Bringing the movies to the workplace

Bringing The Movies To The Workplace

Recycling is pretty comprehensive these days. You can send your used paper to be shredded and pulped, and your glass to be melted down into its malleable liquid form. Tin and aluminium cans alike can become "part of a car, or a train, or another car, or a plane" as Eddie Izzard put it in those recycling adverts from a few years ago, and everything from clothing and furniture to food and batteries can be sold, stripped down, mulched and/or reprocessed, only to return to the store shelves after a few weeks.

But what about movie sets? Granted, cars and large pieces of furniture won't be scrapped, but the smaller items might, such as toiletries from a bathroom set, or logs that didn't get burnt during that particularly saucy scene in front of a roaring fireplace. An example is the relatively recent movie 47 Ronin: eight tonnes of bamboo canes were left over after filming, so what should the studio do with them? Throw them in a skip? It's not very environmentally friendly, is it?

That's where Drèsd comes in. Based in Buckinghamshire, the company provides the broadcast industry with a viable, cost-effective alternative to set waste being sent to landfill. Simultaneously, customers get to grab themselves a piece of silver screen memorabilia, resulting in amazing conversation pieces for the office or studio. Just imagine directing someone to your toilets, nonchalantly adding that they've been used by Leonardo DiCaprio or Charlize Theron. (Okay, that's a weird example, but you get the idea.)

Hanging picture frames from Harry Potter

Lynn McFarlane is behind the idea and on the website states that "we sort the waste we collect into categories, then re-use it for interior design, events and set dressing, sell it and/or re-purpose it for a second use, and donate a considerable amount towards various registered charities." We think that it's an absolutely cracking idea, and a rather impressive testimonial from Colin Firth agrees.

Hypothetically speaking, if you could have any object from any set, what would it be? The Holy Grail that Indiana Jones used to save his father's life would make a delightful mug for hot chocolate, and a full-size Alien would be the perfect addition to your Halloween decorations. Or perhaps you'd go bigger and have the Millennium Falcon in your backyard in place of a shed, or nab the shark from Jaws and ride it through the city streets in the passenger seat of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.