Freitag uses old truck tarps to make their designer messenger bags.

Freitag is one of the early adopters of recycling and upcycling ever since the founders, brothers Daniel and Markus Freitag, based in Zurich, first started making bike messenger bags out of recycled old tires. Over the years, a main source of their fabric is old truck tarps. Frietag likes to call the various street materials and the process by which they create bags, “technical recontextualization.”

Last week, they announced a fresh competition to ask fans of the bags to design tarps for trucks, from which winners would be selected and trucks across European highways would have cool new tarps like a traveling museum. After 5 years on the freeways, the truck tarps would then eventually be made into Freitag bags.

According to Freitag, the reason they thought of this competition is because the number of one-truck set-ups is shrinking and therefore, their raw materials are getting more uniform.

Freitag truck design plans which can be downloaded at their site for the competition.

The top 40 truck tarps will be selected by a judging committee and online visitors to the site. Designers can apply to create a truck tarp through April, 2015. Winners will be announced at the end of May.

Prizes include:

  • 1st prize: 2000 € cash and an invitation to the tarp-fitting ceremony
  • 2nd prize: a voucher worth 1000 € for FREITAG products
  • 3rd prize: a voucher worth 500 € for FREITAG products

Check it out here to download the template.

The results of the recycled truck tarps look like these cool bags.