From Stretch Tents to Coastal Protection: Meet the Partners Behind Our Upcycled Bags
Behind Protect the West Coast’s upcycled bags is a partnership that gives discarded materials a useful future. Through the work of OpenSource Circular (OSC) and RHI Tents, stretch tent fabric is kept out of landfill and put back to work. For PTWC, this approach connects responsible manufacturing with our efforts to protect the coastline and its communities.
A bag packed for a weekend up the West Coast has a fairly straightforward job. It needs to hold your belongings, survive being loaded into an already crowded car and come home ready for the next trip. But the story of how that bag was made, and what its purchase supports, can reach well beyond the boot.
Our partners OpenSource Circular (OSC) and RHI Tents are helping to tell that story by finding value in materials that might otherwise be thrown away.
In September 2025, OSC reported that RHI Tents had supplied it with more than a tonne of waste stretch tent material. This included offcuts, surplus fabric and retired tents, providing material for new products rather than sending it to landfill. That figure covers the partnership’s wider work, which feeds into OSC’s circular manufacturing operation.
For PTWC, which works with OSC to produce our upcycled bags, it is a practical example of the thinking we want to support: making better use of what already exists while helping to fund the protection of the places we love.
Giving good material another purpose
A stretch tent does not lose all its value when it reaches the end of its original use. Nor does an offcut become useless simply because it falls outside a cutting pattern.
The partnership between RHI Tents and OSC recognises that remaining potential. RHI supplies the material, while OSC brings the design and manufacturing skills needed to turn it into useful goods.
OSC works with recovered fabrics from several sources, including stretch tents, advertising banners and yacht sails. Its designers and machinists transform these materials into bags and accessories, with repair forming part of the commitment to keeping them in use. OSC offers a lifetime repair warranty on the products it makes. This is circular thinking made tangible. The material retains a purpose, skilled people do the work, and the finished product is made to be used again and again.
Local skill behind every bag
PTWC’s upcycled bag range is handmade by OSC’s local artisans in Cape Town. Working with recovered material takes care: strong, thick fabrics require suitable machinery and experienced hands, while the characteristics of each fabric help determine how it can best be used.
The result gives our supporters a way to contribute to coastal protection through something useful in their everyday lives.
Proceeds from these bags support PTWC’s work to defend the West Coast’s ecosystems and communities from destructive mining. Our support for circular manufacturing also reflects a wider ambition: to encourage economic opportunities that can sustain livelihoods while respecting the environment on which they depend.
The OSC team.
Partnerships that help us protect
Protecting the West Coast takes people with different skills working towards a shared purpose. In this case, those contributions begin with a business setting aside reusable material, continue through the hands of designers and machinists, and reach the person who chooses a PTWC bag.
We are grateful to OSC and RHI Tents for the roles they play in this story. Their partnership gives us something concrete to share with our supporters: an example of how materials can retain their value, how local craftsmanship can give them another use, and how a purchase can contribute to our work.
The next time you pack for the coast, give a little thought to what your bag carries beyond your belongings.