Designer Wayne Hemingway's recycled home

By Steffy Bambova

British eco designer Wayne Hemingway is one to watch...and listen to! Not only is he the founder of global fashion brand Red or Dead and the co-founder of Hemingway Design, but he is also one of the most eco passionate public figures. His believe that everything can and should be recycled and reused and nothing should go to waste, comes across not only in his design work but also in his home life.

Here Wayne lets us into his incredible eco house and talks us through the ideas and designs behind some of its most creative rooms and items. He also proves us why lying in a hot tub under the stars while cooking a delicious meal at the same time, is just one of the perks of living a sustainable life.

You have an outdoor office/ tee pee, tell us a bit about how you got the idea to build that?

Wayne Hemingway: We built that because we like being outside and we try to work from home a couple of days a week. And the idea is that you can be out in the garden, it’s a fresh environment but you’re also undercover. It’s got hidden wireless, it’s got electricity in there. It’s made from recycled telegraph poles and recycled claw boards and timber. But also it doubles up as a place where kids can play. It also doubles up as a place where you can entertain and have dinner around the table or camp outside the house. The main thing is that things like that are not hard to do, you don’t need to bring an architect to do it, it’s just a bit of fun really! We use it all the time, it’s great!

How did the idea of having a Dutch spa in your garden come up?

Wayne Hemingway: We can cook around it too, there’s a cooker next to it. It was a new designer from Holland who came up with the idea of a sustainable Jacuzzi and we bought it. This weekend I’ve used it twice, it’s fantastic! And all you do to heat the water is to burn any branches that have fallen off. You fill it with water and burn the wood, you don’t need anything else apart from the wood and a match. And it heats up the water depending on how hot you like it. And while you’re in the water you can also cook on the heater. Myself and my wife sat in there on Saturday night, underneath the stars and we cooked prawns with garlic and we had dinner in the hot tub. It was fantastic. We’ve had it now for many years and it still works really well and it’s a design that doesn’t harm the environment.

What about your outdoor dining area?

Wayne Hemingway: We use that regularly because again we cook a lot outside. And we built a pizza oven and we make our own pizzas. Also the wall is made out of old telegraph poles and then we’ve grown bamboo in front of it. It’s not just about being sustainable, it’s about lifestyle. It’s just enjoyable. It’s a new taste, a new experience.

Are there any recycled materials you have used in creating your kitchen?

Wayne Hemingway: The lamps hanging from the ceiling – that’s just made from old wire and it’s just bent metal. We’ve had them for a long time and it’s probably the first recycling project that we did. We made those lamps 17 or 18 years ago. On the dining table there are some light shades made out of old polystyrene coffee cups.

Your house is surrounded by various plants. In what other ways have you incorported your up-cycling views into building it?

Wayne Hemingway: Geradine loves gardening and designing landscape and she’s grown lots of plants from scratch and she does a lot of the work herself. The house is designed so that the water runs out and it either goes to water the land or it goes into a wildlife pond so none of it gets wasted. We’ve got a big vegetable patch where we grow all our own vegetables. We’ve got chickens wandering around too. There's a green roof on part of the property which means that the living roof is made of plants and that’s fantastic because number one – it has loads of water and number two – it encourages loads of light. Most of the garden furniture is made of things that we’ve recycled.

In your living room you have a boat that you use as a sofa. How did you get the idea to do that?

Wayne Hemingway: That is our boat, we used to sail in it to a local beach when the kids were young. We found the boat kind of semi-abandoned, we tracked down the owner and bought it for next to nothing and then we restored it. Then a friend of mine borrowed it to go to work on the Isle of Wight, but when he sailed back, it ended up shipwrecked on Hayling Island with the boat broken and so we made it into two sofas. And the sofas are so comfortable, they’re talking points, they look fantastic, they’re individual. It was my wife’s idea.

Do you have any sustainable living tips for our readers?

Wayne Hemingway: There are really easy ways to live sustainable. One is to make sure you recycle as much as you can. Secondly is to be able to reuse and repair things. It’s not hard to repair. If I get a small hall in an item of clothing, my first thought wouldn’t be to get rid of it, it would be to try to fix it. And if I get bored with something, I'll think of a new way of wearing it or giving it to a charity shop, so somebody else can enjoy it. It’s just making sure that you’re thinking every time- would this be wasteful? There’s hardly any need for anything to go to landfill.

You recently collaborated with Coca-Cola to design an exclusive limited edition umbrella made out of recycled plastic bottles. Tell us a bit more about the project…

Wayne Hemingway: Coca-Cola have just launched PlantBottle plastic and it’s the first-ever 100% recyclable bottle but it’s also partially made of sugar cane. So that is quite a strong message in itself in. A big corporation is thinking how to be sustainable and how to preserve resources and not to overuse them. And so to back that up we all got an idea to do an umbrella made out of old coke bottles and show that there is a value in a bottle and you can either come back and make a new bottle or you can make other things –whether it’s fabric, umbrellas, clothing, carpets or furniture. You can make so much out of it and yet the public are not doing an amazing job at valuing plastic. And we thought that by doing an umbrella it would be another little nudge to get people to think about that.

Wayne’s exclusive umbrella for iconic drinks brand Coca-Cola is available at Harvey Nichols stores now. For more information about Coca-Cola’s new PlantBottle packaging visit www.coca-cola.co.uk/plantbottle