Our masks donated to Shield Our Heroes made the Fox2 KTVU news tonight. Seeing them on the happy faces of doctors, nurses and police officers is the best reward for the countless hours our "Mask Force" sewing crew has put into designing and making face masks over the last two weeks.

When Steffen Kuehr looks at discarded fire hoses, he envisions belts, dog leashes and drink coasters. Kuehr, through his Santa Rosa company TekTailor, takes other people’s garbage and repurposes it into functional items. It’s called upcycling - the transformation of waste into a product people want.

With a sustainable mission to reuse waste materials and keep them out of landfills, the TekTailor Corporation, along with two related business units (BPE-USA and Sonoma-USA), supports a strong environmental stewardship program that is expanding into multiple...

"These fire hoses have helped us save our homes and forests and cities, so we figured we should try and keep it around rather than send it to the landfill," Kuehr said of what he called material with a "heroic past."

Saturday’s free event in Santa Rosa was meant to demonstrate the value and possibility of mending or restoring worn items rather than disposing of them. A woman with a wobbly lamp said the waste bin might be the best place for it, but she wanted appliance repairman Farid Asef to take a look just in case...

In the US businesses large and small are getting involved. In California, textile manufacturer TekTailor has put all its other sewing production - knee and elbow pads and upcycled products - on hold to make personal protection face masks. “We are trying to keep a balance between making masks we send out to nurses, doctors and first responders..."