How might we use product design to bring awareness to the plastic pollution crisis while enabling people to upcycle materials at home?
While spending some time in my home-town Santa Maria, in the south of Brazil, I noticed that plastic was being offered and trashed everywhere, specially polluting our precious nature. It hurt to see my home city infected with the "Plastic Virus" and people were not aware or paying attention to the diagnosis!
To take action towards this problem I hosted a series of Circular Design Workshop were I gathered a group of designers, engineers, entrepreneurs and like-minded people that also felt that we needed a collective change. In the workshops we talked about the consequences of our industrialized and capitalist systems and started to work towards a range of solutions that could be implementes across Santa Maria to transition the city towards a Circular Economy.
The Circular Design Workshops were experimental and the we used the local plastic waste from everyday items to experiment with different types of plastic and recycling techniques.
We used local plastic from grocery bags (that are still legally being distributed in Brazil), to melt and shape into 3d objects.
Melting local disposable plastic bags
Melted plastic bags using basic cupcake molds
Precious Plastic Santa Maria is inspired by the global movement Precious Plastic and shares the mission to create a better future for planet Earth through well designed products made of recycled plastic, aimed to spread a collective awareness throughout the globe. The projects are 100% open source and we invite you to take action with us! Let's collaborate in the mission of shaping the future of our planet!
