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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2. Arthur Huang: Anything Butts
In April 2016, the Taiwanese structural engineer and architect
and founder of the company Miniwiz, launched a pavilion in collaboration
with Philip Morris International during the Milan Design
Week in which a new material was introduced which was
made with recycled filters of the IQOS heatsticks and applied to
Cesare Leonard’s furniture designs from the 60s. Miniwiz is an
internationally operating company dedicated to upcycling and
consumer trash and industrial waste, creating a range of highend
products in the attempt to recalibrate our idea of value.
Though there is little discussion about whether Miniwiz is greenwashing
or actually living up to their promises, it is a company
that is difficult to evaluate. On one hand, it is important to show
value in waste and create a platform to discuss and rethink what
we deem as worthless. On the other hand it conveys again how
recycling is an “end-all” solution for all current waste problems,
and even takes it a step further by promoting recycled items
as a luxury, high-end solution that is not available to everyone
– enforcing the view that you need to have money to be green.
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Image 05: Anything Butts pavilion in Milan, 2016
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