Last month, Dyelicious held kid-friendly workshops in Hong Kong to teach people how to turn food waste into colourful dye. Participants pick from a range of plain white clothes, scarves, hats or bags, and then dye them in whichever pattern and colour they choose for an eco-friendly look. The colour comes from organic waste like coffee, red cabbage, sweet potato, ginger, and more. Since 2017, Dyelicious has held nearly 900 work­shops, attracting 10,000 people and using approximately 700 tonnes of food waste!

You’ve probably never heard of Dyelicious. But beyond the positive impact it is having, here are two insights that you can apply to your business:

Capacity capture. Food waste accounts for 34% of all solid waste in Hong Kong. While everyone else talks about waste reduction, Dyelicious saw something more. Instead it uses that waste to unlock a new source of value. We wrote about this in our CAPACITY CAPTURE trend back in 2017. And they’re not the only ones thinking creatively, we’ve seen JAT Holdings’ Petal Paint in Sri Lanka and zero-waste cocktails from Mark Lloyd in Thailand. Look around. How can you capture excess capacity, and transform it into something of value to consumers?

Waste to want. Waste is unappealing. We all (rightly!) try to avoid it. But, like many of the most powerful brands, Dyelicious has turned consumer attitudes upside down. Participants willingly stain their clothes! As well as these workshops Dyelicious has also partnered with brands to create luxury products with strong eco-credentials, similar to the French luxury perfume house Etat Libre d’Orange, which created a scent from organic waste. Wearing clothes and scent from trash?! It might be surprising at first, but not when you think about the compelling eco-status stories these products offer. Could you radically reframe people’s thinking by taking a counterintuitive position on an important issue?