The second life of plastic bottle

Plastic is an integral and useful part of our daily lives. Lightweight and shatterproof, plastic beverage bottles are among the most commonly used plastics. Because of huge amount of plastic bootles usage and plastic consumption in general the problem of plastic recycling becomes bigger day by day. In 2009, the plastic bottle recycling rate reached 28 percent, ranking it among the highest recycled plastics.
In spite of benefits from plastic recycling like energy conservation (Producing new plastic products from recycled materials uses two-thirds less energy than making products from raw (virgin) materials) or greenhouse gas emissions reducing this process isn't so popular as it is expected. Therefore a lot of designers innovate new types of used plastic bootles recycling and reuse.

Recycled bottles provide an environmentally friendly source for making new products and substitutes recycled materials for new plastic. Recycled plastic bottles make hundreds of everyday products, including fleece jackets, carpeting and lumber for outdoor decking.
However because of allergy a lot of people including me can't wear the clothes from plastic or synthetic materials.

Designers don't lose the hope and offer new plastic problem solutions for example making objects for interiers from used plastic bootles.

One of the first designer is Michelle Brand, she is an eco designer maker based in Manchester, England (http://www.michellebrand.co.uk/, http://michellebrand.tumblr.com/). She is specialising in Up Cycling and designing feed back loops. She is internationally known for her inspirational designs with the humble plastic drinks bottle. Her work is in direct response to environmental problems, and her inspiration evolves from the unseen beauty of everyday objects.
‘Once a plastic drinks bottle is empty it is perceived as redundant and is thrown away. I wanted to challenge this wasteful paradigm’ Michelle Brand

Her designs extend the aesthetic life of a mass-produced object by giving it a second use. In addition this body of work highlights society’s throw-away culture and the need to provide additional resources for recycling within our cities. Every bottle base in her designs represents a bottle that has been creatively diverted away from landfill. The beauty of her designs is not only its aesthetic quality but also the importance and development of closed sustainable feedback loops.
Michelle supports the philosophy of slow design, as a counter-balance for today‚ fast consumer society.

Previously, she sustained her practice through her own local plastic collection round. Today she has a close working relationship with Emerge Recycling based in East Manchester. She has become their research designer-in-residence, preferring to work where the majority of her material is based. Working alongside her material supply chain emulates the natural ecosystem. Michelle is all about system thinking and insists sustainable processes are of equal importance as product. Michelle‚ vision for wanting to work alongside Emerge is information exchange and idea generation, focusing on Up-Recycling and Zero Waste. Michelle doesn’t believe in waste management, she wants to design it out completely. But in the meantime she is designing products from the by-products of our consumer lifestyles. One of the things Michelle set out to do is dispel the misconception that design objects made from ‚found or reused parts‚lack a certain je ne sais quoi.














Michelle is not only one designer who works with used plastic bootles. Designers Lisa Foo and Su Sim are inspired by sea inhabitant and flora and faunа of Malasia and make objects from all parts of bottles adding different lamps and lignt lines (garland).









One more worldwide famous designer is Sarah Turner who makes beautiful ReDesign lighting collection imaginatively recycles plastic water bottles into stunning lampshades. With some clever cutting Sarah Turner has mastered the art of turning waste drinks bottles into decorative shapes, which form the basis of her beautiful ceiling, table and floor lamps.

Sarah Turner as an Eco artist made this big sphere to help communicate the message of 'A World Without Bottles' for Sodastream’s campaign which aims to reduce the amount of plastic bottles people buy, and with this tactic reduce the amount that end up thrown away.
"British model Erin O’Connor holds the sphere symbolically on her shoulders, recreating the iconic pose of Greek God Atlas, highlighting the burden of the world's plastic bottle waste."
Sarah has a wide range of ‘bottle creations’ which can all be found on her website (http://www.sarahturner.co.uk/).

tertium non data

Gülnur Özdağlar studied architecture at the Middle East Technical University and has been active as an architect since she graduated in 1986. She has participated in architectural design competitions, together with various groups, and many of her designs have been recognized with prizes.In addition to being active as an architect, she has also worked in the graphic design and photography fields, and many of these projects have been published in foreign countries in magazines and books. She has received prizes in international competitions of digital art.In the years around 2000-2004 she held five collective exhibitions with the “TemaYokTema” group, while with the “FormatD” group she did projection presentations and several personal exhibits. Since 2008 she has been producing cups, jewellery and home decoration accessories by recycling PET bottles. She collects, heats, cuts, melts, drill holes into and reshapes PET bottles.She thinks that the real solution is “upcycling” rather than plain recycling. Her aim is to substitute with labour and artistic value the characteristics that the material loses during transformation, thus obtaining a product of higher value. Her aim is also to obtain objects from things that have been discarded that are so beautiful, that we would want to wear or exhibit them, thus underlining the importance of “recycling” and encouraging it. In this way she provides her own personal answer to the problem of rcycling.She believes that in the future there will be a plastic material that will not proceed from the cradle to the grave, but that will return to the cradle with no loss, thus giving rise to a new plastic material, that this will “determine the way shapes are created” and that the real problem will not be recycling, and not even upcycling, but “karmic compensation”. In other words she believes that there will be a better world.

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I was attracted by the work of the designer because of its authenticity and beauty. Many things made ​​from recycled materials looks cheap and freaky , but in this case, the objects are in great demand and they are really not a bad example of sustainability. Gülnur – designer who clearly explain her point of view on recycling and using recycled materials so there is really no green washing.

Another great thing about it - you can contact her on website for wholesale inquiries too.It's not a project just for fun or for public attention – it's a big designer work in sustainable way.

For more information you can check

http://www.gulnurozdaglar.com/

or her blog

http://gulguvenc.blogspot.com/

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Ecological Architecture: A Critical History

This is a collection of essays and case studies about sustainable architecture. The book is separated into three parts: current environmental problems and ideas for solutions; case studies, devoted architects and movements in sustainable design; third one is about futurological forecasts in further development of ecological building.



http://www.thamesandhudson.com/9780500342107.html

http://books.google.ru/books?id=91F4QgAACAAJ&dq=Ecological+Architecture+A+Critical+History&hl=ru&sa=X&ei=rbGCT-isLYqgOvjenI4H&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA

The Handmade houses and other buildings: The world of vernacular architecture

This book represents the research of traditional handmade housing in different regions. The main emphasis is on used materials and constructions.


Handmade vernacular houses are an example of cheap and rather fast building with using local materials and adapting to the environment conditions, e.g., climate and geology of the place. This is a result of collecting experience by people who needed to build effective for that time dwelling with using limited resources.

If somebody is going to analyse traditional approach to building for comparison with contemporary methods, this book could be useful.

This book was in our school library.

http://www.amazon.com/Handmade-Houses-Other-Buildings-John/dp/050034258X

http://www.thamesandhudson.com/9780500342589.html

http://expert.ru/expert/2007/09/prodavcy_vakuuma/

Количество и качество

Использование дешевых и одноразовых предметов повседневной надобности - поддерживает производителя дешевого и не качественного товара, что в свою очередь способствует вытеснению качества - количеством . а промышленность в колоссальных  масштабах- ведет к разрушению окружающей среды уничтожению ресурсов без большой на то надобности.

На мой взгляд потребитель вольно или не вольно диктует правила производителю. Этот же процесс отслеживается в происходящем с современным искусством, так как искусство всегда отражает тенденции своего времени.

Потребитель как искусства так и любой промышленности не терпит однообразности и зачастую делает выбор в пользу новшества, которое не всегда качественнее но однозначно способствует колличеству.  

Art for Wildlife

Lynne Hull is an artist who works wider than in the frame of conceptual art. Her works are surprisingly functional.

Raptor Roosts

 "Useful to birds and animals - but why call them art? Because they are sculptures . . .
they are all aesthetically pleasing . . .
And they might well tickle the mind, too -
provoking a few thoughts about what we are doing to our environment."
- John Fox, The Nation, Nairobi, Kenya

 Lynne is an environmentalist artist whose works contribute to sustainable ecological conditions and wild life habitat withing particular bio regions. She created sculptural bird nesting sites in Utah and Wyoming where there are insufficient numbers of natural trees. "Hull created habitats for birds from recycled telephone poles, paint, and wooden cross-beams or branches attached with metal hardware. Hull views her art in the contexts of global and local webs of life that include people, animals, and plants.Hull's art is interdependent with community and ecological issues. Her life-centered approach to making art is community-based, associated with particular geographic locations and with the understanding that art, culture, and ecological relationships need to consider issues of biodiversity."

 

Another interesting example are Hydroglyphs - water capture carved in rocks basins for desert wildlife holding rain or snowmelt. They help wildlife to find that valuable source in the areas where water is scarce naturally or was taken away bu humans.

To me Hull is a type of an artist who balances on the border between art, design (if there is a design for wildlife) and crafts. However, I cannot but agree that her "artistic relationship with nature illustrates that artists can venture out of their studios and connect ideas about art, aesthetics, ecology, and culture to the benefit of all concerned." She is a person who is moved by a very honest desire to contribute to the health of the planet and uses her artistic resources. She does not need a viewer that much to appreciate her works (most of them are away from the popular roots) and is satisfied with the knowledge that her work helps wildlife. She often works in collaboration with zoologists and other scientists to organize educational programs all over the world for locals, to help people through art understand their nature and interact with it for good.


Resources:
Lynne Hull's Website
Greenmuseum