treasured trash Pt II: Eco-friendly Office Equipment

31 Oct 2007 Category: Events & Exhibitions, Japan, Products

treasured trash Pt II: Eco-friendly Office Equipment

The “treasured trash” project is all about “sustainable design using trash.” This year, it has collaborated with ASYL to make stylish environmentally friendly products for your office.

Design Week is in full mode beginning today, and the first project we picked up for you out of those many, many exhibitions is treasured trash. Actually, you might remember them from their last year’s Live Paint Show that encouraged people to avoid using plastic bottles. As they are so nice, we simply have to feature them again and tell you all about their new efforts for the environment! PingMag asked the organisers, Fumiko Ikeda of gift_ and Hiromi Nishi of ASYL, to tell us all about their aims to successfully market works made from recycled materials and how they recycle common office trash to great office equipment - in collaboration with famous office equipment supplier ASKUL.

Written by Chiemi
Translated by Natsumi Yamane

First of all, what is treasured trash all about?

The meaning of “treasured trash” comes from our concept of changing trash into resources. At last year’s DesignTide, we participated in the event with a feature exhibition on the theme of green and environmentally friendly designs. But since some of those works were actually put on the market, we decided to continue with the project throughout the year.

From last year’s “treasured trash:” “Tide Chandelier” by British designer Stuart Haygarth. A beautiful chandelier, completely composed of man-made debris that had washed up on a coastline.

So, which work was actually placed on the market?

“Stay at Ladder” is a recycling bin with bags positioned like racks designed by Akiko Fukuda from Limb Co.. We all know that recyclable waste has to be washed and sorted before taking it to the collection point. So last year, we announced this rack construction as a way to save space and easy carry bags as a concept model. Then we spent a year making trial models. The finished version is officially available at this year’s Design Tide.

“Stay at Ladder,” a space-saving rack construction for trash separation designed by Akiko Fukuda of Limb Co., is “treasured trash’s” first work to be actually marketed. Check it out, it’s now on sale at the DesignTide’s “Tide Market”!

Very practical to use: The trash bags can be easily carried to the collection point.

You are collaborating with the major office equipment supplier ASKUL this year - how did this come about?

ASKUL is a highly design-conscious company and they have been participating in DesignTide from the early days when it was called “tokyo designers block” a couple of years ago. Last year, ASKUL kindly produced the official eco-bag together with DesignTide and was up for another more environmentally friendly product this year again. So, we got in touch with them and suggested transmitting treasured trash’s last year’s theme of “Not Trash but Resource” over to offices: By that, we mean placing recycling posts for common office trash, such as paper and CD-ROMs, and combining great designs with the recycled materials produced from that recycling post. And then, returning the environmentally friendly products to offices as ASKUL supplies. However, creating that system is not going to be easy from a practical standpoint, so we agreed to start with whatever we can do for now…

One page of “treasured trash’s” project proposal: Put the office trash (i.e. resources) into a recycling bin, produce green products using the recycled material, and the products return to offices as supplies from ASKUL.

Too bad it can’t be realised immediately, but that is definitely a great idea! So, what exactly is this year’s “treasured trash” going to be like?

We are displaying our works at the main DesignTide site, and, depending on the feedback, we are thinking of producing some of them commercially. We selected Akiko Fukuda and VINTA as designers due to their presence at last year’s DesignTide and their ability to come up with designs that are suitable for actual marketing.

The picture below shows a material called “Ecoply” made by recycling plastic bottle caps. As these are made from Polypropylene, they are very hard. But if you heat a mixture of 50 percent bottle caps and 50 percent fiberised waste wood, such as plywood and wood chips, in a microwave at about 200℃, then the caps will melt and act as an adhesive to hold the waste wood together to form this recycled ply board. This “Ecoply” made from 100 percent trash is currently only used as a building material. The good thing is, after it is use, it can be recycled again and again as “Ecoply,” so it’s completely waste-free!

”Ecoply” material that can be recycled over and over again: The little green and red dots in brown come from the colours of plastic bottle caps. Hot drinks tend to have warm coloured caps while cold drink caps come in cold colours, so the colour of “Ecoply” also changes slightly according to seasons.

It has such a warm feel that you would never imagine that it’s made from trash….

Exactly. Akiko Fukuda is working with this material and she fell in love with it immediately. It seemed to be a great inspiration for her. This time, the coupling of the designers and materials turned out very nicely and both designers seem to be totally fond of their materials.


The recycling post designed by Akiko Fukuda.

So how did Akiko Fukuda come up with this material?

We asked her to make a unit shelf, table and a recycling post. As for the recycling post, there might be different kinds of trash in different offices, so we made pictogram stickers to go with it to indicate where each type of trash should go.

Pictogram designed for the recycling post. These were designed by Kazuhisa Yamamoto from Donny Grafiks, who also helped with PingMag’s recent article on pictograms.

Then what about VINTA’s designs?

There is something called “Pulp Mould” that is often used to make egg trays and packaging for electronics, and VINTA was attracted to this material. They designed a small desk tray out of this.

VINTA transforms an ordinary pulp mould into…

…a small desk tray!

Beside these items, we are also displaying coasters with our “See You Again!” message from last year, meaning throwing away trash isn’t the last farewell. They are made from our third green material from Australia, which is usually used to make partition walls.

These cute and handy coasters with such a warm texture are shaped after the speech bubble from last year’s “See You Again!” message, by the art director Yuji Tokuda. Check them out at DesignTide!

Incidentally, do you have any idea for the price of the above “Ecoply” recycling post when it’s actually put on the market?

I don’t think it will be as low-priced as colour boxes - but it should be less than the ones made from ordinary ply wood. So, even if the these might be at the same price, it would be great to offer customers an option of ply wood or green material.

No doubt these environmentally friendly products with distinguished designs will be popular….

In fact, we consider this more as a design project rather than an environmental one – designs come first, and then the use of eco materials. Starting with the ecology and environmental issues would only make a lot of hot air but no action, so it would be nice to come up with products that make people happy just by watching and touching them.

What is the next challenge after this project?

It would be nice to design an entire lifestyle like an eco village, but it’s more like a place to visit rather than somewhere to live. Recently, more people are starting to farm and return to nature, so garden and the village lifestyle sounds interesting, too.

Fumoko and Hiromi, thank you very much for your time today! Looking forward to seeing you at the DesignTide site!!

52 Comments

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  3. loved those cute speech bubble coasters :)

    Posted by: bhumika on November 1st, 2007 at 3:34 pm

  4. Yeah! Conscience!

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