Plastic soup to the timeless entombment of our 21st century excesses
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We live in a world of instant gratification, single portioned morsels of conveniently packaged everything, a world wrapped in plastic, meant to be used for one moment of single consumption, then disposed of forever. This idea, that plastic is cheap and convenient, that plastic protects things, or keeps things sanitary to an obsessive level, has taken over our daily lives. We put pristine spring water in plastic, we wrap plastic spoons and biological produce in plastic, we sip drinks through plastic, out of novelty and we throw it away somewhere forever. That forever place, is now overflowing. We are now literally swimming in plastic.
The new frontier, is now the massive cleanup effort, and finding a use for all of this waste. Organisations like The Ocean Cleanup are building massive vessels to cleanup the plastic waste, The Plastic Whale is employing human power to fish out the plastic bottles from the Amsterdam canals and transforming them to the boats used to cruise down the canals to carry out this cleanup effort. Social Plastic is turning the act of recycling into a commodity, providing incomes to those who will help to sort out the recyclable materials. We as designers and makers need to join this movement and turn this recycled material into a raw ingredient into the products of the future. And not products that only fall back into this single use cycle, but towards products that keep this plastic out of the garbage in the first place.
We think about this massive plastic problem, and we see the future emerging. Recycled being the new luxury. No longer is recycled material for the hippies, we are now able to invent beautiful things with it. Durat is one such example. Based in serene coastal village of Rymättylä in Finland, Durat manufactures beautiful modern surfaces and objects using post industrial waste plastics and is 100% recyclable. This ingenuity is part of the solution, where we make beautiful, modern, and timeless products that use up our waste, and are recyclable back into the production of more beautiful, modern and timeless products. Closing the loop in the product life cycle.
Our current collaboration collection is a study into how we can influence the perception of recycled waste plastics. How we, as designers and thinkers, can compose a product that further promotes this idea that we should tread lightly on our earth. We also have an affinity for all things natural. This idea that everything is plastic or synthetic, creates a yearning for something real. Something from this earth, multifaceted and imperfect, yet so right. Our search lead us back into history to look into pigments created from raw earth minerals, the ones that painters in the 17th century used to use to produce those vibrant timeless hues. We found a working windmill dating back to the 1700’s that still uses wind power from their windmill to grind these pigments for paint and dyestuffs. The pigments from this ancient method, we use sparingly to dye the speckles running through the surfaces, creating a precious and pure color. We honor the earth and its abundance, and use it sparingly, and we combine it with the industrial plastic waste to create the basis for the new modern eco-luxury. We believe these are the new values of a sustainable future. One table made of this material is equivalent to many cubic meters of clean ocean. And because it carries with it a preciousness to the natural pigment flecks, the end result is a product with longevity. Something that carries a story of how we cleaned our earth, and pays respect to the lands we inhabit.
Find out more about this collaboration here:
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