About Mousekins
Mousekins Ltd is a social enterprise founded and run by Isla Meynell. Its mission is to reduce the landfill waste of British interior samples and help tackle social isolation in the community through shared craft practice. It achieves this goal by designing beautiful homeware entirely from waste fabrics and working with charity partners to turn these fabric scraps into finished products.
The homeware covers used in Mousekin’s final products are stitched by prisoners and prison leavers, supported by the charity Fine Cell Work. This charity offers prisoners a chance to learn needlework skills, find a creative outlet, and rebuild their lives after release.
Above: © Fine Cell Work on Instagram - @finecellwork. Photographs from a foot-stool making workshop for prison leavers, led by Isla from Mousekins at Fine Cell Work’s Battersea hub. Working with excess fabric from the interiors industry, the workshop attendees were led through the process of creating a footstool, using Shred Station’s pre-consumer cotton waste as stuffing.
About Fine Cell Work
Fine Cell Work enables people in prison to redefine themselves, inspiring and empowering them to rebuild their lives and non-criminal identities. Since 1997, they have been helping people in prison and post-release to see what they are capable of, offering them hope for a different future through the creative medium of needlework.
In the UK, prisons are experiencing extremely high occupancy rates, with many facilities operating near or above their operational capacity. The prison population has been steadily increasing. This overcrowding poses challenges to the system, potentially impacting the well-being of both prisoners and staff.
There is substantial evidence to demonstrate that a failure to rehabilitate can increase the risk of reoffending. By providing an opportunity for prisoners to learn, do something creative with their time that improves well-being, and earn money in the process, Fine Cell Work motivates prisoners and prison leavers to focus on their future, rebuilding their sense of purpose in the process. The company also provides prison leavers with post-release support and training. Prison leavers involved with this programme have a reoffending rate of 1%, significantly lower than the UK average of around 27.5%*.
Stitchers earn around a third of the proceeds upon completing each item. There are also bonuses awarded for work completed to a particularly high standard. Stitchers receive their payments immediately, before sale, so they are paid even if the item isn’t sold straight away. Additionally, stitching is the only avenue of work given to prisoners that they can continue in their cells, where they spend up to 23 hours per day. This provides a creative outlet, keeping the mind occupied.
The challenge
The driving force behind Mousekins’ mission is the desire to reduce small piece fabric waste in the UK’s textile industry.
It’s estimated that 744,000 tonnes of non-reusable textiles are discarded each year in the UK. This includes both domestic residual textile waste and commercial textile waste. Of this, a mere 27,000 is recycled in the UK, and just 1,000 tonnes is closed-loop recycled in the UK and Europe. The majority is sent to Energy from Waste (c.469,000 tonnes) and landfill (c.61,000 tonnes).
Using surplus samples along with new fabrics that have reached the end of the road and have no resale value, the Mousekins community not only reduces waste but also creates something exquisite from it.
The challenge for Mousekins has been filling the homeware once the covers are made. Isla wanted the inside of the items to be just as sustainable as the outside, using only waste textiles. That’s where Shred Station was able to assist.
Having searched for over a year for something that would not only be sustainable and created from waste but also - most importantly - provide the right density and weight for our products - has been quite a journey. We experimented with a lot of things! Contacting Shred Station was the best thing I did. Not only did Simon like our mission, but he took the time to really understand what we needed. It is important to me that all of our suppliers are doing their bit for the planet, and Shred Station stand out as a waste processor in this regard.
Isla Meynell
Founder of Mousekins
Shred Station and Mousekins
Mousekins now uses our pre-consumer shredded textiles as stuffing in items like doorstops, draught excluders, and pouffes. Using pre-consumer waste textiles from our customers who approve, Mousekins is turning these shredded fabrics into something new and long-lasting, simultaneously benefiting the environment and creating social value opportunities.
The pre-consumer textiles we receive can be anything from t-shirt misprints to defective or missewn garments. The items come to us requiring destruction, predominantly to protect brands and avoid unsuitable products from accidentally entering the market. Once destruction is complete, there are several textile recycling methods we utilise depending on the makeup of the garments and their suitability for recycling. These options can include recycling into new garments, using rag recycling, or working with brands like Mousekins to find recycling or reuse options. Where textiles aren’t suitable for recycling, we use Energy from Waste to ensure nothing is ever sent to landfill.
Above: © Shred Station. An image showing a large volume of shredded textiles exiting a baling machine at Shred Station’s Norwich destruction centre.
Along with operating with a strict Zero to Landfill policy and many other sustainability commitments, Shred Station is a lifetime CarbonNeutral® certified company, aligning with Mousekins’ mission of reducing landfill waste and operating sustainably.
Simon Franklin, Shred Station’s founder and Managing Director, comments on the relationship between the two companies:
By forming relationships with brands like Mousekins, we’re not just giving our customers a recycling solution for their shredded textiles, we’re giving them the option to directly benefit communities and create opportunities that have proven to reduce reoffending rates for engaged prison leavers. The designs produced by Isla and the Mousekins team aren’t just well-made and eye-catching; they represent environmental and societal change, as well as hope for a more positive future.
Simon Franklin
Shred Station's founder and Managing Director
*Information correct at time of publication.