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Nothing like three men and a cardboard box to inspire a minor design revolution. Christian Ferrante, 26, marketing manager at Rose Street Artists’ Market, the Fitzroy gem founded by his brother Adam five years ago, was with friends - restaurateur Ash Singam, 26, and graphic designer Josh Cohen, 35 - helping a mate move house when a box of leftover wire coat hangers sparked the idea for a recycled cardboard alternative. The result, Green Hanger (greenhanger.com.au), is now garnering interest from as far afield as the US, Britain and Middle East.

The lads did some research and discovered 77 million wire hangers end up in landfill each year. Straightened out (to roughly a metre in length) and laid end to end, they’d wrap around the globe almost twice. Designing a sturdy cardboard alternative and pitching it to two major consumers of wire hangers - fashion retailers and the dry-cleaning industry - didn’t seem like a huge stretch to the entrepreneurial trio.

“It was just the inquisitive nature of us three. We always seem to come up with these crazy ideas,” says Ferrante. “We’ve always all been into fashion and design and environmental benefits and conservation.”

The creative collective also brought some pretty substantial business smarts to the venture. Cohen, who Ferrante describes as “considered and methodical”, founded successful creative design agency Lemonade 10 years ago and designed the Green Hanger prototype after six months of consultation with retailers and dry cleaners. Singam has run restaurants for his parents, travelled extensively and had just returned from a stint in London, where he saw consumer demand for environmentally sustainable products growing. Ferrante has a degree in business marketing, experience at ad agency Young & Rubicarn, and, with brother Adam, had recently launched Junkyard Cinema - Melbourne’s third outdoor cinema and its first at an industrial site. It was another bright idea whose time had come.

Crucially, through Rose Street, Ferrante had access to a network of environmentally aware fashion designers willing to road test Green Hanger prototypes in pretty tough conditions and spread the word among like-minded designers. Some, such as grafitti artist Puzle and dry-point etching specialist Clare Whitney, have designed one-off hangers for an official Green Hanger launch planned for mid-2oo8. However, to minimise carbon and chemicals required in production, the bulk of Green Hangers will be unashamedly naked.

Ferrante says that although the fashion and dry-cleaning industries generate huge amounts of environmental waste, many designers are embracing sustainable materials and practices, opting for organic fabrics, vegetable dyes, carbon-offset schemes and recycling everything from op-shop frocks to leather car upholstery.

Most simply hadn’t considered extending the concept to hangers.

He admits his wasn’t the first recycled cardboard hanger on the market. US rival EcoHangers, for example, is distributed free to 35,000 dry cleaners on the back of a few centimetres of advertising space per hanger and is proving increasingly popular with big-name brands such as Revlon and Dunkin Donuts.

“We thought about it and we weren’t really comfortable with that model,” says Ferrante. “If it’s going to be an environmental product, how do you select the type of advertisers you want? We thought, ‘Do we just have environmental messages on it?’, but we looked into the whole printing side of things and we realised that was just another wasteful area.We didn’t like being bombarded ourselves by advertising messages all the time and we didn’t want to put that on other people.

“Lastly, I guess it just dilutes our message, which is that everyone can do something for the environment and there are options out there.”

Ferrante believes Green Hanger has loftier ideals than its competitors. To prove it, the group donates 10% of sales to Climate Positive, a grassroots organisation investing in sustainable energy and carbon offsetting initiatives.

“We’re trying to use the Green Hanger as a vehicle to get a message out there to think about sustainability and the environment when it comes to fashion,” says Ferrante. “We hope that one day the Green Hanger (logo) is like the Heart Foundation’s tick of approval for fashion.”

The group made its first tentative steps in this direction last November, sponsoring an event for another clever little local outfit, Clothing Exchange, which organises regular clothes swaps at the groovy inner city bar the Croft Institute. In March, Green Hanger had its most high-profile outing to date, supplying hangers for the 2008 L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival’s runway shows. But Ferrante concedes there’s still a long way to go, particularly in convincing local chains to put their hands in their pockets for a premium product when consumer demand here isn’t as vocal as it is overseas.

Most of Green Hanger’s 15,000-odd sales to date have come from Britain, the US or the Middle East, where the company’s web presence has helped attract strong support from industry and consumers more willing to invest in smart, premium environmental products that don’t have household names attached.

“People in the US and Europe are probably more willing to act on an idea they think is positive and beneficial,” says Ferrante. “(They) don’t care so much about your reputation or whether you’re a big multinational or whatever ... Whereas, in Australia, unless it’s like Visy or someone who has brought out this product, I think people are bit hesitant to jump on board. They need that big reputation.”