Der W ist ja sehr dafür, dass wir ausmisten, das Altmetall muss weg, das brauchen wir nicht mehr, wir heben eh viel zu viel auf, was sollen wir denn damit machen, irgendwann? Also schau ich zwei ganze Maurerwannen mit Messingabschnitten durch und heb nur eine kleine Schachtel voll auf - aber nur wenn wir da jetzt auch wirklich was machen damit. Also machen wir was.
When I tell W about customers asking if we are using recycled materials, he doesn´t get it. "But that is how it´s done. Everything is always been recycled. Nothing is ever thrown away, nothing is ever really new." There are certificates for metals using exclusively recycled material and fair trade certificates, we don´t have those, but I am not perturbed by that fact. Working with precious (and not so precious) metals always means recycling the left overs, putting everything back into the circle. What we can´t melt down in our workshop gets sent away to firms doing this professionally: this is also were we get material we can´t produce, like perfectly smooth sheet metal. Less precious materials go to the scrap metal places, idyllic spots filled with slightly shady characters between heaps of fittings, rusty pipes and gutters. We also go there when we are looking for material sometimes, to avoid having to place an order for something new.
So we sort through our brass bins, keeping only the stuff we might use on day. And then we start using it and make HALF MOON EAR RINGS out of wrongly cut PENDANTS, COUNTER PUZZLE RINGS using the brass sheet the original PUZZLE RINGS were cut from, cut outs from our HAIR THINGS we turn into LEFT OVER EAR RINGS and I find a punch that makes metal look like crocodile skin and now we have vegan ALLIGATOR RINGS (but no idea anymore where the cut offs we used to make them of once came from).
I´m afraid this is just the beginning, so check the RECYCLING section in our SHOP once in a while for new/old things.