Toxic Legacies / Filtering the Truth
The concept of recycling has gained immense popularity as a sustainable approach to waste pollution and is embraced as a potential solution to our escalating environmental crisis. However, not all recycling practices – especially when it comes to plastic – are necessarily environmentally friendly. In many cases, claims to recyclability are merely greenwashing, a marketing strategy used by companies to position themselves as environ- mentally conscious without implementing actual changes in their production practices. My master project aims to investigate the greenwashing behind recycling and how the concept of recycling can tend to justify the production of waste in a consumer-based system.
The concept of recycling has gained immense popularity as a sustainable approach to waste pollution and is embraced as a potential solution to our escalating environmental crisis. However, not all recycling practices – especially when it comes to plastic – are necessarily environmentally friendly. In many cases, claims to recyclability are merely greenwashing, a marketing strategy used by companies to position themselves as environ- mentally conscious without implementing actual changes in their production practices.
My master project aims to investigate the greenwashing behind recycling and how the concept of recycling can tend to justify the production of waste in a consumer-based system.
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Scope
Should we be designing with it?
Semester 1: Material Tests
In the first semester of my Masters degree, I explored
various possibilities to manipulate and transform the individual
components of a cigarette butt into something
new and possibly useful. I started by separating the cigarette
into its individual components which left me with
four initial elements; the filter, tobacco, ash and the paper
holding these elements together. The fifth element is incorporated
in the filter itself; a thermo-reactive dye that
causes the filter to turn darker when exposed to heat.
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