It's not just about the bag: Upcycled Outdoor

Have you ever had that one ski jacket that just fits perfectly? It has seen you through multiple winters and the best and worst days on the mountain. Or that perfect sleeping bag and tent setup, where you know exactly how long it takes to set up and tear down, and how to pack it just right? Then one day it rips, or the zipper breaks, and you can't bear the idea of giving it up.

When your favorite outdoor gear starts to show some wear and tear, it is easy to think you have to give up your most well-loved items and turn to the store to find something new.  Adrienne and Kevin Banker at Upcycled Outdoor are here to show you that there is a different option.

Meet Adrienne and Kevin Banker

How did a love of the earth turn into a personal mindset shift and, eventually, a business?

Well, like so many of us, 2020 brought a new perspective. For Kevin and Adrienne, that perspective came with a side of "where did all this trash come from?" Living in Minturn, they found themselves out on the trails all summer, where you could easily stay six feet apart and enjoy nature. But the Bankers also noticed that everyone else was on the trails too, and it seemed like everyone's trash was being left behind.

The influx of people on the trails was compounded by Eagle County passing an ordinance restricting single-use plastic, so even cleaning up after your dog became a little more inconvenient. That inconvenience led many people to just leave it. This was something Adrienne couldn't ignore. She started thinking about how to solve the problem. "All our products exist to solve specific problems in my life," Adrienne says. So the first iteration of the dedicated dirty bag was born: a small, easy-to-carry bag designed specifically to pack out your waste.

This bag was created from a beloved tent that had seen its last day camping. The Bankers couldn't part with it, so they had been saving it for some unknown future use.

Gear Bag

The dedicated dirty bag became the perfect fit. Adrienne started creating them for herself, and when her friends got wind of it, well-loved, retired tents started pouring in. It seemed there was a whole community that also couldn't stand the idea of quality gear being tossed aside. She began reclaiming the "dead" fabric of her old tent, her friends' old tents, and their friends' old tents, turning them into dirty bags. She created a "6-pack" bag and a "12-pack" bag, each big enough to fit its namesake number of cans, before moving on to a larger trash-bag size.

"The small shift between 'someone should do something about that trash' and realizing that someone is you."

So how did Upcycled Outdoor go from solving personal needs to becoming a business?

Reluctantly. Branding, business-building, and everything that comes with it have never been the motivation. We can all thank Kevin, the self-described hype team, for pushing Adrienne to keep expanding, while also building the website and so much of the behind-the-scenes business side. At the heart of it, the motivation has always been the mindset: the small shifts people can make, the appreciation for the waste we create, and the ways you can offset that. Together, blending their skill sets, the two have moved forward organically, knocking on every door that has presented itself and finding ways to open them.

Those doors have included work at Odell Brewing Company, which led them back to Fort Collins, an expansion into gear repair, and a fateful introduction to someone known only as The Zipper Lady.

Over the years, replacing zippers had been one area of repair that felt more complicated and out of reach, until someone told Adrienne, "You should meet the zipper lady." When she asked for more details, like a name or a website, the answer stayed the same: "The Zipper Lady." So she searched: "Who is The Zipper Lady?"

Endless Zippers

Sure enough, The Zipper Lady, repair and warehouse extraordinaire, was located right in Fort Collins. They didn't know it at the time, but this was the start of the next chapter of Upcycled Outdoor. Over the following months, Adrienne casually learned more about zipper repair from Alicia (The Zipper Lady) until she worked up the courage to ask for an apprenticeship.

As if to prove you never know what doors will open unless you knock, Alicia responded: "The seat is right there. If your butt fits, I will teach you everything you need to know."

Another door opened in the form of a random direct message from the Ski Patrol at Mount Hood, Oregon, asking whether Upcycled could create something with their retired gear bags. Did they have a way to ship the bags? No. Did they know what they were going to create? Also no. But the opportunity was there, so Kevin and Adrienne loaded up and headed to Oregon for a few days of skiing and to retrieve the bags.

After a road-trip adventure that included ripping out all electrical components for safe recycling and literally bale-tying the bags to fit in their car, Upcycled created new rescue throw bags for the entire crew as a thank-you, and still had enough material left to make more than 100 more. When they asked how the Mount Hood crew had found them, the answer was simple: a quick Google search. It was a quiet revelation that not many others are working in this space, when a small shop out of Colorado turns out to be the best option for an Oregon ski resort.

What difference can you make?

This story isn't over yet. Kevin documented the entire journey and process for a short film still in the works. What better way to spread a shared mindset than through a rescue-bag story?

For Adrienne and Kevin, the hope is simple: that they aren't the only ones. We can't all be leaving our trash on the trail and expecting someone else to deal with it, just like we can't all be tossing out gear that still has life in it. Someone has to care enough to pick it up, patch it up, and pass it on. In Minturn, Fort Collins, and on the slopes of Mount Hood, that someone is the Bankers. The only question they're really asking is: who else?

Find them at upcycledoutdoor.org  |  @upcycledoutdoors