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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Super Local has won the Dutch Design Award for best product of 2023 with a project that creates colourful souvenirs from trash that was carried out of the Himalayas by mountain trekkers.

The Dutch design studio created two designs that could make it possible to recycle all of the trash in Nepal's Sagarmatha National Park, which is home to Mount Everest.

The first is a bag that allows people walking the mountain trails to carry trash back with them. The second is a series of mementoes made out of waste bottle caps.

The Dutch Design Award judges, who included designer Chris Kabel and Stedelijk Museum curator Amanda Pinatih, described From the Himalayas as "a complete project".

"'What goes up must come down' is a law of nature that has not applied to waste in the Himalayas for a long time," the judges said. "Super Local came up with a solution that is as poetic as it is pragmatic."

The project was initiated by Nepalese non-profit Sagarmatha Next in response to concerns that an estimated 200 tonnes of waste is left behind in the mountain range each year.

The brief given to Super Local was to design "an end-to-end process" for safely removing and recycling this litter.

"The high altitude, lack of connectivity and limited recycling infrastructure make it challenging to remove waste," explained the studio, which is led by designers Pim van Baarsen and Luc van Hoeckel.

"This has resulted in more than 80 open pits where waste is burned, contaminating the soil, water and air, and threatening biodiversity."

With more than 80,000 people visiting the park every year, the designers saw an opportunity to crowdsource the process of carrying this waste out of the mountains.

Hikers are encouraged to bring back at least one pack of waste, contained within a one-kilo Carry Me Back bag.

A dedicated team is responsible for filling these bags, collecting waste from restaurants and lodges as well as open pits and bins, then taking it to a processing facility to be sorted and shredded first.

Trekkers can then clip these bags onto their backpacks, making it easy to transport them to the local airport. From here, the waste is transferred to a recycling centre in Kathmandu.

Some waste materials are easier to process than others. In particular, water bottles and aluminium cans offer more commercial reuse potential than bottle caps, which are made from HDPE (high-density polyethylene).

This led Super Local to design a collection of souvenirs that can be made from HDPE.

The collection includes faceted pebbles in three different shapes, which can be used as necklaces or key chains, and a scale model of Everest and its surrounding peaks.

These are produced with hand-operated injection moulding machines, built using the open-source blueprints of Dave Hakkens' Precious Plastic machine – a project that was first published on Dezeen back in 2013.

The caps are colour-sorted by colour before being processed. Some of the designs are more monochrome, while others feature deliberate mixes of complementary or contrasting tones.

"These colourful products use thousands of recycled bottle caps and are perfect items for tourists to remember their adventure, and hopefully their responsibility to the environment, even as they return home," said the designers.

Super Local has become a specialist in socially conscious design. Other projects include the Care Collection, a line of affordable hospital equipment, and Bottle Up, a range of terrazzo products made by Zanzibari craftspeople.

From the Himalayas is one of the studio's biggest projects to date.

Following a successful pilot version of the Carry Me Back scheme in 2019, the programme was launched across the region in spring 2022.

The project is expected to make a significant impact on the local ecosystem. According to Super Local, the response has been hugely positive.

"Locals and visitors alike have responded enthusiastically to the Carry Me Back programme, with some people carrying up to 14 kilos of waste on their way," said the designers.

The photography is by Super Local.

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Chinese materials company Yi Design has developed a porous brick made from recycled ceramic waste that could be used to prevent flooding in urban areas.

The Permeable YiBrick is made from 90 per cent recycled ceramic waste sourced from industrial porcelain manufacturers in the city of Jingdezhen, which is known as the ceramics capital of China.

Yi Design was established by curator and artist Caroline Cheng and designer Karl Yin in response to the enormous volume of waste materials generated by the country's ceramics manufacturers.

According to the company, China produces approximately 18 million tonnes of ceramic waste each year, the majority of which is dumped or buried illegally.

Yi Design collects waste from selected local producers, before grinding and binding it together using a specially developed non-organic chemical binder, which the company claims is free from plastics and cement.

The resulting material is used to create a series of durable products such as bricks and glazed tiles in the company's own factory in Jingdezhen, which was set up in 2021.

The Permeable YiBrick uses up to 97 per cent recycled waste in its production, making the product both highly porous and robust.

As a result, the building blocks can be used as a more absorbent alternative to conventional cement bricks in various architectural contexts.

"This brick can harvest rainwater, redirecting it from the sewage system to the water table by permeating through the ground," Cheng told Dezeen.

"It is perfect for sponge cities – urban spaces that retain stormwater before gradually filtering and releasing it – or for outdoor use in paving areas and gardens," she added. "It can also be used as a base of water fountains."

The company's products have already been used in several projects including the tiled wall of a store for fashion brand COS in Shanghai's Century Plaza shopping mall.

The Permeable YiBrick is shortlisted in the sustainable building product category of the 2023 Dezeen Awards alongside a hexagonal paver system by Norwegian firm Snøhetta and Erosion Mitigation Units made from recycled oyster shells.

Earlier this year, we rounded up seven examples of alternatives to conventional bricks, including products made using construction waste, expanded cork and human urine.

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German branding and advertising agency Serviceplan has developed a skincare product made from textile-industry wastewater to promote Japanese startup Aizome's chemical-free dyeing process.

Aizome wanted to garner attention for its newly developed dyeing technique that uses high-frequency soundwaves to add plant-based colours to its textiles.

To demonstrate the environmental and health benefits of this innovation, among the huge number of sustainability claims being made in the textile industry, it worked with Serviceplan to launch Wastecare.

The skincare product was made primarily from the wastewater produced during Aizome's plant-based dyeing process. This sees it apply ultrasound to organic cotton fibres soaking in plant particles, which means they bind permanently.

According to Serviceplan, the wastewater from this process was chosen to be used for Wastecare as it retains the health benefits of the medicinal indigo plants.

The skincare product can be applied to the face and neck and has hydrating, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, the agency said.

Serviceplan developed an identity, packaging and information for the Wastecare serum, which was then sent out to key figures in the textile, fashion and healthcare industries earlier this year in the style of a high-end beauty product.

The agency chose to focus on the concept of blending tradition with science, as a reference to Aizome's technological adaptation of traditional Japanese dyeing methods.

To highlight that Wastecare is delivered straight from the textile factory, the serum was bottled in a laboratory-type glass vial, for which Serviceplan developed a custom lid made of recycled aluminium.

The vial was packaged in a recycled, recyclable cardboard box, layered to make it sturdy enough not to require an outer box meaning that shipping emissions were reduced.

On the front of the box, thin lines were cut between a grid of dots to form the Japanese character for either indigo (藍), flow (流) or cherish (拾) in a manner reminiscent of molecular diagrams.

The dots motif was continued across the other materials contained in the box – four double-sided leaflets, a 12-page booklet and a six-fold poster.

These provided the recipients with information about Aizome and the Wastecare product.

A specially developed font informed by both the ultrasound waves used in Aizome's dyeing method and the traditional Japanese Mincho typeface, which Serviceplan calls Custom Ultra One, was used for titular text throughout.

As an additional reference to the dyeing process, the printed materials ranged from translucent white to dark indigo.

The leaflets, on unbleached white paper resembling undyed natural cotton balls, explained traditional Japanese indigo-dyeing methods.

In the soft-blue-coloured booklet, data visualisations illustrated the Aizome company timeline and its Aizome Ultra dyeing process, while the deep-indigo poster presented figures about the benefits of dyeing with ultrasound versus industrial chemicals.

According to Aizome, more than 1,500 harmful chemicals are used in conventional textile production, with the European Commission reporting that up to 79 per cent of skin diseases worldwide are caused by dyes.

"While getting to know the brand more closely during the unboxing, we wanted people to rethink everything they know about textiles and waste," said Serviceplan.

"From the earthy cardboard box to the deepening of the colour blue in the editorial folder, every layer conveys the brand's purpose and beliefs for a sustainable production process," it added.

Serviceplan's design, which was produced in collaboration with a number of other studios, has been shortlisted for Dezeen Awards 2023 in the graphic design category.

Traditional plant dyeing dates back 5,000 years but died out in the early 20th century as non-fading synthetic dyes became widespread.

"Our strategy was to prove that even the absolute worst part of Aizome's textile-dyeing process – the waste – has value like no other," said Serviceplan.

"We chose skincare as the medium for this message because it's intimate and even considered to hold value, in contradiction to what the world regards as 'waste'."

Most of Aizome's wastewater is reused as fertiliser.

Projects previously featured on Dezeen that involve innovative approaches to dyeing include Vollebak's algae dye, Nienke Hoogvliet's use of seaweed and Loop Loop's process for colouring aluminium with plants.

The images are by Serviceplan.

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A colourful, reconstituted leather made from cutting room scraps was among the recycled materials used to create the fixtures and fittings for Coachtopia, a London pop-up store for American label Coach.

Located in the Wonder Room at Selfridges in London, the temporary store was created to launch a new collection of Coach products crafted from reused leather bags and recycled materials.

Called Coachtopia, the collection seeks to challenge fashion's linear system where most products end up in landfill.

Each of the products in the Coachtopia collection has a clear pathway for reuse and recycling, according to the brand, and comes with an embedded NFC chip that tracks its lifecycle.

Chosen by Coach for its sustainable approach and B Corp-certified status, retail experience agency Studio XAG was commissioned to create a temporary store space to launch the product line.

The resulting space, which features a modular display system made of recyclable parts that slot together, has been shortlisted in the retail interior (small) category of Dezeen Awards 2023.

"The Coachtopia product line is designed to be 'circular from the start' – considering the future life of a product proactively, rather than reactively," Studio XAG said.

"We mirrored Coach's circular ethos for the collection through three approaches to the physical space."

The first approach was to keep the use of virgin materials to a minimum by using repurposed neon flex, recycled leather scraps and Ecoboard – a material made from agricultural waste.

Secondly, Studio XAG ensured that the modular fixtures, like the products on sale, were 'made to be remade' and could be disassembled and repurposed at the end of their current use.

Finally, the studio selected materials that offer meaningful recycling opportunities at their eventual end of life and said it considered the embodied carbon, toxicity and afterlife opportunities in every component.

"The challenge was to create a pop-up that would have visual impact, but could be dismantled and rebuilt in new locations, again and again," explained Studio XAG.

"Any items which couldn't be used in a future pop-up, such as the hoarding and some of the wall panels, were donated to Selfridges to use in their future launches."

The collection's slogan Have Taste Love Waste, which serves as a statement of intent and action, was boldly written in neon signage crafted from offcuts of neon flex that would otherwise be discarded.

The lighting will be reused for other key stores, including Coach's flagship on Regent Street.

"To create a sustainable lighting solution was a challenge, as most neon alternatives are manufactured from virgin materials," explained Studio XAG.

"To resolve this, we contacted a lighting manufacturer and requested that they collect all their offcuts from previous projects over the months leading up to the installation of Coachtopia," it added.

"All of these offcuts were then meticulously threaded together to make a unique set of signs, made up of hundreds of individual scraps which would have otherwise been thrown in the bin."

The Coachtopia tables and display units are covered in reconstituted leather made using scraps from the cutting-room floor that might have otherwise gone to landfill.

These modular pieces can easily be taken apart using a system of slotting together rather than permanent glueing or fixing.

Ecoboard – a carbon-negative material manufactured in the Netherlands from seasonal agricultural waste like straw, seeds, rice and corn – was used in place of MDF. Unlike MDF, Ecoboard does not emit any damaging organic acids.

"In the Wonder Room, visitors are given insight into what circularity means for the future of fashion," commented the studio. "The space feels exploratory and educational, using sustainable materiality and clear signage as a guide."

Other projects shortlisted in the retail interiors (small) category include a gallery shop in Australia housed in a "translucent bubble" and a steel-clad boutique in Bratislava.

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Japanese designer Daisuke Yamamoto presented recycled steel chairs on podiums of the same material as part of an exhibition in Milan, which has been shortlisted for a 2023 Dezeen Award.

Yamamoto's Flow project explores ways to minimise industrial waste by focusing on a single material – light-gauge steel (LGS).

Commonly used in construction as a strong, lightweight framing option, LGS is also one of the industry's largest waste products, Yamamoto claims, as it is rarely recycled after demolition.

The designer therefore chose to create a second life for the steel sheets and components as a series of sculptural chairs.

He also used LGS to form platforms for showcasing the seating designs as part of an exhibition at Milan design week 2023 that has been shortlisted in the exhibition design category of this year's Dezeen Awards.

"This project began with the awareness that everyday recycled construction materials are disposed of, then new construction begins – a so-called 'scrap and build'," Yamamoto said.

"Using the iconic LGS material – one of the most popular materials normally used in framing systems throughout the interior wall structure – we transformed it into beautifully redesigned furniture, giving the materials a second chance," he added.

The exhibition formed part of the Dropcity showcase, which took place inside the Magazzini Raccordati spaces at Milan Central Station during the design week in April.

These empty railway arches have a dilapidated, industrial aesthetic with peeling floors, stained tilework and exposed utilities.

Yamamoto chose to leave the vaulted room largely as he found it but placed a series of platforms in two rows, upon which he presented the series of chairs.

Track lighting was installed overhead to spotlight the elevated designs, each of which has a slightly different shape.

In the centre of the exhibition, a workshop bench also built from lightweight gauge steel was used to fabricate more chairs during live demonstrations between Yamamoto and craft artist Takeo Masui.

"This is a landfill, a place where a volume of used LGS is collected," Yamamoto said. "A place where the designer and craftsmen work hand in hand to recreate what was bound to be disposed into something new, a process of disassembling to re-assemble."

The intention was to not only showcase the material's capabilities for reuse but also to allow visitors to engage with the process and ask wider questions about how society deals with waste.

Using waste materials produced by other industries was a key trend that Dezeen spotted during this year's Milan Design Week, with designers and studios including Formafantasma, Prowl Studio, Atelier Luma and Subin Seol all looking to reduce the environmental impact of their products.

The photography is by Takumi Ota.

Future Landfill took place at Magazzini Raccordati from 15 to 23 April 2023 as part of Milan Design Week. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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A conceptual wildfire detection system powered by renewable energy and composed of recycled Samsung smartphones has been named the winner of the Re:Create Design Challenge.

Hailing from various locations across the US, designers Abi Lambert, Cade Thurlby, Karl Wagner and Tyler Boshard have claimed the top prize of £10,000 with their design called Solar Lookout.

The Re:Create Design Challenge tasked entrants to come up with creative ideas to repurpose old Samsung devices or materials and transform them into new products or services.

The competition aimed to discover creative ideas that could potentially help people's lives and the planet in meaningful ways.

The Solar Lookout proposal would see Samsung smartphones repurposed into wildfire detection devices. Powered by renewable energy, the proposal was designed with the ambition to reduce the time elapsed between the genesis of the fire and when it is reported.

Envisioned to be situated in wildfire-prone zones, the devices would sit three metres above the ground. At this height, the device would make use of smartphone cameras to detect abnormalities such as fires or smoke, employing an AI technology for accurate identification.

The smartphone would be encased within a perforated metal container camouflaged to blend in with the surrounding landscape. The container would feature an opening to enable the phone camera to capture its surroundings.

According to the designers, the phone would communicate via a mesh network and would be developed to be able to report geospatial data including weather patterns and air quality.

The designers proposed that the device would be equipped with a 50-watt solar panel affixed to the top of the pole to generate power for the phone and double as a shade to protect it from overheating.

To mitigate challenging lighting conditions, the devices would reserve space for a Samsung power bank to ensure extended usability overnight.

"So many great designs were shortlisted for Dezeen and Samsung's Re:Create Design Challenge, and it was a joy to see how people across the world envisioned creative ideas that could have a positive impact," Dezeen's deputy editor Cajsa Carlson said.

"Solar Lookout stood out for its proposed utility and well-executed design. The thought and attention to detail that the designers put into the project, and the intention to help communities makes it a very worthy winner," she continued.

London design studio Landor & Fitch and Korean designer Eunsu Lee were the runners up of the competition.

Landor & Fitch's proposal, named Robin, is a modular kit concept that would empower children to construct their own products for outdoor exploration. The concept was designed to foster education and curiosity around how products are made and, hopefully, instil positive recycling practises from a young age.

Robin would be an interactive tool that utilises components from old Samsung devices, such as cameras, speakers and LEDs.

The components would be repurposed into modular parts that can be easily assembled to create diverse products such as a camera, fan and torch.

Lee's concept, named Memory Capsule, is a proposed recycling campaign in which discarded smartphones would be transformed into USB devices. These not only would act as a storage device but also would symbolically serve as a time capsule to preserve memories in the form of images, videos and other data from old phones.

As a playful nod to its name, the design of the device echoes the form of medical capsules and would feature a transparent cap which, according to the designers, would be made from "recycled polycarbonate sourced from discarded fishing nets."

The packaging of the device would be crafted from recycled pulp, while the metals and plastics used in the USB would be extracted from discarded smartphones.

"The entrants really showcased the power of design through a meaningful and sustainable approach to innovation," Samsung said.

"The implementation and actual impact on the planet remains untested. However, with consistent effort and creativity in mind, we hope brainstorming such small changes could possibly help create our vision for the future together."

The finalists beat entries from over 45 different countries around the world, with Solar Lookout emerging as the winner of the Re:Create Design Challenge.

The entries were initially whittled down to a shortlist of 11 designs, from which the jury selected the top three prize winners. Each design was assessed on its innovation and consideration for its use of old Samsung devices and recycled materials.

There was a total prize pot of £18,000 for the top three finalists, with £10,000 going to the designers of Solar Lookout for their winning design.

The proposed designs by the entrants are conceptual and have not been implemented. No assessment was made regarding implementation feasibility and actual or potential social and environmental impact of the designs, which were judged purely on the strength and creativity of the ideas presented.

Partnership content

The Re:Create Design Challenge is a partnership between Dezeen and Samsung. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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A group of design graduates from London's Royal College of Art have come up with a way to make RFID tags entirely from paper, with no metal or silicon components in a bid to cut down on waste from single-use electronics.

Under their start-up PulpaTronics, the team has devised a chipless, paper-only version of a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag – a type of electronic tracker that is attached to products and is most commonly found in clothing stores.

These types of tags have succeeded barcodes in many big retailers, where they allow self-checkout machines to "magically" identify items without scanning anything, while also facilitating inventory management and theft prevention.

However, these types of tags – 18 billion of which are produced every year – are "overengineered", according to PulpaTronics.

The devices rely on a circuit with a microchip and antenna, usually embedded into a sticker adhered to the paper swing tag. Due to the mix of paper, metal and silicon, they are unrecyclable and tend to end up in landfills.

By contrast, PulpaTronics' alternative RFID design requires no other material than paper. The company simply uses a laser to mark a circuit onto its surface, with the laser settings tuned so as not to cut or burn the paper but to change its chemical composition to make it conductive.

This circuit is carbon-based and the tag can be recycled with household waste as easily as a piece of paper marked with a pencil scrawl.

"This approach streamlines the manufacturing process, eliminates the need for metal and silicon components and significantly reduces the environmental footprint of RFID tag production as a result," PulpaTronics said.

PulpaTronics estimates its tags will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 70 per cent compared to standard RFID tags while halving the associated price for businesses.

The company's three co-founders came up with the idea for the RFID tags while working on a group project along with a fourth student, Jingyan Chen, as part of their Innovation Design Engineering masters course, jointly run by Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art.

Chloe So, Barna Soma Biro and Rui Ma have different backgrounds, ranging from engineering to biological sciences to fashion design, and wanted to consolidate their skills to come up with a design that would have a positive impact on the environment.

"Our approach was slightly different to the rest of the teams in our course," said Biro, who is PulpaTronics' tech lead. "We never really started with a problem and then tried to identify a solution to it as you would normally do in a conventional design process."

"Rather, we investigated various types of interesting technologies that we thought were cutting-edge from a scientific perspective and then brainstormed around what we could create out of them by trying to stay aligned to our values of reducing waste and making technology more accessible," he continued.

In addition to the paper circuitry, PulpaTronics also applied another of these experimental technologies to dispose of the RFID's microchip, which is responsible for storing data about the item that is then communicated to the reader via an antenna.

Instead, the "chipless" PulpaTronics tag uses the geometric pattern of the circuit itself to convey the information. In the company's concept designs, for instance, it's a labyrinthine pattern of concentric circles.

"This mechanism is similar to barcodes and QR codes in the sense that the information is encoded geometrically, but it doesn't need to be scanned visually," said Biro. "It's basically storing the information in the antenna."

So far, PulpaTronics paper RFID tag has passed its first round of testing, where the technology was found to match the performance of a copper-based control RFID tag.

The company – which is shortlisted for this year's Dezeen Award in the sustainable design category – will now stress test the product, looking at its shelf life, durability and whether it is affected by environmental factors.

PulpaTronics is targeting the retail industry first, particularly smaller companies that have not yet made the switch to RFID due to cost. And a preliminary trial with a retail partner in the redeveloped Battersea Power Station is already on the horizon.

PulpaTronics is also pushing for the introduction of a new symbol to designate recyclable RFID tags and raise awareness about the environmental issue of e-waste generated from hidden electronics.

Other single-use electronics in circulation today include disposable vapes and digital pregnancy tests, which show the results of a paper strip test on a tiny screen.

Last year, Australian company Hoopsy launched a paper-based pregnancy test to tackle both the electronic and plastic waste created by these devices.

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Design group Circular Economy Manufacturing has created a small factory that uses solar energy to convert plastic waste into household items and city infrastructure on Governors Island.

Named MicroFactory, the portable facility was designed to turn household consumer plastic waste into usable objects within communities.

Created by New York sustainability start-up Circular Economy Manufacturing (CEMfg), the factory was constructed within a 20 by 7.5 foot (six by two metres) shipping container and installed on Governors Island – a small car-less island off the shore of Manhattan.

Its shipping container envelope was designed to make it easy to install on the island and easy to be transported in the future. It was painted white to absorb less heat and keep the equipment cool.

A clear garage door and windows were installed on the facade to allow passersby to see the equipment inside at work.

An array of 25 photovoltaic panels – a ten kilowatt array in total – was placed on top of the container and run through a solar inverter connected to batteries, which store the power and allow the factory to be 100 per cent solar-powered.

To use the factory, people must bring used, cleaned plastics and place them in an on-site shredder. The shredded plastic is then placed in a machine that feeds it into a Rotational Molding Machine.

The machine uses heat and movement to melt and then cool the plastic into preset moulds. Multiple different moulds can be clamped on at each cycle, and the team said it could produce six large street traffic cones in one cycle.

"We plan on growing our start-up by selling the small products to citizens, the urban infrastructure products to cities, and our whole MicroFactory to communities or countries," said CEMfg co-founder Barent Roth.

"Every recycling center around the world could have a MicroFactory on-site immediately converting single-use plastic into durable essential products."

So far, the factory on Governors Island has produced lamps and planters that have been sold back to the public to fund future endeavours.

Because the company is still small, the sorting is done by hand, and Roth said the team does not melt plastic that it cannot identify.

"High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) #2 is our preferred plastic," said Roth. "It has a relatively low melting temperature and is readily available in a wide range of colors."

The project was made possible through an initiative started by entrepreneur Chris Graff who began a competition asking designers to come up with ideas to help deal with the waste problems in New York City called the NYC Curb-to-Market Challenge.

"Eventually, we hope to deploy a fleet of MicroFactories to locations around the country, to create green jobs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, divert tons of plastic waste from landfills, and educate community members about the potentials of Circular Manufacturing," said the team.

"We can bring our MicroFactories anywhere there is ample plastic pollution and consistent sunlight."

The team at CEMfg has made a 3D model of the MicroFactory available online, here.

Nearby, in Queens, a group of academics and designers launched a program that converts architectural mock-ups into community garden sheds.

Other urban recycling projects include designer Jeffrey Miller's conversion of London's waste into tiles for the city's underground trains.

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British designer Gareth Neal and Dutch studio The New Raw have used thrice-recycled plastic and a new 3D-printing method to create the objects in the Digitally Woven series, which are printed in loops rather than layers.

The designer and the studio displayed several of their creations — a pink chair called Loopy and three vessels with a look reminiscent of woven baskets — at the Material Matters fair during the London Design Festival.

Neal is known for making furniture that references or incorporates heritage crafts and usually works in wood, while The New Raw specialises in robotic manufacturing with plastic waste.

The collaborators paired up with the goal of exploring how traditional craft techniques such as willow work, knitting, crocheting and paper-cord weaving could inform a new style of 3D printing.

They hoped to develop a method that would allow for imperfections in the final product and therefore reduce the amount of waste due to misprints.

For Digitally Woven, Neal and The New Raw created objects using various patterns of interlocking loops, which gave the structures strength and enabled the makers to use three-times recycled plastic, a rarely used material.

Currently, when working with recycled polypropylene plastic filament in 3D printing, the mix of source materials in the waste stream and the number of times it has been recycled are factors that can make it more unstable.

However, Neal and The New Raw's technique is visibly different from typical 3D printing, where the filament is added in layers to build an object.

Here, the printing robot has extruded thicker cords of material, almost like icing from a piping bag, laying it down in a looped pattern in 3D space.

According to Neal, the print lines for the machine are based on ones drawn by hand, creating a nuanced look informed by natural movement and crafting tools.

"At the time of starting the project, The New Raw was printing in a very traditional style with layered prints that had come from putting 3D models through slicer tools," Neal told Dezeen.

"They asked me to look into how we could consider using their technology to capture craft techniques that they had started to explore to disguise the misprints," he added.

Their experimentation yielded a "massive amount" of samples and textures, said Neal.

"The open weave structures were a totally new breakthrough and are really quite special in that they create structurally strong, lightweight objects using half the normal material use," he continued.

The designer said the project, which had been funded by a European Union grant, had involved a steep learning curve for him, as he had rarely used additive manufacturing and never worked with plastic.

"I learned so much," said Neal. "It has also reinforced how important the close relationship is between artists and manufacturers. If a manufacturer is open to experimentation, a designer or a maker really can introduce new approaches to traditional methods."

Neal is now working to expand and refine the range of Digitally Woven products. He says the Loopy chair can be made to order in any colour, using plastic from any waste stream.

Neal's previous work has included picnic furniture made with marquetry and a CNC-machined but 1780s-inspired chest of drawers that is in the collection of the V&A.

The New Raw's projects include the Ermis chair, a monobloc seat made from its own 3D-printing waste.

The photography is by James Champion.

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Danish toymaker Lego has abandoned its pilot programme to make recycled plastic bricks from discarded bottles after projections suggested that, adopted at scale, the material would ultimately have a higher carbon footprint.

The company introduced its first prototype bricks using recycled PET (rPET) in 2021 as part of the aim to have all of its products made from sustainable materials by the end of the decade.

But after two years of testing, Lego has now scrapped the project as calculations indicated that retooling its factories to process rPET – instead of the acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) used to form 80 per cent of its bricks – would ultimately generate more emissions over the product's lifecycle.

"It's like trying to make a bike out of wood rather than steel," Lego's head of sustainability Tom Brooks told the Financial Times, which broke the story.

"In order to scale production, the level of disruption to the manufacturing environment was such that we needed to change everything in our factories. After all that, the carbon footprint would have been higher. It was disappointing."

The rPET also requires large amounts of energy for processing and drying, Brooks explained, as well as additional chemicals so it can rival the durability of normal Lego blocks.

Instead of repurposing plastic bottles, Lego says it is now looking to find bio-based and recycled substitutes for the individual chemicals that make up ABS, as well as investigating alternative solutions.

"We remain fully committed to making Lego bricks from sustainable materials by 2032," a spokesperson for the company told Dezeen.

"We are currently testing and developing Lego bricks made from a range of alternative sustainable materials, including other recycled plastics and plastics made from alternative sources such as e-methanol."

The company is also exploring the potential of bioplastics, which has formed some of the flora found in Lego kits since 2018 as well as the company's recent Botanical Collection.

However, Lego CEO Niels Christiansen told the FT he believes no single material will be a silver bullet solution.

"We tested hundreds and hundreds of materials," he said. "It's just not been possible to find a material like that."

Instead, part of Lego's solution will be a focus on incremental emissions reductions as well as a takeback scheme, which the company is hoping to develop over the next few years so that unwanted bricks can be directly reused in new sets or recycled if they are no longer functional.

The news comes only a month after the company pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Previously, Lego had only committed to a 37 per cent emissions reduction by 2032 compared to 2019.

All images are courtesy of Lego.

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L'Arc de Triomphe Wrapped, artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude's last work, is being recycled by Parley for the Oceans, which will turn it into tents and sun shades for use during the 2024 Olympics and other events in Paris.

In 2021, L'Arc de Triomphe Wrapped saw the monument on Paris's Champs-Élysées shrouded in 25,000 square metres of silvery fabric tied in place with 7,000 metres of red rope.

Both fabric and rope were made of woven polypropylene, a type of thermoplastic, and intended to be recycled — a vision that is now being realised by the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation in collaboration with environmental organisation Parley for the Oceans.

The organisation has already processed the materials and is now in the design and production phase.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has confirmed the tents and shade structures created will be used in major events including the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which the city is hosting next year.

"A constant commitment of Christo and Jeanne-Claude was to reuse, upcycle and recycle all materials used in their projects," said L'Arc de Triomphe Wrapped project director Vladimir Yavachev.

"I can think of nothing more fitting than recycling this artwork for future use in Paris, a city so influential on the lives and work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude," he added.

Parley for the Oceans founder and CEO Cyrill Gutsch said it was meaningful to be giving a second life to an installation that he had seen as "a flag of rebellion" and "an encouragement that seemingly impossible ideas can become a reality".

"The ropes, the fabric of the artwork are testament of the true superpower we humans possess: imagination," said Gutsch.

"We will create tent structures that are designed to protect human life against dangerous heat waves," he added. "And to supercharge our hearts and our minds for the epic challenge ahead of us."

"I know it for sure, together we can create a new economy where harmful, toxic and exploitative business practices are a relic of the past."

The wood and steel from the substructure of L'Arc de Triomphe Wrapped have already been reused by the organisation Les Charpentiers de Paris and the companies ArcelorMittal and Derichebourg Environnement.

It is two years since the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation unveiled L'Arc de Triomphe Wrapped, a posthumous work for both artists.

Christo passed away in 2020 and Jeanne-Claude in 2009, but the pair had conceptualised the project together in 1961. The artists and their foundation consider all of their public projects and indoor installations as collaborative works by both Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

L'Arc de Triomphe Wrapped had been scheduled to go ahead in 2020, but was postponed to 2021 after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

After Christo's death, the project was finalised by his team along with the Centre des Monuments Nationaux, Centre Pompidou and the City of Paris.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are most well-known for "wrapping" famous buildings and landscapes in their massive-scale artworks.

While some critics have attacked the waste or environmental interference of their projects, the artists' foundation maintains that they recycled most materials and left sites in the state they found them in, or better.

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Promotion: aluminium and renewable energy company Hydro is exhibiting its collaboration with designer Lars Beller Fjetland at the London Design Festival, exploring how partnerships can help make the metals industry more sustainable.

Earlier this year Hydro and Fjetland partnered to launch Bello! bench, a piece of outdoor seating made from extruded aluminium with 90 per cent recycled content.

Hydro is now exhibiting the bench at Material Matters at Oxo Tower, in a display that aims to communicate how the project advances the company's ambition to decarbonise society.

"Material and manufacturing literacy are key to creating truly sustainable products", says Hydro's marketing director, Asle Forsbak, noting an estimate that 80 per cent of a product's environmental footprint is determined in the design phase.

The company aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and push the whole industry towards those goals as well.

This approach has guided the company into partnerships with designers and producers including Tom Dixon, Polestar, Porsche and Cake as it seeks to share knowledge about how to design with aluminium.

"As a designer the choices you make at the drawing board decide if the product can be taken apart and recycled again and again, which is why understanding material properties and manufacturing processes is key," said Forsbak.

According to Forsbak, a deep understanding of engineering, material science and the realities of production all shaped the Bello! bench.

It is made from 90 per cent recycled aluminium, most of which is end-consumer scrap and can be recycled in its entirety.

Fjetland based his design on penne rigate pasta, luxuriating in the ridged surface texture that could be created through extrusion.

As part of the exhibition, Fjetland is releasing Bello! in a new colour, a "striking, naturalesque green", and says the design is "a practical example of how we are stronger when we work together".

"At face value, Hydro might seem like an unlikely exhibitor at the London Design Festival," said Forsbak. "But with the Bello! bench, we want to demonstrate how the industry and designers can work together to produce a practical and pretty product that can be mass produced, and also meet the society’s growing sustainability demands."

"At one hand, industrial mass production comes with a slew of challenges regarding environmental sustainability," said Forsbak. "On the other hand, there needs to be a market pull for companies to produce sustainably."

Forsbak explains that for "real, impactful change" it is necessary to have an amalgamation of perspectives, expertise and industries when designing products.

"The sustainability challenge of mass production isn't solved in a vacuum; We need to work closely with our partners to help decarbonise society," he said. "That is why collaboration is key."

The Bello! bench can be seen at Hydro's display at the Material Matters exhibition. The company's stand will be made from reused structural components from past exhibitions.

To learn more about aluminium and design, visit Hydro's aluminium knowledge hub, Shapes.

Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen for Hydro as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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Discarded iPhones, vapes, a fly swatter and a 1950s radio form Recover-E, a replica racing car built entirely out of electronic waste by Manchester design studio Lazerian.

Commissioned by Formula E team Envision Racing to highlight the growing issue of e-waste, Recover-E uses a modified drivetrain taken from a beach buggy to enable it to drive at slow speeds.

Everyday objects are dotted all over the car, such as the driver halo made from Nintendo Wii controllers, a Sony VR headset and an electric fly swatter.

A pricing gun operates as the brake light, while a 1950s radio forms the radar antenna on top of the car.

"You can show people how much waste we all go through, but when you take it and turn it into something else it becomes this vehicle to start to trigger people's minds and actually make them think about this stuff," Lazerian founder and owner Liam Hopkins told Dezeen.

"For me it was a beautiful project to be able to create something that will get to a huge amount of people, to bring this issue to them in a way that's not forcing it down the throat."

The world's annual output of e-waste is projected to reach 75 million tonnes by 2030, with the World Health Organisation sounding the alarm over the implications for children's health.

Items for the Recover-E project were sourced entirely from donations from Manchester schoolchildren and locally based tech trade-in company Music Magpie, which considered them unrepairable.

After the e-waste had been collected, Hopkins separated it into different materials, textures and colours to help decide where to use each item in the vehicle.

"I really wanted to encourage people to take things apart," explained Hopkins. "The way things are designed we've been taught not to mess – it's not encouraged for people to take stuff apart and try and repair it, we've literally turned into a throwaway society."

"Whereas we can all learn so much from taking something apart," he continued. "We see how things are made, what materials, how one thing connects to another, can we make something else from it, repair it."

The car was designed to give the impression of gradually disintegrating from front to back.

"I wanted to have this narrative behind it where it's basically uncovering the insides of the waste," he said.

The nose and front spoilers of the car are dominated by phones in relatively good condition with their outer casing visible, with a string of LEDs running underneath that when lit make the devices appear switched on.

"As we then start to move back, it's like it's kind of starting to shed its layers," said Hopkins.

"So as we move along, it becomes the underside of the phones, the underside of the MacBooks and the laptops – the middle of the car is all these circuit boards," he continued.

"And then as we get to the back, it's literally down to components. We've got the induction charges from phones, we've got the wires, we've got screens. So I wanted it to convey that message of these things being taken apart."

Disposable vapes, some of which were used just two or three weeks before the car was built, also make up part of the car's components. An estimated 1.3 million of the electric nicotine products are thrown away every week in the UK alone.

Hopkins believes that single-use vapes, with their rechargeable lithium batteries that do not get recharged, are a prime example of society's problematic relationship with electronic goods.

"We have an issue now where it's so easy to buy stuff so cheap, and there's no value in it," he argued. "You use it for five minutes, an hour, and then it's chucked away when there's still so much more life in these things."

"There was some nice symbolism behind having this fast-moving vehicle and the fast-paced society that we're all in, and hopefully as much as it's a beautiful thing to look at, it's also a scary thing to think about," he continued.

Hopkins' projects have often explored re-use of waste materials, including an earlier collaboration with Envision Racing to build a non-drivable replica Formula E car from plastic waste, but Recover-E is his first focused on e-waste.

The car was unveiled on the eve of the London e-prix at the ExCel centre in late July and will be exhibited at a series of events, including global climate summit COP28, before it is disassembled for recycling.

Electric-car racing championship Formula E has been declared the first net-zero global sport based on an assessment by sustainability consultancy Quantis.

Other projects previously featured on Dezeen that seek to draw attention to the issue of e-waste include a chair made from discarded laptops, furniture created from e-scooters dumped in a canal network and tiles produced from recycled oven glass.

The photography is courtesy of Envision Racing.

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Wearable health trackers for pets, AI-powered clip-on cameras for the visually impaired and a wildfire detection system are among 11 designs shortlisted in Dezeen and Samsung's Re:Create Design Challenge.

Entrants from more than 45 countries around the world entered the contest, which challenged participants to come up with creative ideas to repurpose old Samsung devices or materials and transform them into new products or services.

The competition came about as part of Samsung's ongoing efforts to make its business more sustainable. It sought to discover innovative new concepts that improve people's lives in meaningful ways and have a positive impact on the planet, using old Samsung devices or materials.

The finalists were determined by an expert panel comprising Dezeen editors and design professionals who were looking for creative ideas that have a positive social and environmental impact, propose meaningful solutions to people's lives, and resonate with the lifestyle of Samsung consumers.

A total of 11 designs have now been shortlisted and are in the running for a share of the £18,000 prize pot. The finalists will be revealed in October.

The winner will win the top prize of £10,000, while the two runner-ups will receive £4,000 each.

The shortlisted entries are listed below in the order that they were submitted.

Memory Capsule by Eunsu Lee
Incheon, South Korea

Eunsu Lee proposed a recycling campaign called Memory Capsule, in which discarded smartphones would be repurposed into USB devices that store memories such as images, videos and other data from old phones.

The concept was created in response to Lee's findings that users are reluctant to dispose of old smartphones as they don't want to lose the memories stored within them.

To address this, Lee designed a simple device that serves as a time capsule to preserve memories. Its form is reminiscent of medical capsules, as a playful take on its name.

When the device is in use, an LED text display on the product surface begins to glow, highlighting the year the first data on the discarded smartphone dates back to. The data would be accessed through a retro-inspired design programme to evoke a sense of nostalgia, allowing users to revisit cherished memories at any time.

The packaging of the device would be crafted from recycled pulp, while the metals and plastics used in the USB would be extracted from discarded smartphones. The device's transparent cap would be made from recycled polycarbonate, which would be sourced from discarded fishing nets.

"Memory Capsule not only promotes material circulation but also appeals to users' emotions," Lee said. "It encourages their participation in saving the planet and fosters positive brand and product perceptions."

Common Sands Forite by Studio Plastique, Snøhetta and Fornace Brion
Brussels, Belgium

Common Sands Forite is a collection of recycled glass tiles made from glass components found in discarded ovens and microwave ovens. The tiles were designed by Norwegian studio Snøhetta, Belgian designers Studio Plastique and Italian manufacturer Fornace Brioni.

The tiles were designed to address the growing volumes of electronic waste and silicate scarcity. The collection aims to leverage the unique properties, composition and colour of e-waste glass, which currently is more difficult to recycle, despite glass being a highly recyclable material.

Transforming sand into items such as microchips, solar cells, aerogel, insulation and more requires a rigorous process of extracting, refining and processing, but little is done to recycle those materials when they reach the end of their lifecycle.

To counter this, the designers propose repurposing these overlooked and under-recycled components into a series of architectural glass tiles. The Forite tiles are partially translucent, which makes them suitable for dividers for interior spaces and semi-transparent exterior walls.

"The project showcases that a circular approach to our material world can be designed without compromising on aesthetic, qualitative and human values," the designers said.

"With the aim of creating sustainable, smart and refined architectural products, the project creates new value for an abundant yet unexploited group of materials."

Intersist Harness by Sohee Chung, Dong Sun Shin and Seung Hwan Ra
Seoul, South Korea

Sohee Chung, Dong Sun Shin and Seung Hwan Ra proposed repurposing Samsung Galaxy watches to create Intersist Harness, a smart harness for guide dogs to provide visually impaired individuals with a method of caring for their companion.

Intersist Harness would utilise the bioactive sensors found in Galaxy watches to track the dog's health and notify the owner if any health issues arise that require attention. The semiconductors would be collected through a Samsung recycling programme, which negates additional costs in manufacturing.

From a young age, each guide puppy would be given a small training harness that records their biorhythm throughout their education and growth. The data would be sent to a trainer to analyse the dog's characteristics, walking pace and physical health. The accumulated data later would become the criterion for which patient the dog is assigned to.

The role the device plays in matching guide dogs to patients would enhance compatibility between the two companions from the very beginning. Many smart devices for the visually impaired focus on a technological approach, however, Intersist Harness aims to shift the focus to strengthen the relationship between the owner and the guide dog.

"The existence of a smart device makes continuous care possible and it resolves the linguistic barrier the guide dog had through more straightforward interaction," the designers said.

Samsung Innovate & Learn Kit by Raman Rathour
Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar, India

Raman Rathour proposed an educational kit that introduces students to electronics, coding and technology through repurposing components from old Samsung devices.

The concept aims to divert electronic waste from landfills and contribute to a circular economy, where valuable resources are reused to ignite curiosity and foster imagination amongst students.

The kits would include essential components such as circuit boards, sensors and LEDs that enable students to build and experiment. This would provide them with a hands-on learning experience and enables them to gain a better understanding of technology and engineering principles.

Along with the kits, interactive learning materials would guide students through coding tutorials to aid them in developing critical thinking, problem-solving and programming skills.

"Samsung's philosophy of innovation and commitment to sustainability is beautifully reflected in this initiative," Rathour said. "It not only repurposes old devices, but also fosters a new generation of creators and problem solvers."

Beta Electronics by Kristina Betha Suwarso
London, UK

Another educational kit shortlisted is Beta Electronics, created by Kristina Betha Suwarso. The kit was designed to give consumer electronics a second life to "sustainably decolonise and democratise consumer electronics".

Users could donate old Samsung devices to be salvaged for parts, which would then be transformed into new objects that encourage education around consumer electronics sustainably and affordably.

With a focus on reusing what is already available at hand, the Beta Electronics kit aims to encourage users to scan their own salvaged finds with an AI scanner that makes recommendations on how to give the objects a second life.

Each kit would provide users detailed guidelines of how to create everyday objects, such as MP3 players or weather machines to be hung out of windows to help users decide the most weather-appropriate outfit for the day.

"A beta version is a pre-release of software or a product that gathers feedback and improves before the official release," Suwarso said. "Similarly, my design solutions are a work in progress, embracing continuous iteration as humans and technology evolve."

Solar Lookout by Abi Lambert, Cade Thurlby, Karl Wagner and Tyler Boshard
Atlanta, Georgia, USA

The Solar Lookout is a wildfire detection system composed of recycled Samsung smartphones and powered by renewable energy and AI, intended to reduce the time elapsed between the beginning of the fire and when it is detected.

According to the designers, wildfire-detection technology is in its nascent stages, with human reporting being the most common way that wildfires are detected. Some detection systems utilise real-time satellite imagery, but are often difficult to gain access to, particularly in wildfire-prone regions such as Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and Australia.

The Solar Lookout devices would be situated in wildfire-prone zones and sit 10 feet above ground. At this height, the repurposed Samsung smartphone cameras would detect abnormalities such as fires or smoke in the landscape that it would be trained to detect using AI.

The devices would operate and communicate via a mesh network and be able to report data such as weather patterns and air quality.

Each device would be fitted with a 50-watt solar panel at the top of the pole to generate power while simultaneously providing shade to prevent the device from overheating. To mitigate challenging lighting conditions, the devices would hold space for a Samsung power bank to accommodate overnight usage.

"By creating effective and easily adaptable early detection and warning systems we can impact populations around the world," the designers said. "Reducing forest fires means reducing people displaced directly because of the fire and reducing carbon spitting back into the atmosphere."

InSight by Merve Nur Sökmen and Ayberk Köle
İzmir, Turkey

Merve Nur Sökmen and Ayberk Köle designed a wearable device to assist the visually impaired by providing AI-powered audio descriptions of their surroundings in real time.

Called InSight, the device would attach to the user's clothing to offer a discreet and hands-free experience. It would be easily connected with smartphones and headphones from which personalised audio descriptions are fed to the user.

The wearable smart device was designed to foster a safer navigation experience for the visually impaired, empowering them with greater confidence, autonomy and access to the world around them.

InSight would be composed of repurposed parts taken from old Samsung smartphones, earbuds and watches. Each device would be equipped with wide-angle cameras, user-friendly touch control via haptic feedback and AI technology to provide an intuitive navigation system.

"InSight's problem-solving approach revolves around user ease, comfort and personalisation, making it a reliable and empowering solution for daily life," the designers said.

"The device aims to revolutionise the lives of visually impaired individuals by promoting independence, mobility and access to information."

Djuro's Story by Barbara Babic and Zvonimir Medin
Lovran, Croatia

Barbara Babic and Zvonimir Medin's proposal tells the story of an energetic 70-year old named Djuro who lives on a picturesque Croatian island with a dwindling population called Unije.

The story illustrates Djuro's vision of a completely self-sustainable island, which is already making progress through the creation of a photovoltaic solar power plant and battery storage system that would provide supply year-round energy.

Starting at home, Djuro created a solar-powered mobile phone charger made using an old non-working Samsung music system from 1991 found at a local recycling yard. The charger enables Djuro to fish in remote coves off the grid.

The phone charger is composed of an old turntable, which rotates the solar panel to provide optimal angles throughout the day. Djuro makes use of the cassette deck's sliding door to provide dust protection, while the CD tray protects the wireless charger when not in use.

"Djuro's solar charger illuminates a model for the world where renewal lies in reimagining the forgotten treasures of yesterday," the designers said. "The social impact radiates through Unije and beyond."

Galaxy Loop by Hayong Kim and Saun Park
Seoul, South Korea

Hayong Kim and Saun Park designed Galaxy Loop, a pet healthcare wearable device made from recycled Galaxy watches.

The device was proposed by the designers in response to their findings that electronic devices are often replaced before their lifespan is over. The Galaxy Loop devices would make use of components such as bioactive sensors from functional but no-longer-needed Galaxy watches.

The sensors would enable pet owners to actively track their pets' health by monitoring their activity, heart rate, body temperature, sleep time and different emotional states. The device can also detect various diseases earlier through analysing the pet's sounds via a microphone.

The devices would be equipped with GPS and NFC tags that enable owners to expeditiously locate them if lost. The Galaxy Loop devices would be water and dust resistant and were designed with durable materials to prevent it from being easily damaged by the pet's everyday activities.

"For ageing pets and caring owners, Galaxy Loop can help pet parents keep their companions healthy," the designers said. "People and their pets can stay healthy together for a longer time while being sustainable for the planet."

Robin by Landor & Fitch
London, UK

Design studio Landor & Fitch created a modular kit that enables children to build their own products. Called Robin, the adventure accessory was designed to encourage outdoor exploration, educate children about how products are made and instil positive recycling behaviours from a young age.

The device would make use of components from old Samsung devices such as cameras, speakers, LEDs and printed circuit boards that are repurposed into modular parts that can be assembled together to form various products such as a camera, fan and torch.

The kit would includes a child-safe screw tool designed for small hands, which can be used to open and close a panel that conceals five colour-coded wire connectors that can be easily slotted into each other and are interchangeable depending on the device that the user is creating.

The device would features a power consumption dial to illustrate how much power each module uses in a bid to educate children on the power usage of various devices.

"This innovative product brings joy by engaging and educating young children in the wonders of design and engineering, and fosters environmentally conscious mindsets," the designers said.

"Its meaningful impact can challenge the notion that everything must always be brand new."

Galaxy Connected by Amowa Design
São José dos Pinhais, Brazil

Riorgior Ranger, Fabiana Westphal and Robert Renoir Ranger of Amowa Design updated a conventional public telephone box into a contemporary phone booth that provides users internet access and to make video and phone calls to anywhere in the world.

Called Galaxy Connected, the concept would see old or unwanted Samsung smartphones and tablets reused in public areas throughout cities and remote locations. This would enable internet access and video calling to those who have limited access or need connection in emergency situations, such as homeless people, those in remote areas or those from lower income backgrounds.

The modular design of the booths means that multiple configurations can be clustered together.

The dome of the booth would be made from rotomolded recycled plastic and the base is made of metal, selected for its highly recyclable quality. Electricity would be generated from a photovoltaic panel.

"Galaxy Connected is a way to connect people with other people around the world," the designers said. "Using old Samsung cell phones and tablets, these people will be able to have video access with family, friends, doctors, teachers and city information."

Partnership content

The Re:Create Design Challenge is a partnership between Dezeen and Samsung. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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Local studio Lab La Bla sourced diabase rock from a nearby mine and created seating from MDF and recycled cork for the interior of energy company E.ON's headquarters in Malmö, Sweden.

Lab La Bla designed the headquarters' reception area, coat room and lounge area, while also creating furniture, sculptures and other accessories across nine floors of the 22,000-square-metre building.

The studio aimed to create a sequence of space that had variety, while taking inspiration from sources including airport terminals.

"Creating work for an office that houses 1,500 employees is both challenging and inspiring," co-founders Axel Landström and Victor Isaksson Pirtti told Dezeen.

"It's about creating spaces and functions that cater to the many while offering a mix of focus, creative and social environments, so it's really about designing for the masses without making it boring or generic," they added.

"There's a current fascination about airport interiors in the studio, so for the reception area we drew from that source of inspiration."

In the reception area, the studio created a set of sunny yellow furniture made from medium-density fibreboard (MDF) covered in nylon fiber.

"The overall project for us is sort of a reaction to dysfunctional and non-sustainable processes inherent within our industry," the studio explained.

"For the reception area MDF and screws have been coated with repurposed nylon fiber using a technology commonly seen in the automotive industry, resulting in furniture that celebrates leftover material but without compromising on durability."

For the building's central atrium, Lab La Bla designed an unusual bench that features a gloopy stone decoration resembling an oil spill.

This was created using diabase stone, which is famous for its blackness and was mined nearby in southern Sweden. The process of creating it was informed by its setting at an energy company headquarters.

"Since electricity and magnetism are essentially two aspects of the same thing – and E.ON being an electric utility company – we thought it suitable to introduce magnetism as a modelling tool," Landström and Isaksson Pirtti explained.

"The shape of the piece comes from dropping a lump of magnetic slime on top of a conductive material," they added. "The slime seemingly randomly slump and drapes over a metal bar before settling in its final shape."

Lab La Bla then scaled this shape up and hand-sculpted the shape from a single block of diabase, which was finally sandblasted and polished.

"We see this process as an adventurous exploration in making a physical representation of the invisible force that shapes our world," Landström and Isaksson Pirtti added.

The studio also turned brick beams, left over from the construction of a school in Malmö in the early 1900s, into umbrella stands, and sourced mouth-blown glass panels from one of the few remaining producers of the material.

This was used, together with dichroic glass, to create a three-metre-high glass sculpture with a graphic pattern that depicts a CT-scan of a wood-fibre material.

Lab La Bla also created decorative vases and glass sculptures using molten glass blown into tree trunks that had been hallowed by fungal decay. The trunks were sourced from E.ON's own local heating centre.

These trunks "serve no industrial purpose, but are burnt for energy by E.ON and used for teleheating for Malmö," the studio said.

"We borrow these tree trunks to blow glass in them, before returning them to their final purpose."

In the headquarters' lounge areas, the designers created modular sofas made from ground-down wine corks sourced from restaurants.

"The modular cork sofa uses a unique process where 100 per cent recycled cork is sprayed onto a foam structure, proudly incorporating signs of imperfection into the design while bringing superior durability and sustainability to your furniture," Landström and Isaksson Pirtti said.

To the designers, the aim of the interior design was to use disused or forgotten materials, as well as ones that were recycled and recyclable.

"We took a conscious decision of picking hyper-ordinary materials such as MDF and aluminium to pinpoint and educate people about cyclic and sustainable qualities inherent in the processes of creating these materials," the studio said.

"We often try to celebrate the beauty and intrinsic qualities of everyday, industrial materials otherwise consigned to temporary or low-cost construction solutions," it added.

"We wanted to design objects which require significant time and skills from craftspeople, usually reserved for expensive, rare and high-quality materials – to some of the very inexpensive and found materials that we used throughout the project."

Lab La Bla's designs have previously been shown at the Moving Forward exhibition at Stockholm Design Week and as part of the Metabolic Processes for Leftovers exhibition in Malmö.

The photography is by Lars Brønseth.

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Designer Jeffrey Miller has created tiles for the London Underground using the transit system's own waste, as part of his final-year work at Central Saint Martins.

The From the Underground tiles are made using two waste materials produced either from the construction or operation of the tube: London clay and iron oxide-rich dust.

London clay is the soil on which most of the city is built and which is excavated during tunnel boring, while iron oxide dust is created by train wheels as they grind against steel tracks every day.

Miller's clay tiles are cast in an art nouveau design that was already utilised in some of the network's older stations. Originally designed by Leslie Green, the architect behind many of the stations, the tile moulds were loaned by the manufacturer H&E Smith.

The spark for the project came when Miller was sitting on the Central line, listening to the loud screeching as the train hurtled through one of the oldest sections of the railway.

Curious about the byproduct of all that friction, he began his research and eventually found a study that identified the main component of the dust as iron oxide — a chemical compound that Miller, a practiced ceramicist, knew could be used to pigment glaze.

The dust is visible as a black substance on the train tracks and other nearby areas.

Obtaining the dust, however, proved tricky. Without a collaborator at Transport for London (TfL) – the local government body that runs the network – he had to collect it himself, going from station to station with a vacuum cleaner.

"I didn't vacuum the actual tracks, because that was maybe a little bit too risky," Miller told Dezeen. "But I vacuumed the grooves on the platform right before you step onto or off the train. A lot of dust had collected in there."

The dust was mixed with contaminants such as dirt and human hair, but the designer embraced the slight imperfections that this brought to the glaze.

The idea to use London clay, meanwhile, arose through conversations Miller had with a geologist, who gave him a contact who worked on tunneling projects in London and could provide waste-borehole samples full of the clay.

The challenge with using the clay, Miller says, is that it took a lot of processing and testing to get it to a stage where it could be used to make objects.

The processing involved drying out the clay, crushing it, reconstituting it with water and then filtering out the non-clay particles before mixing it together again and testing how it behaved when fired in the kiln.

"Working with wild clays is rewarding," Miller said. "Usually in ceramics, you don't really get access to this process. And it's quite nice to be almost filling in all the gaps along the route of the creation of something."

Miller says he undertook the From the Underground project to reflect upon how materials are used in the built environment, often with an "opaqueness" around their provenance. For tiles, the materials are typically virgin resources obtained through open-pit mining.

"The whole crux of this project was seeing how the underground, which is this very uncommon place for resource extraction, could be used for resource extraction," he said.

"I actually didn't think when I started that it would be something that could be scaled up until I started working on it and realised the scale of the materials that are involved," he continued. "For the clay, you're dealing with hundreds and hundreds of metric tonnes for an excavation of usable material."

"For the iron oxide, there's 400 kilometres of track along the Underground and it gets covered in this black stuff that they have to dispose of quite regularly."

Miller, who completed the project as part of his masters in Material Futures at Central Saint Martins, is hoping to work with TfL to see his tiles actually used in the London Underground one day.

By using the Leslie Green-designed mould, he has created a product that could theoretically be used to replace broken tiles in station restorations.

Other recent tile designs to have made use of waste material have come from Snøhetta and Studio Plastique, who drew on recycled oven and microwave glass, and Kazakh designer Enis Akiev, who created a marbled effect with single-use plastics.

Photography by Sarel Jansen.

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Dezeen and Samsung's Re:Create Design Challenge closes for entries at midnight on Wednesday 19 July. Enter before the deadline for the chance to win up to £10,000.

The competition, which is free to enter for anyone over the age of 18 in any country around the world, invites readers to repurpose old Samsung devices or materials into new products or services.

Entrants are to propose innovative ideas for reusing, recycling and upcycling old and no longer-in-use electronic devices or waste materials, transforming them into products or services that improve people's lives in meaningful ways.

Full details of how to enter the contest are included in the competition brief and rules.

Entrants are free to imagine ideas that repurpose entire devices or those that recycle specific components or materials.

Concepts could include old Samsung products such as smartphones, tablets or televisions, as well as materials used in Samsung product development, including plastic, glass and aluminium.

Judges will be looking for creative ideas that improve people's lives in meaningful ways and have a positive impact on the planet.

£18,000 prize money up for grabs

The competition entries will be assessed by a panel of judges made up of Dezeen editors and design professionals. The judges are looking for original, human-centred designs that have a positive social and environmental impact.

A shortlist will be published on Dezeen in August 2023, with the finalists and winner revealed later in October 2023.

The winner will receive a top prize of £10,000, while the two runner-ups will receive £4,000 each.

How to enter

Entrants must produce visualisations depicting the product or service in use, along with supporting text to describe their idea explaining how it meets the brief.

Supporting images can include alternative angles of the main image, as well as other renders, drawings, sketches or diagrams that explain the concept. A video or animation are optional.

For more information about how to enter, including how to enter, visit www.dezeen.com/samsung-recreate-design-challenge.

Partnership content

The Re:Create Design Challenge is a partnership between Dezeen and Samsung. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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There are just two weeks left to enter our Re:Create Design Challenge, which invites readers to repurpose old Samsung devices or materials into new products or services. Enter before 19 July.

The Re:Create Design Challenge is a global design contest that seeks to explore innovative ways to transform old Samsung devices or materials by reusing, recycling and upcycling old and no longer-in-use electronic devices or waste materials.

The competition asks entrants to propose creative ideas that improve people's lives in meaningful ways and have a positive impact on the planet.

Proposals to make use of old Samsung products or materials

Concepts could include old Samsung products such as smartphones, tablets or televisions, as well as materials used in Samsung product development, including plastic, glass and aluminium.

Entrants are free to imagine ideas that repurpose entire devices or those that recycle specific components or materials.

The contest is free to enter for anyone over the age of 18 of any profession and from any country in the world.

See the full competition brief and rules for how to enter ›

The competition entries will be assessed by a panel of judges made up of Dezeen editors and design professionals, who are looking for original, human-centred designs that have a positive social and environmental impact.

The best proposals selected by the judges will be revealed in August 2023. A top prize of £10,000 will be awarded to first place, while the two runner-ups will receive £4,000 each.

How to enter

Entrants must produce visualisations depicting the product or service in use, along with supporting text to describe their idea explaining how it meets the brief.

Supporting images can include alternative angles of the main image, as well as other renders, drawings, sketches or diagrams that explain the concept. A video or animation are optional.

For more information about how to enter, including how to enter, visit www.dezeen.com/samsung-recreate-design-challenge.

Partnership content

The Re:Create Design Challenge is a partnership between Dezeen and Samsung. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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There is one month left to enter our Re:Create Design Challenge, which challenges readers to come up with ideas for reusing Samsung electronic devices or waste materials. Enter now before the contest closes on 19 July.

Launched last month, Dezeen and Samsung teamed up to launch a global design contest that tasks entrants with coming up with innovative ways to repurpose old devices or materials and transform them into new products or services.

Through the competition, Dezeen and Samsung seek new concepts that improve people's lives in meaningful ways and have a positive impact on the planet.

Contest challenges designers to repurpose old Samsung devices or materials

The contest, which is free to enter for anyone over the age of 18 in any country around the world, closes for entries on Wednesday 19 July 2023.

It has a top prize of £10,000 and total prize money of £18,000. Full details of how to enter the competition are included in the competition brief and rules.

The finalists will be determined by an expert judging panel comprising Dezeen editors and design professionals.

The judges will be looking for talented individuals to present original and innovative concepts that have a positive social and environmental impact, propose meaningful solutions to people's lives and resonate with the lifestyle of Samsung's consumers, fitting with its design philosophy.

You can learn more about Samsung's design philosophy here.

How to enter

Entrants must submit a description of the product or service, explaining how it addresses each of the judging criteria, along with supporting imagery showcasing the design.

Contestants are free to propose ideas that repurpose entire devices or those that recycle specific components or materials.

Entrants have the option to produce a video or animation of the design, which should be uploaded to an external hosting platform such as YouTube or Vimeo and submitted via a URL.

See the full competition brief for how to enter ›

Competition closes for entries on 19 July

The Re:Create Design Challenge closes for entries at 23:59 UK time on 19 July 2023.

The shortlist will be announced and published on Dezeen in August 2023. The finalists and the winner will be announced and published on Dezeen in October 2023.

The winner will win the top prize of £10,000, while the two runner-ups will receive £4,000 each.

For more information about how to enter, including the full brief and rules, visit www.dezeen.com/samsung-recreate-design-challenge.

Partnership content

The Re:Create Design Challenge is a partnership between Dezeen and Samsung. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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The Canadian government and social enterprise Challenge Works have announced the winners of their Afri-Plastics Challenge – an accelerator for companies across sub-Saharan Africa that are working to end plastic pollution.

The competition's £4.1 million prize fund was divided among nine winning projects, including a reusable diaper subscription from Rwanda and a Kenyan company making washing-up brushes from discarded coconut fibres.

"Eleven million tonnes of plastic waste enter the ocean each year," said Challenge Works' managing director Tris Dyson. "The winners of the Afri-Plastics Challenge are putting African innovation at the heart of solving this global problem."

Launched in July 2021, the accelerator program received more than a thousand entries that were whittled down to a shortlist of the 40 most promising projects, 60 per cent of which were female-led.

The finalists, alongside the 31 other shortlisted projects, had already received £4.8 million worth of seed funding, grants and support throughout the duration of the competition. Since  its launch they have reported a 113 per cent increase in the amount of plastic being collected and processed every month.

"We are awarding more than £4 million to businesses that are already doubling recycling rates thanks to the Afri-Plastics Challenge while providing new sources of income for families [and] pioneering companies," Dyson said.

The biggest cut of the prize fund at £1 million went to Green Industry Plast – an initiative setting up plastic donation bins across Togo and training young drop-outs and women in sorting and recycling the waste to make building materials.

Once the plastic is melted, it is mixed with sand and cast into moulds to create bricks and paving stones for the local community.

"The Ecopave concept is an innovation designed to win over the minds of everyday people and persuade them to make more sustainable choices in the materials they use and the way they dispose of plastic," said the company's CEO Gado Bemah.

Another £750,000 was awarded to Kenyan company Chemolex, which has developed a bioplastic made from invasive water hyacinths that are blanketing Lake Victoria.

The Biopactic material provides an alternative to fossil-based plastics while creating an economic incentive for removing the invasive species wreaking havoc on the local ecosystem.

Fellow Kenyan company EcoCoCo, which took home £250,000, took a different approach and instead focused on finding a plastic-free replacement for traditional scrubbing brushes and scouring pads.

Competitively priced and biodegradable, the resulting pieces are made using waste coconut husks for bristles and handles made using wood offcuts from local timber yards and carpenters.

"Plastic dish scrubs and sponges are commonplace in homes in Africa and are some of the most wasteful products in our kitchens," explained project lead Ingabo Schneidder.

"When in use, they shed tiny fibres, a type of microplastic, which can't be filtered out by water treatment plants and end up in the water system. And then there's the waste factor because they are replaced often and are not recyclable."

Another winning project was Toto Safi from Rwanda, an affordable women-run subscription service that delivers and cleans reusable nappies.

The aim is to cut down on the 7,000 disposable diapers an average baby needs before they are potty trained and ultimately save not just waste but also cost.

"Many mothers in Rwanda just don't have the money to keep up with the number of disposable diapers they need, forcing them to cut back on basic essentials," CEO Faith Wacera explained. "For some mothers, it can mean the choice between diapers and food."

Other winning projects include Mega Gas, Ukwenza VR and Baus Taka Enterprise from Kenya, Chanja Datti from Nigeria and Catharina Natang from Cameroon.

Plastic pollution is at the top of the global agenda at the moment as the second round of negotiations for the UN's Global Plastics Treaty took place in Paris last week.

Delegates from 180 nations and various other stakeholders were involved in the discussions to determine what the first-ever international treaty to regulate plastic production and pollution should include.

But ahead of the negotiations, a number of NGOs and scientists accused the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) of excluding communities and waste pickers from developing countries, which are most affected by plastic pollution.

Meanwhile, Greenpeace lobbied for the treaty to focus on capping and phasing down plastic production instead of treating recycling as a silver bullet solution, in a report outlining how recycled polymers often contain more toxic chemicals than virgin plastic.

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Dezeen Showroom: 3form brand LightArt has expanded on its Coil lighting collection with new pendants made of 3D-printed recycled ocean plastic.

The Ocean Coil lighting was created in collaboration with plastic-sourcing organisation Oceanworks, which provided ocean-bound and near-shore plastic for the product.

The 100 per cent recycled polypropylene plastic is turned into pellets that are fed into a 3D printer, which extrudes the material as a continuous, coiling line, giving the collection its name.

LightArt developed three new styles of pendant for Ocean Coil, all with profiles inspired by the shapes of kelp and sea foam, and in different sizes that suit being hung either individually or in clusters.

There are also three colour options: the green Seagrass, soft white Sea Foam, and new Marina, a blend of the other two colours with tonal variations that highlight the recycled origins of the product.

Ocean Coil comes with several industry certifications including Product Challenge, EPDs, Declare labels and GreenGuard Gold, and LightArt operates a take-back programme to recycle products that are no longer wanted.

Product: Ocean Coil
Brand: LightArt
Contact: info@3-form.com

Dezeen Showroom

Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen's huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.

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Dezeen has teamed up with Samsung to challenge readers to come up with creative ideas for reusing old electronic devices or waste materials.

The Re:Create Design Challenge tasks entrants with coming up with innovative ways to repurpose old Samsung devices or materials and transform them into new products or services that will have a positive impact on people and the planet.

The competition is free to enter for anyone over the age of 18 of any profession and from any country around the world.

The challenge is open for entries until 19 July 2023. A shortlist of the best ideas will be published on Dezeen in August, while the winners will be announced in October.

A selection of the most interesting ideas will be published on Dezeen and the three best ideas will be awarded prizes totalling £18,000, with a top prize of £10,000.

Full details of how to enter the challenge can be found in the competition brief and rules.

Challenge invites ideas that are beneficial to people and the planet

Through the design challenge, Dezeen and Samsung seek to discover innovative new concepts that make use of old Samsung devices or materials in a bid to reduce waste.

"We live in an era of uncertainty and unlimited opportunity, especially for design creatives," Samsung said. "Samsung believes in the power of creativity, and our future needs to be protected and transformed through meaningful and sustainable innovations."

"We hope this competition provides a spark that leads to impactful change for all of us."

Competition entries will be judged by an expert panel comprising Dezeen editors and design professionals.

Proposals to make use of old Samsung products or materials

Entrants are free to propose innovative and inclusive ideas that repurpose entire devices or those that recycle specific components or materials. This could include old Samsung smartphones, tablets or televisions, as well as materials used in Samsung's product development, including plastics, glass or aluminium.

The project is part of Samsung's ongoing efforts to make its business more sustainable.

Examples include Samsung's Eyelike project, which sees old smartphones repurposed into medical diagnosis cameras, as well as the latest Galaxy devices, which feature a design that incorporates recycled plastic from discarded fishing nets, and the SolarCell Remote, which incorporates recycled materials for 24 per cent of its plastic component and is powered by light rather than conventional disposable batteries.

Dezeen and Samsung are seeking original and innovative ideas for the challenge. Entries will be judged against four key criteria:

Innovation: How original is the idea?
Problem-solving: Does the idea propose meaningful solutions to improve people's lives?
Social and environmental impact: How will the idea positively impact people and the planet?
Human-centred design: How well does the idea fit with Samsung's design philosophy and resonate with its products or the lifestyles of Samsung consumers? You can find out more about Samsung's design philosophy here.

Competition closes for entries on 19 July

The Re:Create Design Challenge closes for entries at 23:59 GMT on 19 July 2023.

The shortlist will be announced and published on Dezeen in August 2023. The finalists and the winner will be announced and published on Dezeen in October 2023.

The winner will win the top prize of £10,000, while the two runner-ups will receive £4,000 each.

For more information about how to enter, including the full brief and rules, visit www.dezeen.com/samsung-recreate-design-challenge.

Partnership content

The Re:Create Design Challenge is a partnership between Dezeen and Samsung. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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Dezeen Showroom: textile manufacturer Camira has launched Revolution, a range of fabrics in 10 colours that are all made from waste wool.

The Revolution collection is created by stripping discarded wool back to its fibre form before blending with virgin wool and weaving it into fabric.

It is designed as a closed-loop textile product, meaning it can also be recycled indefinitely, which Camira said marks "a new era in wool textile".

"Revolution is a powerful illustration of how lessons from the past can be used to innovate in the present, for the good of the future," said the brand's head of creative Lynn Kingdon.

"Revolution extends the lifespan of wool and enables this precious natural resource to be used all over again as fabric on furniture."

The fabric range is aimed specifically for use in commercial interiors and is available in 10 different colours, each created using the colours of the base waste-wool fibres.

"Each shade in the Revolution colour palette has been lovingly developed with the original colouration of the recycled woollen fibres as its base," said Kingdon.

"This innovative method of colour curation eliminates the concept of dyeing, reducing the use of harmful chemicals."

Product: Revolution
Brand: Camira
Contact: jennifer.ogden@camirafabrics.com

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Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen's huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.

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The process of recycling can actually make plastics more hazardous to human health, according to a recent Greenpeace report that calls on the United Nations to rule it out as a scalable fix for plastic pollution.

Released ahead of the second round of negotiations for the UN's Global Plastics Treaty, which will begin on Monday, the report compiles the findings of several peer-reviewed studies from across the globe.

These suggest that recycled plastics often contain higher concentrations of toxic chemicals such as flame retardants, benzene and other carcinogens than virgin plastic. Recycled plastics also contain "numerous endocrine disruptors that can cause changes to the body's natural hormone levels", according to the Greenpeace report.

Plastic recycling a "toxic endeavour"

Chemicals in recycled plastics have been linked to cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity and other health issues, the report says. These can affect not just the end-user of the recycled product, but also frontline communities and workers involved in the process.

Combined with the fact that less than nine per cent of plastic waste is recycled globally, Greenpeace argues these findings suggest that the UN's Global Plastics Treaty should focus on capping and phasing down plastic production, instead of treating recycling as a silver bullet solution.

"The science clearly shows that plastic recycling is a toxic endeavour with threats to our health and the environment all along the recycling stream," said Therese Karlsson, a science advisor with the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN) who worked on the report.

"Simply put, plastic poisons the circular economy and our bodies, and pollutes air, water, and food," she added. "Real solutions to the plastics crisis will require global controls on chemicals in plastics and significant reductions in plastic production."

Chemicals compound through recycling

Virgin plastic already contains more than 3,200 chemicals that are known to be hazardous to human health, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which can be transferred over into the recycled product.

On top of that, plastic waste can be contaminated with other toxins in the waste stream, the report says; for example when it comes into contact with containers for pesticides and cleaning solvents.

The recycling process itself can also create new hazardous chemicals such as benzene and brominated dioxins, according to Greenpeace, as the plastics are heated and their different hazardous chemicals combined.

"There are a lot of chemicals within plastic and every time you recycle them, you compound them up," Sian Sutherland, co-founder of environmental organisation A Plastic Planet, told Dezeen.

"So it is no coincidence that recycled plastic was until recently not allowed to be used to be in contact with food."

Designers conflicted about role of plastics

Last year saw 193 countries agree to draw up a legally binding UN treaty to end plastic pollution by 2024, known as the Global Plastics Treaty. And now, UNEP is hosting the second round of negotiations in Paris starting next week.

The role of recycling in solving the world's plastic pollution crisis is highly contested among designers.

Some, including designer Richard Hutten and Belgian curator Jan Boelen, argue that big brands are using recycling as a smokescreen to create an illusion of change while continuing to produce more and more virgin plastics.

Others, among them the CEO of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Andrew Morlet, argue that durable, recyclable plastics can form part of a circular economy.

The photo is courtesy of Pixabay.

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Students from Swiss design school ÉCAL have worked with Philippe Malouin to make furniture from metal objects salvaged from the scrapheap in a project called Junkyard Diving.

ÉCAL's Bachelor Industrial Design students created the furniture and household items during a four-day workshop run by Malouin and based on his own salvaging practice, which saw the designer create 68 works from junk steel in a month for the Breeder Gallery in 2021.

The students exhibited the works in the Junkyard Diving exhibition, part of the sustainably themed Swiss group show Urgent Legacy at the House of Switzerland during Milan design week in April.

In a reversal of the usual design process, function would follow form. Ideally, they would use no additional external materials.

"It's all about picking," Malouin told Dezeen. "It's going to junkyards and not being scared. Working with steel, people think it's really daunting and scary."

"I just wanted them to be instinctive and not think too much in front of a computer and just let the function and the materials dictate what they were creating."

He also wanted the students to think in terms of creating a replicable industrial design.

"Instead of doing gallery pieces like I've done, which were all one-offs and constructed that way, I wanted them to try and do this exercise as an industrial design exercise and look at the waste streams and modify them in order to make a new product," said Malouin.

One of the most creative interventions in the exhibition is a deep blue barbecue, created by Christophe Ascençao from two aluminium train connectors with a grill attached to the top. Malouin says these types of train components are frequently discontinued, making them a good waste stream source for products.

There is also a lounge chair by Frederik Buchmann and Charlotte Dubois, made from an old towel radiator from a bathroom. The metal bars are painted green and draped across a wooden base to make a reclined seat.

"You would never understand it or see the radiator unless I told you it was there, which was also the point of the exercise," said Malouin.

Perhaps most unrecognisable as a piece of steel waste is a blue tote-style "bag" or basket by Charlotte Dubois. It is made from a ventilation duct, with black trimming applied at the edges and string strung between two holes to shape the object through tension.

The exhibition also included a virtual reality experience called Potential Objects: Junkyard Diving Reboot, which recreated the activities of the workshop. Developed by another ÉCAL student, Alex Nguyen, it allowed visitors to the show to walk through a junkyard and select objects to cut and weld together, just as the student designers had done.

ÉCAL is short for the Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne, although the school is better known by its acronym. Malouin said that he had found the experience of teaching there an "inspiring" one that also reminded him of the importance of accessibility in design education.

He said that while tuition fees in his UK home had risen to the extent that only the rich can afford to go to design school, ÉCAL had remained a "meritocracy", and that was visible in the calibre of the students' work.

Malouin's interest in metal junkyards has also just seen him launch a book, Steel Works, which documents the process he went through for his Breeder gallery show of the same name.

The London-based Canadian designer's previous work includes the Industrial Office set of experimental workplace furniture and a set of tables and benches with bases that reference whiskey barrels.

The photography is by Marvin Merkel.

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Design gallerist and curator Rossana Orlandi has announced the winners of this year's Ro Plastic Prize for sustainable material use during a ceremony at Milan design week.

The Ro Plastic Prize is awarded yearly to projects that feature material recycling, reuse or upcycling, with this year's winning projects including a bacteria-growing menstrual cup and a 3D-printed prosthetic leg.

Italian company Isinnova won in the Emerging High Technology category with its design for an artificial leg, which was designed to be produced quickly and at a low cost in emergency situations such as wars and earthquakes.

This is crucial because, without the rapid provision of a prosthesis, a patient's chances of being able to walk again are decreased due to factors such as muscle atrophy, according to Isinnova CEO Cristian Fracassi.

Made largely from recycled plastic that is 3D-printed to customised designs, the prosthetic was developed in response to the war in Ukraine and is being made on a not-for-profit basis.

There were two winners in the Art and Collectible Design category: designer Geo Minelli with the Kernel tables and architecture studio External Reference with its Pure Plants collection, both from Italy.

Minelli's Kernel tables are made by recycling end-of-life wind turbines made from glass fibre-reinforced plastic into a new circular material called Glebanite.

The tables, which have a smooth top and a gnarled trunk-like base, are the result of two years worth of experimentation with the material's textures, colours and fabrication techniques.

External Reference's Pure Plants are artificial plants that are 3D-printed from a corn-based bioplastic called Pure.Tech and available in 17 different "species", each with an intricate geometry based on phyllotactic leaf patterns.

There were also two winners in the Inspiring Learning Projects category.

Czech designer Adriana Kováčová was recognised for her recycled plastic Totemo toy, which evolves from a mobile hanger to a construction set, and Italian design studio Cantieri Creativi was awarded for its Artisans Of Now workshop series, held in locations around Italy and focused on reconnecting people with nature and craft.

Among the runners-up and special mentions in the competition was Italian designer Lucrezia Alessandroni, whose Soothing Cup is a speculative project comprising a menstrual cup and incubator that would enable users to grow vaginal bacteria extracted from their own body with the goal of reducing period pain.

A seaweed-based hydrogel turns the silicone cup into a bio-membrane that can collect vaginal lactobacillus bacteria, which is then cultivated in an incubator in the time between periods.

According to Alessandroni, studies have shown that this bacteria can reduce period pain and cut down on the number of painkillers those affected have to take each month.

Another special mention in the Emerging High Technology category went to Italian designers Alessandro Stabile and Martinelli for the OTO chair, which is made from recycled ocean plastic in a single, reduced-size mould and shipped flat-packed direct to consumers.

In the Art and Collectible design category, special mentions included UK design studio Novavita's recycled plastic tiles, which have a mottled patterning that is meant to recall natural stone and marble.

And Spanish duo Eneris Collective made third place in the Inspiring Learning Projects category with its playful design for the Nontalo children's stool, made from waste olive pits.

Shortlisted projects for the Ro Plastic Prize were on display as part of an exhibition at Milan design week. And winners were announced on 20 April after judging by a 17-member jury that included Triennale Milano president Stefano Boeri, architect and designer Giulio Cappellini, Parley for the Oceans founder Cyrill Gutsch and Dezeen co-CEO Benedict Hobson.

The prize is an initiative by Orlandi and her daughter Nicoletta Orlandi Brugnoni, who wanted to raise awareness around the importance of plastic recycling and reuse.

Since the first Ro Plastic Prize in 2019, the criteria of the competition has expanded to include other plastic alternatives, with competition categories varying every year.

The Ro Plastic Prize exhibition was on show as part of Milan design week, which took place from 18 to 23 April. See our Milan design week 2023 guide on Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks that took place throughout the week.

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Design consultancy Matter has redesigned the Royal British Legion remembrance poppy to be created entirely of paper made from coffee cup waste and recycled wood fibres, the first change in the flower's design for 28 years.

According to Matter and researchers at University College London, the paper poppy will reduce carbon emissions by 40 per cent compared to the previous design, which had a paper leaf and petals held in place by a plastic stem and black circular centre.

Matter's redesign aims to remain true to the original recognisable poppy but replaces all plastic elements with paper. The entire poppy can be recycled at home via household recycling collections.

It has been designed to be produced on a high-speed assembly line without the need for adhesives, with crease details on the paper's surface that help to give the poppy a 3D shape.

The plastic-free poppy can be fastened by a pin or inserted into button holes and aims to encourage more people to support this year's Poppy Appeal, an annual charity campaign organised by the Royal British Legion that raises money for veterans and their families experiencing injury, hardship or bereavement.

It will be available alongside remaining stocks of the previous poppy in the lead-up to Remembrance Day on 11 November.

"We didn't want to simply reduce single-use plastic but to eliminate it completely, and we didn't want to replace plastic parts with expensive and complicated bio-based plastics," said Matter director John Macdonald.

"Paper offered a single-material solution that could be easily recycled, as well as offering a bold, elegant approach for the next generation of poppies."

Matter created the poppy in collaboration with paper manufacturer James Cropper, which has made the paper for remembrance poppies since 1978.

James Cropper developed two bespoke papers for the new design, Poppy Green and Poppy Red, made from a combination of 50 per cent recycled fibres from the production of coffee cups and 50 per cent from recycled wood fibre.

"We're proud to have designed a plastic-free poppy that will enable people to show their support for our Armed Forces community in a more sustainable way," said Gary Ryan, executive director at The Royal British Legion.

"Matter has played a fundamental role in reducing the environmental impact of the new poppy whilst maintaining the iconic poppy design that the public can wear with pride."

Earlier this year, former Apple designer Jony Ive revealed his redesign of the Red Nose Day nose for UK charity Comic Relief, which saw the iconic clown-style nose reimagined as a foldable paper sphere. In Australia, start-up Hoopsy has created a pregnancy test made from 99 per cent paper.

The photography is courtesy of Matter.

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Microsoft has unveiled a special edition Xbox controller made partly from recycled plastic, including surplus old controller parts that have been reground.

One-third of the green-hued Xbox Remix Special Edition controller is made from a mix of post-consumer recycled resins and "regrind" — a term for ground industrial plastic waste, in this case the company's leftover Xbox One generation controller parts.

These materials are mixed with virgin plastic to make the controller, an approach that Microsoft claims maintains the durability and performance of the product.

The post-consumer plastics used include CDs, plastic water jugs and automotive headlight covers.

The Remix controller was launched ahead of Earth Day on 22 April, and takes its aesthetic cues from the planet's natural landscapes, featuring a patchwork of green and sandy hues.

The recycled, previously moulded coloured parts leave their mark on the casing, which Microsoft describes as featuring subtle variations, swirling and texturing that give "each Remix Special Edition controller its own look and feel".

The beige-toned bumpers, triggers and side grip areas have a textured pattern that nods to topographic maps while imparting the tactility that Microsoft says its users like on those areas.

There are also elements in bright lime green, a colour that was apparently chosen as a reference to lichen in the Pacific Northwest Forest as well as to add vibrancy.

"By incorporating these regrind materials, post-consumer recycled resins, and including the Xbox Rechargeable Battery Pack – Xbox is exploring ways to use less new plastic and reduce waste," Xbox Accessories senior marketing manager Daniel Ruiz said in a blog post.

"Our goal is to bring fans along with us on our journey towards greater sustainability across the Xbox product portfolio."

The production of hardware for gaming — which uses mined minerals such as copper, nickel, gold and zinc — is one of the key contributors to the environmental impact of gaming, although some researchers identify the energy requirements of cloud gaming to be an even bigger problem.

Microsoft's sustainability commitments include being carbon negative and zero waste by 2030.

The company started incorporating post-consumer recycled resins into its controllers in 2021 with the Daystrike Camo and Electric Volt, but the Remix Special Edition is the first to include regrind from other controllers. It also includes recycled plastic options in its Xbox Design Labs custom controllers.

Its other innovations with Xbox have included creating an adaptive controller and complementary packaging design for people with limited mobility.

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Architect and restaurateur Elly Ward has opened the low-impact restaurant Edit in London, drawing inspiration from its vegan, minimal-waste menu to create an interior filled with reused and recycled materials.

Ward collaborated with her husband Joe Morris of architecture studio Morris + Company on the project, which was designed using low-intervention methods.

"It's been designed to be as circular as possible, which is the whole philosophy of the restaurant," she told Dezeen.

Edit is located in a former factory and warehouse building in east London and connected to the adjacent Morris + Company architecture office.

Visitors to the restaurant can view the studio's models through a large glass door, adding a decorative touch to the space.

This door and a window into the office were two of the main changes Ward made to the existing space, which she has transformed using recycled and reclaimed materials.

The building's brick walls – including a former exterior wall that still features old advertising text – were retained alongside the warehouse's cast-iron columns and beams, forming the structural fabric of the 197-square-metre restaurant.

Ward added lightweight screen partitions that slot between the existing structures, including a wall made from wood and recycled polycarbonate that divides the main dining area from a smaller private dining room.

A warm red floor, made from screed topped with a water-based resin, matches the floor in the architecture office next door and contrasts the textured brick wall that Ward and Morris painstakingly unveiled from underneath layers of paint.

At the rear of the space, the duo clad a wall in salvaged maroon terracotta tiles, which merge into the bar counter. These were among the many recycled materials that Ward used for the project.

"I call them my wonky tiles because they're like the wonky fruit and wonky veg of the industry that gets thrown away because it's not a perfect carrot," she said.

The architect also reused the copper from an existing bar in the restaurant, which now clads the sinks in the bathroom.

"It's all about diverting waste from waste streams," Ward said.

"When you're building something new, you have to get things," she added. "If you can't buy recycled or reclaimed, you have to look for renewable materials, things that would have otherwise gone to waste but you've made into something else."

"It's almost a checklist of 'how circular can you be?'"

Ward also sourced vintage Scandinavian school chairs to provide seating in the restaurant and complemented them with her grandparents' wooden chairs and vintage Ercol seats.

The accompanying tables have tops made by British company Foresso using waste wood chips set in a plant-based resin, creating an effect similar to wooden terrazzo and adding textural interest to the room.

The lighting in the space was handmade by British artist Peter Lanyon using wood salvaged from trees that were trimmed back in a local woodland in Devon. Pieces include a "chandelier" made from a piece of hazelwood with hanging lampshades made from cherrywood veneer.

Throughout the restaurant, the colour palette adds a sense of warmth. While the main room has a red hue, Ward chose a calming green colour for the smaller private dining room.

"We started with the red; it's obviously such a strong colour," Ward said. "I'm somebody who's quite into colour and I'm not really afraid of it but I didn't want it to be a 'pop' kind of place."

In the bathroom, the red hue is tempered by the decorative natural cork that clads the walls in both the main space and the toilet cubicles.

"It's all waterproof and actually really good for humid, damp environments and you can wipe it clean," Ward said.

To Ward, there's a connection between the food and architecture industries that she wanted to underline in Edit's design.

"I did a deep dive into the food industry and found out a lot of stuff about provenance and how a lot of the things we're looking at in the architecture world about circularity and sustainability are kind of echoed in the food industry," she said.

"I wanted the design to match that philosophy."

Other vegan restaurants with decorative interiors include Humble Pizza by Child Studios in London and Sydney vegan cafe Gumbuya.

The photography is by Jack Hobhouse.

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Dezeen Showroom: Norwegian designer Lars Beller Fjetland has created a bench informed by the design of pasta for aluminium producer Hydro.

Bello! from Hydro is created for indoor or outdoor use and is made from nearly 90 per cent recycled and 100 per cent recyclable aluminium.

It will launch next month at Norway's annual Milan design week showcase, Norwegian Presence, where it will be available to order in neutral hues as well as vivid blue and terracotta colours.

The bench was produced through aluminium extrusion, a process in which heated metal is pressed through a hole shaped according to the desired form, similar to the way that pasta shapes are made.

Beller Fjetland partly based the shape of Bello! on a piece of penne rigate, giving it a ridged surface texture.

"The subtle ridges add so much value – you just have to run your fingers across the surface," said the designer. "These tactile discoveries mean so much to me."

"With this design I really wanted to emphasise the possibilities of extruded aluminium," he added. "It is very much a culmination of everything I appreciate – from the planes, trains and buses that were designed in the 1930s–1970s, to brutalist architecture and, last but not least, pasta."

Its aluminium structure means that Bello! is lightweight, strong and durable, and was intended to be suitable for high-traffic places like public transportation hubs.

An internal support structure means Bello! can be modified to integrate additions such as tables, lamps, or chargers, or for multiple benches to be joined together seamlessly.

Despite the high proportion of recycled material used in the bench, no traces remain of the aluminium's former uses – such as a drinks can or a window frame.

Designer: Lars Beller Fjetland
Brand: Hydro
Contact: asle.forsbak@hydro.com

Dezeen Showroom

Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen's huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.

Dezeen Showroom is an example of partnership content on Dezeen. Find out more about partnership content here.

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It has never been easier for designers and brands to access recyclable materials and close the clothing loop, says Christopher Raeburn in this interview.

Speaking to Dezeen from his studio, which is housed in the former Burberry textile factory in east London, the British designer explained that sustainable fashion has gone from fringe to mainstream since he started his brand in the late noughties.

Consumers "demanding more from brands"

This is partly driven, he said, by an increasingly climate-conscious society with higher expectations from brands.

"I've seen the entire narrative change in the 14 years that we've been in business," Raeburn told Dezeen. "A lot more people have woken up to the reality of the environment that we live in today."

"They are genuinely demanding more from brands in a way that I don't really think was happening on any kind of scale, certainly not 10 years ago."

Raeburn launched his eponymous studio in 2009 and it has since become known for its simple, functional designs crafted from pre-worn utilitarian items.

The 40-year-old designer is often credited as a pioneer in upcycling thanks to the success of reworked lines, including a collection of jackets made from brightly coloured life rafts.

Recycled materials have become more affordable

Changes in shopping habits and growing customer concerns about the impact that waste clothing has on the planet have coincided with the availability of more affordable recycled materials, he said.

"When I first started Raeburn, recycled materials would be 30 to 50 per cent more expensive to purchase. Now you have parity, and sometimes you have more affordable recycled materials than virgin cloth."

"Recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a really good example where prices have definitely come down – all of those plastic bottles that we're able to put into the recycling can be chipped into pellets, made into fibre and made into material," he added.

Raeburn was among several designers to use the material back in 2019 when he presented a collection made from reclaimed parachute nylon and recycled PET at London Fashion Week.

However, his interest in upcycling and recycling goes back to his childhood, where he spent much of his time outdoors as an Air Cadet in a rural village in Kent.

"I grew up with parents that were very much of the make-do-and-mend kind of generation so for me, it's about having a really pragmatic approach to design and trying to make good choices," Raeburn explained.

"A big part of why I design the way that I do today is because you were issued all of this kit in the Air Cadets," he said.

"Most of it was really bad – it was either really scratchy or really uncomfortable, or they issued waterproof jackets that we call crisp packets as it made so much noise when you moved and had no breathability – but it led me to look for things that were better."

Sourcing clothing to upcycle is "like archaeology"

Raeburn went on to study fashion at Middlesex University London before completing a master's at the Royal College of Art in 2006. As a student, he would thrift vintage military garments from markets across London to use for his projects.

"At the time, I was going through markets in places like Portobello Road and Goldhawk Road and Spitalfields," Raeburn said.

"I was finding original military jackets still wrapped in hessian, wax-proof paper and beautiful wool jackets from the 1950s that cost one pound each."

"For me, it was like archaeology finding all of this cool stuff that already existed and then starting to deconstruct it and rework it and it had all these incredible labels and buttons and all of this character already embedded in it," he recalled.

This commitment to reworking and recycling has stayed with him throughout his career and has evolved into his work with global brands and organisations such as Moncler, the V&A museum and Timberland.

His efforts have resulted in a number of accolades, including a prestigious Fashion Award and at the Drapers Sustainable Fashion awards.

Despite changes in attitudes towards sustainability, just one per cent of recycled clothes are turned back into new garments. Meanwhile, 65 per cent of new clothes end up in landfill within 12 months.

The British designer says that these figures reflect the manufacturing processes used to make mass-produced garments within fast fashion, which often involve using glue to assemble items at speed.

"Unfortunately, what tends to happen still in the industry is we blend materials – we take a natural and then the synthetic and we blend it together. And at the moment that can't be extruded at all at the end of life at any kind of scale," explained Raeburn.

Trainers are one of the worst culprits, as the glue used to bond the uppers needs to be shredded when recycled, which requires large amounts of energy. Studies show that the average shoe takes anywhere between 50 and 1,000 years to break down in landfill.

Raeburn cites his latest boot for Timberland, the Timberloop EK+ Utility Boot, as a viable alternative. The boots have a removable inner sock made from 100 per cent recycled plastic, while the natural rubber outsoles can be easily removed by simply cutting one of the seams and unravelling the thread.

Wearers can therefore disassemble the boot easily at the end of its life and each part can be put into its own recycling stream.

Consumers can alternatively drop their worn shoes off at a Timberland store for recycling with an American company called Recircled.

"If we can make things from things that already exist and we can make those things repairable and enduring, or if we can make things from recycled materials or natural materials, then in theory, they can go back to the earth," said Raeburn.

The photography is courtesy of Timberland unless otherwise stated.

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New York design studio New Affiliates and architect and historian Samuel Stewart-Halevy have created a prototype of their Testbeds project, which repurposes architectural models used for large projects.

Originally announced in 2020, the team has completed a garden shed, greenhouse and community space in the New York City borough of Queens that was made partly from a model created for a luxury condominium in Tribeca.

Architectural models are used in many large construction projects for design review. They are often made to the same standard as the buildings they are modelling and are usually disposed of after the building is complete.

New Affiliates and Stewart-Halevy saw an opportunity to try and use these models to replace public structures in Queens, which they noticed were often in disrepair.

"By relocating mockups to local community gardens, we imagined a new form of Manhattan transfer," said the team.

"Here the mockup becomes a vehicle, carrying the surplus value of New York’s high-rise architecture into neighborhoods that have been historically disinvested while bringing the image of the growing city down to the ground," it added, noting that this was only one of many possible uses for the mockups.

Located in Garden by the Bay in Edgemere and completed late last year, the shed repurposed the dark facade of the Tribeca building and used it as a structural wall for the primary envelope.

The mockup was originally installed in a showroom for the condo and consists of four custom concrete panels and a large glass window.

The team worked with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation's GreenThumb, an arm of the agency that promotes civic programming, to place the mockup in the centre of the urban garden.

"The project involves many leaps of faith," the team told Dezeen. "When we first approached the Parks Department, the developers, the engineers and the community members, we always anticipated encountering more skepticism."

"We were delighted at the enthusiasm and generosity with which everyone, including Cape Advisors, responded," referring to the developer for 30 Warren, the Tribeca condo for which the mockup was made.

A gabled timber frame was suspended over the mockup, connecting it to an adjacent greenhouse that has a cinderblock foundation and polycarbonate walls.

Between the mockup and greenhouse is an open space that is covered by a large metal sheet that was placed over the wooden frame to serve as a roof.

The team hopes to expand on the project by creating a number of similar structures in New York City's outer boroughs.

New Affiliates is led by Ivi Diamantopoulou and Jaffer Kolb and received AIA New York's New Practices award in 2020.

Samuel Stewart-Halevy is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University.

Other projects that repurpose structures include RSDA's repurposing of shipping containers for structures on a farm in India.

The photography is by Michael Vahrenwald. 

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Tokyo advertising agency TBWA\Hakuhodo and plastics manufacturer Koushi Chemical Industry Co have created Shellmet, a hard hat made from discarded scallop shells and recycled plastic.

The product was conceived as protective headgear for the fishing community in Japan's Sarufutsu village where around 40,000 tons of scallop shells go to waste every year, according to Shellmet's creators.

The Shellmet is fastened with a nylon chinstrap and shaped like an oversized, ridged seashell.

Its structure is made from Shellstic – a material developed with Koushi Chemical Industry Co that combines scallop shells from the seafood industry with recycled plastic.

"Scallops are the most commonly eaten shellfish by Japanese people and it is also the shellfish that results in the most amount of waste," TBWA\Hakuhodo told Dezeen. "We asked ourselves, what if we could turn these scallop shells into a new resource instead of waste?"

"Shells that have protected themselves from external enemies are now reborn as something that protects human life."

Shellstic is created by boiling and sterilising the collected shells, which are then finely crushed, mixed with the plastic and inserted into a helmet mould.

Koushi Chemical Industry Co used mineral and synthetic pigments to colour the material, available in either sunset pink, ocean blue, sand cream, coral white or deep black.

Shellmet's materials can be recycled to remake another helmet or reused separately as building materials.

According to its creators, the helmet draws on biomimicry – a design strategy wherein systems found in nature are adopted by humans to solve problems.

"Shellmet incorporates a special rib structure in its design that mimics the structure of scallops," TBWA\Hakuhodo explained.

"Based on an internal experiment, we discovered that the [helmet's] durability is improved by about 30 per cent compared to cases where the rib structure is not available, despite the small amount of material used."

Although the helmet was initially designed for Sarufutsu's fishing workers, the advertising agency said that Shellmet can also be used as a cycling helmet or a hard hat during disaster prevention work.

The product is slated to go on sale to the public this spring.

This is not the first time that designers and researchers have used waste seafood shells to create new materials. Other projects that have utilised similar composites include architectural tiles made from mussels and furniture for a restaurant in Gothenburg made using waste oyster shells from its kitchen.

The photography is by Junya Taguchi.

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Designer Helena Elston has created a collection of upcycled clothing made from mycelium and London-sourced textile waste, which explores "how we can produce beautiful things from discarded materials".

FI (Fungal Integrated) is an ongoing project by London-based Elston made up of various garments she creates using a combination of local waste products, including discarded textiles, coffee sacks and mycelium – the vegetative filaments of fungi.

These pieces range from a seamless dress and a navy trouser suit to chunky heeled boots and a rugged jacket made from earthy-hued patches of hessian stitched together.

Elston appliques these surplus fabrics using a mycelium growth process that lasts for roughly six weeks, which produces wearable pieces that are designed to biodegrade once the wearer has finished with them.

"The growing environments are basically containers where I introduce nutrients and mycelium to the garments at a specific dampness, darkness and temperature," the designer, who is trying to patent her growing process and therefore cannot disclose its details in full, told Dezeen.

Once the garments are removed from this environment in Elston's studio in North Acton, they dry out and stop growing, after which they can be worn.

The designer said that the project is centred around the idea that the wearer could "fully decompose" these pieces once they have finished with them rather than disposing of them in landfill, reducing waste.

Though Elston garments aren't yet in production, she explained that "in practice" they could be composted in household waste or buried in a back garden due to the "extensive and magical toolkit" within soil that works with mycelium to decompose materials.

"This is speculative at the moment, but with some more experimentation it is very likely to work," the designer said.

The time taken for each garment would depend on its material, with natural fabrics taking between two and six months to break down, according to the designer.

"It's a speculative and cyclical design process, but still very plausible," said Elston.

"We've seen mycelium able to decompose all types of human waste and byproducts, so I investigated the unexplored concept of using it to decompose fashion and textiles, which is one of the world's largest waste producers."

While Elston's finished pieces are made from discarded textiles, she is currently experimenting with a combination of synthetic and natural materials in order to make other garments.

The designer is also working on producing a way to use mycelium as an alternative sewing tool in order to connect patches of fabric.

"There is so much unknown about mycelium, but we do know that it is an intelligent living system that interconnects many parts of ecology," reflected Elston, who exhibited her pieces at this year's London Design Festival as part of the Park Royal Design District.

"I work with mycelium because it is the future of materials. I find it fascinating that we are just discovering its capabilities – there is so much more to explore," she said.

"As I continue working with mycelium I seem to stumble across many more questions than solid answers, but that makes the process and material exciting," added the designer. "There is a fragility to mycelium, but when growing it correctly you can produce dense slabs of extremely useful product."

"I love exploring how we can produce beautiful things from discarded materials."

Various designers are taking advantage of mycelium to enhance their projects. Other mycelium-based designs include a cycle helmet that Studio MOM created from mycelium and hemp and "soft and velvety" lampshades by materials company Myceen.

The images are courtesy of Helena Elston.

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Dezeen Showroom: Swedish furniture brand Blå Station has relaunched Sting, a stackable chair that was originally created by designers Stefan Borselius and Fredrik Mattson in 2003.

For its reproduction, Blå Station kept Sting's original graphic shape but made the chair from recycled materials.

The chair's legs are made from stainless steel while the seat and backrest are made from 90 per cent recycled aluminium.

Suitable for indoor and outdoor settings, Sting chairs can be stacked to save space and linked together in rows by a plastic attachment at the bottom of the chair leg.

"At home indoors as well as outdoors, Sting has that perfect tilt of the backrest," said Blå Station.

The design is available with or without armrests and can be customised with various seat pads or a writing table.

Product: Sting
Designers: Stefan Borselius and Fredrik Mattson
Brand: Blå Station
Contact: info@blastation.se

Dezeen Showroom

Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen's huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.

Dezeen Showroom is an example of partnership content on Dezeen. Find out more about partnership content here.

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Interior construction firm Semba Corporation has renovated the interior of its headquarters in Tokyo to include reclaimed materials discarded during the demolition of other offices.

The company's redesign of its own office interior is shortlisted in the sustainable interior category for the upcoming Dezeen Awards, which will announce its winners next month.

Called Semba Good Ethical Office, the project features various pared-back tables, seating and shelving created from materials salvaged from previous office demolitions.

This furniture is positioned across a single open-plan space in Japan's capital, which is brightly illuminated by overhead lighting and rectilinear windows.

A plinth-like centrepiece takes the form of both a staircase and a designated desk area, which was formed from boxy arrangements of surplus wood and old filing cabinets.

Semba Corporation centred the interiors around two principles – "ethical" and "hackable" design – in order to complete the project, the company said.

"To incorporate 'ethical design', a circular interior design [theory], into the office renovation, we mined materials from unnecessary stuff generated by office demolitions," Semba Corporation told Dezeen.

"Under the theme of 'hackable design', we can redefine our working style and attitudes. We completely renovated our office to be friendly to the Earth, people and society," explained the firm.

According to the company, 80 per cent of the furniture in the Semba Good Ethical Office is reused, while the office achieved a waste-recycling rate of 99 per cent.

Reconstituted foam was used to create the padding on benches that make up informal meeting booths, while various offcuts of wood were used to construct geometric shelves throughout the interior.

Semba Corporation explained that it hopes that other firms will begin to adopt similar design principles when creating their office interiors.

"Especially in Japan, the lifespan from construction to demolition and disposal has become very short since [increasing] economic growth, and waste has been dumped in landfill," the firm said.

"However, Japanese culture has originally valued attachment to things and has an aesthetic sense to continue to use them with creative ideas. So I think our principles have an affinity to that culture."

"We hope that 'ethical design,' a future-friendly interior design, will be a basic principle in interior design for the future."

Semba Good Ethical Office joins a group of existing self-designed studios that other firms have created to be more sustainable than the average office, according to the companies.

These include German studio Urselmann Interior's renovation of its studio to include biodegradable, recycled or upcycled materials.

The images are courtesy of Semba Corporation.

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Dezeen Showroom: designer Todd Bracher Studio has collaborated with office furniture brand Humanscale to create the Path task chair, which is made from recycled materials.

Path has a deliberately simple silhouette designed by Humanscale and Todd Bracher Studio to ensure a comfortable seating position for users working from home or in the office.

Its ergonomic design also incorporates Humanscale's "pioneering seating technology", in which the chair automatically adjusts to the user's weight and position throughout the day without manual controls.

"Path was born from the vision of delivering world-class inclusive ergonomics, responsibly considered, into a relevant user experience for contemporary work culture," said Todd Bracher of Todd Bracher Studio.

"We sought to develop a quiet design solution that is perfectly in tune with the versatile nature of modern office architecture while making no compromise on its ability to solve complex and critical ergonomic needs," Bracher added.

Each chair's structure is crafted from nearly 10 kilograms of recycled materials, including fishing nets salvaged from the ocean and approximately 68 PET bottles.

To suit a range of interiors, the cushioned parts of the seats are available in 19 colours with natural tones, ranging from moss and stone to a brigher terracotta.

These can be made with a mix of different finishes, including fabrics, leather and Humanscale's own 3D FormSense Eco KnitTM – a material made from recycled polyester.

Product: Path
Designer: Todd Bracher Studio
Brand: Humanscale
Contact: internationalmarketing@humanscale.com

Dezeen Showroom

Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen's huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.

Dezeen Showroom is an example of partnership content on Dezeen. Find out more about partnership content here.

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Local studio Multitude of Sins has created an eclectic restaurant interior in Bangalore out of a mishmash of reclaimed materials, including discarded bicycle bells and cassette tape boxes.

Officially called Big Top but known as The Circus Canteen, the restaurant is shortlisted in the sustainable interior category for a 2022 Dezeen Award.

Multitude of Sins sourced the components that make up the interior from a city-wide waste donation drive held over several weeks.

The materials were then painstakingly curated into distinct categories, ranging from home appliances to toy cars, and used to design an eclectic interior featuring mismatched furniture and flooring.

Less than 10 per cent of the materials used to create the interior were sourced as new, according to the studio.

"The Circus Canteen [was informed by] the concept of creating a collage of unwanted items with a curatorial spirit," Multitude of Sins founder Smita Thomas told Dezeen.

Visitors enter the restaurant through a bold scarlet door decorated with unwanted bicycle bells and humourous hand horns, which is accessed via a series of labyrinthine archways made from teal-hued scrap metal.

The archways are illuminated by alternative chandeliers composed of dismantled bicycle chains and old vehicle headlights.

Inside, the two-level dining area is made up of custom tables and seating that double as a set of striking installations.

Salvaged objects used to create these booths include abandoned sofas, obsolete bathroom ventilators and colourful coffee tables created from old oil barrels sliced in half and topped with glass surfaces.

"One man's trash is another man's treasure," acknowledged Thomas. "We have seen and felt this phrase come to life as we pieced together The Circus Canteen."

The restaurant's flooring is a jigsaw puzzle-style mosaic of sample tiles sourced from ceramics stores, while a kitchen serving hatch is framed by a colourful collection of outdated cassette tape boxes.

Prompted by the desire to create an eatery interior with a minimal carbon footprint, Multitude of Sins' project responds to many designers' growing concerns about the wastefulness of their industry.

"The creation of each element – from custom lighting and flooring to art installations and furniture – was attributed to the mercy of the waste donation drive," said Thomas.

"It reminds us of adapting skillfully, to reinvent with agility."

The Circus Canteen is part of Bangalore Creative Circus – a project formed by artists, scientists and other "changemakers" who host various community-focussed events in the Indian city.

Other eateries that feature reclaimed materials include a restaurant in Spain with elements made from upcycled junk and site construction waste and a cafe in Slovenia defined by recycled components that create a mix of patterns and textures.

The photography is by Ishita Sitwala.

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London-based toothbrush company Suri has created Sustainable Sonic Toothbrush, an electric toothbrush with an aluminium body and brush heads made from plant-based materials that can be recycled after use.

Suri founders Mark Rushmore and Gyve Safavi designed the Sustainable Sonic Toothbrush after learning that nearly every plastic toothbrush ever owned still exists in the world. They believe it could replace plastic toothbrushes – four billion of which they say are disposed of each year around the world.

"Over the last few decades, electric brushes haven't meaningfully changed; only novelty features, such as Bluetooth-enabled apps, have emerged on the market under the guise of innovation," Rushmore told Dezeen.

"While most are bulky composites of plastic that can't be recycled because they're welded shut, it's no surprise that every year over four billion brushes – including electric ones – are thrown away and end up either in landfill or in our oceans," he added.

"We wanted to create a brush that champions design, performance and sustainability without compromise."

The Sustainable Sonic Toothbrush heads, which come with medium to soft bristles are made from corn starch and castor oil.

Traditional toothbrushes usually have bristles made from nylon, which end up as landfill waste or marine waste for decades.

By contrast, Suri claims that they are 100 per cent recyclable. Users can send their used brush heads back to the brand in the post in compostable paper bags provided by the company.

By using a pre-paid compostable return service, Suri hopes to make the process of changing heads as easy as possible and discourage its customers from switching back to disposable brushes out of convenience.

The company recommends changing the brush head every three to four months as you would traditional electronic toothbrush heads.

Alternatively, the brush heads can be recycled at home by removing the bristles and disposing of them in a home waste bin where the brand says they will eventually break down in a couple of years.

According to the toothbrush manual, the metal clips that connect the bristles to the head and the inner core of the head can also be recycled at home in the same way as aluminium foil. The remaining cornstarch shell can be sent to a local industrial composter.

Meanwhile, the aluminium body can be sent back to Suri to be repaired or have its rechargeable Li-ion batteries replaced once they run out. The batteries are designed to last for up to 30 days without being charged.

"Once a customer's battery dies, they can send back the brush to us to replace the battery or complete any other repairs, if necessary," Safavi explained.

"Whilst we're refurbishing the brush, we will send that customer a replacement brush so they can still brush their teeth."

Despite Suri's sustainability claims, the brand sources the materials and manufactures its toothbrushes in China. As a result, the product's carbon footprint is much larger than it would be if the product was manufactured locally.

"All components are sourced in China but we found that we could reduce our scope three emissions by not shipping parts to the region to assemble and then ship on once again," Rushmore said.

"We are looking to make production more local, but this was the most optimal way to launch with sustainability in mind."

Cutting down on virgin plastic in toiletries is one way that designers are trying to make their products more sustainable.

New York toiletries company By Humankind created refillable deodorants and dehydrated mouthwash that come in paper pods made of biodegradable paper while design studio Visibility developed a re-fillable container for plant-based deodorant brand Myro that uses 50 per cent less plastic than a regular disposable toiletry.

Suri's Sonic Toothbrush has been shortlisted in the product design category of the Dezeen Awards. Other products shortlisted for design awards include Tenuto 2, a wearable vibrator by MysteryVibe that is designed for those who experience erectile dysfunction.

Images are courtesy of Suri.

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Australian start-up Hoopsy has created a recyclable pregnancy test that is 99 per cent made out of paper, aiming to stop millions of single-use plastic versions ending up in landfill each year.

The Hoopsy "eco pregnancy test" is made almost entirely out of paper, with cardboard packaging that can be recycled in domestic bins. Only the pouch the test comes in is made of soft plastic and needs to be recycled through supermarket collection.

The company aims for its products to replace plastic home pregnancy tests, 12.5 million of which it says are completed each year in the UK before being thrown in the bin.

Entrepreneur Lara Solomon founded Hoopsy after going through IVF and embryo donation procedures that made her realise just how many times people who are trying to conceive test themselves.

She said she used "countless" pregnancy tests in the 14-day period following her embryo transfer. She then went on to develop the product, naming it after the Dutch word for "hope".

"I feel that when you do a pregnancy test there is a lot of hope – a 'hope I am' or a 'hope I'm not'!" Solomon told Dezeen. "Plus, it also has connotations with jumping through hoops in life, which is sometimes what trying for a baby feels like."

"On top of this, there's hope for the future that this product can help reduce plastic waste," she continued.

Hoopsy has been approved for sale by the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency following clinical trials that showed it was over 99 per cent accurate from the day of a person's expected period.

Like most home pregnancy tests, it works by measuring levels of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG, commonly known as the pregnancy hormone) in the urine.

The test is taken midstream, which Solomon said most users prefer to strip tests that require prior collection of the urine in a container. To use it, a person holds the end of the test with the Hoopsy logo while placing the other end in their urine stream for three to five seconds.

They then place the test on a flat surface and wait five to 10 minutes to read the result. Afterwards, the paper test can be cut in half so the part that's been urinated on can be put in the bin while the clean portion goes in paper recycling.

Hoopy was developed entirely in-house by Solomon and the manufacturer, but she hopes to work with an external design team for the second iteration of the product, which she aims to make from 100 per cent paper.

She would then like to go even further in challenging the pregnancy test market, which also features digital tests that have been shown to sometimes feature extra gadgetry to translate the lines on the test trip into words on a screen.

"I'd love to see all plastic tests phased out eventually," said Solomon. "I think that the pregnant/not pregnant digital screen version instead of two lines is not necessary."

"The 'number of weeks' tests are more tricky to replicate in a non-plastic way, but I am confident we could look at a non-digital version as a way to stop that waste."

Another single-use plastic testing product that has recently been given a recyclable reimagining is the Covid 19-test. Design agency Morrama came up with a concept design made from moulded paper pulp and NatureFlex film.

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Design studio Space Available has worked with Indonesian architects Sidarta and Sandjaja to turn a Bali building into an institution dedicated to circular design, with a facade made of 200,000 recycled plastic bottles.

Located in the coastal town of Canggu, the Museum of Space Available (MoSA) houses a gallery, recycling station and "upcycling bar" where people can bring in old clothing items to give them a new life.

The design studio intends for the space to showcase both its own work and contributions from international artists, designers and scientists, all centred on innovations in plastic recycling, biomaterials and circular living that form an archive of "future possibilities".

Space Available founder Daniel Mitchell told Dezeen that the studio wanted to create a museum rather than a more traditional shop or gallery so that there could be greater focus on storytelling.

"A museum setting allows us to give context to the history of the material and how it has arrived in today's situation," said Mitchell.

"Also all our objects and products are made by hand with no two objects the same due to the artisan nature of how we make things," he continued. "We need the space to showcase this process and highlight craft culture in a setting that gives it value."

Space Available worked with architecture studio  Sidarta and Sandjaja to renovate a previously derelict two-storey building for the project, aiming to give it a "striking" facade that would both represent their vision for the centre and grab the attention of passers-by.

In collaboration with Indonesian circular firm Robries, they made the facade and signage — along with a few items inside the gallery — from 200,000 waste plastic bottles, which Mitchell describes as being in "endless supply" in Indonesia and a threat to its waterways.

The plastic was shredded, sprinkled into a sheet mould and heated to make it into the blue-hued panels that feature on the outside of the building, just above newly added sliding doors and polished concrete fascia.

Sidarta and Sandjaja designed the facade to look like a continuation of the roof line. A narrow end-to-end cutout and oversized lettering serve to break up the mass, while plants poking through the cutout are meant to add a tropical feel.

Inside, the studio focused on stripping the building back to its core concrete structure and removing existing partitions to create an open gallery space, with white walls and an exposed concrete ceiling.

"Even though the museum is small, we'd like to visualise it just like a modern museum in Europe, with spacious exhibition halls for flexible use," architect Patisandhika Sidarta told Dezeen.

"Removing all existing partitions, adding large glazing and a white backdrop helped create spaciousness to the open-plan layout on both levels."

As well as a gallery and retail and repair space, MoSA will act as a learning facility that hosts workshops for the benefit of the local community. Space Available also intends for the museum to have a digital side, with rooms in the metaverse and a series of NFTs launching soon.

Mitchell has been based in Bali for eight years and founded Space Available in 2020. The studio produces entirely recycled and circular products and concepts, such as its chair patterned with hypnotic blue spirals, also made with waste from the island.

"Bali is rich in craft culture – and this ancient craft approach we not only want to preserve but take into the future with new materials that challenge some of today's ecological issues," said Mitchell.

The photography is by Tommaso Riva.

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Architect Yussef Agbo-Ola and cacao farmer Tabita Rezaire have designed an installation at London's Serpentine Gallery made of wood recycled from past exhibitions that explores medicinal plants.

Called Ikum: Drying Temple, the project is currently on display at Serpentine North Gallery in London as part of Back to Earth, a group exhibition centred on the climate crisis.

The installation features a wooden frame repurposed from discarded structures that were previously used in other Serpentine exhibitions.

Held together by recycled cable ties, knitted "tensiles" made from dyed cotton fibres are stretched over the wooden frame to form a structure that intends to resemble an ant.

Specially selected plant cuttings were tied in bouquets and looped into the cotton, which Agbo-Ola and Rezaire chose for their connection to each of the collaborators' different practices linked to aromatherapy for mental health and womb health.

These include rosemary, lemon thyme and green sage as well as dyer's chamomile and two different types of lavender.

Over the duration of Back to Earth, the plants will slowly dry and release their scent for visitors to encounter.

"Through the process of plants losing their internal water from drying, they release an orchestra of aromas that can be experienced and reflected upon in contemplation," Agbo-Olda and Rezaire told Dezeen.

"Ikum is a living medicinal entity," continued Agbo-Olda. "What I perceive as medicinal in my works is how matter transforms."

The installation's ant shape intends to draw attention to the insect's role in the dispersal of seeds and general soil health, according to the project's creators.

"Ikum acts as an architectural vessel for the subtle metamorphosis of the life and death of plants to be experienced through the spine of an ant," said Agbo-Ola.

The architect explained that the structure's appearance was informed by a series of existing artworks created by his practice Olaniyi Studio, which take cues from the "symbolic textile traditions" of the Yoruba and Cherokee peoples.

An immersive soundscape called Plant Lungs in River Dust also composed by the architect accompanies the work.

At the end of the exhibition, the installation will be dismantled and its knitted tensiles will be relocated to Amakaba, an environmental centre for "wisdom and healing" founded by Rezaire in the Amazonian rainforest of French Guiana. As well as a farmer, Rezaire also works as a doula.

Once in the rainforest, the tensiles will be fitted with fresh plants that will be used in various womb health practices once dried, including vaginal steams or to soothe symptoms of menopause.

The plants on display at the Serpentine will be gifted to visitors on the last day of the exhibition in an attempt to "extend Ikum's presence".

At Amakaba, Agbo-Ola and Rezaire plan for the tensiles to take the form of a drying nursery and continue to decay and eventually become part of the rainforest.

"Materials are always entangled in complex histories – they also carry and diffuse different energies," explained Rezaire.

"For me, it was essential to work with natural fibers as the temple is designed for the forest and will live within it."

"Ikum is an invitation to develop an intimacy with plants, to feel the power of their scents through decay, and to listen to their voice," concluded Agbo-Ola and Rezaire.

Similar plant-related installations include lantern-like sculptures in Texas clad in bioplastic skins made from local plants and Conference of the Trees – a temporary project by Es Devlin including 197 trees and plant species that was staged during the COP26 climate conference.

The images are courtesy of Yussef Agbo-Ola, Tabita Rezaire and The Serpentine Gallery. 

Back to Earth is on show at The Serpentine North Gallery in London from 22 June to 18 September 2022. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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California-based industrial designer Reiten Cheng has developed a recycling machine that can be 3D printed using open-source instructions and used to turn PET bottles into filament for additive manufacturing.

Polyformer was designed to make it cheaper and easier for independent makers to create products from repurposed waste materials instead of relying on virgin plastic.

The design is open source, meaning that a step-by-step manual detailing its construction is freely available online so that it may be used and adapted by others.

The L-shaped gadget is made from 3D-printed parts combined with a few off-the-shelf components found in traditional 3D printers.

"The entire machine was printed using recycled PET bottles, which gives a nice translucent look to it," Cheng said.

Polyformer is equipped with a slicing tool with stacked bearings that can cut plastic bottles into long, continuous ribbons.

Users can feed these ribbons into a so-called hot end, which heats, melts and feeds the thermoplastic through a brass nozzle to create a filament with a diameter of 1.75 millimetres.

The end of this filament can then be mounted onto a motorised red spool, which will pull the rest of the ribbon through the hot end and wind up the filament as it is created. Once the spool is full, it can be taken off to be mounted and used in a 3D printer.

Polyformer has a modular design that allows users to easily swap out parts and modify the machine to their liking.

Since making the project public last month, Cheng said there are now around 130 people in Polyformer's community on social media platform Discord, who have machines under construction.

Some users have proposed adding grinders so that the machine can recycle different kinds of plastic waste, while others have suggested recycling cassette tapes and fabrics.

Polyformer follows on from a number of other open-source projects, such as VoronDesign's 3D-printed 3D printer and the Recreator3D pultrusion kit.

Together, Cheng says these kinds of machines could eventually help to forge a decentralised system of manufacturing and recycling.

"I am imagining a future where products can be manufactured at home or in a community centre and be recycled into things at the end of their life that can be used again to manufacture new products right on-site," Cheng told Dezeen.

"The technology might not be there yet but I believe it's not far from possible if we keep developing and implementing it as a community."

Last year, a number of architects including Bjarke Ingels collaborated on an open-source project to make 3D-printed coronavirus face shields for hospital workers.

Ingels argued that the pandemic has revealed "the shortcomings of the traditional supply chain" and that decentralised local manufacturing could replace global supply chains.

The photography is by James Chou.

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Düsseldorf studio Urselmann Interior has renovated its own office interiors using biodegradable, recycled or upcycled materials, including glueless joinery and a cellulose-based wall cladding.

The interior design studio said that it renovated its self-described "circular" office in the German city to only feature materials that are either recycled, upcycled or biodegradable.

These include existing wooden and terrazzo flooring that was salvaged during the renovation, as well as heaters obtained from resource-efficient building material platform Concular.

Spread over one main workspace, a kitchen and a meeting room, the single-level office features clay paint walls and is designed to be used as both a co-working space and a showroom.

"The office also serves us as a laboratory in that we can [use it to] test new qualities, materials and construction methods," project manager Liz Theißen told Dezeen.

A solid wooden frame was used to create simple kitchen cabinets, which were constructed without glue so that the structure is fully demountable.

The frame was fitted with panels formed from recycled strips of fabric supplied by textile brand Kvadrat from its Really collection.

For its walls, the studio used Honext wall cladding – a cellulose-based material that is produced using paper sludge and cardboard waste.

Poplar wood from a tree felled in the nearby city of Krefeld was chosen for the ceiling, which was also assembled without glue.

Throughout the office, neutral and minimal colour and material palettes were applied to the interior design, which also includes clusters of carefully arranged potted plants and books.

Second-hand lighting encased in wiggly orange felt from Hey-Sign adds a splash of colour to the otherwise sandy-hued atmosphere.

Theißen explained that all of the components that Urselmann Interior used for the renovation have been listed in a published "material passport" that can be referred to for future projects.

"We want to develop a new design language for ourselves, in which we smartly combine high-quality materials such as solid wood with ecological building materials as well as reusable components [to achieve] a positive footprint in the construction industry," she said.

"Our design principles follow the school of thought of 'cradle to cradle', which is the safe and potentially infinite circulation of materials and nutrients in cycles."

"All constituents are chemically harmless and recyclable. We aim to eliminate the design flaw of waste in our processes," concluded Theißen.

Urselmann Interior is a Düsseldorf-based interiors studio founded by Sven Urselmann.

Similar projects to the studio's office renovation include a Madrid restaurant by Lucas Muñoz with furniture formed from site construction waste and a bar made out of recycled stereos, bottle crates and fridges by Michael Marriott.

The photography is by Magdalena Gruber. 

Project credits:

Design and build: Urselmann Interior
Founder and designer: Sven Urselmann
Designer: Petra Jablonická
Project manager: Liz Theißen

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Sportswear brand Nike has unveiled ISPA Link, a collection of modular trainers that can be easily disassembled, as part of the brand's move towards a circular design economy.

The line comes from Nike's ISPA (Improvise Scavenge Protect Adapt) design division, which works to create sustainable solutions to design problems.

It comprises two trainers, the ISPA Link and ISPA Link Axis, which are modular designs produced without glue. Glue is normally used during the cementation process to attach the shoes' parts together.

Instead, the ISPA Link trainers consist of three interlocking parts that are held – or linked – together by tension. Each shoe has a sole made up of pegs that slot into openings in the upper – the part that covers the foot.

"The idea was to completely eradicate the cementation process," said Darryl Matthews, a vice president of shoe design at Nike and lead at ISPA.

ISPA Link, which will be available for consumers in June 2022, represents ISPA and Nike's "first steps to understanding how we can get to a circular process," Matthews added.

"You have to completely understand the processes it takes to create a product to undo it again," said Matthews.

Matthews also noted that making shoes in this way will reduce emissions by eliminating energy-intensive processes such as heating and cooling tunnels, as well as glue lines.

Shoes with glue take large amounts of energy to recycle because they need to be shredded, but "[t]he fewer materials used and the less they’re intermingled, the more efficient disassembly becomes," Nike said.

According to Matthews, each pair of ISPA Link shoes takes only eight minutes to produce, which can also help lower emissions from labour.

Nike referenced early 2000s designs, such as its computer-modelled Zvezdochka trainer and Presto Clip running shoe, for the ISPA Link trainers.

The ISPA Link Axis has the same general design principles as the ISPA Link, but differs from its predecessor in its materials. It will be made completely from recycled and recyclable materials.

Noah Murphy-Reinhertz, sustainable design lead at Nike, noted that the goal for these products was to go from "spark to scale."

"We're not innovating for one small example," said Murphy-Reinhertz.

The shoes are part of a shift at Nike towards sustainable design technology.

Part of this shift is embracing new technologies to give designers a more hands-on approach to production by utilizing 3D printing technologies and artificial intelligence, chief design officer John Hoke told Dezeen.

"I think [designers] want to control outcomes and getting a chance to deal with design control at a parametric level at a pixel voxel level is incredibly exciting to the team," he said.

Technology will "change the form vocabulary, the sculptural ability, the fit and the features of these products that we don't know yet," Hoke believes.

"And they can be done at a macro level. Or at a micron level," he added.

Other technological features coming from Nike include its purchase of virtual sneaker company RTFKT and its Space Hippie shoe, which was designed to have the "lowest carbon footprint" scores ever.

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Dezeen Showroom: Swedish studio Interesting Times Gang has designed a 3D-printed chair made from recycled fishing nets.

Named Kelp Collection, the chair has a curved and organic shape that is made possible by 3D printing.

"Kelp Collection is inspired by biomimicry, with undulating lines and organically swaying silhouettes to emulate the forms found in ocean vegetation," said Interesting Times Gang.

"The design is also ergonomically functional and gives the chair a very nice dampening effect which makes it an absolute joy to sit in."

"The chair was created to bring attention to the fact that vast amounts of known underwater kelp forests have been eradicated due to unsustainable fishing practices and rising ocean temperatures," the brand continued.

Kelp Collection is made from a material that uses recycled maritime gear such as ropes and fishing nets, which is where it gets its green colour from.

The maritime gear is combined with wood fibres, a recycled FSC-certified bi-product from the saw mill industry, to create the furniture's bio-composite material.

Kelp Collection can be ground down into bio-materials and reused to create new objects.

The chair was originally designed for chefs Niclas Jönsson and Daniel Höglander, who wanted custom furniture for their sushi restaurant in Stockholm.

Product: Kelp Collection
Designer: Alexander Westerlund
Brand: Interesting Times Gang
Contact: hello@itg.studio

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London studio EBBA Architects has branched out into furniture design with the release of a recycled paper stool that can be used alone or combined in pairs to form a coffee table.

The Plod stool consists of four flat-pack elements – a seat and three legs – all made entirely of a single material called Richlite.

This recycled paper composite is commonly used to make cladding, countertops and skate ramps.

But so far, the material has been grossly underappreciated by the furniture industry, according to EBBA Architects co-founder Benni Allan.

"It's not a material that has yet been used much in furniture and this is one of the first stools," he told Dezeen.

"Previously it was used primarily for surfaces in kitchens and carpentry but we were able to source bespoke panels that are thick enough to produce the stool's unique geometries."

The material is made by soaking lengths of recycled paper in a thermosetting resin and stacking them on top of each other in alternating grain directions.

These layers are then bonded together using heat and pressure to create a durable, hardwearing material.

"The most interesting aspect of the material is the way the surface shows the patina and makeup of the paper," Allan said. "The surface has a very tactile quality, with a mottled quality of laminations combined with a very smooth finish."

The resulting material can be milled, routed and joined much like regular hardwood.

For the Plod stool, EBBA Architects combined modern and traditional fabrication techniques, CNC cutting the seat while lathe turning the legs.

"We use the traditional process of making spindles for stairs in a local workshop in east London," Allan explained. "The construction is intentionally designed to be as simple as possible with a repeated joint system. This allows the stool to be shipped fully assembled or flat-packed."

Plod can be assembled in three moves, using three identical tongue-and-groove joins that connect the seat to the legs while also providing a visual detail on the stool's surface.

The seat is generously rounded but also has one straight edge, allowing it to sit flush with another Plod stool to form a larger coffee table.

"It forms part of a collection EBBA is developing, looking at ways to make larger pieces of furniture through repeated parts that can be stacked or joined together," Allan said.

Many of EBBA Architects' architecture and interiors projects also make use of traditional joinery.

Last year, the studio constructed a double-height ash and pinewood storage wall and staircase for a remodelled apartment in London's East End, as well as creating a reusable facade screen system for the Construction Skills School using off-the-shelf timber.

The photography is by Marta Fernàndez.

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British designer Michael Marriott has installed a makeshift beach shack made out of recycled stereos, bottle crates and fridges in the historic Harewood House in West Yorkshire.

Kioskö is Marriott's contribution to the Harewood Biennial 2022, where 16 artists, designers and makers are each presenting a "radical act" of craft.

The London-based designer used only found and discarded objects to build Kioskö.

The structure is installed in the 18th-century manor in a room known as the Spanish Library, which led Marriott to design it the spirit of the ad-hoc "chiringuito" bars and kiosks that are common in Spain.

"I am drawn to these makeshift structures for their directness and honesty," he said. "Each culture has its own version of the same idea."

The design boasts a sign formed of estate-agent placards, pendant lights made from upturned buckets and a sound system framed by recycled furniture, which is playing a soundtrack of Jamaican folk music.

Marriott's aim is to show the value and joy that can be found in resourcefulness.

"There is also an underlying political message: two fingers to commercial design and the establishment that gave birth to it," he said.

Kioskö is filled with an assortment of objects and curiosities.

Marriott has included several of his own products, many of which he sells on the webshop WoodMetalPlastic. These include bottle openers made from old bicycle wheel rims and a stool with a recycled plastic seat.

There are works by other designers, including a redesigned Union Jack flag in colours that represent all the different nationalities of people that live in London, and a plant pot that doubles as a bicycle lockup.

Various food and drinks products also feature, from cans of Red Stripe beer to packets of Garofalo spaghetti.

Each object is numbered and Marriott has produced a pamphlet that offers a narrative on each one, helping to further emphasise the value in these simple and everyday items.

"I wanted lots of different things from different places, and I wanted things that told stories," Marriott told Dezeen.

"Each one is a little anecdote, some politically charged and some personally charged," he said. "Mixing them all up, with the richness of all those graphics, made it feel more like a kiosk would be."

Radical Acts: Why Craft Matters is the second edition of the Harewood Biennial, which is curated by Hugo Macdonald.

The first edition, Useful/Beautiful, explored the relevance of craft in the digital age. This time around, Macdonald wanted to show the power of craft to influence social change.

Other projects in the show include a gaming table by Mac Collins that makes a statement against inequality and a treehouse by Sebastian Cox that symbolises a woodland management strategy.

"Michael is Mr Resourcefulness; his ethos is all about 'waste not, want not', and design fit for purpose," said Macdonald.

"In this wonderful piece, he celebrates a type of construction that exists all over the world, made by materials that people have to hand," he said. "It really broadens the spectrum of what constitutes design and craft."

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Australian building company Revival Projects has turned a warehouse that is set for redevelopment into a hub for repurposing construction and demolition waste, which is open to the public during Melbourne Design Week.

Melbourne Design Week describes the Zero Footprint Repurposing hub as one of the world's first free hubs dedicated to the storage and reuse of demolished material.

Revival Projects aims to save these materials from landfill by making them more accessible to architects, designers, builders and manufacturers.

The Zero Footprint Repurposing hub stores materials from projects around Melbourne, with Revival Projects facilitating large-scale repurposing initiatives from various sites.

"For repurposing of existing materials to be a fundamental element of new design, storage of a large amount of demolished materials is necessary, often for many months or several years, while the project comes to life," Revival Projects founder Robbie Neville told Dezeen.

"The idea of this costly storage is often a prohibitive issue, so we have offered the industry free storage of materials in our Collingwood space, if they are going to repurpose those materials back into their project."

"We present this dramatic commercial offer with zero obligation to engage us for any of our services – which include structural engineering, commercial and domestic building, and joinery and furniture making – so we are effectively removing that prohibitive issue of space, with no strings attached," he continued.

The Zero Footprint Repurposing hub is located in Collingwood, in a 100-year-old, 1,500-square-metre warehouse that Revival Projects will occupy until its slated demolition in 2024.

Revival Projects is working with the architects of the future development, Grimshaw, to repurpose the existing materials from the warehouse into the new buildings.

The hub also currently stores material from architects and developers including FJMT, Edition Office, BAR Studio, Hip V. Hype, Kerstin Thompson Architects, ANPlus Developments and Bayley Ward Architects.

The interior of the space is decorated with murals, art, quotes, installations and materials that communicate the project's vision.

"Our mission here is to revolutionise the way our industry approaches existing materials," said Revival Projects founder Robbie Neville. "We are disrupting centuries of traditions based on reckless consumption of natural resources."

According to RMIT, 20.4 million tons of waste were generated from construction and demolition in Australia in 2017, including through works such as road and rail maintenance and land excavation, and about one-third of this ended up in landfill.

The waste from these activities include bricks, concrete, metal, timber, plasterboard, asphalt, rock and soil.

A registered builder, Neville founded Revival Projects in 2016, after four years of running his own salvage missions but becoming frustrated that the construction industry was not geared for reuse.

The company has since channelled salvaged waste into interiors and architecture projects such as RM Williams stores around Australia and the Industry Beans cafe in Fitzroy, Melbourne.

The practice also worked with Hip V. Hype on a 2020 demolition and salvage for a block of 22 apartments the property developer is building in South Melbourne. For that project, Revival Projects established an earlier iteration of the Zero Footprint Repurposing hub beside that site.

Additionally, the practice runs workshops out of its hubs, focusing on different sectors of the community that are underrepresented in the construction industry, such as women.

The current Zero Footprint Repurposing hub at Islington Street, Collingwood is part of the programme at Melbourne Design Week, with an open day happening on Friday 25 March and a panel discussion at 5pm.

The hub was awarded the 2022 Melbourne Design Week Award, with National Gallery of Victoria director Tony Ellwood calling it "a project of ambitious scale with global importance".

The construction industry accounts for 38 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, partly because of the cost of creating new materials.

According to a 2021 report published by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, buildings equivalent to a city the size of Paris are being built every week, but less than one per cent of them are even assessed to determine their carbon footprint.

The photography is by Sean Fennessy.

Melbourne Design Week is on from 17 to 27 March 2022. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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