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This week I was lucky enough to catch up with the amazing Charlie (cool name, right?!), founder of Müll. Müll is a London based refill store also working hard to recycle locally sourced plastics into incredible, beautiful and useful products. Read on to find out more!
I’m based in South East London with my 5 year old… dog. I’m a total workaholic, obsessed with my recycling goals but also love getting up and out early for morning workouts. This is how I start almost everyday, I love stealing a little bit of time when everyone else is still sleeping. Plus it keeps my mental health in check.
I do love seeing my friends and going to gigs/festivals when I can but at the moment I’m totally consumed by the recycling and I’m ok with that, I love it.
I’ve been a bit obsessed with plastic waste for a few years now, pre-Covid I had a project which included fitting a bubble barrier in Regents Canal in London. The point of the bubble barrier was to stop plastic waste from entering the Thames via Regents Canal, and then entering the sea. The plastic we planned to capture was then going to be recycled using the machines I have today. Due to Covid that plan was stalled, so it brings me so much joy that I’ve managed to refocus on recycling a few years later; it’s just taking plastic directly from the source. But I’m sure I’ll revisit the bubble barrier plan in the future.
I think the biggest problem is a lack of responsibility from corporations that produce plastic on a daily basis, all without any end of use plan. Our local councils are severely underfunded, and we have a government seriously uninterested which means the recycling system is totally flawed. According to Greenpeace and Everyday plastic only 12% of the plastic waste created in the UK is actually recycled in the UK. We send about 2/3 of our waste overseas. And the remaining plastic is more likely to end up in landfill or be incinerated, than be recycled. This blows my mind as plastic is actually quite an incredible material when not treated as single use, and recycled effectively. But plastic typically isn’t recycled effectively, it’s in the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink, by 2050 there will be plastic in the ocean than fish.
Our plastic doesn’t travel miles and miles up and down the country or to other countries before it even goes through the recycling process. We take the plastic waste directly from the source, in most cases our kind community just walk it to our shop / drop off points. And we then recycle the plastic as it is, we don’t add anything to our plastic. I get asked a lot if we add dyes, but we just create our blends around the colour of the plastic that we have in that moment, the process is very minimal. We’re reducing the carbon footprint of recycling.
Yeah absolutely, in our community the conversation is really changing. I no longer see plastic waste as waste, I see the colour and material that I can create with it, and my community see it the same way too. If they’re buying unavoidable plastic and especially if it’s a bright colour I’ll get a message about it, how they’ll bring it down once they’re finished with it. My community is willing to make the extra effort to carry their waste to me. It’s huge, and quite mind blowing how everyone is getting onboard our recycling journey. It’s our own form of activism.
At the moment we’ve just got a small selection of products, the soap dish, comb, coasters and candle holders but we’ve got plans to expand, so watch this space. The most popular item is the soap dish, this took a lot of consideration, I wanted a soap dish that properly drained the water away so the soaps aren’t sitting in water, going all mushy. I also wanted the dish to look good, to really demonstrate how recycling can be cool and beautiful. I think we nailed it. We also create bespoke items for other companies, we’re working on a few large projects at the moment which I’m really excited to announce when I can.
We are mainly updating our Instagram page mull.club, we do have a TikTok account too… I keep promising myself I’ll be better on that.
A huge thanks to Charlie for giving her time, and you can find our range of Müll Club products here.
