Gimme shelter
Gimme shelter
Jack Woolley’s ingenious solution to a London litter problem
What it is
Discarded crisp packets are the blight of every high street. They take an age to degrade and are also difficult to recycle. Unless, that is, you use them as they are, thought Jack Woolley. Crisp packets, he says, are the perfect material with which to make light, cheap, weatherproof shelters. Tents, in other words.
"Here we have this wonderful material that is causing a huge litter problem but could be converted to a fabric that’s very well suited to making temporary shelters for refugees and victims of natural disaster" he explains.
"In hot climates the reflective surface would be outside to reflect the sun and keep the interior cool. In cold climates it would be on the inside, reflecting heat from the occupants back into the interior."
Who he is
A London-based industrial designer, Woolley, 43, has a portfolio of work that ranges from a prosthetic leg for King’s College Hospital to a tide-powered oyster-growing ‘machine’, modular bathroom furniture and bone china lighting. He is studying architecture at London Metropolitan University and has been working on the crisp tent as part of the course.
How he thought of it
Out walking one day in London, Woolley was struck by the amount of litter on the streets. He took a wheelbarrow out around King’s Cross and collected 600 discarded crisp packets (the amount, he says, represents one year’s crisps consumption by a single school-age child in the UK).
After taking them home, he split them open, cleaned them and set about experimenting with ways to join them together into larger sheets. The sheets are held up using poles made from plumbing scraps.
What happens next
Woolley is currently in talks with a major crisp manufacturer about developing the design further and establishing an infrastructure for gathering up the discarded packets. Apart from making smaller versions, he is also trialing different structures that can stand up without the need for poles. "It would be great to be able to scrunch the whole lot into a tiny package," he says.
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