Reform & Reproduce
Written by Harry Hobbs
Creative Intern at VBAT
The world of sustainable design has been hi-lighted recently with everyone from small designers to international supersized companies, getting involved in tackling some of the environments largest issues. Charities and technological advancements are helping us to clear the oceans of waste plastics, but the issue still prevails, what do we do with this plastic once we have collected it. I thought I would share with you three design teams who are using their skills to find the best use of this resilient material.
Precious Plastic
Precious Plastic is a global community of hundreds of people working towards a solution to plastic pollution. Knowledge, tools and techniques are shared online, for free. They are in their own words, “independent, poor but free :)”
Hundreds of people all over the world contribute to the project with their skills & knowledge, single or monthly donations.
Precious Plastic initiated its mission in 2013 and is now in the process of developing the fourth version of the project. Originally set up by Dave Hakkens, the project has now picked up a worldwide audience and participation.
Crafting new ways to recycle plastics and new open source machines to make the process accessible for everyone, Precious plastics are truly revolutionising the sustainability movement in the industry.
At the Dutch Design Week 2018, about 40 volunteers from around the world travelled to Eindhoven to help shape the fourth version of the project and create new solutions to tackle the plastic problem. Designers, engineers, developers, activists, chefs and helpers worked in the VDMA space, living and working together with one shared goal, fight plastic pollution. This fast paced innovative workshop aimed to develop the machines to reform plastic into new and beautiful products and solutions.
James Shaw
James is a product designer and graduate of the Royal College of Art. He now now runs a studio in South London specialising in the design and manufacture of bespoke furniture and products, sculptural objects and material research. The most interesting part of his practice is how he has created a new tool to reform recyclable HDPE into a new form.
The plastic extruding gun takes small pellets of HDPE and melts them to the point were they can be reformed into a long extruded shape. The HDPE plastic often comes from local council recycling plants. Veolia, Londons waste disposal service, donated 600kg of their ‘sweepings’ from their plastic recycling facility in Dagenham for James to use in his unique way. There are endless possibilities with this extruder and it definitely has a unique aesthetic, allowing the previous waste material to become something more high-end.
“The plastic-extruding gun squishes out molten plastic through a die at its tip — so far I’ve mostly been using recycled polyethylene, but the gun could take a lot of different plastics. I really like being able to work with a material like plastic, which usually requires massive high-tech machinery to manipulate.”
James shaw interview by Monica Khemsurov for Sight Unseen
Plasticiet
Plasticiet is a Dutch company that aims to seize the waste stream of plastic and transform it into a building block for the future. The founders, Marten van Middelkoop and Joost Dingemans, set up the initiative from a passion of material development and a vision of how the future could be changed. Marten and Joost are two product designers based in Rotterdam. They both graduated from their Product Design studies at the Willem de Kooning Academy after which they initiated Plasticiet in 2018.
The mesmerising patterns created from the melted and reformed plastics mimic the exclusive style of marble whilst providing a way to recycle a waste material.
Often compared to the composite material terrazzo, the new plastic materials tap into the current trend of composite materials in interior design and architecture.
Plasticiet believe that they can cut into a global problem and find a way to process large volumes of this problematic material to a building block with a visual language that almost everyone recognises.
These are just three examples of designers that are breaking the waste cycle to create new and innovative designs. Instead of using the recycled material for another single use purpose, these designers are all attempting to create something that can last much longer without being thrown back into the waste cycle within a few weeks.
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written by Harry Hobbs, Creative Intern at VBAT
edited by Connie Fluhme, PR at VBAT
