Trend: Design Recycling

Growing eco-awareness inspires product design using recycled materials.

Trend Description:
One mans trash is the other mans treasure, as they say, and more and more designers are realizing this as they are increasingly challenged by the demands of a society generating more trash than ever before. Instead of using expensive materials many designers have started reusing disgarded objects and materials to create new and often innovative products and goods. Some of the designers even draw their inspiration from the trashed treasures they decide to metamorphose.

Cases:

Cohda
Cohda Design presented a Live Recycling Factory at the Dott07 design festival. Not only did the eco-design visionaries show off their recycling machines, they also let the public participate in the process of turning plastic bottles into designer chairs. The idea was sparked by the simple fact that there are 600,000 tons of high density polyethylen (HDPE) produced in the UK alone each year, accounting for 50% of all plastic packaging. So far only 7-10 % is being recycled.

Reestore.com
Reestore takes everyday waste objects and turns them into functional pieces of furniture and accessories. A shopping car becomes a chair, a wash drum becomes a table, a bathtub becomes a couch and abundant plastic pipes are turned into a table lamp. And these are just a few of many more recycled design pieces.

Dutch design duo Tejo Remy and Rene VeenHuizen
Tejo Remy and Rene VeenHuizen also draw their inspiration from trash. Check out their cozy rug and armchair made from recycled, their lamp made out of old milk bottles, and the interestingly shaped shelf-and-cabinet sculptures made out of repurposed bits and pieces.

Recycled bird
Humans aren’t the only ones recycling — this bird used traditional building materials and high-tech water resistant insulators to make it’s nest, adapting to its circumstances.

Trend Impact:
210-million tons of trash is generated in the United States every year. The numbers of how much is recycled or reused vary between 10% and 27%. But the remaining trash is mostly made up of paper products, plastic, yard waste, and wood, all materials that can be repurposed or recycled. High-end designers are catching on, and hopefully, consumers will forget that these trash-derived items were once sitting in garbage heaps and realize that reusing these materials makes the entire environment cleaner.

Cohda
Reestore
Tejo Remy and Rene VeenHuizen
Thank you to Superuse.org

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