In yesterday’s post we looked at a project focused on recycling chewing gum by two students. So let’s continue the sustainable/recycled thread with another project, this time by South Korean Haneul Kim, a young graduate and designer who tried to find a solution about the problem of discarded face masks. Because of the global pandemic we have all been using face masks, mainly disposable surgical ones. Unfortunately, these masks too often get disposed together with the ordinary waste or end up abandoned in the streets. It is estimated that we use 129 billion face masks globally every month, that is 3 million a minute.
Our planet is already suffering from the effects of plastic pollution and discarded face masks are just contributing to more waste and polluting our oceans, so Kim decided to come up with a design project based on masks.
The young designer started collecting discarded masks from his school, installing bins on the premises of the Kaywon University of Art and Design, while a manufacturer also donated him defective masks. A series of trials and errors followed, but eventually he found the solution he was looking for.
Kim quarantined the masks for a few days, then, after removing the metal wire that allows you to fit the mask on the nose and the ear elastics, he melted the polypropylene filter and the non-woven plastic fabric, using a heat gun at more than 300 degrees Celsius (Coronavirus dies close to 100 degrees Celsius).
Through this process that doesn't need any glue or resin, the non-woven masks are turned into a liquid resin, moulded and then cooled down again, so that they can harden.
There are around 1,500 face masks in each stool and the colours of this design object, those combinations of chewing gum pink, turquoise and white, derive from the colours of the original masks.
The designer called this line of stools "Stack and Stack", and Kim is currently moving onto other pieces of furniture made with the same process, such as a chair and an incense holder, tables and lights.
There is another current project that focuses on recycling plastics and melting this material: mosaicists Uliana Medikova and Sara Gozzaldi from Studio Cassio, Rome-based experts in mosaic making and restorations, developed a project to recycle plastic bottles.
ReplasticMosaic focuses on making individual mosaic tiles crushing PET bottles and then creating with them recycled plastic mosaic panels for street art based on an image that gets divided into pixels (one pixel is one recycled plastic cube). The project could renovate public spaces while also raising awareness on the issues of plastic disposal and reuse.
There are two similar points between this project and the "Stack and Stack" line of furniture: both are based on melting plastics (in this case the design duo manipulates the shape with hot air and pressure) and in both cases the resulting colours depend from the colour of the pre-existing materials. So in this case the wide range of bottles available on the market provides a wide range of hues and colours.
Such a project could raise the public awareness to the problem of plastic recycling as the two designers need a lot of bottles to create a large work of art and are turning to the citizens of Rome to collect 4,500 plastic bottles to create the first 5 sqm of a plastic mosaic (one square meter of mosaic requires 900 plastic bottles).
At the moment Medikova and Gozzaldi have also launched a Kickstarter as they need to improve their bottle-crushing process.
Last but not least, there is a project by Amsterdam design studio Aectual that also revolves around recycled plastic in connection with 3D printing.
In 2003 Hedwig Heinsman and Hans Vermeulen founded the architectural firm House of DUS, concentrating on objects, public buildings and urban planning. In 2017 they also launched Aectual, an independent platform for designers that has now been collaborating with customers as far as America and the Middle East.
Aectual mainly focuses on creating design products and architecture from plastic waste and bioplastics and enables designers and companies to design sustainable made-to-measure pieces at any scale in any building. All Aectual products are made from bio-based and/or recycled materials in a zero waste and carbon neutral production and the company self-developed four extra-large printers with robotic arms that can print a surface of 170 m² with high quality. On its webshop it is now possible to buy customisable products such as bookcases and room dividers, designed by DUS Architects and printed on order from waste materials.
DUS and Aectual were recently invited by Belgian magazine Sabato to create a unique limited-edition product. The project is part of the yearly "Knokke" series Sabato organises every year, inviting an international design team to produce a unique item made from materials locally found in the Belgian coastal town of Knokke. Aectual created for the occasion a set of two architectural planters - a low oval and a high round one - 3D-printed from plastic from local waste plastic - a mix of beach plastic found from Knokke and Belgian Household PP waste. One planter contains the equivalent of about 120 plastic shampoo.
As seen in a previous post, we know that only a fraction of the plastic that gets thrown out is recycled and part of it ends up in the sea, entering the food chain. The planters are a tribute to the sea as they are made from 100% recycled waste and their shape is inspired by the natural shape of mussels, that, as scientific research proves, nowadays sadly contain an enormous amount of microplastic particles.
The planters (on sale exclusively via www.Sabatoshop.be until 30th September 2021 and after that available on the Aectual site) are produced on-demand in a limited edition and each planter is numbered and colour graded by hand with white pigment to create subtle lines that are reminiscent of the mussel shell (there is another analogy with mussels and 3D printing: the shells of mussels is formed in a layered manner and the planters are produced using the 3D printing technology that creates the shell layer by layer...). Looks like plastic can be truly fantastic, especially when it is recycled to create innovative design products.
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