Original Duckhead

Morgan Cros founded Original Duckhead in London in 2012, after a cheap New York bodega umbrella collapsed on a windswept Paris evening one December. The replacement, in her mind, looked like the umbrella her mother had owned in their Parisian home — handmade, with an intricately carved duck handle. She set out to revive that design, and to fix what was wrong with the umbrella industry along the way.

The number she kept running into was the one that became the brand's mission: over a billion umbrellas are discarded globally each year, and almost none of them are recyclable. Original Duckhead's response was to make an umbrella designed to be kept rather than replaced. Each canopy is spun from nine post-consumer plastic bottles. Each handle is carved from FSC-certified birch wood. The waterproof coating is PFAS-free, the steel frame is wind-resistant, the packaging is biodegradable.

Today the brand is a Certified B Corporation with an impact score of 88.4 — well above the 50.9 median — and a 1% for the Planet member. It still makes one thing properly: an umbrella built around the same carved duck handle that Morgan first saw in her mother's hand.