Carleton industrial design graduate Heather Jeffery is giving the three R’s—reduce, reuse, and recycle—a whole new meaning through her company Re4m, pronounced “reform,” where she designs custom furniture and art. Jeffery graduated from Carleton in 2014.
Defining upcycling as “taking something that is otherwise considered trash or headed to the landfill, and then repurposing it for another use,” Jeffery transforms scraps from museums, schools, and manufacturers into furniture and art.
“Re4m is a sustainable design and fabrication company, and we design and build custom furnishing, fixtures and displays,” Jeffery said. “Everything is made using recycled and reclaimed materials.”
Among her most notable projects are a stage prop for Carleton events and a play structure in the Museum of Nature’s butterfly and flight exhibit.
“The play structure is a fake front end of a jeep, so kids can go behind it and get their photos taken,” Jeffery said. “I think [it] was made from 90 per cent museum exhibit materials—from old exhibits that were being thrown out.”
Jeffery said her courses at Carleton helped start Re4m.
“[Carleton] taught us a lot about manufacturing techniques,” she said. “They also had a lot of hands-on classes at Carleton like a welding shop, a wood shop and a plastic shop.”
According to third-year industrial design student Alura Sutherland, Carleton’s industrial design program steers their students towards sustainable projects.
“The UN has their sustainability goals, and that was made part of our curriculum in the last few years,” Sutherland said.
Jeffery believes that all businesses should consider incorporating some aspect of sustainability in their daily operations.
“Don’t put paper in the garbage, put it in the recycling kind of thing, or have a compost bin in your lunch room,” she said.
Re4m was inspired by one such business.
“This retailer was throwing out their old displays and stuff that they put products on,” Jeffery said. “I just took it from them and then I turned it into a cinema-style light fixture where you can interchange letters to spell something out.”
Jeffery said Re4m has snowballed since her first projects in 2015, but does face a few challenges every so often.
The materials they get are sometimes coated with harmful coatings, and there are tons of nails, she said.
“We have to tell our clients that production lead time is longer than a typical custom designer because of the extra labour that’s involved,” Jeffrey said.
Regardless, she said she applies her beliefs about keeping products out of landfills to her work, and encourages others to consider sustainability in their daily lives.
“If there is a way for businesses to take that extra time to find a different path for their scrap materials, that would be amazing,” Jeffery said. “It’s not always the case unfortunately, it just takes too much time or they don’t know the resources.”
Jeffery will be hosting an open house at the Re4m workshop on Sept. 15.
Photo by Jordan Haworth
