Tag Archives: waste

Odd sustainable stool concept prioritizes minimizing materials over recycling

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The majority of sustainable designs today focus on using responsibly sourced or biodegradable materials as well as the ability to recycle components at the end of the product’s life. While these are indeed a big leap compared to common production practices, it’s still from the ideal. Even sustainable materials like wood, metal, or bioplastics produce material waste that still gets discarded at the end of the production process. And depending on the materials involved, recycling can actually consume more energy and even result in more pollution, offsetting whatever benefits it should have brought. Another approach to sustainability is to actually reduce the materials used and, therefore, the materials that need to be recycled, as what this rather unconventional “two-piece” stool design tries to propose.

Designer: Kitae Pak

The less materials you use for a product, the more products you can make out of that material. If a single 1,220mm x 2,440mm sheet of plywood would normally yield 24 circular plates with a diameter of 310mm, you could potentially squeeze 219 plates with a diameter of 120mm. That’s the kind of increase in yield that the Dots stool concept is claiming, making more efficient use of a material without compromising on quality, at least in theory.

The concept accomplishes this by completely redesigning what a stool is expected to be. Yes, it’s still a piece of furniture for seating, but there’s no hard rule that the seat has to be one large and whole piece. Instead of a single big circle, the Dots stool utilizes two smaller discs to support the body at rest, hence the name. It delivers the same function but at a significantly lower material consumption right from the start.

With this minimalist design, which consists of two wooden rods for legs and recycled plastics to connect the pieces into a stable whole, you can make 4 times more Dots stools than a regular stool using the same materials. This kind of conservation means that the production process itself would use less materials and energy to produce the same number of stools, while recycling would also use less energy and water as well. And since it’s mostly made of wood, the stool can also be repurposed for other designs or returned to the Earth one way or another.

While the design does check all the right sustainability boxes, it does raise questions on conform and stability. It’s arguable that it does serve its function well, but neither its appearance nor its ergonomics inspire complete confidence. It’s not a complete loss, however, as the experiment proved that there’s still a lot of room for improvement even for already sustainable designs.

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These beautiful tiles are actually made from fish scale waste

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Humans eat a lot of food that comes from plants and animals, but not all the parts of these living creatures are deemed edible or appetizing. These parts include internal organs, bones, and even skin, parts that get discarded and thrown out during processing. Unsurprisingly, this waste starts to pile up and cause harm to the planet, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any decrease in human appetite and consumption. Fortunately, some people have started to get smarter and use that human ingenuity to either help reduce food waste or use them for something completely different. In fact, some people have even discovered how beautiful this waste can be, such as these stunning tiles that would shock you to learn are made from ignored and discarded fish scales.

Designer: Erik de Laurens

Animal skins have plenty of uses, some more wasteful than others. Some skin can be eaten, of course, but others are simply taken for their material value. Leather has always been a controversial material because of this, loved for its natural properties but criticized for its cruel source. Fortunately, there are now attempts to create more sustainable alternatives to leather that don’t involve harmful plastics either.

Fish scales, on the other hand, are simply discarded because they aren’t exactly edible. They are thrown out by both food and aquaculture industries and add to the growing amount of waste in our environment. It turns out, however, that these seemingly useless scales have the components that make them as hard as stone yet as beautiful as marble. And thus, Scalelite was born. Using a sustainable process and no harmful ingredients, Scalelite transforms wasted and ugly fish scales into beautiful materials that can cover walls or floors and even become parts of furniture.

Scalelite also has other admirable properties beyond being 100% natural and attractive. It has natural fire resistance and is dirt-repellent, making it suitable for use in hospitality and retail applications. It’s easier to clean, too, even without using harmful detergents. And, of course, it’s completely recyclable, so you won’t have to fill guilty when you do have to throw the tiles away after probably decades of use.

It’s definitely encouraging to see such efforts to salvage what most of us have considered garbage and turn them into something not only useful but actually appealing as well. It gives credence to the expression that one man’s trash might be another one’s treasure. Sadly, Scalelite is just a small fish in a gigantic industry trying to make a difference, and we need a lot more of these sustainable materials to stop the planet from hurting.

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Student Develops Dissolving Ramen Noodle Packaging to Reduce Plastic Waste

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London-based Ravensbourne University student Holly Grounds has developed ramen noodle packaging that dissolves in hot water in order to help cut down on plastic waste. That’s a great idea! Also, I wonder if her parents had any idea they were *this close* to naming their daughter Holy Grounds.

The biofilm is made entirely from safe-to-consume potato starch, glycerin, and water and is embedded with herbs and spices to season the noodles inside when it dissolves. How about that! If I were Nissin Top Ramen, I would be snatching up the patent rights to this faster than you can boil water.

I can’t even tell you how many packets of Ramen noodles I’ve eaten in my lifetime, but you could easily build a mountain out of the sodium I’ve ingested, no question. Ramen noodles and $1 personal frozen pizzas – those were my entire culinary life in college. I mean, they still are now, but they were back then too. My wife says I’m gross, and she isn’t wrong.

[via TechEBlog]

This tiny black cabin is built from felled oak trees acquired from a home’s construction waste!

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Studio Padron designed and built a tiny cabin entirely from mature felled oak trees acquired from another home’s construction waste.

As the old saying goes, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” When it comes to home construction, waste produced during the building process opens the door for more opportunities. While many home builders and architects plan homes around the site’s preexisting trees and landscape, sometimes felling trees can’t be avoided. After finishing work on a new home, Studio Padron, a US-based architecture firm, utilized the felled trees collected during the home’s construction and built a tiny black cabin to function as the home’s standalone library.

Calling the bookworm’s oasis Hemmelig Room, or ‘secret room’ in Norwegian, Studio Padron built the entire tiny cabin from disused mature oak trees that were felled during the main home’s construction. From the outside, Hemmelig Room finds a geometric structure clad in blackened timber. Following the main home’s construction process, the felled oak trees were cut into large, rectangular log sections that were left to dry over several years before building Hemmelig Room.

Inside, the blackened timber reveals the oak tree’s raw, polished form. From top to bottom, Studio Padron outfitted Hemmelig Room’s interior in nonuniform timber panels that merge with cavities to create bookshelves. Besides that, floor-to-ceiling windows bring the quiet space closer to the outdoor landscape. Equipped with a wood-burning stove to keep the space warm year-round, guests can enjoy enough space for a bed, armchair, and writing desk.

Designer: Studio Padron

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Sustainable tiles made of recycled glass gathered from old appliances are reducing electronic waste!

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Everyone is chasing the next sustainable material that will change the design industry, from seaweed to mushroom no stone (or plant) is left unturned given how urgently we need alternatives to combat climate change. But at the same time, very few are looking at how to recycle existing sustainable materials like glass that can give them a second life! Common Sands is a design project focused on just that – recycling glass from consumer electronics and turning them into tiles that would otherwise end up with electronic waste.

Glass is sustainable from its origin to its end. While the process of making it contributes to emissions like most things, we can counteract it by extending the life of the glass as it is infinitely recyclable rather than letting it go to waste only to make more of it. Sand is a crucial resource to our technology-focused society, it does a lot more than lay at the beach! We production of silicon microchips, fiberoptic cables, insulation, solar cells, and it is also the primary ingredient in glass which is used in the production of consumer electronic products such as fridges, microwaves, and computers.

Despite strenuous attempts to extract, transport, refine and process sand into complex electronic components, not much is done to recycle these components when the electronic goods are discarded after use partly because there are no clear directives on effectively processing glass from electronic waste. To address this issue, a Norwegian architectural design office called Snøhetta collaborated with Brussels-based Studio Plastique to research and explore the possibility of recycling as well as utilizing glass contained in electronic waste.

After multiple trials, prototypes, and variations, the team developed a standard process for recycling electronic waste glass components as well as an application that integrates its variable material quality – glass tiles! This is where Italian ceramic tile manufacturer Fornace Brioni came in and brought their experience, industrial know-how, production facilities, and potential for scalability to the project to the table. The team is starting with waste glass from ovens and microwaves to demonstrate the aesthetic depth, function, and potential of the recycled material.

Using recycled glass, the team made tiles in two different sizes that were both opaque and transparent. Each one had a unique pattern and look, but all the tiles showed a deeply complex, terrazzo-like material quality. This determined that they are suitable for a wide range of architectural applications, including both surface coverage and semi-transparent partition elements! Common Sands has now turned potential waste into architectural glass tiles that are scalable, infinitely recyclable, and effectively reducing electronic waste!

Designers: Snøhetta, Studio Plastique, and Fornace Brioni

The post Sustainable tiles made of recycled glass gathered from old appliances are reducing electronic waste! first appeared on Yanko Design.

Artificial wood made out of Kombucha brewing waste wins the 2021 USA James Dyson Award

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Winning the US-leg of the James Dyson Award, Pyrus™ (a kombucha-based wood-alternative) now progresses to the international stage of the James Dyson Award to compete with the other participants, with the international winner being declared on the 17th of November.

With its uniquely rustic, wood-like finish, Pyrus has the ability to offset the use of exotic woods as a material, helping protect fragile ecosystems in the Amazon rainforests from excess deforestation. Its primary ingredient? Kombucha! Well, rather, the Scoby from the kombucha brewing process. Right before going to college, Gabe Tavas became aware of deteriorating environmental issues and conditions after living in an indigenous community in Ecuador. His interests and research led him to focus on bio-design, where Tavas soon committed himself to creating a new, lab-grown synthetic wood that could be used as an alternative to actually felling trees for exotic woods. Tavas’ research helped him understand that wood could essentially be broken down into two components – cellulose (which gives the wood its structure) and lignin (which binds everything together like glue). Cellulose, he discovered, could also be found in abundance as a waste by-product of kombucha-brewing.

Often referred to as the ‘mother’ or the Scoby in your kombucha, the small jelly-like sheets that float on the top of your drink are rich in cellulose. Given that they aren’t consumed along with the kombucha, these sheets are either reused to brew more beverages or are discarded as a waste product. To make Pyrus, Tavas blended these sheets of cellulose to an even consistency and then embedded them in Agar, an algae-based gel. As the gel dried, it hardened significantly and could be placed under a mechanical press to form a flat sheet of wood. “This material can then be sanded, cut, and coated with resins just like its tree-based counterparts”, Tavas mentions.

Symmetry Wood (the group founded by Tavas) mentions that the one thing that sets Pyrus apart from other engineered woods is that it doesn’t harm a single tree. Engineered woods like MDF uses compressed sawdust in their production, which while being relatively waste-free compared to wood, still requires trees to be chopped/sanded/processed. Pyrus, on the other hand, can be made without harming a single tree. In fact, Symmetry Wood touts that it’s petroleum-free too, unlike other artificial woods.

Tavas has produced 74 wood samples of Pyrus in a variety of colors and textures over the past year, mimicking high-demand woods like Ebony and Mahogany among others. Pyrus woods can be treated like regular woods, being spun on lathes, cut with hacksaws, sanded, and even laser-engraved/etched. The Symmetry Wood website even lets you buy Pyrus products, including a set of 3 guitar-picks made from the ‘booch-wood’ (that’s my phrase, not theirs) as well as Pyrus Earrings.

As a winner of the USA James Dyson Award, Tavas was awarded $2,600 prize money. He plans on using it to expand production facilities and even develop 3D printing processes. “The top priority is to put Pyrus into various environmentally-friendly product forms that meet consumer needs and are commercially viable”, Tavas says. “Eventually, we hope to turn any customer interest into revenue streams that will sustain a formal company, Symmetry, and fund improvements for the material that will let it work at larger scales like furniture and even buildings.”

Designer: Gabe Tavas (Symmetry Wood)

This handheld composting machine works just like a coffee-grinder, turning waste into nutrient-rich pulp!

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No, this doesn’t mean your coffee-bean grinder can help you make compost!

The ReGreen is a nifty little handheld device that’s designed to speed up the composting process by entire weeks. Working almost like a handheld version of your waste-disposal machine, the ReGreen lets you manually crush and pulverize your waste into smaller bits that are much easier to biodegrade.

The grinder-shaped device is made entirely out of aluminum, allowing it to easily cut through waste while resisting rot/corrosion, and being easy to clean. Waste goes into the ReGreen through the opening on the top, and a rotating arm lets you gently and effectively pulverize the waste into manageable pieces, while water drips out of the base, drying out your compost. A sachet of enzymes are then introduced into the ReGreen before shutting the lid. The enzymes accelerate the composting process by giving the microorganisms the food they need to break down the organic waste into nutrient-rich dry-compost in a matter of weeks – as opposed to the months it usually takes for waste to turn into compost. Once a composting cycle is complete, the ReGreen can easily be rinsed under running water and cleaned with soap!

The ReGreen Tiny Compost Machine is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2020.

Designer: Shihcheng Chen