Sustainability, surf and old bikes tyres, and what ties them all together

At first glance it may seem a love of sustainability, bike riding and having your hair tie fall out in the surf have nothing much in common.

But, as couple Jessie Alice and Adam Hough discovered by chance one day in a beach car park, upcycled hair ties might be the one thing that ties them all together.

Jessie and Adam met at a community-organised dinner event to raise awareness about food waste.
Both passionate about sustainability and the outdoors, they felt an instant connection.

Now, seven years later they are living in Bellbrae with their foster-dog Yanni, doing up their van and running a sustainable hair tie business.

Adam is a keen cyclist and works as a bike mechanic in Torquay and Jessie loves to surf and works full-time at their business, Eco Hair Ties.

Jessie said as a company their aim is to normalise upcycling and aim to create an eco-friendly circular business model.

“It all started in the Point Impossible car park. I was about to paddle out in the surf but didn’t have a hair tie, so Adam, he has an engineering mind and is very practical and pragmatic, launched into the back of our van and got a bike inner tube and cut out a hair tie for me,” Jessie said.

“And it actually worked! It held my hair back for the entire surf and I’d never ever had that before.”

With Adam working in the bike industry, he saw the large amount of waste from rubber first-hand.”

Tyres can be reused, but inner tubes are a totally different material and they’re more likely to go into landfill,” Jessie said.

“Being really interested in sustainability we thought ‘what can we do with that?’ So we kept working away at these hair ties and we thought ‘how can we make the perfect hair ties that can utilise this rubber waste but also make sure it’s a product that doesn’t damage the planet or anyone’s hair?’.

“So, the two worked together to design a hair tie that could utilise bicycle inner tube waste.

“It wasn’t until July 2021 that we came up with that perfect product and we launched Eco Hair Ties.

“It does what it says it does, it doesn’t hurt your hair and it doesn’t hurt our planet. We source materials from about a dozen bike stores all across Victoria … we haven’t come across a bike store yet that hasn’t wanted to give us their bike tubes – they acknowledge that there is a waste issue.”

Eco Hair Ties are ecofriendly, plastic free, zero waste and sustainable.

“It’s a really, really great product for surfers and divers, because they can use our product when they’re in the surf or when their diving and it doesn’t fall out of their hair and it also doesn’t damage their hair, so it’s a real win,” Jessie said.

She said while their focus is hair ties for now, the mission of sustainability is something they hope everyone adopts.

“We’re just doing hair ties, and that’s just one small change we can make, but it’s part of a bigger message that says well what else? What else can we be doing?

“And, hey, if we can turn a waste item like an inner tube into something valuable, then imagine what else we can do with all the other waste in the world. It’s getting people familiar and normalising upcycling, it’s not a dirty word.”

Jessie said some customers find upcycling less appealing than buying something new, but the couple have embraced this as a challenge to educate and raise awareness about sustainable practises.

“I want to be able to normalise this stuff. I want to walk into a surf store, a green grocer and see our product on the shelf and find that it’s just the natural thing that people are reaching for when they think about hair ties,” she said.

Looking to the future, Jessie and Adam are expanding the business.

They have recently outsourced manufacturing locally and are planning to run their head office from their soon-to-be fitted-out van.
The couple plan to drive up the east coast and supply products to surf and dive shops along the way.

“We want to be surfing out with our customers and retailers. It’s not just going into the store, its being out in the world with them.”

Learn more about Eco Hair Ties at www.ecohairties.com.au or on Instagram @ecohairties.