3D printing has long been touted as a technology that can reduce the environmental impact of products by eliminating or significantly reducing distribution impacts. However, these claims often overlook the fact that filament needs to be shipped to the point of production and the final product still needs to be transported to the place of […]
Products
Can Lego become a green giant?
Last year Lego announced it had abandoned plans to switch to making bricks from recycled PET. The two-year project aimed at replacing ABS was part of a US$1.2 billion initiative to make the company more sustainable. Despite having more than 150 people working on sustainability and testing ‘hundreds and hundreds’ of materials a suitable replacement […]
Pickleballs are piling up
Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in the United States. Introduced in 1965 it had attracted nearly 9 million players by 2022 and international interest is growing, with a professional league already operating in Australia. In the United States, there are already more than 3000 courts, just in the largest 100 cities. Similar to tennis or […]
Recyclable wind farms
Wind turbine blades have a life expectancy of around twenty years. As they are usually made from composites containing carbon fibre and can’t be recycled economically, used blades are typically buried in landfills. Apart from the environmental impact, this provides opponents of renewable energy with ammunition to attack wind farms. Global expansion of wind farms […]
Luxury Handbag Market Faces Eco Crisis—Who’s Fighting Back?
The luxury handbag market is estimated to be worth a staggering US$72.7 billion (in 2023) and consumes between 5 and 10% of global leather production (totaling around 2 billion square meters annually). All these bags are held together with plastic-based components with foams used for filling, making it impossible to recycle discarded bags. With such […]
A plastic chair has grown into an enterprise
Jane Atfield was among the first to use recycled plastics to make consumer goods, with the 1992 release of the RCP2 Chair. Atfield made her own flat panels by recycling HDPE containers, colour sorting to produce panels in a variety of colours. While the chair was originally released in a limited edition it has since […]
Colour is not the only unusual thing about this office chair from Ahrend
The Remode is claimed to be the most sustainable task chair available. Designed by Ben van Berkel of UNStudio, the Remode is fully modular (so parts can be replaced), lightweight (15kg, 30% lighter than most office chairs) and made of circular materials (54% by weight), including plastic from the ocean. Over three quarters of the […]
Pendant light created using 3D-printed PLA
The Hedron Pendant is a 3D-printed chandelier or pendant light made from PLA (Polylactic Acid). The shape is developed from a polyhedron, in this case, a 3D version of a hexagon or honeycomb, twisted and given an almost alien appearance. Poul Henningsen’s Artichoke Light (1958) was an inspiration for this project – in that the […]
Mat Chair
The Mat Chair features a shell made from hemp stems and eelgrass and powder coasted steel legs. The lighter version of the shell contains hemp only. The collection encompasses numerous variations of dining chairs and barstools. Launched during Stockholm Design Week 2024 the design is a result of a collaboration between Foersom & Hiort-Lorenzen and Norman Copenhagen. Johannes Foersom […]