In an effort to chop down on waste within the manufacturing course of, Subaru has collaborated with a Japanese provider to make reusable procuring luggage out of airbag material. The baggage are made out of surplus materials that is sometimes discarded throughout on the airbag manufacturing facility.
The provider in query is Toyoda Gosei, which is definitely a part of the Toyota Group. The corporate has been round since 1949 and makes weatherstripping, gas tank elements, LEDs, dashboards and consoles along with airbags. It provides quite a lot of carmakers and given Toyota’s shut ties with Subaru, the partnership is smart. Toyota owns 20% of Subaru, and so they collaborate on automobiles such because the 86 and BRZ, or the bZ4X and Solterra.
Airbags are woven out of a particular nylon that must be flame resistant and impervious to gases. They’re designed to final a very long time as properly, since they’ve to stay purposeful via many heating cycles in a automobile inside for years, presumably a long time. In the event you’ve ever left a typical polypropylene procuring bag in your sizzling automobile for too lengthy and had it disintegrate in your palms, scattering plastic mud all over the place, you understand these so known as eco-bags aren’t actually that eco pleasant.
Attributable to their smooth materials, the airbag luggage can fold down into a really compact sq. as and include an elastic band to carry the folded sq. collectively. That is useful for storage, as anybody with a trunkful of canvas procuring luggage can attest to.
The baggage are white however have stripes in both Subaru’s trademark blue or the pinkish-red of the STI efficiency model. They’re additionally designed to have a gap massive sufficient maintain a normal Japanese cypress tub and onsen towel, two gadgets vital when visiting one in every of nation’s many sizzling springs.
Earlier this yr, Toyoda Gosei introduced a collaboration with Asics to make sneakers out of airbag material.
The Subaru bag prices ¥2,500 ($18.62 USD), however to this point it is solely accessible in Japan.
