BUSINESS BIO

Where is the enterprise based? Dorset

Key business markets: Varies depending on the material to be recycled

Annual turnover: (08/09) £200,000

% of turnover which is trading income (as opposed to grants): 100%

Number of employees: Two

www.fire-hose.co.uk

ambassadors

Kresse Wesling

Kresse Wesling
  • Elvis & Kresse Organisation

  • 32

  • Founder and director

  • Bournemouth

Corporate brands, fire brigades and young interns have all been motivated by Kresse Wesling’s work making new markets from waste products

Social Enterprise Ambassador Kresse Wesling doesn’t do things by the book – that’s what makes her a successful social entrepreneur.

For example, ask her what Elvis & Kresse's key business market is and she flatly states ‘we don’t work that way’.

‘What we do,’ she says, ‘is look at the material that needs to be recycled and then we reverse engineer. Depending on the material we might design something for the retail market or we might design something for the business-to-business market. The waste defines the market.’

This unusual business principle has so far allowed Elvis & Kresse to create fashionable belts and bags made out of decommissioned fire hose, and supermarket tote bags sold in Sainsbury’s, made out of coffee sacks that otherwise would have ended up in UK landfill.

But what has fired up this young entrepreneur to direct her energies into saving the planet, when she could have chosen a business path more focused on personal fortune?

'Growing up in Canada meant the benefit of a strong environmental education,’ Kresse says. ‘People of my generation would never, for example, think of littering. I know that's only a little thing but those little things feed into the big things. I think I'm capable of fixing this problem – and because I'm capable I'm obliged.'

The results have certainly impressed her private sector partners, who include Costa Coffee, Bettys and Taylors, and Matthew Algie.

Piers Blake, who heads up the Costa Coffee’s corporate social responsibility strategy says he was bowled over by Kresse’s ‘drive and energy’ and by the ‘virtuous circle’ that Elvis & Kresse’s business creates.

There has to be a business case for the product because then nobody can debate it.

‘It’s easy to chuck away the sacks but this is the right thing to do,’ says Blake.

Instead of sacks going to landfill they are turned into reusable shopping bags. Profits from the bags collected from Costa Coffee are then split between Elvis &Kresse and the Costa Coffee Foundation which supports programmes for Costa’s coffee growers.

Elvis & Kresse always donates half the profits from its products to a charity associated with the partners from whom it has collected the waste. In the case of Costa Coffee, Blake expects this profit to fund the yearly salaries of two teachers in African schools.

‘There are very few products on the shelf that you can keep talking for days about the benefit,’ says Kresse.

At the same time she points out that the businesses along the way are all making money. Coffee companies and the Fire Service are saving money on landfill while businesses involved in the supply chain are making standard mark-ups.

‘No-one is saying that because this is so good we won’t take a margin on it. And I wouldn’t want it any other way. There has to be a business case for the product because then nobody can debate it.’

The business model, combined with Kresse’s youth (she is only 32 and started her first business at 24), have made Elvis & Kresse an irresistible story for the press. This is good news for her private sector partners and has led to requests from young interns that want to play a part in an organisation they can be inspired by.

Judging by some of the discussions in progress on new products with new private sector partners it looks like those interns, and of course Kresse herself, will be in for an exciting year.

Quick Facts

  • Since November E&KO has saved 30 tonnes of jute sack from landfill and raised £3,000 for projects like wells and schools in coffee and tea growing communities in the developing world.
  • E&KO has saved fire brigades around the country from having to throw away 20 tonnes of old fire hose. Typically they would have to pay £70 a tonne at the tip.
  • Days after starting the business E&KO was asked by the team behind Live Earth to make 500 belts in three weeks.

Print