Umbrellas lost on trains upcycled

What to do with the 80,000 umbrellas lost on London’s Underground each year? For those that cannot be reunited with their owners, a group of architects may have the answer: The Harvest Dome.

The Harvest Dome was built earlier this year in New York using 450 discarded umbrellas support by a floating platform made from 128 recycled drinks bottles – the equivalent of two days’ worth of lost umbrellas from the tube.

Underground waste

Considering that the London Underground has been running for over a century and carries each year in excess of 1 million passengers, for the most part, it works like a finely-oiled machine. It has, however, always produced a significant amount of waste.

The strong wind created by the trains blows into the tunnels so much human hair, clothing fibres, and general rubbish that it has to be cleaned away each night to prevent a fire risk.

While it is hard to imagine there is anything to recycle from this detritus, or indeed the 219 umbrellas lost everyday on the tube, a fleet of Harvest Domes on the Thames would stand testament to our collective wastefulness, forgetfulness and ingenuity.