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Blue Ombak chair next to a pool
CategoriesSustainable News

Sungai Watch chair consists of 2,000 plastic bags from Bali’s rivers

By Zarkon Group,

Indonesian non-profit Sungai Watch has unveiled the debut furniture launch from its design studio Sungai Design, aimed at creating useful products from the mountains of plastic waste that it fishes from Bali’s rivers every day.

The Ombak lounge chair, created in collaboration with American designer Mike Russek, is made using a sheet material produced entirely from discarded plastic bags, with around 2,000 needed for every chair.

The bags are collected by Sungai Watch, which is on a mission to eliminate ocean plastic pollution using its own system of floating barriers to capture the waste as it flows along Indonesia’s rivers.

Blue Ombak chair next to a poolBlue Ombak chair next to a pool
Sungai design has launched its first-ever product

Since its inception three years ago, the organisation has installed 270 barriers and collected more than 1.8 million kilograms of plastic, resulting in a huge stockpile of material.

Plastic bags are the most frequently collected item and also the least sought after in terms of future value, which led the team to focus on creating a product collection using this readily available resource.

“Collecting and amassing plastic waste solves one part of the problem of plastic pollution, the second challenge is what to actually do with all of this plastic,” said Kelly Bencheghib, who co-founded Sungai Watch with her brothers Sam and Gary.

White chair by Sungai Design on a concrete backdropWhite chair by Sungai Design on a concrete backdrop
The Ombak lounge chair is made from discarded plastic bags

“As we collected hundreds of thousands of kilograms of plastics, we started to look at plastic as an excellent source material for everyday products we all need and use, from furniture to small goods to even art,” she added.

Sungai Design has created two variations of the Ombak lounge chair – with and without armrests – manufactured in Bali using processes that aim to minimise waste during production.

The plastic bags are thoroughly washed to remove any impurities before being shredded and heat-pressed to form hard, durable sheets.

Close-up of white Ombak chairClose-up of white Ombak chair
The bags are heat-pressed to form sheets

Precision CNC cutting machinery is used to carve out the different components, which are carefully shaped to minimise material use and leave no offcuts.

The panels are connected by a concealed metal structure, resulting in a pure and visually lightweight form with a simple slatted construction.

Although the design is available in three distinct colourways – Granite Black, Ocean Blue and Concrete White – the upcycling process produces slight variations in the tone and texture of the material, meaning each chair has a unique quality.

Ombak means wave in Indonesian and the name references Sungai Design’s commitment to cleaning up rivers and oceans.

In line with this aim, Sundai Design has pledged to minimise its carbon footprint and put in place processes to audit and track the sources of the plastic used in its products.

The company is planning to release other products using the same material and, as a social enterprises, will donate part of its revenue to Sungai Watch to further the project as it seeks to clean up rivers in Indonesia and beyond.

Black chair by Sungai Design next to a treeBlack chair by Sungai Design next to a tree
The chair was designed to minimise material use and leave no offcuts

“There is so much potential with this material,” added Sam Bencheghib. “When you choose a chair from our collection, you’re not just selecting a piece of furniture; you’re embracing the transformation from waste to a beautiful, functional piece of art that has found its place in your home.”

Every year, Indonesia accounts for 1.3 million of the eight million tonnes of plastic that end up in our oceans, making it one of the world’s worst marine polluters.

Other attempts at collecting this waste and finding new uses for it have come from design studio Space Available, which set up a circular design museum with a recycling station and facade made of 200,000 plastic bottles in Bali in 2022.

White, blue and black Ombak chairs with armrests by Sungai DesignWhite, blue and black Ombak chairs with armrests by Sungai Design
The chair is available in three colours

The studio also teamed up with DJ Peggy Gou turn rubbish collected from streets and waterways in Indonesia into a chair with an integrated vinyl shelf.

“The trash is just everywhere, in the streets and rivers,” Space Available founder Daniel Mitchell told Dezeen.

“It’s not the fault of the people, there’s just very little structural support, waste collection or education,” he added. “Households are left to dispose of their own waste and most ends up in rivers or being burned.”

Reference

Revolutionising roads with upcycled plastic waste
CategoriesSustainable News

Revolutionising roads with upcycled plastic waste

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: While we like to think that any waste placed in a recycling bin is recycled into new products, the reality is that in some places, the refuse is either incinerated or exported to landfills elsewhere. This was the situation faced by Singaporean Oh Chu Xian. In response, Oh and her sister founded Magorium, a deep tech firm that develops sustainable solutions for plastic waste.

Oh’s family had been in the road construction and asphalt manufacturing business for almost five decades, so this was a logical place for Magorium to start. The company’s product, NEWBitumen, is a replacement for bitumen, the liquid binder used to hold asphalt together. Where traditional bitumen is produced using crude oil, NEWBitumen is made from plastic waste that would have otherwise been considered non-recyclable and destined for the landfill.

Contaminated plastic waste is put through a multi-step process, which breaks down the long chains of polymers in the plastic, and then reformulates the materials to create a substance with similar characteristics to bitumen. By-products, such as synthetic gas, are captured, cleaned, and used as a heating source to power the process. Organic contaminants are converted to biochar and used as filler.

At the 2023 CapitaLand Sustainability X Challenge, Magorium won the Emerging Startup Award and received S$150,000 (around €103,000) as a result. In future, the startup hopes to take NEWBitumen beyond Singapore and help stimulate circular economies in other countries around the world.

Coping with plastic waste is the goal of a growing number of innovations spotted by Springwise. These include the recycling of plastic waste into chemicals and rentable packaging made from recycled plastic.

Written By: Lisa Magloff

Reference

Recycling plastic waste into multi-purpose chemicals
CategoriesSustainable News

Recycling plastic waste into multi-purpose chemicals

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: The COVID pandemic shined a spotlight on the huge amount of plastic waste produced by disposable Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). While PPE such as medical masks, respirators, and surgical gowns are essential health equipment, most of it is highly unsustainable, made using petroleum-based, non-biodegradable polymers. These materials, along with other post-consumer plastic, are not biodegradable and often end up incinerated.

In 2021, as part of the Innovative Solutions Canada programme, which began as the Canadian government’s drive to find new solutions to COVID-19 challenges, Canadian startup GreenMantra was tasked with recycling this PPE waste.

The startup has developed an efficient and cost-effective system for recycling plastics – including bottles, food boxes, film, as well as PPE – into feedstock that can be used to produce speciality waxes and polymers. These, in turn, are used as additives in construction materials like asphalt, roofing shingles, and plastic piping.

GreenMantra’s process operates at relatively low temperature and pressure, making it energy efficient. The system involves depolymerising waste plastics and shortening the length of the polymer chains to produce the wax additive. The company claims that construction products made from its additives outperform fossil-based equivalents.

Creating circular processes that recycle plastic waste into new products is the goal of a huge number of recent innovations Springwise has spotted. These include converting used nappies into pet products and roof tiles made from post-consumer plastics.

Written By: Lisa Magloff

Reference

Photo of plastic bottles
CategoriesSustainable News

We need to design for human behaviour to get rid of single-use plastics

By Zarkon Group,

Packaging designs aimed at boosting recycling rates and reducing the prevalence of single-use plastics are destined to fail unless they help to change people’s behaviour, writes Matt Millington.

No one is particularly happy when they find out there’s plastic waste on Mount Everest, or in the deep oceans, or in human blood. It’s not controversial to say that we need to stop churning the stuff out and throwing it away.

One way for businesses to tackle single-use plastics is to design their packaging to be reusable, but so far efforts have not succeeded at scale.

For example, reusable McDonald’s cups are only getting a 40 per cent return rate from customers in Germany, despite consumers paying a €2 deposit. When Starbucks trialled reusable cups in the closed environment of its Seattle HQ, where returning them is presumably straightforward, the return rate still didn’t exceed 80 per cent.

We weren’t exactly succumbing to dehydration on the streets before coffee shops designed takeaway cups

It’s not that we don’t care: research suggests consumer motivation towards environmentally positive behaviour is high. It’s that as a society we have developed an expectation of convenience: to have what we want, when we want it, without any consequences.

This is entirely unreasonable – we weren’t exactly succumbing to dehydration on the streets before coffee shops designed takeaway cups – but while it persists, consumers are very unlikely to switch to reusable alternatives if it puts them out. And without a high return-and-reuse rate, reusable packaging is usually worse for the environment, owing to the much higher quantities of plastic involved.

This is why we need to design for human behaviour if we’re ever to get rid of single-use plastics. You cannot control what people will do with packaging once it leaves your premises, but you can influence them by factoring behavioural psychology into the design of the packaging itself.

The first step is understanding how consumers interact with the pack, throughout its lifecycle. Where are they and what are they doing when they open it? What’s their headspace? How about when they’re finished with it? There’s a big difference between how someone interacts with a reusable plate after a meal in a cafeteria, and how they interact with the reusable salad bowl they’re gobbling from on the lunchtime rush back to the office.

Then it’s about understanding the levers you can pull to nudge people towards more planet-positive decisions. Behavioural psychology shows there are three factors that work together to drive behavioural change: increasing consumer motivation to recycle or reuse, raising their ability to do so, and providing a trigger to remind them.

Take plastic bags. While usage of single-use bags has dramatically decreased in the UK since legislation requiring retailers to charge for them came into force in 2015, reusable alternatives have had mixed success. According to a report by the Environmental Investigation Agency and Greenpeace, 57 “bags for life” were sold for each household in the country in 2019 – more than one a week.

It’s possible to go too far in signalling that a pack isn’t disposable

Online grocer Ocado uses recyclable bags instead, but it has had success in achieving returns because it pulls all three behavioural psychology levers. Consumers are happy to receive bonus reward points for each bag they give back (motivation).

The bags are straightforward to return and customers know not to throw them away because of their clear messaging and distinct off-grey colour, which follows from not using harmful bleaching agents (ability). And because the driver usually asks for old bags after delivery, they’re unlikely to forget (trigger).

Ability is the key consideration. If you wanted to return the packaging from a takeaway burger meal, it would mean washing and then carrying around a bulky burger box, fries box and cup, and either making a special trip to the restaurant or waiting until you happen upon another branch.

New Zealand start-up FOLDPROJECT has done some interesting work here, trying to make boxes more portable. It’s a simple idea: a machine-washable lunch kit that packs down to a flat sheet. The challenge is that because it is so minimal, its form and material make it look disposable.

One way to ensure a reusable design communicates its intended purpose is through material choice. For example, using explicitly post-consumer recycled plastic could be a visual shorthand to communicate a planet-positive intent, as could using longer-lasting materials like glass or stoneware.

Interestingly, it’s possible to go too far in signalling that a pack isn’t disposable. When McDonald’s introduced reusable packaging in its restaurants in France, it found the packaging kept disappearing, only to reappear on eBay. It looked reusable and on-brand, but was too novel for some, defeating the object.

So long as we have bins on every street that lead directly to landfill, we are going to struggle

Businesses cannot just switch to reusable packaging – even when intelligently designed – and expect results. So long as we have bins on every street that lead directly to landfill we are going to struggle.

We therefore need to think beyond just designing the packaging to be sustainable, and think about how we design systems to be sustainable. In a circular economy that means service and experience design, packaging, industrial design, marketing, data, artificial intelligence and logistics all working hand-in-hand to keep the pack “in the loop”. It will therefore need to be an ecosystem effort.

We’re already seeing innovations that can help make reuse and return viable in the age of convenience. For example, when is a bin not a bin? When it’s a Bjarke Ingels Group-designed TURN system – a remote, digitally connected, RFID-enabled, packaging-asset reclaim and sorting network, which rejects unwanted trash.

Similarly, we’re seeing nudge messaging along the pack journey, and even packs that communicate their status themselves. Scottish start-up Insignia has designed colour-changing labels that reveal how long a pack has been exposed to the environment. Imagine taking this further, with reusable packaging telling you what to do with it, and offering prompts or rewards to encourage you.

Reusability hasn’t hit scale yet, but we should be optimistic that it can, not least because we’ve been there before. Milk deliveries were once the norm, with bottles returned, not discarded.

There’s no reason that we can’t get back to this more sustainable approach across the board, without having to endure too much inconvenience. All that’s required is a little ingenuity, and a lot of collaboration.

The photography is by Jas Min via Unsplash.

Matt Millington is a sustainable-design strategist at PA Consulting.

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Turning the tide on plastic with reusable packaging
CategoriesSustainable News

Turning the tide on plastic with reusable packaging

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: E-commerce is growing steadily, with one forecast predicting that it will reach 23 per cent of total worldwide retail sales by 2027. Unless innovative solutions are found, this growth will come with an equivalent increase in the volume of packaging. Rather than focus on recycling alone, several organisations are now turning to reuse as a way to more rapidly reduce pollution and improve the circularity of their operational processes.

In Germany, a company called The Ocean Package offers a packaging-as-a-service solution consisting of fully traceable reusable boxes. Each box consists of up to 70 per cent recycled polypropylene plastic and 30 per cent virgin materials. To avoid unnecessary dyeing and material treatment, the boxes are all grey – the colour of plastic after it’s been recycled. Up to one-quarter of the weight of the boxes, which are designed to be easily flattened and returned via postboxes, is recovered ocean-bound plastic from the North Sea.

Most of the companies that partner with The Ocean Package are in the subscription and rental sector and have already established reusable packaging cycles. In this application, the organisation’s service integrates seamlessly with these existing processes, and partners agree to return all packaging for recycling at the end of its useful life. The company is also exploring potential collaborations to bring its reusable solution to the B2C sector.

The boxes come in four sizes ranging from small to extra-large, and the accompanying logistics platform tracks every package for its full life cycl. The platform also provides detailed analysis of a company’s processes, and the data can help monitor ESG performance indicators.

The Ocean Package expects to use each box at least 20 times. Each use reduces carbon emissions by 80 per cent from that of traditional packaging systems, and waste is reduced by up to 95 per cent when compared to cardboard. The company’s development plans include expanding its network of partners and working with a broader range of organisations, including those that are not as far along in the circular economy path.

Corn-based laminate and a mushroom-based biodegradable polystyrene alternative are two examples of material innovations in Springwise’s library that could help us replace plastics.

Written By: Keely Khoury

Reference

Sustainable footprints: from ocean plastic to chic shoes
CategoriesSustainable News

Sustainable footprints: from ocean plastic to chic shoes

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) brings together more than 400 member organisations to build a circular economy and replace single-use plastics. With time running out for us to make the necessary changes to our damaging reliance on plastics, advocates for change continue to emphasise the multi-faceted approach needed to build a solution. Organisations in every sector must work creatively and quickly to reduce their use of virgin, and any, plastic.  

In Australia, fashion brand Aciae works to the Circle to Zero principle that strives to eliminate waste from every step of its production processes and contribute to the overall reduction of global plastic pollution. The company’s name is Latin for thread and refers to its practice of turning single-use plastic waste into the thread that’s used to create its machine-washable, waterproof, recyclable shoes. Gathered plastics are cleaned, shredded, and then melted down for extrusion. The extruded fibres are then spun into thread, completing the transformation of trash into fabric.  

Aciae works with a number of organisations to source its plastic-based threads, including Repreve Our Ocean, for a line of designs that uses ocean-bound plastics. Aciae’s shoes come in a range of styles and colours, all of which are machine-washable and fully recyclable at the end of their life. That circularity helps Aciae close its production loop and make strides towards its goal of achieving zero carbon emissions by 2030.  

As well as providing the fashion industry with an example of ways of working that reduce waste, Aciae also turns a global scourge into something useful while lessening reliance on virgin materials. The brand highlights design for durability, repair, and disassembly by making recycling at a product’s end-of-life an integral part of the initial creation of each pair of shoes. As part of the Australian Fashion Council, Aciae is helping guide the Council’s Seamless Stewardship programme, which seeks to reduce the country’s volume of clothing waste.  

Springwise’s library also showcases other methods of using recycled plastics for new products such as home construction materials and eyewear.

Written By: Keely Khoury

Reference

Recycling single-use plastic waste from labs
CategoriesSustainable News

Recycling single-use plastic waste from labs

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: Disposable plastics have become a crucial part of research and healthcare, especially for consumables like syringes and test tubes that need sterilisation. A lot of this laboratory and clinical plastic waste is sent to landfill or incinerated without a specialised recycling service.

This linear economy takes its toll on the environment. According to one study, lab-derived plastic waste could amount to 5.5 million tonnes a year around the globe. To address the problem, LabCycle has opened the UK’s first pilot plant that can recycle up to 60 per cent of plastic lab waste to make new lab equipment.  

Members of the LabCycle team have experience working in laboratories and were shocked by the amount of single-use plastic consumables that people had to go through in their daily work lives. In response, the company developed technology that enables contaminated plastic waste to be recycled from the laboratory to manufacture lab- and medical-grade consumables, promoting a circular economy approach within the research and healthcare sectors.  

After it is decontaminated, the plastic is turned into high-grade pellets the size of rice grains, which are then sent to LabCycle’s manufacturing partner to be transformed into new lab equipment like test tubes and Petri dishes. Waste doesn’t need to be sterilised beforehand, meaning less heat energy is required, and the company also specifies that water for the process can be reused, further reducing the environmental impact. 

LabCycle has recently set up its pilot recycling plant in a converted greenhouse on the University of Bath campus, and will be using the plant to recycle waste from the university’s engineering and science labs. The company is also working closely with the local NHS Blood and Transplant to repurpose their plastic waste. 

Single-use plastics pose a serious danger to the environment, but promoting a more circular economy can give these plastics a chance to be used again, instead of quickly being thrown into landfill. In the database, Springwise has spotted many innovations looking to boost circular practices, like trainers made from recycled waste materials or on-demand data that makes recycling easier.

Written By: Anam Alam

Reference

Turning post-consumer plastic into building materials
CategoriesSustainable News

Turning post-consumer plastic into building materials

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: Two issues that often face developing economies are a deficit in recycling infrastructure and the availability of affordable housing. Timao Group is aiming to provide an answer to both these problems through its provision of modular homes made from recycled plastic.  

Timao transforms post-consumer plastic into the materials necessary to create its modular homes, like interlocking blocks, universal beams, and plastic beams. In converting the recycled plastic into generic component parts, the homes can easily be constructed and extended, crucially reducing the cost of maintenance and labour. The company also utilises turnkey delivery and installation methods to make sure that construction of the houses is as simple as possible, with the construction systems being produced off-site to then be delivered and fully assembled on-site. 

The group believes in a triple-impact philosophy of its business model, meaning it aims to have a positive impact on both the social and environmental levels, without neglecting or risking economic profitability.  

Earlier this year, Timao received the SME Award at the Africa Climate Summit (ACS) High-level CEOs Roundtable and more recently, was selected as a participant in the third Project NINJA accelerator programme, which will help the company scale within the Kenyan market.  

The construction industry is brimming with new methods and materials to help make the homes of tomorrow more sustainable and affordable. Springwise has also spotted one company that upcycles plastic into building materials, as well as another that creates sustainable home insulation using natural wool.

Written By: Archie Cox

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What’s So Luxurious About Luxury Vinyl Tile, Part III: The Poison Plastic and Why "Recycling Will Not Save Us"
CategoriesArchitecture

What’s So Luxurious About Luxury Vinyl Tile, Part III: The Poison Plastic and Why “Recycling Will Not Save Us”

By Zarkon Group,

This article was written by Burgess Brown. Healthy Materials Lab is a design research lab at Parsons School of Design with a mission to place health at the center of every design decision. HML is changing the future of the built environment by creating resources for designers, architects, teachers, and students to make healthier places for all people to live. Check out their podcast, Trace Material.

Between 1950 and 2019, more than 7,000 million metric tons of plastic waste were generated. We add roughly 400 million metric tons to that figure every year. If your eyes glazed over while reading these frankly incomprehensible numbers, just know that our plastic waste problem is out of control. Recycling, the solution long promoted by the plastics industry as a panacea, is deeply flawed at best and entirely unfeasible at worst.

So, if recycling as we know it won’t save us, what do we do with the mounds of plastic clogging our waterways and landfills? Even if we could recycle plastics effectively at scale, does it make sense to recycle a toxic plastic like Luxury Vinyl Tile?

This article is Part III of a three-part series on the hazards of vinyl flooring.

  • Part I explores the “dirty climate secret” behind the popular material and shares some healthier, affordable alternatives.
  • Part II considers the long history of worker endangerment by the vinyl industry and how this legacy continues in China today.
  • Part III, this article, explores the dark side of recycling.

The Guilt Eraser

Municipal Solid Waste – Worker in recycling facility, The U.S. National Archives, Library of Environmental Images, (ORD), image via GetArchive

As early as the 1970s, plastics industry officials warned that effective recycling of plastic wasn’t feasible. One said in a 1974 speech that “there is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis.” And yet, the plastics industry forged ahead with its recycling messaging. Plastic’s enemy number one was the guilt people felt about the wastefulness of single use products. So even if the industry wasn’t actually recycling or protecting the environment, they needed consumers to think that they were.

One industry lobbyist called recycling the great “guilt-eraser”. “Recycling assures people that plastic isn’t just an infernal hanger-on; it has a useful afterlife. As soon as they recycle your product,” he explained, “they feel better about it.”

Throughout the ‘90s, as environmental pushback mounted, the plastics industry fought back. Recycling was their most important message, so they spread it far and wide. The industry spent over $250 million on public campaigns about the usefulness of plastic and its ability to be reused. They wanted people to feel safe and comfortable with their products. They also invested millions in recycling efforts, but those efforts have come up dramatically short. In 2021, the U.S. (by far the world’s biggest plastics polluter) only recycled around 5% of plastics.

We spoke to Kara Napolitano who is the Education and Outreach Coordinator for the Sims Municipal Recycling Center in Brooklyn, New York for an episode of our podcast, Trace Material. We cover the sordid history of plastics recycling and its uncertain future. Kara, who lives and breathes recycling, had this to say about how we should set our plastics priorities:

“My job is to teach people about recycling. But I have to bring attention to the fact that recycling is only halfway up that waste hierarchy of preferred methods for managing our waste. Recycling is not number one. Recycling will not save us. At the very top of that waste hierarchy — the most preferred thing to do to manage your waste — is to not create any waste in the first place.”

Kara reminded us that the well known waste management hierarchy goes: “Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.” If we are to reverse the course of our plastics crisis, we must focus our efforts on drastically reducing production and consumption of plastic all together.

The Poison Plastic

Image generated by Architizer using Midjourney

There are lots of questions that need answering about the future of recycling. While there is consensus that we should focus on reducing plastics production, there are debates raging about what to do with the mounds of plastic we’ve already created. There is, however, no question about PVC’s place in that future. From a health standpoint, PVC has no place in a circular plastics economy.

That’s because PVC is toxic at every stage of its life cycle. The building block of PVC, vinyl chloride, is a known human carcinogen. Then there are performance additives: plasticizers to make PVC flexible can disrupt the body’s endocrine system and heavy metals used to make it rigid are toxic too. These toxic chemicals are in the millions of homes across the country that utilize the number one flooring choice in the US: Luxury Vinyl Tile. And, these dangerous chemicals don’t magically disappear if PVC is recycled. When companies advertise recycled LVT or tout its ability to enter the circular economy, ask yourself: Would I paint my house with recycled lead paint?

Problematic and Unnecessary

The U.S. Plastics Pact is a group of “stakeholders across the plastics value chain” that are trying to create a circular economy for plastics in the United States. To be clear, this group is certainly not anti-plastics nor anti-recycling. Yet, they have labeled PVC plastic to be a “problematic and unnecessary” material and are working to eliminate it from all packaging by 2025. This is because PVC is “not currently reusable, recyclable or compostable with existing U.S. infrastructure at scale” and “contains hazardous chemicals or creates hazardous conditions that pose a significant risk to human health or the environment (applying the precautionary principle) during its manufacturing, recycling (whether mechanical or chemical), or composting process.”

PVC is incredibly difficult to recycle and it interferes with the recyclability of other plastics too. Even if recycling PVC at scale could be figured out, its carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting chemicals remain. These chemicals pose a threat to residents in the use phase and again to humans and the planet at disposal. The vast majority of PVC ends up in landfills and incinerators. When PVC is burned, a host of toxic chemicals, including dioxins, are released into the air, soil and water. While there may be hope for a future where some plastics are able to be effectively recycled at scale, PVC should not and will not be a part of that future.

Rethink, Redesign, Reform

We should continue to support innovations in plastics recycling. Exciting progress is being made in the field of biological recycling, which uses enzymes from bacteria, fungi and insects to break plastics down into their component parts. This allows for theoretically infinite recycling of plastics that could have a smaller carbon footprint than making virgin plastics.

What we should not do is continue to use recycling as a guilt eraser. No innovations in recycling can justify the continued production of materials as toxic as PVC, and therefore LVT. The most effective thing that we as designers and architects can do to protect humans and our planet, is stop specifying plastics (especially PVC) wherever possible. In part one of this series we shared a list of healthy, affordable alternatives to vinyl flooring. You can find other thoroughly vetted flooring options in our materials collection on the Healthy Materials Lab website.

We’ll leave you with a re-imagining of the waste management hierarchy (“reduce, reuse, recycle”) mentioned earlier from Chief Scientist of Environmental Health Sciences and friend of Healthy Materials Lab, Pete Myers:

Re-Think

Many applications of plastics are non-essential. Serious efforts should be made to identify the essential uses of plastics vs. non-essential.

Redesign

Chemists should be given the challenge of creating safer materials to use when the services of plastic are required.

Reform

The regulatory system needs to be reformed by incorporating 21st century biomedical science in its assessments of safety.

As architects and designers our charge as pivotal members of the design and construction industry is to re-think the design decision making process that has been “business as usual” for the last several decades. If we put the health of our bodies, the planet, and all those living there at the center of our design decisions, the way we build will radically change. That thinking has to extend to the entire lifecycle of the materials we use.

If we consider their impact from the time they leave the earth to the time they are returned to the earth, we will have no choice but to re-design our systems of production. These shifts in thinking will leave no place for toxic plastics or any other toxics in our work. Centering human and ecosystem health in design and construction will positively change the future for everyone.

Architizer is thrilled to announce the winners of the 11th Annual A+Awards! Interested in participating next season? Sign up for key information about the 12th Annual A+Awards, set to launch this fall.

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Recycled plastic lego bricks on a conveyor
CategoriesSustainable News

Lego ditches plans to make bricks from recycled plastic bottles

By Zarkon Group,

Danish toymaker Lego has abandoned its pilot programme to make recycled plastic bricks from discarded bottles after projections suggested that, adopted at scale, the material would ultimately have a higher carbon footprint.

The company introduced its first prototype bricks using recycled PET (rPET) in 2021 as part of the aim to have all of its products made from sustainable materials by the end of the decade.

But after two years of testing, Lego has now scrapped the project as calculations indicated that retooling its factories to process rPET – instead of the acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) used to form 80 per cent of its bricks – would ultimately generate more emissions over the product’s lifecycle.

Recycled plastic lego bricks on a conveyor
Lego scrapped efforts to make its bricks from recycled plastic bottles

“It’s like trying to make a bike out of wood rather than steel,” Lego’s head of sustainability Tom Brooks told the Financial Times, which broke the story.

“In order to scale production, the level of disruption to the manufacturing environment was such that we needed to change everything in our factories. After all that, the carbon footprint would have been higher. It was disappointing.”

The rPET also requires large amounts of energy for processing and drying, Brooks explained, as well as additional chemicals so it can rival the durability of normal Lego blocks.

Instead of repurposing plastic bottles, Lego says it is now looking to find bio-based and recycled substitutes for the individual chemicals that make up ABS, as well as investigating alternative solutions.

“We remain fully committed to making Lego bricks from sustainable materials by 2032,” a spokesperson for the company told Dezeen.

“We are currently testing and developing Lego bricks made from a range of alternative sustainable materials, including other recycled plastics and plastics made from alternative sources such as e-methanol.”

Man pouring recycled plastic pellets into funnel
The prototype bricks were made from recycled PET (rPET)

The company is also exploring the potential of bioplastics, which has formed some of the flora found in Lego kits since 2018 as well as the company’s recent Botanical Collection.

However, Lego CEO Niels Christiansen told the FT he believes no single material will be a silver bullet solution.

“We tested hundreds and hundreds of materials,” he said. “It’s just not been possible to find a material like that.”

Instead, part of Lego’s solution will be a focus on incremental emissions reductions as well as a takeback scheme, which the company is hoping to develop over the next few years so that unwanted bricks can be directly reused in new sets or recycled if they are no longer functional.

The news comes only a month after the company pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Previously, Lego had only committed to a 37 per cent emissions reduction by 2032 compared to 2019.

All images are courtesy of Lego.

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