Live, Work and Play Like a Local at The Student Hotel, Delft (Design Milk)

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The space has been designed by Amsterdam-based boutique interior design studio The Invisible Party, in collaboration with the brand’s in-house design team, according to the circular design principles of reducing waste and keeping objects and materials in use.

Opened on October 1, 2020, this new co-working and co-living space has taken up residence next to Delft Central Station in ‘Nieuw-Delft’, the heart of the city’s green development program.

“The Student Hotel has a strong and distinct brand identity across its 15 sites, but for each new location they seek a genuine connection with the city, the neighborhood and the community,” says Vivian van Schagen, founder and creative director of The Invisible Party. “For Delft, we tapped into the technical DNA and history of the city as the basis for our project research. This ultimately gave this project its own identity and experience within the lines of the brand,”

The agency made circularity and community central to the brief for their scheme and the outcome aims to be a welcoming hub where the community can come together – whether that’s local innovators and creatives, international travelers or students from Delft University of Technology.

To make the students feel at home and provide a visual link with the university, they deliberately chose materials, patterns, prints and shapes with a technical theme in mind; from computer grids to aerodynamic shapes. These were combined with the playful character of The Student Hotel brand and practical requirements of such a multifunctional space with multiple public functions.

Co-working spaces, flexible working zones, conference facilities and meeting pods provide peaceful and private zones for work, study and meetings. The walls inspire visitors through hand-drawn illustrations by graphic designer Monsieur Hubert and a mural by artist Chantal van Heeswijk.

The Commons, the hotel’s restaurant, was inspired by the concept of a ‘grand café’ and designed for locals as well as guests to enjoy. Lush indoor planting, rounded forms and joyful colors soften the concrete columns and extensive glazing.

Curtains, industrial chandeliers and wall-to-wall banquet benches create different zones and seating areas, where guests can dine convivially.

The heart of The Commons is the fifteen-meter long cocktail bar that doubles up as an open kitchen. The eclectic materials and color palette of recycled plastic tables, sky blue bar stools, bright red sofas and a recycled confetti screed floor ensure that the space is always decorated, even before the tables have been set.

The use of recycled plastic is just one of the many circularity-driven design decisions in a project that – driven by the motto “less is more” – in which the reuse, preservation of value and reduction of the carbon footprint were central throughout.

Chairs made from old jeans are paired with vintage pieces and all the screws and bolts designed to be easily removed so that the furniture is ready to be disassembled and repurposed or recycled at the end of its life.

All the hotel’s public surfaces are entirely constructed from recyclable materials, such as recycled plastic milk caps – and a detail that is a sly wink for Dutch guests is that the felt used to cover the walls is made from recycled Efteling costumes. “From a sustainable perspective, we have worked with suppliers and materials that are circular, environmentally friendly or upcycled,” says van Schagen “An example is the impressive wall on entry; for this we made a recycled plastic wallcovering, designed with a Delft Blue color theme to which we added a distinct The Student Hotel color accent.”

What: The Student Hotel, Delft
Where: Van Leeuwenhoekpark 1 2611 DW, Delft
How much: From €69 per night
Highlights: The Commons’ fifteen-meter long cocktail bar made from recycled milk-bottle tops.
Design draw: Hand-drawn illustrations by graphic designer Monsieur Hubert and a mural by artist Chantal van Heeswijk.
Book it: The Student Hotel, Delft

Go virtually on vacation with more design destinations right here.

To read the article at its source click here.

Design With Purpose; Legacy Without Ego – Decorex Virtual 2020

Zoe Murphy Turns Unloved Furniture, Wood and Textiles into Vibrant Home Accessories (Circular by Design, Design Milk)

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Tell me a little bit about your childhood, education and background in terms of how you first became interested in creativity, design and sustainability.

I was born and raised in Margate. Both of my parents were school teachers and so we always had a lot of educational textbooks around the house and I seemed to be preoccupied with spending summers learning things from the books and then re-drawing the pictures and text from them into sketchbooks of my own. I was reproducing these little graphic interpretations when I picked up a book all about the environment and the ozone layer. I was so shocked to read about pollution, that I wrote to the Queen about it. (This is not a joke, my parents didn’t know I had done it until I received a reply from a lady-in-waiting at the palace!) I resolved, there and then, to do more to spread the message that I’d read. It seemed really important to me, and my tiny developing mind decided that I could get more people to pay attention if I could translate the information out of that dusty textbook using my own unique skills and talents. I went on to study textile design and screen printing at university, but always retained a strong sense of duty and have therefore always strived to create things that spread awareness about the environment and waste.

How would you describe your furniture?

I screen-print my own hand-drawn designs and patterns onto second-hand wooden furniture and create cheerful, graphic and very colorful furniture pieces such as chests of drawers, tables and sideboards. The storage and surfaces that I create with objects others have discarded have a very mid-century look to them before I apply a lot of pattern and decoration. This is a conscious choice for me as the interiors from that period have very simple and straight or smooth forms and so they support my details and statement print work in a way that doesn’t make a piece feel too busy in the end. My designs have their roots in the time I spent studying to be a textile designer and growing up in Margate. For that reason, I always seem to have a lot of suns, flowers, sunrays, happy shapes and optimistic imagery. It matters to me to make something positive out of the waste I’m using and I know that can be engineered on every level, so even the colors I choose will have a warm and bright feel to them. First and foremost, I want people to feel good when they look at my work, and perhaps only after that discover that it is reused.

What inspired this project?

I like to investigate new design ideas every few months and they are always born from an interest or compulsion that I’m exploring at the time. My latest collection of work has been inspired by one of my design heroes Vera Neumann who was a silk scarf designer in the 1950s. She began life as a painter so when the war finished and parachute silk was an abundant material she began painting her work onto silk instead. Vera would still sign all of her designs, even when they were silk scarves instead of paintings, and is known for popularizing the idea of a ‘signature’ scarf. I was so inspired and impressed by an artist using her creativity in such a practical way but also retaining the value of her artistic identity at the same time, for me it felt an important blend of the two disciplines – art and design. Particularly at a time when a lot of creatives are feeling pressed to make-do and the world is in a state of flux and uncertainty, it’s encouraging to think that even after a great war or shortage of materials it’s possible to pivot and emerge with tenacity and flair. The sets that I’m making for the collection all come from one huge oak table that had a split from age and was heading to the tip. It’s fruited a batch of screen-printed coffee tables and matching candlesticks that celebrate the idea of looking again even in the most difficult of eras.

What waste (and other) materials are you using, how did you select those particular materials and how do you source them?

I work exclusively with unwanted and badly damaged wooden furniture, often solid woods but mostly pieces that have been veneered. Although these will have been cheaper to produce in their time and are sometimes more stable than solid wooden pieces, they are nearly always chipped, ripped, stained or broken because of how fragile veneers and the light wood furniture frames are over time. I try to get pieces that are badly damaged, that are about to be thrown away, or that need a lot of repairs. If it’s stylistically out of date too that is a bonus, because of the way that I work I can bring furniture into different centuries and make things look a lot more contemporary. I’m mostly given or find unwanted furniture, it’s still surprising how much people leave on roadsides and throw away – my most recent collection was made from a table that was about to be thrown into a chipper at a recycling centre.

When did you first become interested in using waste as raw material and what motivated this decision?

I was campaigning and caring for climate change from a young age, and wrote my university dissertation on consumption patterns and how to steer them in a market to make for more sustainable activity. In 2008, when I was challenged with creating my degree show (to showcase my print work) I knew I wanted the entire collection to be reused and made from waste. That’s when I started screen printing onto wood and furniture and even wedding dress silk for soft furnishings – eventually my entire show was made from waste.

What processes do the materials have to undergo to become the finished product?

I start by carefully removing and dismantling a piece that I’ve chosen to use, stripping the existing lacquer, unscrewing all of the components and restoring anything I hope to use again. I will remodel most of my furniture pieces by adding new legs, handles and sometimes splitting the piece into different sized units to get the maximum use out of the material. It feels very important to me that all of the forms look like they have come from the same place even if they start out looking very different. Unwanted furniture as a waste material has a better chance if I am able to pull it in to a recognized aesthetic that people trust and value and that I’ve worked hard to brand. So I strip back a unit to its most simple form and then prime it for printing. Once I have designed something I’m happy with, the silk screens are used to apply layers and layers of print work onto only certain parts of a piece. This means being able to choose parts that are very badly damaged to cover with the pattern and leaving the rest of the remaining wood to be celebrated. When the print is applied, all parts are revarnished and then reassembled with any new wooden components added (these are made by a woodturner local to me). The final touches are to line or fabric the inside of any storage units to make sure that every part of a piece feels exciting and special to discover. And then, much like Vera, I sign my creation!

What happens to your products at the end of their life – can they go back into the circular economy?

Because I know that every time wood is stripped or painted it takes a little more of the material away and reduces its possibilities for the next time it might be recycled, it’s always my aim to decorate and print onto as little of a piece as possible while still moving it on enough to be found refreshing for a consumer. Everything is screwed together, printed with water-based paints, and lacquered with a durable varnish, so that it will last for as long as possible and then finally will have enough original material for it to be reused again. It takes an incredible amount of time and care to reuse waste and I’m of the opinion that the application of craftsmanship can elevate any material. I use my researched and designed print work to add value and rescue a material that isn’t considered useful. I aim to deliver an emotional connection and delight to the people who buy my work, so that they will care for it properly and keep it for longer than the average piece of furniture.

How did you feel the first time you saw the transformation from waste material to product/prototype?

It would have been at a very very small age. My favorite thing to do as a little girl was to make dresses for my Barbies and furniture for my doll house. None of them were made from things I had bought because the thought didn’t even occur to me – why would I use new things when there was so much already available? I clearly remember making a set of living room chairs for my doll house, padded and upholstered, from toilet rolls. The buzz I got from taking something that really was the lowliest material and fit for the bin and turning it into something so useful and domestic, was unmatched. Giving things a second chance at being valuable made me feel valuable, and that feeling hasn’t ever gone away.

How have people reacted to this project?

The response to my work from others has always been an emotional one. I imagine it comes from the narrative created when you see pictures and drawings on things that often are just a color or a surface. I make work to express how I feel and what I care about, so it can still be a surprise for me how much people emotionally invest in the things that I make. It nearly always makes people smile or exclaim something, and the extra benefit is when they find out that it’s made from something that was ready to be thrown away. The polarity of that is always special and memorable for people and is likely a reason that all waste reuse has an impact beyond that which a new material on its own can generate. The legacy of a product makes it all the more interesting, as waste has lots of lives before it. I pour a lot of myself into every piece I make and thank the way that I market myself and my work for that. I talk and share a lot with the people who buy from me and I know that when they look at something I have made, see the creative as much as the creation. It’s another aspect that helps the waste I chose to reuse, as I’m determined to package myself up with the product as a way of giving the best chance of striking a light in a customer.

How do you feel opinions towards waste as a raw material are changing?

What I think is really helpful is how much awareness has grown around the issues of climate change. The primary objective is to create with better and non-toxic materials and to use up what exists already so that more doesn’t need to be produced. It’s still novel and notable to recycle instead of using raw materials in product design and I’m looking forward to a day when it’s just considered standard to look for a reusable option first before using something new. As a designer it can be more fussy and time consuming to use waste rather than buying in big predictable sheets of material, but educators and informed creatives are drawing attention to the fact that ongoing consumption is a zero-sum game. If we are going to move forward in a way that isn’t destructive for ourselves or the planet, we’re going to have to make creative accommodations, and that’s definitely something that is talked about more than it used to be.

What do you think the future holds for waste as a raw material?

As material scarcity starts to increase – either through increased demand from populations or reduction in the amount of raw materials still available – I have no doubt that we will all get more creative with our production cycles through necessity alone. It seems likely that some dramatic environmental activity will also remind consumers of what the status quo is doing to our resources as well, and so it’s likely that there will be a shift in concern that will start to hopefully move us over to using waste in production more. It will be great to see technology and connectivity play a bigger part in reallocating materials, and all the while our systems and apps develop there’s a big opportunity to use that connectivity to deliver information about resources and what is available. Imagine a time before eBay, and think how much was thrown away because we couldn’t find someone who wanted that exact item. It’s beautiful! I would love to see increased connection providing more circular solutions like this.

To read the article at its source click here, or find out more about Zoe Murphy here.

‘The resources we need are no longer in the ground, but in landfill – a circular economy is our only option.’ (Dezeen)

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Glassware by Simón Ballan

Take Aimee Bollu for example. This Nottingham-based designer-maker collects ‘the detritus of the urban landscape’ – rubbish to you or me – and slip-casts or hand-turns vessels to suit each found object, elevating it from street litter to objet d’art. The gallery-quality pieces challenge our perceptions of what we throw away.

Dutch designer Sanne Visser has worked out that there is one natural material that only becomes more abundant with population growth – human hair. She cycles around London hairdressers collecting their waste, has it spun into yarn, makes the yarn into rope and then uses knotting, macrame and weaving techniques to make bags, nets, climbing cords and even a swing.

London-based designer Yinka Ilori sees discarded chairs, not as waste, or even just as furniture, but as objects with the power to change perspectives. If Chairs Could Talk is his collection of five seats, each made from combinations of discarded pieces, that tell the stories of his childhood friends – lawyers, actors and those caught in a criminal justice system they’ve lost all faith in. For Yinka, the longer an object has been around, the more it has to say.

As unlikely as it may sound Simón Ballan uses waste gold in his glassware. Jagua is the crushed ore that is left over from gold mining, and even once it has been chemically treated to remove as much gold as possible, there is still a little left. Jagua is typically dumped into rivers, together with those chemicals, causing pollution downstream. In collaboration with local craftspeople, Ballan used Jagua to colour hand-blown recycled glass, demonstrating its value and keeping it out of the river.

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For Tobias Juretzek of Studio Nito, unwanted clothing carries not just environmental, but emotional, baggage. By shaping used garments into chair forms, he hopes to capture the memories they hold and demonstrate the value of the things we discard, reframing our perception of waste and making us think twice before we discard something old only to replace it with something new.

Have you ever heard of a b-stock egg? Of the 1.1 trillion eggs laid every year, these are the ones that don’t make it into the egg boxes on supermarket shelves, because of their shape, size or colour. Hannover-based Basse Stittgen is turning them into egg cups, not because he thinks the world needs more egg cups, but because he wants to make us aware of the hidden waste in food supply chains and do something about it.

Inspired by the indigenous people of her native Puerto Rico, Ana Cristina Quiñones has made a series of vessels from the organic waste created by the consumption of plantain and coffee – two of Puerto Rico’s cultural staples. She hopes to echo the imperfection found in the natural world and demonstrate the beauty of waste.

Dirk van der Kooij melts down anything he can get his hands on – CD cases, agricultural tubing, chocolate moulds, even his own prototypes – and turns it all into a candy-like mish-mash of colours, which he presses into furniture and lighting that tell stories of their origins. The idea came about as a way to use his own waste but has become so successful he is now taking in local businesses’ plastic waste too.

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And finally, The New Raw want to empower a whole city. If you recycle your plastic in Thessaloniki in Greece, you can decide what you want it to be turned into. Their collection of 3D-printed public furniture always includes a bench, but citizens can choose the colour and add features such as a tree-tub, a bike rack, a water bowl for a dog, and even bookshelves. Their print-on-demand system both reduces waste and encourages recycling.

It would be a stretch to suggest that these projects alone offer the solution to Kunzig’s ‘mother of all environmental problems’, but they do suggest a different way of thinking. If we can reframe our own ideas about waste as these designers and makers have, we will have taken a significant step towards a thriving circular economy – one that can meet the needs of the present, while ensuring that future generations can meet their needs too. And in all honesty, we don’t have a lot of choice – or a lot of time.

To read the article at its source click here.

Stitch by Stitch Talk

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Stitch by Stitch invited Katie to take part in their series of Instagram Live talks. Katie spoke to Stitch by Stitch co-director Karen Sear Shimali on the subject of sustainability in interiors.

Vancouver Zero Waste Conference

In November 2020 I was invited to deliver the closing keynote for the 10th annual Vancouver Zero Waste Conference.

For 10 years the Zero Waste Conference has been at the forefront of Canada’s circular economy journey. I joined keynote speakers: Beau Lotto, Chelsea Rochman, Michael Green, Suzanne Lee, Hon. Jonathan Wilkinson and Horacio Barbeito.

Sessions included: new materials, the built environment, and how to build back better.

Circular&Co Turn Discarded Single-Use Coffee Cups into Reusable Ones (Circular by Design, Design Milk)

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Tell me a little bit about your childhood, education and background in terms of how you first became interested in creativity, design and sustainability.

Wizardry, in a word! To me, product design is a type of witchcraft. I mean that positively because when I was a child the ability to turn what started out as an idea or a drawing in my head into reality seemed magical. Even now, it seems magical and that’s what drives me. Designers are in a unique position of being able to turn ideas – dreams – into reality. You have got the functional goals, and you have got every aspect of the thing right in order to meet them, and I find that fascinating and thrilling. From a practical level in education, I enjoyed making things and being hands-on. I liked the fact you could have an idea in your head first and then develop it all the way through to something that would eventually stand there in front of you doing its thing – something beautiful, tangible and lovely.

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How would you describe Circular&Co – and the Reusable Coffee Cups in particular?

Circular&Co is a mission to try to make all our products follow the circular economy and design model. But then we also have a mission to try to educate, not just consumers, but also trade and industry on how to become more circular too. The reason for that is we genuinely believe it’s the future. We are running out of resources, and the only conceivable way to prevent that is to reuse what we have already got. It’s really quite simple and straightforward. The design has to change, and we have to adapt to see that before we run out of time. I don’t think anyone can really argue with us on that – it’s coming and things have to change.

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The Circular Cup itself is best described as the ambassador or pioneer of what we deem a circular model when it comes to design. It has been designed with circularity in mind: it uses as much recycled content as possible; it is designed for longevity, and it is designed to last for 10 years. We have designed the ability to replace components that might wear out to extend its life. And we’ve designed it to be recycled at the end of its life – through a curbside recycling service or our worldwide take-back scheme. It is about making a product last for as long as possible, and then capturing it again and turning it back into another cup, or another product, and those are key pillars of circular design.

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What inspired this project?

This project was not actually inspired – we were asked to do it! As a company, we design not just our own products but products for other brands – from a circular perspective. So, we will look at and analyze their waste streams and then suggest products that could be made from that waste stream. That results in all kinds of products from a pencil to a pallet – it is about turning their waste into a functional useful product, on budget. When Hugh Fernley Whittingstall and the BBC announced to the world that single-use coffee cups weren’t getting recycled, the coffee industry approached us to see if we could help. We quickly worked out a way of recycling the whole cup, so we didn’t have to separate the inner liner from the paper, which is obviously very complicated, and isn’t something that can be done through general paper recycling – hence the problem! The obvious product to turn them into was a reusable cup – that started to attack the problem at both ends, so that is how the project came about.

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What waste (and other) materials are you using, how did you select those materials and how do you source them?

Across the business, we source a vast array of different waste materials from other brands, but they tend to be problematic materials because anything that is easy to recycle is already being recycled. Of course, we have the infrastructure to cope with card, aluminum, paper and ‘easy’ plastics, but it’s the other stuff where the infrastructure hasn’t been built yet where we really specialize. That’s where the circular economy really kicks in because when you design a product from waste, you create demand for that material. That stimulus in demand, coupled with that material being used in a higher value product, justifies the cost of that material being collected, processed and recycled and hence you have the ability to turn that processed material into a product. So circular design stimulates demand for awkward materials and creates a sustainable economic model for that material be picked up, collect, and processed. Before we designed the Circular Cup there was one, possibly, two companies in the UK collecting paper cups and recycling them, now there are 18 – and that has been, in part, due to this circular model that we have introduced targeting this problematic material.

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When did you first become interested in using waste as raw material and what motivated this decision?

When I started Circular&Co (then ashortwalk) 17 years ago, I was told my product should be either cheap or unique and I wanted it to be unique. Rather than just trying to develop a product for a new market or to fill a new need, I realized there was another way of approaching product development and that was to look at the fundamentals of how you design and the materials you use. So, it was partly about trying to be unique in the marketplace. The second part was just a moral obligation, I knew that it was technically possible to start making products out of waste materials. The only thing made of waste in those early days was sheet materials made from melted wellies or melted CD cases and that kind of approach. They were expensive to make and not particularly commercial, so I saw an opportunity to use recycled materials to make aesthetically pleasing and highly functional products. First and foremost, the product had to fulfill a need and perform well, but the second part was to make it out of reused material.

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What processes do the materials have to undergo to become the finished product?

Importantly the processes involved in capturing and reusing waste are generally lower in energy and carbon emissions compared to using virgin materials. If we use the Circular Cup as an example; used cups are collected within cafes, separated from general waste and recycling, stacked and sent to a recycling facility. There, they are compressed and bailed. They are then transported to a processing facility that cleans, shreds and compounds the cup with recycled plastic to form a resin. This resin can be used in conventional manufacturing techniques such as injection moulding, extrusion and compression moulding. The circular industry will always attempt to try and keep this process in the tightest possible geographical area, so the Circular Cup sources waste materials near the production facility.

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What happens to your products at the end of their life – can they go back into the circular economy?

We design our products specifically to feed into the circular economy by ensuring that they are easy to recycle. It is important to note that products must be designed for the end of their life, in a way that fits into the infrastructure that we have established. Many products can claim to be recyclable, and just about everything is in principle, but they won’t be if there isn’t the infrastructure to support this. If we feel there may not be the infrastructure to recycle, then we offer take-back schemes for all our products to accommodate for this. Customers can send these items back to us and receive a discount on new products, ensuring these resources get recycled and reused.

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How did you feel the first time you saw the transformation from waste material to product/prototype?

Relieved! With any research and development process and any new product, there is always a pressure that you put on yourself – you just hope it is going to work! I would like to say excited, but I think for all designers you are initially just relieved it worked! After that comes the excitement, and with the Circular Cup, I always remember the first time I saw it being used by a member of the public. I was at Exeter services on the M5 and my two children both shouted “Daddy, daddy, other there! There’s someone with a Circular Cup!” and lo and behold there was a guy queuing up for Burger King with a cup in hand and that was the first time we had seen anyone with one. That’s the pleasure you get as a designer, and when you’re looking at a circular design, it’s not only that you’re providing a functional cup that people love, but you’re also making a difference in that you’re using waste materials and hopefully educating people too, so it isn’t just a cup.

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How have people reacted to this project?

It’s won lots of recycling awards and gets great consumer reviews and what I find really interesting is that a lot of that is because it’s just functionally a really good design, which I’m really proud of. Yes, it is made from waste and everything that involves and everything that delivers driving change, but first and foremost it is a really well-designed product. it does exactly what everybody needs in a cup. It is completely leak-proof, it is thermally insulated, it is robust, it lasts a long time, it has got a unique, easy-to-use push-lid. First and foremost, people love it because it just works. They seem to be quite relieved that they have finally found a reusable cup that works and that is lovely and something to be really proud of.

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How do you feel opinions towards waste as a raw material are changing?

We have noticed a huge shift in the last three to four years – we are busier than ever because people realize that the world needs to go circular. In the UK, legislating and policy are changing. We have already seen a waste bill requiring a lot of food packaging to have 25% recycled content by 2025, so producer responsibility is starting to come in. It is only a matter of time before that kind of legislation applies to white goods too. Consumers are starting to appreciate the value in making products from waste materials and people are increasingly willing to spend more and support that – especially the younger generation.

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What do you think the future holds for waste as a raw material?

Purely out of necessity, at some point, the world will have to change because we are going to run out of resources. If you just want the next glorious product that everyone is going to buy, if we are not careful, it just will not be there because you have got nothing left to make it from. We are already at a stage where companies are mining old landfill sites to try and get back the raw materials that 50 years ago, we just simply discarded. It might look quite bleak because we were running out of resources, but on the other hand, it’s a fascinating and exciting time to be involved with design. We’ve got the ability to change and move forward. We hold that power and we have the opportunity. I think we’ll look back on this as the moment in time when we all woke up, realized mass consumption was fundamentally flawed, and then turned it around. So waste represents a great opportunity and it is going to be the next great area of innovation. I really believe that, so I think it is an exciting future!

To read the article at its source click here, or find out more about Circular&Co here.

The Human Instinct to Create panel (London Craft Week 2020)

In November 2020 I was invited to chair a panel discussion on The Human Instinct to Create for London Craft Week 2020.

The panel included Kanupriya Verma, CEO of Ikai Asai, with Ikai Asai collaborators Matthew Sasa, Noor Salma, Ayush Kasliwal, and Dharmesh Jadeja.

Photo credit: Ikai Asai

I’m dreaming of a waste-free Christmas (Crafts Magazine)

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Some 114,000 tonnes of plastic packaging will be thrown away and not recycled this Christmas, along with four million portions of turkey dinner, eight million Christmas trees and, according to Defra, enough paper to gift-wrap the entire island of Guernsey. If all those stats have got your tinsel in a twist, fear not – there are plenty of ways to embrace the festive season without compromising your eco-ethics.

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Christmas trees are traditionally cut down, used for just a few weeks and then dumped, emitting harmful greenhouse gases as they decompose. Some local garden centres offer replanting services for rooted trees and Giles Miller Studio is launching the Goodness Tree on Kickstarter (kickstarter.com, £65). Made from corrugated cardboard, it is expected to last at least five years and can be fully recycled. For added feel-good factor, the trees are assembled by those without work, providing vital income when it is needed most. Any profits will be donated to homelessness charity Shelter.

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Photo: Caro Weiss

When it comes to wrapping, take a tip from the Japanese and embrace the art of furoshiki – or cloth wrapping. The practice dates back thousands of years in Japan and is now gaining worldwide popularity as an eco-friendly alternative to wrapping papers, with shiny, glittery coatings that make them almost impossible to recycle. Laura Spring’s Fabric Wraps (lauraspring.co.uk, from £9.50) are designed for just this purpose – or use a silk scarf or a screen-printed tea-towel that can double up as an extra gift.

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At least half of us will receive an unwanted gift this Christmas, so avoid yours being regifted, donated, or worse still, joining the 5% of Christmas gifts that go straight into the bin, and choose wisely. Think about an experience, such as an embroidery masterclass with textile artist Ekta Kaul – offered virtually or in-person in her London studio (ektakaul.com, from £70) – or a throwing course at The Leach Pottery in Cornwall’s St Ives (leachpottery.com, from £335 for three days).

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Photo: Camilla Greenwell

Or go fully circular and buy a gift made from waste. Aimee Bollu combines the ‘detritus of the urban landscape’ with slip-cast or hand-turned vessels, elevating street litter to objet d’art (aimeebollu.com, from £150 for a set of three).

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Bethan Gray’s Exploring Eden collection, created in collaboration with Nature Squared, includes the Pearl Shell Paper Weight (bethangray.com, £660) hand-crafted from the mother-of-pearl shell threads leftover from river pearl cultivation. Netherlands-based Studio Lindey Cafsia and Studio Carbon have designed a series of five cubical objects called Morphs (adorno.design, from £79), which can be used as anything from candle holders to key trays – they are made from a bio-composite, the main ingredient of which is cow dung, but don’t worry, they are odour-free. And because they are unglazed, they can be broken down and composted or remade at the end of their lives.

Waste-Free-Christmas

For more ideas, those in London can pop into The Home of Sustainable Things (thehost.store) in Islington, where they will find Studio Blast’s Myceliated Vase (£125), made from take-away cups that have been digested using mycelium – the thread-like feeding network of a fungus. Try one of the zero waste shops popping up all over the UK – from Earth Food Love in Totnes to the Zero Green Shop in Bristol and Store Brighton on the south coast – where you can often find locally-made gifts alongside their mainstay of dried goods. Or explore German online platform Eyes Wide (eyeswi.de) where you can filter products by ethical concern.

Shop mindfully, wrap with care, and rethink your tree – and there’s every chance you can enjoy a waste-free Christmas this year. Just make sure you eat all that leftover turkey.

You can buy Issue 285 of Crafts Magazine here.

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Do Something Good (Hole & Corner Magazine)

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Photo: Studio Plastique (above)

It started with a throwaway line in my first business plan: ‘Do something good.’ A 12-year career in advertising had reached its natural conclusion when I found out I was being made redundant via a Post-it note. I wanted to do more than help big companies sell more cars / lip balm / gym memberships. I wanted to be a writer, and specifically I wanted to write about design. I’d seen Modernism: Design for a Modern World at the V&A in 2006 and was intoxicated with the notion that design and making could change the world for the better. I hit on the idea of writing about new designers. They were as idealistic as I was and often got missed by mainstream media for want of a press release or proper photography. Through my blog, confessions of a design geek, I awarded a bursary worth £10,000 in kind each year to help get their purpose-driven products to market. I travelled to the world’s design fairs, and launched an independent magazine, Fiera, to cover the world-changing ideas I discovered. But somewhere along the way, I lost my fire. Having tracked these designers for a few years, I realised that many of them abandoned the lofty ambitions of their graduate projects the moment a big design firm handed them a contract. Many others simply didn’t leave university with the tools or resources to make good on their intentions. And if they weren’t changing the world, neither was I.

Wasted-Katie-treggiden

By this point my writing career had taken off. Alongside the blog and the magazine, I had written four books and was contributing to titles such as The Guardian and Elle Decoration. I had a growing roster of copywriting clients for whom I could combine the skills of my two careers. I had achieved everything I had set out to and more. And yet that line in my business plan niggled at me – ‘do something good’. Was I doing enough? Or was I just helping big companies sell more chairs / sofas / cabinets? I needed to refocus, to find my North Star again. I took a deep breath and applied for a place on a part-time Master’s programme in History of Design at the University of Oxford – the only place that offers design history part time.

Katie-Treggiden-Wasted-Super-Local
Photo: Super Local

I closed confessions of a design geek and Fiera to focus on my studies and allowed myself the first year to explore the multitude of subjects that a course covering multidisciplinary design from 1851–1951 offers. I studied plastics, ceramics (the subject of my third book) and textiles (my fourth). I researched feminism, craftivism and the circular economy. I had almost decided to dedicate the rest of my career to uncovering the forgotten female potters of the 20th century when we broke for summer. Another chance to refocus. I reflected on those first heady days of design writing when I believed that making could change the world for the better and I wondered if it really could. With four of the nine planetary boundaries that define a ‘safe operating space for humanity’ already crossed and a UN report described by scientists as a ‘screaming warning signal’ that we may have just five years to reverse climate change before it is too late, there was little doubt in my mind about the change the world needed. ‘Can craft save the world?’ That question set the course for my second year at Oxford. I wrote papers on bio-facture, plastic waste and repair, explored every aspect of the circular economy, and laid the groundwork for my latest book Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure, and a new podcast, Circular with Katie Treggiden. Most importantly, I found my focus. That question has inspired an emerging body of work and I hope it will continue to do so for at least the next five years. Can craft save the world? I don’t know, but I sure as hell intend to find out.

You can buy Issue 20 of Hole & Corner here.