*Although I do not advocate that clean-ups be the solution for plastic pollution, I do think they are a valuable tool to understand waste trajectories when waste categorization and brand audits are included. Clean-ups that immediately take and dispose of the...
We design the world we want to live in. Our products are a result of human ingenuity. Design that places 'no value' on the environment looks like single-use packaging. We live in holistic systems of interconnection. Even the *smallest thing like packaging connects...
How can plastic material be reused, repurposed, or salvaged so it is kept out of the oceans and other ecosystems? Social awareness about the impacts of plastic pollution is growing, and there is a trend for creative, social solutions to the ‘plastic menace.’ Every...
March 18th is International Recycling Day. But, not to confuse the order of operations for creating more sustainable materials use: #1: Developing a healthy respect and appreciation for the environment #2: Refuse #3: Reduce #4: Redesign #5: Reuse / Repurpose #6: ...
Video of an experiment I made visiting a backyard plastic recycler in a village outside of Colombo. We are doing an experiment to 'test' what kind of plastic constitutes these objects. In the rural context, there is no lab to verify if the plastic is #2 or #6...
Plastic is cheap. The environment is not. New investments in fossil fuel extraction, and new investments in plastic production further the trajectory of this persistent pollutant. Plastic is all-pervasive to the point of entrenchment; society is suffocating with...
Every single piece of plastic that has ever been made, still exists today - and we keep making more, with no thought for tomorrow. Globally the weight of plastic produced annually (approx. 300m tons) is almost equivalent to the weight of humanity (approx. 316m...
~‘Waste’ may be out of human sight in one area, but it is never out of the global mind.~ How ‘waste’ is discussed determines the level of the problem and the remedial solutions. If overconsumption is the problem, then solutions target consumerist norms. However,...
Re-envisioning Materials Use ~ The EPA says manufacturing an item with PET plastic is effectively creating 100 times the amount of toxins as the same item made of glass (Rogers, 2005). Humans were able to design goods without plastics for thousands of years, with...
Why do we only label what is on the inside of packaging, but not the packaging itself? Packaging is treated as if it is invisible, harmless, a non-entity, but in reality it is often made of harmful plastics. Many studies show that plastics leach chemicals used in...