Tag Archives: plastic waste

This donut-shaped EDC is designed to cut through plastics to help streamline the recycling process!

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The Donut Cutter is an EDC water bottle slicing tool designed to cut through hard plastics and streamline the recycling process.

PET is the most common thermoplastic polymer resin in production today. Used in fibers for clothing, thermoforming for manufacturing, and most often in containers for foods and liquids like water bottles, PET is used to produce most of the plastic-based products in circulation today. Since PET plastics aren’t biodegradable, they end up in landfills following their use where they’ll remain for 500 to 1,000 years until they fully degrade.

With plastic water bottles being some of the biggest contributors to PET plastic waste in landfills, industrial design studio BKID Co. constructed an EDC Donut Cutter that carves right through the bottle cap, neck ring, and plastic label to streamline the recycling process and prevent hard plastics from harming wild and aquatic life.

We’ve all seen the tragic photographs of turtles stuck in plastic yokes and birds choking on bottle caps. While PET plastics are certainly the most common form of thermoplastic polymer resin today, they’re also the most damaging to the planet.

BKID’s Donut Cutter slices right through every and any plastic water bottle partly in response to the life-threatening effects that in-tact plastic waste has on wildlife. Made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE), bottle caps and neck rings have a tougher, more durable feel compared to the actual water bottle, but the Donut Cuter carves right through those as well.

Compact enough to fit inside your pants pocket, the Donut Cutter is similar in size to other EDC items like pocket knives and multipurpose tools. Designed with a circular shape, the Donut Cutter is named after its main finger loop that makes handling the EDC plastic cutter intuitive and safe.

Designer: BKID Co.

Microsoft’s wireless mouse goes sustainable with 100 % recyclable packaging and waste ocean plastic construction

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This ergonomic mouse by Microsoft is made out of the plastic waste recovered from the water bodies that are decimating our planet beyond comprehension. This is another example of mindful recycling effort plays a part in saving the planet from doom.

Microsoft is on course to fulfill its zero waste goal by 2030 and give up single-use plastics in packaging by 2025, as a part of the larger recycling and sustainably goal. Their latest creation in collaboration with Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), a global leader in the chemical industry is a testament to their noble efforts. The Silicon Valley giant revealed the all-new sustainable Microsoft Ocean Plastic Mouse at the annual Surface event to mark the occasion.

This first-of-a-kind Microsoft consumer electronic product was initially planned with the aim of infusing at least 10 percent recycled ocean plastic. After formulating the prototypes, the final version’s exterior shell came out with 20 percent recycled ocean plastic. Way more than the initial goal set by Microsoft! The Ocean Plastic Mouse also has packaging made out of 100 percent recyclable material – recyclable wood and sugarcane fibers to be precise. The plastic shell mixed with resin and other materials starts its journey from the oceans and waterways – in the form of waste plastic recovered from these water bodies. The plastic waste is then cleaned and processed into recyclable plastic resin pellets to procure the raw material for the final processing.

To take the sustainability efforts further, Microsoft is also offering a free mail-in program in select regions. Here you can send an old mouse to be recycled with help from Microsoft’s contracted partners. The best thing, this eco-friendly mouse can be pre-ordered right away for a price tag of $24.99.

As for functionality, it has got all the relevant functions of a Bluetooth wireless mouse with an average AA alkaline battery cell life of 12 months. Apart from that Microsoft touts its super responsive left/right-click buttons, fast-tracking sensors, and precise navigation. It also gets the three customizable buttons and the Swift Pair technology for quick pairing with your machine.

Designers: Microsoft and SABIC

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This sustainably designed clothing peg can reduce plastic waste!

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Clothing pegs are made of cheap plastic that only adds to the mounting pollution problem. These are not recycled and the bad quality means we go through them faster which generates more waste. There are alternatives like metal pegs but Indian designer Rutvik Jadhav gives us another innovative option – Blip! Blip is a clothing peg made from rubber that can be easily recycled and lasts for a longer time! It also can be flat-packed and stored easily reducing the hazard of plastic pegs.

Unlike the traditional peg that has plastic and metal components that increase manufacturing costs, Blip is entirely made from rubber. Traditional pegs can leave stains on the fabric from the rusted metal and the spring wears out pretty fast – these two problems were solved with Blip’s material choice and form. Similar to the snap bands from our childhood, Blip is organic and easier to use. Jadhav used two of Dieter Ram’s principles to guide him with his project – “good design lasts long” and “good design is environmentally friendly” which shines through Blip’s purpose and simplicity.

“Blip is a two-month personal project where I tried to redesign a clothing peg. I believe in Dieter Ram’s principles and have tried to apply them to all that I create. My aim to create that can conserve the ecosystem and help humanity too. That is why I designed Blip – a sustainable, innovative, and distinct clothing peg,” says Jadhav. The flexible design and innovative approach to something as mundane as a clothing peg has given us an eco-friendly alternative that could help reduce tonnes of plastic waste. Blip can easily be mass-produced and adopted at a large scale, so let’s make a difference one blip at a time.

Designer: Rutvik Jadhav

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This ergonomic paper cup was designed to reduce plastic waste generated by to-go coffees!

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Most of us have abandoned plastic straws but the next big culprit of our to-go coffees are the plastic lids! About 8.25 million tons of plastic waste enter the ocean each year and these take a million years to decompose causing significant damage to the oceans and marine life. Not-so-fun fact: New York City alone generates enough plastic lid waste to cover the entire earth THREE times. To solve this issue and keep coffee from spilling on your clothes, Unocup designed an ergonomic paper cup that folds into itself to create a spill-proof lid!

Just fold over each flap and insert the tab to close the “lid”. To open, it is a simple press of a button that will gently open the flap instead of trying to carefully pop off the lid – praying for you if you attempt that with long nails. This cup has a unique shape that fits into your palm, the uniform structure creates a strong and consistent body that will not cave under pressure, unlike traditional paper cups. The drinking curved spout is specifically designed to fit your lips naturally as opposed to the otherwise flat plastic lids. You can also fold flaps backward and drink from the rim just like a normal drinking glass. The first prototype was developed in 2015 and it has been refined 800 times since then to create the perfect final version that is as strong as your coffee. Unocup has been optimized for mass-production using existing cup-making machinery which will yield significant cost and energy savings in manufacturing, storage, and transportation while not requiring new machinery or investment.

One of the co-founders and designers of Unocup, Tom Chan, was just a sophomore when he came up with the original concept – a single unit with an origami-like lid that you fold into place to seal liquid inside, eliminating the need for single-use plastic lids. After countless coffee-shop interviews and more than hundreds of prototypes later, he and long-time friend Kaanur Papo founded Unocup, in 2019. It is a 100% plastic-free, compostable beverage cup that replaces the traditional lid with paper folds that seal the drink tightly. “When people think of sustainable solutions they think of certain compromises that have to be made. What’s really exciting about this is that it’s a sustainable and practical solution at the same time,” says Papo. It helps coffee drinkers want a cup that they feel will contribute to waste reduction, while still keeping the convenience factor. Unocup has recently won Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Award in the Packaging Category!

Designer: Tom Chan and Kaanur Papo

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This sustainable amenity kit produces clean energy & reduces plastic waste for hotels when composted

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All industries are making an effort to pivot and use more sustainable designs in an effort to slow down the climate crisis. We are seeing a boom in material experimentation and exploration, especially to make products that are biodegradable because that encourages a circular economy that works for the planet and the user. Single-use plastic is one of the biggest non-biodegradable contributors to ocean pollution. My biggest pet-peeve is when hotels have each item in their toiletries kit wrapped in plastic – it is so unnecessary and given the turnover of these items, it creates a tonne of waste. The Green Box is an innovative solution that aligns hotel stays with your sustainable lifestyle choices!

It is an amenity kit designed to help hotels to transition to a circular economy and avoid the waste generated by tens-of-millions of amenity kits are thrown away by hotel chains – we use them once but they last forever on our planet. Green box is made from compostable plastic which will let hotels industrially compost and organically recycle the items in a controlled environment. The design goes beyond providing functional value and also aims to educate guests about the material and its impact to encourage better choices even after the vacation ends. Each box comes with a disposable bin for the room to familiarize guests with the new kind of waste-stream. The guests will sort materials as compostable and non-compostable by simply following the color grading – green for compostable and white for general waste. Then they will put the green compostable items in the green part of the box and the white parts (contaminated with bacterias to be composted) will be disposed of with the general waste.

Once separated, the green items along with the rest of the organic waste from the hotel restaurant will be composted on an industrial facility. After 10 weeks of the methanization process, we will be left with soil and bio-gas which can be used to generate power. In fact, the Green Box might produce enough energy to power a standard LED light bulb for over 27 hours. The remaining organic matter left could be used as a soil fertilizer. The color system is easy to follow and by doing it themselves, the guests can see how much waste is being generated. This creates a beautiful circular design and business model for hotels to implement using bioplastics.

Designer: OnMateria

These origami greenhouses reduce plastic waste using a sustainable material: inflatable bamboo!

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You will find that in a lot of Southeast Asian countries people still use the traditional plastic-covered greenhouses and they are super popular in India which is the world’s second-biggest agricultural country. Polythene sheets are cheap and easy especially for those in developing countries like India where over 60% of the population depends on agriculture for income. We know that plastic is bad (and still find it so hard to remove it from our lifestyles), but most people in these countries don’t fully grasp that and the quickest way to convince them is by providing them with an accessible sustainable alternative while educating them simultaneously. This way we fast-track their sustainable journey and Designer Eliza Hague has already come up with the alternative solution – inflatable bamboo greenhouses!

Hague is a student at the University of Westminster where she is pursuing her Masters in Architecture. Her design features shellac-coated bamboo to emphasize the use of biomimicry in different disciplines of design – in her case it is providing eco-friendly architectural solutions inspired by nature. For the main structure, Hague drew inspiration from the Mimosa Pudica plant which closes its leaves when it senses danger and that is how she came up with collapsible beams featuring inflatable hinges. It gave the greenhouse a unique origami effect (it actually looks like paper too!) and also enables the structure to be easily flat-packed for transportation/storage. Rows of these bamboo-paper greenhouses can be connected to shared houses constructed from the soil, which has a high thermal mass, providing shelter from extreme temperatures in India. Hague envisions that the greenhouses would be shared by multiple families and would provide each family member with enough food to be self-sufficient, creating communal greenhouse villages in the city’s more rural and isolated areas.

“The tutors in Design Studio 10 encourage you to analyze what it means to be truly sustainable in architecture, rather than integrating sustainability as a generic requirement which is often seen throughout the industry. This helped to develop my project into something that challenges the suitability of widely used materials and current lifestyles. In light of the pandemic, the idea that architecture can provide spaces to encourage self-sufficient living has become more prevalent as we rely on supermarkets more than ever. This notion stimulated the desire to create a design that not only responded to its local environment but proposed innovative solutions to these challenges,” says Hague as she continues to develop her design so it can someday be an accessible alternative that will reduce plastic waste and educate people at the same time. Also, who wouldn’t love a cool, sustainable, origami dome as a greenhouse?

Designer: Eliza Hague

Polythene is used all over India because it is cost-effective for the rural demographic but it needs to be replaced each year which generates tonnes of plastic waste. With Hague’s alternative, the environmental impact can be minimized as the design uses locally sourced bamboo and natural resins extracted from trees.

The bamboo is then coated with shellac resin which makes it weather-resistant and gives it a texture similar to paper.

To set it up, all one has to do is inflate the greenhouse with air, cover it up with the bamboo-shellac material and fit the expandable fin-like black solar balloons that would sit between the inflatable beams and cladding for the hinges to facilitate natural ventilation based on the heat from the sun.

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As each individual requires 40 meters-squared of greenhouse space to grow enough food to maintain self-sufficiency, the concept accommodates the potential different typologies based on two-person, three-person, and four-person homes.

This award-winning eco-friendly floss was designed to make flossing cost-effective, efficient and effortless!

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Sometimes we don’t realize but small parts of our routine tend to have a big environmental impact, for instance, floss is good for our teeth but it is terrible for the ocean and turns it into a plastic minefield. Most floss is made up of nylon which is biodegradable but another thing that makes it dangerous is that it is designed to not tear causing serious harm to ocean life. There are millions of miles of floss strings in the ocean and we need to switch to eco-friendly alternatives – there are a couple in the market but there is a demand for more innovative designs like the Phloss here.

Phloss is a refillable flossing aid that has a string suspended between two prongs. These prongs not only maintain the tension of the string but also reduce the effort required by your arms which makes flossing more effortless, efficient, and quick. Phloss was created to speed up the cleaning process without compromising on quality after the reduced dexterity. Since it is refillable, there is a waste management system designed for the compostable floss strings. “These refills are delivered to people using a subscription service, the used floss refills can be sent back to the manufacturer for industrial composting, utilizing waste material and following a circular economy,” elaborates Boyle. Flossing removes 80% of plaque from the teeth and is vital to our personal hygiene so it is essential to find a sustainable alternative instead of giving up this good habit. Dental products often have a short life span and Phloss aims to close one of its most notorious loops.

Boyle conducted research, where he dived into factors like user experience, sustainability, cost, and effectiveness of existing floss alternatives like Quip’s refillable floss, oral irrigator, dental floss, interdental brush, and floss pick. After addressing the pain points, he took the best parts of all these existing alternatives to craft Phloss and was mindful of making it an inclusive design. He then created several prototypes before landing on a final version which had an ergonomic build, smooth curves, good grip, and clean aesthetics that didn’t distract from its purpose. The same aesthetic mood board was also applied to the packaging of the refills because it is an important part of the overall product-service, the success of the product depends on every detail of the user experience and interaction.

Phloss’ aim was to make the flossing accessible and desirable while being eco-conscious. Boyle’s ‘take back’ system gives the manufacturers valuable compost for a range of agricultural applications. It is designed for mass manufacturing which makes it easier for people to quickly switch to eco-friendly options. The packaging will also reflect its goal to be eco-friendly and the product will come in a fully recyclable cardboard tube while refills will arrive in compostable envelopes. There are so many little changes we can make that go beyond the bamboo toothbrushes or reusable cups to truly be a step closer to living sustainably. Understanding this, Phloss also won the Joseph Joseph Brilliantly Useful Design Award at New Designers Awards 2020!

Designer: Charlie Boyle

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Edible food packaging made from seaweed has the potential to offset carbon emissions entirely!

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I don’t even know where to begin with the problem of plastic pollution – it is a heavy one and in literal terms, the amount of plastic on this planet is almost the same as the weight of the entire human population. Let that sink in. Single-use plastic makes for more than 50% of the plastic waste problem and if we continue at the rate we are going right now, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050. According to the UN Environment, one million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute around the world, while up to 5 trillion single-use plastic bags are used worldwide every year (read more here). In total, half of all plastic produced is designed to be used only once and then thrown away – this is a serious problem and Wenwen Fan of the Royal College of Arts is using her design abilities to do her bit in providing a solution.

Seaweed is touted as green gold by scientists who are exploring its uses as a sustainable alternative for single-use plastic. What makes it interesting is that it can be edible and has high nutritional value too! It is already a staple in Asian diets and also in skincare routines, so it was time to push the boundaries and turn these into vegan wrappers. Made from seaweed and vegetable extracts, these low-cal wrappers can be used as edible packaging for snacks and dissolvable pouches that add extra nutritional value to your food like vitamins, minerals as well as polysaccharides from that support your gut health. The seaweed extract is then dehydrated and the prototypes are examined in different temperature settings as well as tested for waterproof properties. Turtles eat seaweed and they live to be 100 so why not!?

“As a multidisciplinary experience designer, I am passionate about designing a cohesive, integrated set of experiences for behavior change. From embedding AR into an immersive Alzheimer’s simulation experience to creating sustainable edible packaging from seaweed, I believe a good experience design should be context-driven, behaviorally informed, and culturally relevant,” says Fan. The wrappers can customize for different flavors and nutritions for a more personalized product combination on Seaweed U which will be an online platform dedicated to the product. It is an ingenious way of packaging food while also being a source of soluble fiber – I see this design as a win-win with the only hurdle being the scale of mass production should a big brand adopt this packaging design. Seaweed U encourages a more convenient, playful, and pleasurable diet solution as well as reducing plastic pollution from the food industry.

There are three suggested scenarios in using these seaweed wrappers: Trick or Treat, The Lazy Pouch, and Super Chef. Trick or Treat is a healthy snack made from fruity-taste seaweed skins. Through combining a more familiar food palate like nuts and berries with the nutritional skins, it enables people to enjoy seaweed through daily snacking without being held back by the green and slimy texture. The Lazy Pouch is a single-serve, dissolvable pouch with different types of seaweed like wakame, dulse, and kelp, etc. that offers a convenient and quality meal supplement for those living a fast-paced lifestyle. Super Chef offers a creative DIY food experience in the kitchen where people can play with this versatile material in combination with ordinary ingredients to make unique dishes like transparent onigiris, ice cream raviolis, and colorful spring rolls.

We all know eating a more plant-based diet has a direct impact on climate change and seaweed can be of great help. According to scientists, building seaweed farming networks on just 9% of the world’s ocean could offset carbon emission entirely – that can buy us more time to focus on the larger plastic problem. Seaweed U aims to help people feel comfortable with different superfoods that add immense benefits to their health as well as the health of our planet.

Designer: Wenwen Fan

Can NIVEA’s 3D printed shower gel refill station prototype really reduce plastic packaging waste?

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Brands are consciously moving towards eco-friendly practices and the first hurdle every single one of them has to overcome is plastic packaging waste. NIVEA’s parent company is German giant Beiersdorf and they are on a mission to reduce packaging waste by minimizing and closing their material cycles. And for NIVEA that meant launching a shower gel refill station! Now it is a good first step and has its pros but also has some cons. The biggest con is that shower gels itself are not good for the environment and there is no way to know how many bottles actually get rinsed clean before they are recycled – otherwise, it doesn’t work. Shower gels also need a lot of water to be made, and as climate change makes the world hotter/drier, the water crisis is already a big issue in many countries. A solution to that? Bar soaps! NIVEA makes those too, they use less water and can be packaged in recycled paper – that is the real solution but if this refill station reduces some plastic waste and sparks a movement for the brand to take bigger steps, then we are here to see it.

The prototype is going to be tested in select locations where the brand will gather data on how consumers are interacting, feeling, reacting to the concept of reusable bottles. The prototype machine was made with their in-house 3D printers. NIVEA hopes that with this refill station they will make it convenient for consumers to reuse containers and reduce plastic usage. Once they experience that it is easy to make small sustainable lifestyle changes, they will be quicker to adopt it as a habit. The refill station has been carefully designed, developed, and engineered by a cross-functional team within Beiersdorf’s global packaging and R&D functions. Consumers can refill up to three times before sending their bottles to be recycled and get a new one for hygiene reasons – this limitation slows down the plastic consumption problem but without longevity in the solution, it will not end the cycle.

Caroline Zia, Senior Formula Developer at Beiersdorf wanted to make sure that the concept worked for sustainability and for the consumer’s experience. “The formulations need to withstand the additional burden of refilling and we had to carefully choose our products after extensive internal testing. Also, the machine had to be programmed for additional cleaning protocols so that we could guarantee multiple filling loops and still meet our safety and sustainability criteria,’ she explains. The machine’s design had to also account for the retailer’s interior requirements while providing easy user experience. “We decided to use light as visual support to guide the users. Whenever one of the dedicated refill-bottles has been filled or a bar code has been printed, the integrated LED lights give feedback to the consumer,” says Marta Suslow, Concept Designer at Beiersdorf’s packaging department. Other details include formula choice and refill cycles, sophisticated pumps, color-changing lights, a label printer, and a programmed microcontroller.

While this is a good start, personal care brands, especially global giants like NIVEA can step up their game to find real solutions that make it a sustainable choice. You already have the product and the presence, pivot to reducing plastic waste at a larger scale as well as reduce water consumption with one ‘clean’ move – soap.

Designers: Marta Suslow, Caroline Zia, Koushik Sreedhar, Bernhard Felten, Cecile Ratschow of Beiersdorf

 

Bubble tea lovers finally get a reusable straw that opens up for easy cleaning!

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If you are someone using plastic straws in 2020, you need to look up photos of baby turtles and imagine how they feel with plastic in their stomach. Scientists estimate 437 million to 8.3 billion plastic straws pollute the coastlines around the world. So our plastic pollution problem is pretty huge and to be specific how huge, the Great Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean is twice the size of Texas. Let’s start making a difference by decreasing single-use plastic usage – one of them being straws!

One bubble straw is designed using 100% recyclable material and is specially created for being bubble-tea friendly. I haven’t seen a paper or metal straw that is wide enough for bubble tea which makes it harder for that demographic to make the switch but not anymore. This straw by Green One has 1.3 cm diameter and measures 21 cm length. What makes it stand apart is that you can actually open it up to clean it and you don’t require any brushes! The design team wanted to create an alternative to the existing eco-friendly straws which was easier to use not only in terms of cleaning but also in piercing the drink – paper straws are too soft and metal straws are too hard. The straw is also super lightweight and wide enough to slurp up the bubble tea pearls which most existing reusable straws don’t accommodate for.

If you don’t want to rinse it by hand, you can simply put it in the dishwasher for cleaning. One bubble straw is made from 100% recyclable food-safe TPE which can be further recycled whenever you are done with it. This is the first step to decrease your single-use plastic consumption tremendously. It is eco-friendly, non-toxic, anti-dust, tasteless, and safe for use in hot and cold drinks. Green One is an HK based company dedicated to developing sustainable products and it shows in the straws packaging as well – it is made from eco-friendly paper with soy ink! Apart from creating alternatives, the brand is also organizing a ‘One Straws’ recycling program where the public can bring their used reusable straws to be cleaned before they are sent to recycling factories in order to educate people and help them reduce waste.

Designer: Green One HK

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