Upcycling sports shirts and aeroplane seats

"When I started talking about upcycling, people thought i used to be talking about riding bikes uphill," laughs Scott Hamlin.

But the former Adidas boss incorporates a simple, yet ingenious, business model - he buys unwanted tops from professional sports teams, upcycles them into merchandise and sells it back to them.

He first began the business with Portland Trail Blazers shirts, a professional five in the US.

"They came to us with jerseys of four players that were traded and that they wanted us to make something for one in every of their green games," Mr. Hamlin says.

The green games are a part of the National Basketball Association's (NBA) environmental initiative called NBA Green, which creates awareness and raises funds to help protect the environment.

Mr. Hamlin's company Looptworks used the fabric from the jerseys to create a scarf, sling bag and toiletry bag. the company then sold back the finished products to the Trail Blazers, who sold the things at their team store and online.

Once others saw Looptworks' handiwork it soon found itself with more orders from NBA clubs.

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The NBA has strict rules around its official sports tops, which don't seem to be allowed to be sold once players are traded (when a player is transferred from one club to another), if they retire or if the sponsor changes.

This means that a club can stand still with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of unsellable items.

As a veteran of the sportswear and outdoor clothing industries, Mr. Hamlin saw first-hand the large amount of waste being produced.

He estimated about 15%-30% of all materials within the development and production process went unused, often reaching to the incinerator or landfill.

''It hit me, what we actually got to do is simply stop... and not create any new materials until we use those that exist already ," he said.

That inspired Mr. Hamlin to line up Looptworks, with the mission to "close the loop", by taking excess textiles and transforming them into consumer goods such as bags, accessories, and clothing.

Mr. Hamlin thinks upcycling - defined because the process of reusing waste materials to form a product of higher value or quality - may be a better solution than recycling. ''Upcycling is different from recycling because then you're grinding up materials and adding more energy footprint to the material, which is best than burning or landfilling, but not as efficient as upcycling.''

But it is not just sports tops that have gotten overhauled.

When airlines update their plane interiors and refit cabins, Looptworks takes their used leather seat covers to craft them into purses, bags, and luggage. one among its biggest clients is Southwest Airlines. Looptworks' other non-sports clients include outdoor clothing firm Patagonia, Wells Fargo Bank and Subway.

Mr. Hamlin has plans to expand to other sports and countries and is reprimand some ''notable brands'' in Europe about potential partnerships.

When asked about any future collaboration with football clubs, he says: ''Personally, Barcelona, Manchester United, Ajax, Paris St Germain, Manchester City, and Real Madrid would top my list.''

The UK-based Textile Recycling Association says both the reuse and recycling of clothing are playing an even bigger role in sustainability efforts.

"With the appearance of fast fashion and rapidly rising consumption rates we are now potentially viewing many thousands of tonnes of used clothing being discarded annually (globally) and that i think that upcycling will only be ready to deal with a limited amount of this," says spokesman Alan Wheeler.

Upcycling is additionally becoming popular for extending the lifetime of furniture and home items . Canada-based Upcycle That takes items such as skateboards, tea-cups, and plastic bottles and reinvents them for corporate clients and individuals.

"When people upcycle, they experience first hand what it means to require something that was previously considered waste and turn it into something functional and exquisite," says Upcycle That co-founder, Judy Rom.

"This ends up in a mindset shift around waste and gets people to debate before throwing something away."