Coats for the homeless made out of newspaper

When the temperature in Toronto drops below -15°C, or 5°F, the city declares a Cold Weather Alert that triggers a host of actions aimed at getting the homeless off the streets and into warm shelters.

But some people still can’t get out of the cold.

So the successful branding and marketing company TAXI decided to give back to their community by making a jacket to help those who couldn’t get out of the cold.The result was the 15 Below Project and the goal to distribute 3,000 specially designed jackets to the homeless.

“We’ve survived 15 years, now we’re going to help others survive the night,” said TAXI executive creative director Steve Mykolyn on the 15 Below Project Web site.

The cool thing about the project is the design of the jacket. It is a wind- and water-proof fabric filled with large pockets. There are pockets in the arms, hood, and body, but the jacket doesn’t come with insulation built in. Instead the pockets are designed to be filled with crumpled newspaper as insulation.

Whether this method could really keep someone warm in a Toronto, or Chicago, winter was my first question, but the project’s organizers thought of that. They gave one of their guys a coat, yesterday’s newspaper and then stuck him in an industrial meat locker for 8 hours. To see the outcome check out the video.

The coats will be distributed in cities where TAXI has an office, which is Torono, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver in Canada and New York City in the U.S. Currently there are no plans to distribute the coats in Chicago, according to TAXI’s spokeswoman Lisa Sanders.  As a fundraiser 15 celebrities from Kid Rock to Jon Stewart have signed jackets that are being auctioned off on eBay.

The design of the jacket is versatile and aimed at the needs of the homeless. Toronto gets colder than Chicago, but these jackets could be useful to the many Chicago homeless who can’t fit into the diminishing number of shelter beds available. With shelters on the Northside like REST closing, jackets for those who don’t want to take the van ride to the West or South Side could be a welcome relief from the cold Chicago winter.

For more info about the jacket’s design and the project check out the 15 Below Project site.For pictures of the jackets in action visit the Salvation Army Canada’s Flickr page.

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