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Sungai Watch chair consists of 2,000 plastic bags from Bali’s rivers
CategoriesSustainable News

Sungai Watch chair consists of 2,000 plastic bags from Bali’s rivers

By Zarkon Group,

Indonesian non-profit Sungai Watch has unveiled the debut furniture launch from its design studio Sungai Design, aimed at creating useful products from the mountains of plastic waste that it fishes from Bali’s rivers every day.

The Ombak lounge chair, created in collaboration with American designer Mike Russek, is made using a sheet material produced entirely from discarded plastic bags, with around 2,000 needed for every chair.

The bags are collected by Sungai Watch, which is on a mission to eliminate ocean plastic pollution using its own system of floating barriers to capture the waste as it flows along Indonesia’s rivers.

Blue Ombak chair next to a poolBlue Ombak chair next to a pool
Sungai design has launched its first-ever product

Since its inception three years ago, the organisation has installed 270 barriers and collected more than 1.8 million kilograms of plastic, resulting in a huge stockpile of material.

Plastic bags are the most frequently collected item and also the least sought after in terms of future value, which led the team to focus on creating a product collection using this readily available resource.

“Collecting and amassing plastic waste solves one part of the problem of plastic pollution, the second challenge is what to actually do with all of this plastic,” said Kelly Bencheghib, who co-founded Sungai Watch with her brothers Sam and Gary.

White chair by Sungai Design on a concrete backdropWhite chair by Sungai Design on a concrete backdrop
The Ombak lounge chair is made from discarded plastic bags

“As we collected hundreds of thousands of kilograms of plastics, we started to look at plastic as an excellent source material for everyday products we all need and use, from furniture to small goods to even art,” she added.

Sungai Design has created two variations of the Ombak lounge chair – with and without armrests – manufactured in Bali using processes that aim to minimise waste during production.

The plastic bags are thoroughly washed to remove any impurities before being shredded and heat-pressed to form hard, durable sheets.

Close-up of white Ombak chairClose-up of white Ombak chair
The bags are heat-pressed to form sheets

Precision CNC cutting machinery is used to carve out the different components, which are carefully shaped to minimise material use and leave no offcuts.

The panels are connected by a concealed metal structure, resulting in a pure and visually lightweight form with a simple slatted construction.

Although the design is available in three distinct colourways – Granite Black, Ocean Blue and Concrete White – the upcycling process produces slight variations in the tone and texture of the material, meaning each chair has a unique quality.

Ombak means wave in Indonesian and the name references Sungai Design’s commitment to cleaning up rivers and oceans.

In line with this aim, Sundai Design has pledged to minimise its carbon footprint and put in place processes to audit and track the sources of the plastic used in its products.

The company is planning to release other products using the same material and, as a social enterprises, will donate part of its revenue to Sungai Watch to further the project as it seeks to clean up rivers in Indonesia and beyond.

Black chair by Sungai Design next to a treeBlack chair by Sungai Design next to a tree
The chair was designed to minimise material use and leave no offcuts

“There is so much potential with this material,” added Sam Bencheghib. “When you choose a chair from our collection, you’re not just selecting a piece of furniture; you’re embracing the transformation from waste to a beautiful, functional piece of art that has found its place in your home.”

Every year, Indonesia accounts for 1.3 million of the eight million tonnes of plastic that end up in our oceans, making it one of the world’s worst marine polluters.

Other attempts at collecting this waste and finding new uses for it have come from design studio Space Available, which set up a circular design museum with a recycling station and facade made of 200,000 plastic bottles in Bali in 2022.

White, blue and black Ombak chairs with armrests by Sungai DesignWhite, blue and black Ombak chairs with armrests by Sungai Design
The chair is available in three colours

The studio also teamed up with DJ Peggy Gou turn rubbish collected from streets and waterways in Indonesia into a chair with an integrated vinyl shelf.

“The trash is just everywhere, in the streets and rivers,” Space Available founder Daniel Mitchell told Dezeen.

“It’s not the fault of the people, there’s just very little structural support, waste collection or education,” he added. “Households are left to dispose of their own waste and most ends up in rivers or being burned.”

Reference

Toothbrush pops open for recycling in Seymourpowell’s Un-Made concept
CategoriesSustainable News

Toothbrush pops open for recycling in Seymourpowell’s Un-Made concept

By Zarkon Group,

British design studio Seymourpowell has put cheap electronic goods under the spotlight with Un-Made, a project imagining four possible ways to design for quick disassembly and recycling.

As part of the project, Seymourpowell devised four automated disassembly mechanism concepts using an electric toothbrush as an example for their animated graphics.

Each of the mechanisms could be built into a product during manufacturing and then activated in a factory at the end of the item’s life.

Rendering of a toothbrush on a white backdrop from Seymour Powell's Un-Made conceptRendering of a toothbrush on a white backdrop from Seymour Powell's Un-Made concept
Un-Made suggests automated disassembly mechanisms for an electric toothbrush

The first Un-Made concept is a pin mechanism. Similar to the action of opening a SIM card slot on a smartphone, it involves poking a pin into a small, sealed pinhole on the rear of the product to release the internal components.

The second concept is a vacuum mechanism. It involves placing the product into a vacuum, causing closed cell foams and air-sealed features within it to expand and bust the external housing open.

Third, there is a piston mechanism that works by pushing a piston through a cap on the bottom of a device and forcing all of the internal components upwards until they emerge through the top.

3D graphic showing a conveyer belt of electric toothbrushes being disassembled in Seymour Powell's Un-Made concept3D graphic showing a conveyer belt of electric toothbrushes being disassembled in Seymour Powell's Un-Made concept
The first concept includes a pin-triggered release mechanism

The final concept involves using UV glue – a type of adhesive that deactivates under ultraviolet light. In this concept, the product is placed into a specially lit chamber to release the clamshell construction.

The Un-Made project was led by Eddie Hamilton, a senior industrial designer at Seymourpowell, who was driven to make the work after researching what electric toothbrush to buy for himself.

“Inevitably I went for the cheap one, at which point Amazon smugly pointed out they’d sold 10k+ of that model last month alone,” said Hamilton.

3D graphic of a series of electric toothbrushes on a conveyer belt. The one on the left is whole, the one in the middle is having its casing stripped from it under a clear dome, and the one on the right has its interior components exposed3D graphic of a series of electric toothbrushes on a conveyer belt. The one on the left is whole, the one in the middle is having its casing stripped from it under a clear dome, and the one on the right has its interior components exposed
Another mechanism uses a vacuum to burst open the product’s external housing

“As an industrial designer, I spend time obsessing over the product I’m working on, typically thinking of it in isolation,” he added.

“But one thing I occasionally fail to remember or adequately picture is the true scale of that product once manufactured. 10,000 units sold per month seems vast.”

Using Amazon’s bestsellers list, Hamilton ascertained that fabric shavers, steam irons, wireless doorbells, wireless computer mice, digital tyre inflators and USB-C adaptors were all items selling in their thousands each month, at a price of less than £20.

While designing products so they can be repaired is important, the associated expense may not be something that customers can justify for small items sold at this price point, Hamilton said.

“Even if we change societal attitudes, the bottom line is whether you should open that cheap toothbrush to replace a failing battery when you only paid £24.99 for it two years ago,” he said.

“I’m optimistic for some product categories to get the ball rolling, namely expensive and bulky items. But I’m also a realist that we need alternative strategies adjacent to repair. This is where we must design for disassembly.”

In Hamilton’s view, disassembly and recycling is a worthy “next best option” to repair for cheaper objects, as it keeps the materials in a circular material flow.

3D graphic showing a conveyer belt of electric toothbrushes being disassembled by a piston mechanism pushing their internal components out from the bottom to the top of the casing from Seymour Powell's Un-Made concept3D graphic showing a conveyer belt of electric toothbrushes being disassembled by a piston mechanism pushing their internal components out from the bottom to the top of the casing from Seymour Powell's Un-Made concept
The piston mechanism disassembles a product by pushing its components up and out

The Un-Made design team took inspiration from Agency of Design’s Design Out Waste project, which looked at three strategies for keeping a toaster out of landfill. But they particularly wanted to explore just how efficient the disassembly process could be made through automation.

The cheaper and easier the process, they say, the more motivation there is for companies to pursue this approach and recover the components and materials inside their devices.

“A huge part of the reason e-waste ends up in landfill is because of product complexity and the inherent challenges involved in their disassembly,” Seymourpowell lead designer Alex Pearce told Dezeen.

“To date, because e-waste has been considered too time-consuming and costly to disassemble – there has been no (commercial) incentive strong enough to make it a viable option.”

3D graphic showing a conveyer belt of electric toothbrushes going into a purple-lit tunnel and emerging on the other side in pieces3D graphic showing a conveyer belt of electric toothbrushes going into a purple-lit tunnel and emerging on the other side in pieces
The fourth Un-Made concept uses UV light to dissolve the glue holding the device together

The materials inside even cheap devices are valuable, Pearce points out, particularly when there are supply shortages or when it comes to rare-earth minerals.

“When you consider that more gold exists within a ton of e-waste than within a ton of gold ore dug from the ground, a straightforward economic imperative becomes clear for companies who are able to recover and reuse these materials,” said Pearce.

Seymourpowell imagines disassembly taking place either at the manufacturer’s facilities following a take-back procedure, or potentially at a public recycling centre if disassembly processes have been sufficiently standardised.

The London-based studio is known for its innovative product and transport designs, as well as concepts that challenge current norms. Recent projects from the studio have included the two-in-one reusable Bottlecup and a spaceship cabin for Virgin Galactic.

Reference

kraken installation made of reclaimed wood spreads its tentacles in lyon
CategoriesArchitecture

kraken installation made of reclaimed wood spreads its tentacles in lyon

By Zarkon Group,

UV LAB unveils Le Kraken ephemeral wooden installation

 

Le Kraken by UV LAB emerges as an ephemeral monumental installation gracing the central esplanade of the historical site housing Les SUBS and the fine arts university of Lyon ENSBA. With dimensions stretching 25m wide, 15m high, and boasting 180m of tentacles, Le Kraken commands attention, constructed from 1000 sqm of reclaimed wood over a period of six weeks with the collective effort of 30 professionals and students.

 

This imposing wooden structure evokes a sense of awe, transporting viewers to another epoch or perhaps an alternate history. Despite its chilling presence, the Kraken invites interaction, drawing visitors to explore its labyrinthine form and unravel its mysteries.

kraken installation made of reclaimed wood spreads its tentacles in lyon
all images by Collectif des Flous Furieux

 

 

Le Kraken acts as A Dynamic Space for Dialogue and discovery

 

The immersive experience shifts perceptions; what initially appears as a formidable beast transforms upon closer inspection. Visitors can touch, walk through, and even climb the Kraken, blurring the lines between art and reality. The living quality of the installation challenges conventional notions of architectural integrity, embodying a sense of fragility and inclusion.

 

Le Kraken transcends traditional ontological categories, embodying a political figure that disrupts established hierarchies and boundaries, representing freedom and unpredictability. Its presence challenges the established order, sparking curiosity and prompting contemplation about its next move.

Le Kraken serves as more than just an artwork; it’s a dynamic space for dialogue, play, and discovery, highlighting UV LAB‘s innovative design approach.

le kraken 5

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project info:

 

name: Le Kraken
designer: UV LAB | @uv.lab
location: Lyon, France

photography: Collectif des Flous Furieux | @lesflousfurieux

 

 

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

 

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom



Reference

Revolutionising recycling with AI-enabled robots
CategoriesSustainable News

Revolutionising recycling with AI-enabled robots

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: Even in areas that have established comprehensive recycling systems, very often huge amounts of recyclables don’t actually end up getting recycled. In the UK, recycling rates have ‘plateaued’ at around 43 per cent in recent years, while in the US, almost 70 per cent of municipal waste doesn’t get recycled or composted.

Enter Glacier, which has developed an AI-enabled sorting robot to help materials recycling facilities more efficiently separate individual recyclables. The robots can accurately identify more than 30 different types of recyclables as they move along conveyor belts. In addition, the robots collect real-time data on the volume of recyclables, contamination rates, and other details.

The robot takes up about the space as a human, can achieve cost payback in as little as six months, and can be installed with no downtime or heavy machinery. The company’s co-founder, Areeb Malik, told Springwise that “existing sortation solutions were too expensive, difficult to install, and expensive to maintain and repair.” Glacier’s robot, in contrast, is “purpose-built to solve these exact pain points.”

Glacier, which is led by a female CEO, earlier completed a $4.5 million (around €4.1 million) seed round led by venture firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA). More recently, the company has received an additional $7.7 million (around €7 million) in funding from NEA and Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, with additional participation from other investors. Malik explained that the technology is already live in about a dozen facilities across the US and the company expects significant growth going forward.

There is increasing urgency in finding solutions to the world’s growing waste problem. Springwise has recently spotted the use of plastic waste as a bitumen replacement and AI technology that combats food waste.

Written By: Lisa Magloff

Reference

Shower sustainably: a greywater recycling solution
CategoriesSustainable News

Shower sustainably: a greywater recycling solution

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: The World Economic Forum (WEF) calls the reuse of greywater – lightly used waste water – “one of the most promising avenues for water innovation.” One of the main challenges in increasing this reuse, though, is the highly energy-intensive process required to power the treatment processes and plants.

Renewable energy could be the solution that makes greywater recycling sustainable. French company Geopure designed a system that provides an endless loop of zero-waste, sustainable showers. The company’s WTS100 system was created particularly for organisations and communities living in remote areas or off-grid. The shower requires 100 litres of water from almost any source, including groundwater sources and rain.

Water drains directly from the shower and accompanying taps into the recycling system, to be purified immediately without using chemicals or generating emissions. Once the water has been disinfected and is ready for reuse, the system pumps the water back to the shower.

The WTS100 system is modular and portable, enabling custom sizes and bespoke layouts. Geopure’s systems are currently being used in locations that include an off-grid glamping camp in Australia and a self-sufficient cabin in Finland.

The UN Environment Programme calls wastewater “an invaluable resource” that could supply over 10 times the water currently provided by global desalination. Springwise’s library showcases a number of innovations seeking to make use of that resource, from beer to biomanufacturing feedstocks.

Written By: Keely Khoury

Reference

Recycling plastic waste into multi-purpose chemicals
CategoriesSustainable News

Recycling plastic waste into multi-purpose chemicals

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: The COVID pandemic shined a spotlight on the huge amount of plastic waste produced by disposable Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). While PPE such as medical masks, respirators, and surgical gowns are essential health equipment, most of it is highly unsustainable, made using petroleum-based, non-biodegradable polymers. These materials, along with other post-consumer plastic, are not biodegradable and often end up incinerated.

In 2021, as part of the Innovative Solutions Canada programme, which began as the Canadian government’s drive to find new solutions to COVID-19 challenges, Canadian startup GreenMantra was tasked with recycling this PPE waste.

The startup has developed an efficient and cost-effective system for recycling plastics – including bottles, food boxes, film, as well as PPE – into feedstock that can be used to produce speciality waxes and polymers. These, in turn, are used as additives in construction materials like asphalt, roofing shingles, and plastic piping.

GreenMantra’s process operates at relatively low temperature and pressure, making it energy efficient. The system involves depolymerising waste plastics and shortening the length of the polymer chains to produce the wax additive. The company claims that construction products made from its additives outperform fossil-based equivalents.

Creating circular processes that recycle plastic waste into new products is the goal of a huge number of recent innovations Springwise has spotted. These include converting used nappies into pet products and roof tiles made from post-consumer plastics.

Written By: Lisa Magloff

Reference

We need to design for human behaviour to get rid of single-use plastics
CategoriesSustainable News

We need to design for human behaviour to get rid of single-use plastics

By Zarkon Group,

Packaging designs aimed at boosting recycling rates and reducing the prevalence of single-use plastics are destined to fail unless they help to change people’s behaviour, writes Matt Millington.

No one is particularly happy when they find out there’s plastic waste on Mount Everest, or in the deep oceans, or in human blood. It’s not controversial to say that we need to stop churning the stuff out and throwing it away.

One way for businesses to tackle single-use plastics is to design their packaging to be reusable, but so far efforts have not succeeded at scale.

For example, reusable McDonald’s cups are only getting a 40 per cent return rate from customers in Germany, despite consumers paying a €2 deposit. When Starbucks trialled reusable cups in the closed environment of its Seattle HQ, where returning them is presumably straightforward, the return rate still didn’t exceed 80 per cent.

We weren’t exactly succumbing to dehydration on the streets before coffee shops designed takeaway cups

It’s not that we don’t care: research suggests consumer motivation towards environmentally positive behaviour is high. It’s that as a society we have developed an expectation of convenience: to have what we want, when we want it, without any consequences.

This is entirely unreasonable – we weren’t exactly succumbing to dehydration on the streets before coffee shops designed takeaway cups – but while it persists, consumers are very unlikely to switch to reusable alternatives if it puts them out. And without a high return-and-reuse rate, reusable packaging is usually worse for the environment, owing to the much higher quantities of plastic involved.

This is why we need to design for human behaviour if we’re ever to get rid of single-use plastics. You cannot control what people will do with packaging once it leaves your premises, but you can influence them by factoring behavioural psychology into the design of the packaging itself.

The first step is understanding how consumers interact with the pack, throughout its lifecycle. Where are they and what are they doing when they open it? What’s their headspace? How about when they’re finished with it? There’s a big difference between how someone interacts with a reusable plate after a meal in a cafeteria, and how they interact with the reusable salad bowl they’re gobbling from on the lunchtime rush back to the office.

Then it’s about understanding the levers you can pull to nudge people towards more planet-positive decisions. Behavioural psychology shows there are three factors that work together to drive behavioural change: increasing consumer motivation to recycle or reuse, raising their ability to do so, and providing a trigger to remind them.

Take plastic bags. While usage of single-use bags has dramatically decreased in the UK since legislation requiring retailers to charge for them came into force in 2015, reusable alternatives have had mixed success. According to a report by the Environmental Investigation Agency and Greenpeace, 57 “bags for life” were sold for each household in the country in 2019 – more than one a week.

It’s possible to go too far in signalling that a pack isn’t disposable

Online grocer Ocado uses recyclable bags instead, but it has had success in achieving returns because it pulls all three behavioural psychology levers. Consumers are happy to receive bonus reward points for each bag they give back (motivation).

The bags are straightforward to return and customers know not to throw them away because of their clear messaging and distinct off-grey colour, which follows from not using harmful bleaching agents (ability). And because the driver usually asks for old bags after delivery, they’re unlikely to forget (trigger).

Ability is the key consideration. If you wanted to return the packaging from a takeaway burger meal, it would mean washing and then carrying around a bulky burger box, fries box and cup, and either making a special trip to the restaurant or waiting until you happen upon another branch.

New Zealand start-up FOLDPROJECT has done some interesting work here, trying to make boxes more portable. It’s a simple idea: a machine-washable lunch kit that packs down to a flat sheet. The challenge is that because it is so minimal, its form and material make it look disposable.

One way to ensure a reusable design communicates its intended purpose is through material choice. For example, using explicitly post-consumer recycled plastic could be a visual shorthand to communicate a planet-positive intent, as could using longer-lasting materials like glass or stoneware.

Interestingly, it’s possible to go too far in signalling that a pack isn’t disposable. When McDonald’s introduced reusable packaging in its restaurants in France, it found the packaging kept disappearing, only to reappear on eBay. It looked reusable and on-brand, but was too novel for some, defeating the object.

So long as we have bins on every street that lead directly to landfill, we are going to struggle

Businesses cannot just switch to reusable packaging – even when intelligently designed – and expect results. So long as we have bins on every street that lead directly to landfill we are going to struggle.

We therefore need to think beyond just designing the packaging to be sustainable, and think about how we design systems to be sustainable. In a circular economy that means service and experience design, packaging, industrial design, marketing, data, artificial intelligence and logistics all working hand-in-hand to keep the pack “in the loop”. It will therefore need to be an ecosystem effort.

We’re already seeing innovations that can help make reuse and return viable in the age of convenience. For example, when is a bin not a bin? When it’s a Bjarke Ingels Group-designed TURN system – a remote, digitally connected, RFID-enabled, packaging-asset reclaim and sorting network, which rejects unwanted trash.

Similarly, we’re seeing nudge messaging along the pack journey, and even packs that communicate their status themselves. Scottish start-up Insignia has designed colour-changing labels that reveal how long a pack has been exposed to the environment. Imagine taking this further, with reusable packaging telling you what to do with it, and offering prompts or rewards to encourage you.

Reusability hasn’t hit scale yet, but we should be optimistic that it can, not least because we’ve been there before. Milk deliveries were once the norm, with bottles returned, not discarded.

There’s no reason that we can’t get back to this more sustainable approach across the board, without having to endure too much inconvenience. All that’s required is a little ingenuity, and a lot of collaboration.

The photography is by Jas Min via Unsplash.

Matt Millington is a sustainable-design strategist at PA Consulting.

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Reference

Recycling single-use plastic waste from labs
CategoriesSustainable News

Recycling single-use plastic waste from labs

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: Disposable plastics have become a crucial part of research and healthcare, especially for consumables like syringes and test tubes that need sterilisation. A lot of this laboratory and clinical plastic waste is sent to landfill or incinerated without a specialised recycling service.

This linear economy takes its toll on the environment. According to one study, lab-derived plastic waste could amount to 5.5 million tonnes a year around the globe. To address the problem, LabCycle has opened the UK’s first pilot plant that can recycle up to 60 per cent of plastic lab waste to make new lab equipment.  

Members of the LabCycle team have experience working in laboratories and were shocked by the amount of single-use plastic consumables that people had to go through in their daily work lives. In response, the company developed technology that enables contaminated plastic waste to be recycled from the laboratory to manufacture lab- and medical-grade consumables, promoting a circular economy approach within the research and healthcare sectors.  

After it is decontaminated, the plastic is turned into high-grade pellets the size of rice grains, which are then sent to LabCycle’s manufacturing partner to be transformed into new lab equipment like test tubes and Petri dishes. Waste doesn’t need to be sterilised beforehand, meaning less heat energy is required, and the company also specifies that water for the process can be reused, further reducing the environmental impact. 

LabCycle has recently set up its pilot recycling plant in a converted greenhouse on the University of Bath campus, and will be using the plant to recycle waste from the university’s engineering and science labs. The company is also working closely with the local NHS Blood and Transplant to repurpose their plastic waste. 

Single-use plastics pose a serious danger to the environment, but promoting a more circular economy can give these plastics a chance to be used again, instead of quickly being thrown into landfill. In the database, Springwise has spotted many innovations looking to boost circular practices, like trainers made from recycled waste materials or on-demand data that makes recycling easier.

Written By: Anam Alam

Reference

What’s So Luxurious About Luxury Vinyl Tile, Part III: The Poison Plastic and Why “Recycling Will Not Save Us”
CategoriesArchitecture

What’s So Luxurious About Luxury Vinyl Tile, Part III: The Poison Plastic and Why “Recycling Will Not Save Us”

By Zarkon Group,

This article was written by Burgess Brown. Healthy Materials Lab is a design research lab at Parsons School of Design with a mission to place health at the center of every design decision. HML is changing the future of the built environment by creating resources for designers, architects, teachers, and students to make healthier places for all people to live. Check out their podcast, Trace Material.

Between 1950 and 2019, more than 7,000 million metric tons of plastic waste were generated. We add roughly 400 million metric tons to that figure every year. If your eyes glazed over while reading these frankly incomprehensible numbers, just know that our plastic waste problem is out of control. Recycling, the solution long promoted by the plastics industry as a panacea, is deeply flawed at best and entirely unfeasible at worst.

So, if recycling as we know it won’t save us, what do we do with the mounds of plastic clogging our waterways and landfills? Even if we could recycle plastics effectively at scale, does it make sense to recycle a toxic plastic like Luxury Vinyl Tile?

This article is Part III of a three-part series on the hazards of vinyl flooring.

  • Part I explores the “dirty climate secret” behind the popular material and shares some healthier, affordable alternatives.
  • Part II considers the long history of worker endangerment by the vinyl industry and how this legacy continues in China today.
  • Part III, this article, explores the dark side of recycling.

The Guilt Eraser

Municipal Solid Waste – Worker in recycling facility, The U.S. National Archives, Library of Environmental Images, (ORD), image via GetArchive

As early as the 1970s, plastics industry officials warned that effective recycling of plastic wasn’t feasible. One said in a 1974 speech that “there is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis.” And yet, the plastics industry forged ahead with its recycling messaging. Plastic’s enemy number one was the guilt people felt about the wastefulness of single use products. So even if the industry wasn’t actually recycling or protecting the environment, they needed consumers to think that they were.

One industry lobbyist called recycling the great “guilt-eraser”. “Recycling assures people that plastic isn’t just an infernal hanger-on; it has a useful afterlife. As soon as they recycle your product,” he explained, “they feel better about it.”

Throughout the ‘90s, as environmental pushback mounted, the plastics industry fought back. Recycling was their most important message, so they spread it far and wide. The industry spent over $250 million on public campaigns about the usefulness of plastic and its ability to be reused. They wanted people to feel safe and comfortable with their products. They also invested millions in recycling efforts, but those efforts have come up dramatically short. In 2021, the U.S. (by far the world’s biggest plastics polluter) only recycled around 5% of plastics.

We spoke to Kara Napolitano who is the Education and Outreach Coordinator for the Sims Municipal Recycling Center in Brooklyn, New York for an episode of our podcast, Trace Material. We cover the sordid history of plastics recycling and its uncertain future. Kara, who lives and breathes recycling, had this to say about how we should set our plastics priorities:

“My job is to teach people about recycling. But I have to bring attention to the fact that recycling is only halfway up that waste hierarchy of preferred methods for managing our waste. Recycling is not number one. Recycling will not save us. At the very top of that waste hierarchy — the most preferred thing to do to manage your waste — is to not create any waste in the first place.”

Kara reminded us that the well known waste management hierarchy goes: “Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.” If we are to reverse the course of our plastics crisis, we must focus our efforts on drastically reducing production and consumption of plastic all together.

The Poison Plastic

Image generated by Architizer using Midjourney

There are lots of questions that need answering about the future of recycling. While there is consensus that we should focus on reducing plastics production, there are debates raging about what to do with the mounds of plastic we’ve already created. There is, however, no question about PVC’s place in that future. From a health standpoint, PVC has no place in a circular plastics economy.

That’s because PVC is toxic at every stage of its life cycle. The building block of PVC, vinyl chloride, is a known human carcinogen. Then there are performance additives: plasticizers to make PVC flexible can disrupt the body’s endocrine system and heavy metals used to make it rigid are toxic too. These toxic chemicals are in the millions of homes across the country that utilize the number one flooring choice in the US: Luxury Vinyl Tile. And, these dangerous chemicals don’t magically disappear if PVC is recycled. When companies advertise recycled LVT or tout its ability to enter the circular economy, ask yourself: Would I paint my house with recycled lead paint?

Problematic and Unnecessary

The U.S. Plastics Pact is a group of “stakeholders across the plastics value chain” that are trying to create a circular economy for plastics in the United States. To be clear, this group is certainly not anti-plastics nor anti-recycling. Yet, they have labeled PVC plastic to be a “problematic and unnecessary” material and are working to eliminate it from all packaging by 2025. This is because PVC is “not currently reusable, recyclable or compostable with existing U.S. infrastructure at scale” and “contains hazardous chemicals or creates hazardous conditions that pose a significant risk to human health or the environment (applying the precautionary principle) during its manufacturing, recycling (whether mechanical or chemical), or composting process.”

PVC is incredibly difficult to recycle and it interferes with the recyclability of other plastics too. Even if recycling PVC at scale could be figured out, its carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting chemicals remain. These chemicals pose a threat to residents in the use phase and again to humans and the planet at disposal. The vast majority of PVC ends up in landfills and incinerators. When PVC is burned, a host of toxic chemicals, including dioxins, are released into the air, soil and water. While there may be hope for a future where some plastics are able to be effectively recycled at scale, PVC should not and will not be a part of that future.

Rethink, Redesign, Reform

We should continue to support innovations in plastics recycling. Exciting progress is being made in the field of biological recycling, which uses enzymes from bacteria, fungi and insects to break plastics down into their component parts. This allows for theoretically infinite recycling of plastics that could have a smaller carbon footprint than making virgin plastics.

What we should not do is continue to use recycling as a guilt eraser. No innovations in recycling can justify the continued production of materials as toxic as PVC, and therefore LVT. The most effective thing that we as designers and architects can do to protect humans and our planet, is stop specifying plastics (especially PVC) wherever possible. In part one of this series we shared a list of healthy, affordable alternatives to vinyl flooring. You can find other thoroughly vetted flooring options in our materials collection on the Healthy Materials Lab website.

We’ll leave you with a re-imagining of the waste management hierarchy (“reduce, reuse, recycle”) mentioned earlier from Chief Scientist of Environmental Health Sciences and friend of Healthy Materials Lab, Pete Myers:

Re-Think

Many applications of plastics are non-essential. Serious efforts should be made to identify the essential uses of plastics vs. non-essential.

Redesign

Chemists should be given the challenge of creating safer materials to use when the services of plastic are required.

Reform

The regulatory system needs to be reformed by incorporating 21st century biomedical science in its assessments of safety.

As architects and designers our charge as pivotal members of the design and construction industry is to re-think the design decision making process that has been “business as usual” for the last several decades. If we put the health of our bodies, the planet, and all those living there at the center of our design decisions, the way we build will radically change. That thinking has to extend to the entire lifecycle of the materials we use.

If we consider their impact from the time they leave the earth to the time they are returned to the earth, we will have no choice but to re-design our systems of production. These shifts in thinking will leave no place for toxic plastics or any other toxics in our work. Centering human and ecosystem health in design and construction will positively change the future for everyone.

Architizer is thrilled to announce the winners of the 11th Annual A+Awards! Interested in participating next season? Sign up for key information about the 12th Annual A+Awards, set to launch this fall.

Reference

Recycling e-waste with microbes  – Springwise
CategoriesSustainable News

Recycling e-waste with microbes  – Springwise

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: According to Statista, more than 50 million metric tonnes of e-waste are generated every year. And as the world becomes increasingly digitised and reliant on technology, this is only set to increase. Often, this e-waste ends up in developing countries, where electronics are burned on a mass scale to reveal precious metals, releasing extremely harmful toxic gases. 

But now, New Zealand company Mint Innovation has devised an eco-friendly multi-step process for breaking down e-waste. The technology uses low-cost and low-impact biorefineries that extract valuable metals from scrap circuit boards so they may be reused, reducing future need for mined materials. 

First, electronic circuit boards are ground up. If metals can’t be retrieved using electrochemistry, Mint dissolves the precious metals using its proprietary green chemistry – chemistry that either reduces or completely eliminates the use or “generation of hazardous substances”.  

The company then recovers metals from the solution with a bioabsorption process, whereby special microbes added to the solution absorb the metals. A centrifuge separates metals from the microbes and these extracted materials are then refined into pure metals, ready to be repurposed and resold as items like jewellery or new electronics.  

Although Mint has been focused on recycling electronic devices and scrap circuit boards so far, the technology could also be used in the recycling of batteries and catalysts on a large scale. 

Other e-waste innovations spotted by Springwise include clean e-waste recycling and mineral processing, the world’s first fully recyclable computer chip substrate, and a project where gamers can return their e-waste for Minecraft coins.

Written By: Matilda Cox

Reference