Why have we not found a replacement for single use plastic yet? We are not unknown to the fact that plastic waste is polluting our oceans, disfiguring and killing our animals, yet we still continue to dump our plastic.
Ozean is a small solution to this big problem! An innovative, low-impact manufacturing technique allows plastic waste to be reshaped into kitchen knife handles. This allows easy recycling, as approximately 40 bottle caps are reshaped into one handle. Ozean is the start to making our waste useful instead of polluting our world!
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The journey of my honours project was a whirlwind of decisions, emotions and changes. When I started my honours project in September, I had not the simplest of ideas of what I wanted to make or achieve throughout the year. I did not really know who I was as a designer or what area of design I was most passionate about. In order to overcome this problem, I set myself goals at the beginning and along the way to create some guidance. Below I specify the biggest goals and detailed my path of achieving them!
1. Selecting a topic based on my interests
I have always been intrigued by problem solving, particularly improving people’s lives through design. Two areas of design that have always interested me are ‘people centred design’ and ‘sustainable design’. Therefore, I knew that I wanted these two aspects incorporated in my honours project.
The initial stages of selecting a topic were quite difficult because I was not happy any of my ideas. The longer it took to find a topic, the more stressed I became. Coincidentally, my wish to be back at the Baltic Sea and not having to worry about my honours project was what led me to my topic. I have always visited family there and over the course of my visits, I witnessed more and more plastic debris being washed onto the beaches. Just after a couple of minutes of quickly looking into this issue, I realised how devastating the reality of plastic pollution is. Reading statistics like, “100,000 marine mammals and turtles and 1 million sea birds are killed by marine plastic pollution annually,” (Surfers Against Sewage) I knew that I wanted to find a solution to this social problem causing such great environmental issues.
2. Conducting thorough research both primary and secondary
One thing that has always been important to me is conducting in-depth research in order to make thought-through decisions. I spent a lot of time researching about plastic pollution, ‘plastic’ as a material and different kinds of recycling methods. Whilst that knowledge provided a strong foundation for my project, my narrow-minded focus on research prevented me from developing my own ideas. As the field is so big, I was not able to decide whether to design something that removes plastic from the oceans, reuse plastic in order to create a new product or to create a visual campaign. Chris and Ewan were definitely a great help when suggesting I should utilise my knowledge by creating small “plastic experiments” to get a feel for the possibilities and limitations of working with this material.
This experimental phase allowed for many realisations to occur. I learned that I was not able to combine different types of plastic, which is actually good as it otherwise makes recycling impossible. I also figured out that HDPE plastic (number two on the resin identification code) is the easiest type of plastic to reshape with the resources that I have available. Additionally, I found that heat was very effective in changing the shape and purpose of the plastic pieces.
Gurus day was another progress setback for me. It was certainly very insightful in order to discuss my project from so many different perspectives. Nevertheless, while discussing all the distinct ways that I could utilise plastic I realised that I had no clue of what direction I wanted my project to head into. I went on to research more about plastic pollution and possible solutions. After weeks of frustration, I realised I had been trying to solve the unsolvable. I had subconsciously been trying to come up with an immediate solution that would get rid of plastic waste in the ocean without harming any animal. If this were so easy, companies would not have been spending years and millions of pounds still trying to find a solution. Once I had finally realised that, I knew my project had to be smaller scaled. Although clean up programmes remove plastic waste out of the ocean, there lacks a recycling method for after. Therefore, I figured out that I wanted my focus to lie on reusing already existing plastic and thus preventing this plastic from even reaching the ocean in the first place. In hindsight, my research stage took more time than expected. I do not regret my process, however I would have preferred it to be over sooner, so that I could have used my time more effective.
3. Creating a commercial product that demonstrates reused plastic does not lessen the visual design
While I did shortly consider a campaign, I pretty much always knew that I wanted to create a commercial product. I decided on furniture design, because I wanted my product to be a necessary item. I also wanted my product to be in daily use, while at the same time being long lasting. For my project, I knew that I wanted to educate people in one way or another (in my case about plastic and its reuses). Since my project is product design focused, my goal was to demonstrate that customers do not have to lower their design expectations, just because it is a recycled material.
Once I had decided this, I used ethnographic research to decide on my particular product. This type of research helped me notice that tables are a very common and often used furniture piece. As living rooms often need to be supplied with a side tables, I decided to start with that. While the decision was reasonable, I was never passionate about it, but I only had the courage to rethink this decision after a chat with Polly. She encouraged me to reassess my decision process and explore other possible options. I began to conduct ethnographic studies again, this time focussing on the bathroom and kitchen more closely, since those environments seemed to be more appropriate for plastic.
This stage became very frustrating but ultimately very rewarding. I came up with one idea after the other, but none of them were realistic. For example, I was very interested in making kitchen counter tops. However, I soon realised that no matter how hard you press HDPE plastic, it will never be compressed to a point where it is not easy to scratch and cut into the surface. As well as that, there is a high likelihood of the counter top melting when someone accidentally places a hot pot onto the surface. However, the kitchen environment just felt right, so I kept pushing myself for new ideas. Eventually, I had the idea of making kitchen knives. It turned out that this idea combined all elements that I wanted my project to focus on. Kitchen tools have become a prosperous market as a result of the current health trend and thus demonstrate a demand. Kitchen knives are long lasting products. Fortunately, I realised that recycling plastics do not exist in this area. The current trend is to use plastic-free alternatives, so a lot of metal and wooden knives exist, but no company has thought of reusing plastic for their handles.
4. Developing an environmentally-friendly manufacturing process
My technological focus within this project was to develop my own manufacturing process. While my project focuses on helping the environment, I thought that it was only appropriate to make every aspect of my project environmentally friendly. While it was easy to decide on reusing plastic, it was a very difficult decision to do so without harming the environment. Since I knew that plastic releases toxins when it is melted, I tried to develop a manufacturing method that did not require plastic to change its original shape. I explored the idea of cutting up plastic and combining it with some sort of natural resin-like material, such as shellac, to create a smooth surface. However, this would have meant that the product made from recycled plastic would not be able to be recycled further along the line as mixing materials makes the process of recycling impossible. This means that I would have created a material that could have never been disposed of and therefore would have made an even more negative impact on the environment.
I went back to exploring the option of melting plastic. I realised that if I melted plastic at a very low temperature, I would only be changing the molecular structure slightly and thus hardly releasing any toxins. This minimal temperature would still allow the plastic to turn into a clay-like consistency and ensure I could reshape it. Personally, while this is not the perfect solution, I realised that there frankly is no perfect solution to this problem. There is only a least harmful one, which I am positively confident that I have developed.
5. Pushing myself
While I know that our honours project is all about demonstrating the skills we have been perfecting over the last couple of years, I also wanted to push myself one last time. I wanted to use this last chance in my studies to learn as much as possible while I still have the opportunity to explore. As I had been unsure of what type of designer I wanted to be so far, I wanted to use my honours project to figure that out. I think this is the one goal that I have achieved beyond of what I was expecting of myself. During this honours project I pushed myself to try new things. I worked with a material that I had only little experience with previously. Not only that, but instead of using a pre-made material, I had to figure out my own manufacturing process for it. Combining a social issue with design has been eye opening in so many ways. Even though plastic recycling and pollution is a current topic, there have not been as many solutions as there should be. I hope that my honours project could be a small solution to this massive problem. Overall, the process of my honours project was long and educational. I set out various goals at the beginning and throughout the project and I believe that I have overcome all of the problems during this journey. I am proud of what I have accomplished and how I developed as a designer.