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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01 Introducing waste: Cigarette butts 10
02 How do we design with it? 16
03 Should we be designing with it? 26
04 Why can recycling be problematic? 28
05 Context:
1. Bioplastics 40
2. TerraCycle 44
3. rPET 46
4. Paper Bags 50
06 Examples of cigarette recycling 52
07 Material and object development 58
08 Final outcome 120
09 Discussion: Possible solutions 172
10 Outlook: What now? 178
11 Endnotes 184
References 190
Acknowledgements 198