Holistic model for activating a reuse platform
Establishing a circular reuse network through engaging business, satisfying the needs of our community members and reducing waste.
Roles: Secondary research, user research, interviews, user testing, pilot program as a non-profit start-up
October 22 - July 23
Project done in collaboration with Caroline Bussick and The Remake Project.
The Maker Movement Research
"The steady growth of makerspaces to decentralized production enables access to new and previously unknown technologies for diverse users and thus equally promotes the social-ecological change in society. First, such facilities offer a physical space where ideas and innovations can be realized as prototypes or in small series. Secondly, they are also considered social spaces where people come together, exchange ideas, work collaboratively, and learn. Therefore, in theory the maker scene has great potential for sustainable development especially in the educational and awareness raising context."
The maker movement promotes:
Exploration
Creative Thinking & Problem Solving
Community
Potential for sustainable development
however…
It has been shown that makers certainly have an awareness of the need for sustainable development, however, this is not reflected in their actual making practices. Rather, makerspaces are characterized by high consumption of resources. A fundamental aspect here is the self-image of makers, in which sustainability plays a subordinate role.
Usual Pysical Design Process
Prototyping is an essential part of the design process, however, it creates a lot of waste.
How can we promote a circular maker movement while reducing waste?
Creative Reuse and Upcycling
Back from the pre-industrial eras, upcycling and reusing has been around mainly due to scarcity and inaccessibility to products. People used to sew or mend their clothes and build their own furniture. With industrialization and globalization, we have lost the need to do so and through consumerism, these skills started disappearing.
With sustainability of consumerism becoming an alarming problem, as well as many other socio-economic reasons, people have started questioning the current system, makerspaces started democratizing and enabling access to manufacturing tools, accessibility to materials made production possible again for small scale enthusiasts.
This included upcycling, one the preferred ways to reuse materials and products, before going through the recycling process which is not exactly a reliable solution to our waste problem today.
There are two different types of upcycling:
the crafty non-commercialized version
the designer approach
Crafty Upcycling
This type of upcycling is great for coming up with quick fixes around the house instead of buying new, and promotes creative thinking while reducing waste.
While this is great, it's not necessarily scalable given the solutions are very personalized.
Materials that are used in this type of upcycling is usually found either in the home or thrift stores. It could be taken to the next level via utilizing harder-to-manipulate materials which is what designers are trained to do.
Designer Upcycling
This type of upcycling requires access to bulk materials and basic level of design/craft knowledge in order to ideate and create a design.
Quite a few designers have implemented this design principle, but their story usually starts with "after seeing the amount of waste" or "collected x amount of leftover material".
In order to create a design from leftover tires, the designer needs access to enough tires to experiment, as well as enough space to store the tires.
This shows us that upcycling design is possible, however, limited to the capacity of the designer having access to a sufficient amount of this materials and space to store them.
Resources that support designer upcycling
While there are plenty of resources for crafty upcycling, there is a big market gap when we get into more industrial materials. Through the interviews I had with makers that work with reuse materials, they said that they find their materials either through word of mouth or coincidence.
How can we support existing efforts for crafty and designer upcycling?
There is plenty of waste to upcycle
This said waste is also how designers create upcycled designs, they run into one of these streams and are able to intake it.
The problem is, there is 7.4 billion tons of manufacturing waste per year simply in the United States according to EPA. We have more waste than people, hence, we need to establish a system where upcycling can be accesible and more than a happenstance.
Materials we had access to at Remake Project
Through speaking with local manufacturers, we acquired a sample amount of materials that had to be thrown away due to cancelled orders, errors in production and surplus materials etc.
Some manufacturers reached out to us personally expressing their concern about how they have to throw away tons of products and that there were no recycling facilities that would take their waste.
Polyester Banners
Vinyl Banners
Corrugated Plastic Signs
Injection Molding Caps
Current Solutions
With the increasing accessibility of craft materials, just like clothing and home goods, "Art Thrift Stores" started emerging. These spaces run off of individual donations of used craft materials and resell them for cheaper in order to continue its lifetime and support crafters with cheap and sustainable supplies.
Resources that support upcycling
Proposed System
After seeing the amount of waste and the potential these materials have, I proposed an alternative system where instead of capitalizing on a stream of waste to produce products, we could engage more people through providing and exposing this unseen resource as a targeted sourcing service for makers and small businesses as well as promoting making skills through implementing remake projects into non-profit needs.
I'm currently updating this project, come back soon for more!
Iset Celik
isetcelik@gmail.com