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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My final master project is an investigation into forms
of greenwashing behind recycling and how it can tend
to not address or sometimes even deflect from the
core of the problem. The aim was to raise awareness
about this issue and do this through the power of seduction
that advertising is able to have. Bordering the
line between ironic and speculative design, my final
products contradict themselves in their purpose –
making little sense – aiming to bring a currently great
issue across through subtle humour.
Over the course of my degree, I often found myself
asking whether I was contributing enough to these
daunting environmental problems we are facing today –
desperately wanting to make an active change in my
little cosmos. In terms of design research I do believe
I have created a foundation for design possibilities
that would be possible once these toxins would
be extracted, through methods such the ones that
TchaoMegot created. Yet now, at the finishing line, I
see my strength and my form of problem solving to
be the communication and education of a current
problem. My final project is what I see as my contribution
to a larger sense of awareness of the possibility
of greenwashing behind recycling.
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