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.
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Semester 2: Useless Objects / Campaign
The realisation that recycling might do more harm than
good, led me to bring back more of the visual communication
design that I had attained my Bachelor’s degree
in. I decided to not continue to try to recycle cigarette
butts and focus on the communication. The aim for my
second semester was now to find a way to use these
methods and seductive qualities from my initial material
tests, to develop an object that both communicates the
environmental problems of the waste product (cigarette
butts), as well as the impact that the promotion of recycling
(under false pretences) can have on both consumer
and environment. The end-result is a product line and
campaign advertising the materials reuse with a sense
of irony and humour, as the product is not usable and
the campaign arguably does not make sense.
26
Change language