Cassie Ulvick

Project Description

This final project is an example of how you can upcycle plastic waste for the purpose of creating art, recreating a canvas and “paint” from used packaging.

 

Inspiration

The process of creating paint from plastic was something I first experimented with for a small bit for my capstone project before it changed directions. At the time, I was inspired by John Sabraw, who used paint created from pigments found in toxic sludge found in Ohio’s waterways to make beautiful paintings:

I really liked the idea of turning pollution into paint, and wondered if there was a way to create paint or pigment from plastic waste.

 

Process + Experiments

The inspiration for the canvas came from an experiment I did for capstone, which was molding a plastic bag to an object using a heat gun:

I had first used the ironing technique to make two layers of the plastic bag stiffer, and then used a heat gun to mold it to an old paper cup. The texture and bounciness of the transformed plastic reminded me of a canvas, which influenced my process for creating the canvas.

First, to make the frame, I cut strips from a cardboard box, cutting slits on the ends of each strip so that they could slide in together. For the canvas material, I used the ironing technique to fuse together two layers of a plastic bag. I then glued this sheet to the frame, pulling each side as tightly as I could.

I then wanted to stretch the canvas tighter across the frame with heat. In my previous experience with using a heat gun to mold the plastic, I learned that if you heat it too much, holes will burn through the plastic. I was scared of this happening, so instead of using a heat gun, I used a hair curling iron to touch up spots along the edges of the canvas to gently stretch and harden the material.

For the “paint,” I was inspired by our experiments with melting plastic bags in class. When the plastic is cut into small strips and put into the oven, before it is pressed into the mold, the scrappiness of the plastic reminds me of dried acrylic paint. Thus, I followed this process using cut up pieces of plastic Taobao packaging.

The resulting material was ripped up and glued to the canvas to create the mountain effect. This process was repeated with a red part of a type 2 plastic bag for the sun.

 

Implementation + Raising Awareness

This technique of creating canvases and melting plastic to look like paint has endless possibilities for implementation. Because artwork is such a subjective artifact, it can be altered in many ways depending on what the creator wants to create. For example, the subject of the work could relate to the place it was created in, and then the work could be sold as a souvenir.

Because the material used is still visibly plastic, it raises awareness of plastic waste. If the plastic was completely transformed to look like something entirely different, I think this awareness potential would be lost.

 

Further Development + Conclusion

To further develop this project, I would have liked to experiment more with the glue as this was the only material used that was not from waste. One experiment could be cutting slits in the cardboard frame and trying to attach the ironed plastic to it through different tying and knotting techniques. Another experiment could be fusing the “paint” plastic to the canvas plastic using heat rather than glue, and seeing how that would transform the material. There is also a technique of making casein glue from vinegar, baking soda and milk. Based on experiments from replacing milk with soy milk to make material and having this still work, I wonder if making casein glue using soy milk would produce a successfully sticky glue.

In conclusion, there is a lot that can still be experimented and developed with this project. Additionally, in order for it to be of use for anyone to implement, proper documentation or instructions would be necessary for any person who is interested in using plastic waste as an artistic material.

This week I experimented with the milk and vinegar mixture to try and make a moldable bioplastic, following this article as a reference. I wanted to see the difference between using milk vs. soy milk, so I conducted two experiments:

 

Experiment 1: milk + kangle vinegar

There wasn’t enough white vinegar for both of the experiments and I could only find kangle vinegar on my FamilyMart run so I decided to try it out with the milk. I also adjusted the amount of vinegar to keep the same ratio as the recipe (depended on how much milk was in the small carton I had):

Ingredients:

• 200 ml milk
• 50 ml kangle vinegar

Before I even added the vinegar, the milk curdled/got plastic-y at the top as I was heating it:

I think I also messed up because I got distracted in the middle of experimenting and turned off the heat (before adding the vinegar), and came back to the mixture with it already curdled. I then turned the heat back on and added the vinegar, but the result was super crumbly and not what I expected at all.

I’m not sure if this was the result of me getting distracted in the middle, or the use of kangle vinegar rather than white vinegar.

When it dried, however, it was quite hard and reminded me of concrete:

 

Experiment 2: soy milk + white vinegar

There was enough white vinegar left to try it out with the soy milk.

Ingredients: 

• 245 ml soy milk
• 59 ml white vinegar

This worked a lot better. It didn’t really curdle as much as the milk, but when strained, the result was much closer to the moldable dough I was expecting with the milk:

When it was dry, it was stronger than I had expected: it didn’t seem too brittle with the exception of the very edges – it stays in tact if you give it a little tug.

 

Experiment 2: soy milk + white vinegar on a larger scale

After these results, I decided to pursue the soy milk + white vinegar bioplastic and try to mold it to a food container using more soy milk.

Ingredients

• 1225 ml soy milk
• 295 ml white vinegar

It’s currently drying, so we’ll see how it turns out!

Thoughts on Reading 1: Cradle to Cradle – A Question of Design

• “The Industrial Revolution was not planned, but it was not without a motive. At bottom it was an economic revolution, driven by the desire for the acquisition of capital. Industrialists wanted to make products as efficiently as possible and to get the greatest volume of goods to the largest number of people.” (21)
  • Interesting because this is what also causes a lot of environmental problems in the present day. You can look at things like wai mai – efficiency and convenience in getting our food
• “Viewed from a design perspective, the Model T epitomized the general goal of the first industrialists: to make a product that was desirable, affordable, and operable by anyone, just about anywhere; that lasted a certain amount of time (until it was time to buy a new one); and that could be produced cheaply and quickly.” (24)
  • When designing products that are sustainable, in order to be widely adopted, they also need to take into consideration these factors
• “To achieve their universal design solutions, manufacturers design for a worst-case scenario; they design a product for the worst possible circumstance, so that it will always operate with the same efficacy. This aim guarantees the largest possible market for a product. It also reveals human industry’s peculiar relationship to the natural world, since designing for the worst case at all times reflects the assumption that nature is the enemy.” (30)
  • This is a really interesting point I hadn’t considered before. Is the author suggesting that we have products designed for each specific circumstance? If there were local producers that only sold local detergent, would that be a key selling point to local consumers? Especially with the “buy local” trend nowadays, at least in the US
  • Assuming that nature is the enemy is necessary for the most basic needs (shelter from weather, warmth in the winter, etc). The detergent example is a really interesting one because it demonstrates this assumption and how it goes so far as to actually harm nature instead of just “defending” ourselves from it.

 

Thoughts on Reading 2: Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic, p. 208-225

• “Even when plastics do biodegrade, they often do not completely disappear but instead fragment into smaller invisible pieces.” (210-211)
  • I’m a bit confused – I was under the impression that biodegradable meant being able to completely break down and completely disappear. Fragmenting into smaller invisible pieces doesn’t seem to fit this definition, so why is plastic considered biodegradable?
• “At the same time, plastics have been shown to be an adsorption medium for potentially harmful chemicals, carrying and dispersing additives and plasticizers such as flame retardants, Bisphenol-A (BPA) and phthalates, as well as drawing in and concentrating chemicals from seawater.” (212)
  • I didn’t know it was the plastic that absorbed the harmful chemicals, I had just assumed that the harmful chemicals were leftover product inside a plastic container or something, and that was how they get released in waterways. In that case, is there a way to truly cleanse plastic from harmful chemicals?
  • Later I read: “Biodegradation presents an ideal vision of matter, lapsing back to ‘nature’ without leaving a visible residue.” (216)
    • So it’s about the visibility of the degradation and not its actual degradation. I find it a bit odd and misleading that the term biodegradation has such a positive connotation, but is a term that plastic can still be labeled as.
• “Plastic-loving bacteria turn up, inhabiting and apparently decomposing plastic: are they new, or have they been there all along, and could they clean the oceans of excess debris?” (214)
  • This reminds me of those quotes that are like “nature has its own way” or something along those lines. I’m not saying we should rely solely on these quotes that may or may not be true, but if these plastic-loving bacteria are indeed true, maybe there is something else out there that has yet to be discovered to help us clean up the mess we made.

 

Final Project Planning

Disposable components of a wai mai order (besides the food):

• Bag to carry everything, usually paper or plastic
• Cutlery + napkin, usually inside another plastic packaging component
• Container, usually plastic or paper, that holds the actual food
• Sometimes additional packaging to prevent spillage…like an extra plastic bag wrapped around a container of soup
• Sometimes additional packaging to preserve the heat

Steps

1. Experiment with the actual food container first, this is probably the most important component
   1. Collect a food container to use as a model/possibly a mold
   2. Test different bioplastics methods, fixed to mold, to see which material is the most flexible
      1. Hypothesis: the milk/vinegar method will make a stable and stiff enough box, and the agar agar/glycerol material could make a good cover, kind of functioning like saran wrap..but would have to find a way to seal it nicely
2. Bag that carries everything
   1. Agar agar/glycerol material might also work here. Test a sheet of this material…
   2. Then find a way to cut it into a bag.
      1. Reference: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2548739
3. Time-permitting: cutlery. Also thinking milk/vinegar method for this one.

Materials needed

1. Stove/other cooking equipment like pots, measuring cups, etc.
2. Molds – can use collected wai mai packaging
3. Milk

Bioplastics Experiments

In class, Ben, Kenneth and I tried out the used coffee grounds recipe. We realized a bit after we mixed all the ingredients that Professor Marcela had mentioned that the recipe called for a bit too much used coffee grounds, so we added an extra 50ml of water and 2-5ml of agar agar to try and balance everything out.

It was then poured into a large metal bowl as a mold, with another bowl on top.

I checked back on it this past Monday and was surprised to see it was still wet. Professor Marcela suggested putting it in the dryer, which, after about a day of drying looked like this:

Still needs to dry, though!

I decided to experiment more with the used coffee grounds, with different ratios of ingredients. Before I saw the drying result I thought that the reason it was so wet and jelly-like was because we put too much water. For the second experiment, the ingredients were:

• 15 ml agar agar
• 5 ml glycerol
• 250 ml water
• 5 ml alginate
• 0.3 cups coffee grounds

This time the mixture seemed to be a lot thicker and clumpier as I was stirring it all together. I poured it into one of the small tins. It still needs to dry, but after about 17 hours of drying it looks like this:

I still had a lot of the mixture left over and didn’t want to waste it all, so I poured in 20 ml of water to try and get rid of some of the clumpiness. This seemed to make it super jelly-like as it dried a bit:

I poured this mixture into a plastic cup I had, and after about 17 hours of drying it looks like this:

 

Final Project Ideas

Idea 1: Reconstructed Waimai Packaging

The convenience of waimai has made it extremely popular in Shanghai. One of the problems with it, however, is the amount of waste that is produced from all of the food packaging. Services like eleme have already made steps toward trying to reduce this waste, such as making it mandatory for you to specify whether or not you need single-use disposable tableware. What if we could reduce the waste further through packaging created from bioplastics?

Idea 2: Sleeves for hot drinks at the cafe

When you order a hot drink from our school’s cafe, it comes with a cardboard sleeve so that your hand doesn’t get hot. We’ve already made progress in reducing cafe waste through the reusable metal cups, but what about the sleeves? The sleeves could potentially be created out of plastic waste using the molding techniques we have learned, but I’m wondering if there needs to be some sort of coating to prevent the hot drink from altering it.

Thoughts on Precious Plastics workshop:

I thought that the workshop was really interesting not only because of the experimentation part, but the other ideas and inspirations drawn from the talk as well. One thing I was especially inspired by was a project Adele showed that one of her interns was experimenting with, which was using a hot air gun to shrink plastic onto a mold:

There were also many new interesting pattern samples she showed us that I thought were very visually appealing and unlike other examples I’ve seen before, such as Pollock PP:

Pictures shown during the presentation of plastic tiles that had a more feathery sort of pattern were especially inspiring because it was a completely new pattern to me; Adele mentioned that kind of pattern can be created with an extruder.

From the workshop part, I was a little surprised at the amount of plastic that needed to go into the top part of the stool. I’m wondering if there is a way to make it hollow while also using that molding technique so that less plastic can be used.

 

Thoughts on Reading 1: Social Innovation in China

This reading’s focus on replicability (of something that works) and scalability is really important, and something I often forget about. When creating projects or examining social issues around us, I think it’s easy to get stuck in a very localized mindset. Seeing things or issues happening in one’s direct surroundings or community can lead to losing sight of the fact that other communities are also facing the same or similar issues. As the reading mentions, this is why it’s so important to spread the information of your solution out there if you have one that works.

There was one thing in the reading, however, I was a bit unsure about. On page four It talks about shifts in mindsets, and says “consumers have begun looking for safe, reliable, high value products, and more importantly they are showing that they are willing to pay a premium.” Yes, the economy is growing and people’s incomes are rising but there is still a wage gap that exists. What about consumers who fall into the lower bracket, who can’t afford to pay a premium for safer, reliable and high value products? Will their needs get left behind?

 

Thoughts on Reading 2: Multiple-Helix Collaboration for the Development of a Circular Economy

If anything, this reading made the idea of a truly circular economy pretty much impossible. With the multiple helixes that exist and operate in a very linear economy, it proves that achieving a circular economy would be extraordinarily difficult. On page 64, it mentions that “the success of a country’s most important export companies becomes a priority not only for the companies themselves, but also for suppliers, public organizations, non-government organizations (NGOs), and the general public in entire regions and nations where they have their operational and strategic centres.” This means that if one aspect is changed in an effort to operate more circularly, all of these other organizations and people are affected as well. The direct relationship each component has with each other means that one little change makes it necessary for many other changes to happen, which is no easy task.

There is another point I found really important towards the end of the reading: “Consumers contribute to making or breaking companies and business models. By selecting a product or service they, very simply, communicate their approval and signal that they want more of the goods or services of a particular supplier…The favourable choices made by customers represent a carte blanche for companies to continue with business practices and continue to expand operations” (71-72). This highlights the importance of being aware, as consumers, of the products we are thinking about purchasing in terms of their social and environmental impact. If we keep purchasing unethical-y made products, then we are supporting that unethical practice.

Chinese Craft Techniques

Papercutting is a type of Chinese folk art that is hung up as decoration on windows or doors, and is also used during festivals or special events because they symbolize luck and happiness.

This craft is thought to have originated from as early as 3BC, when people used other thin materials such as leaves to create artwork. The switch to paper, however, came when the price of paper became more affordable. It basically involves scissors to cut paper, usually red, into an artwork, making use of negative and positive space.

The paper material can potentially be replicated with plastic. Since the paper used is pretty thin, the plastic would also have to be thin. The ironing technique could potentially be used with perhaps two layers of plastic bags to somewhat match the characteristics of paper in terms of thickness, and to make the plastic less flimsy.

 

Interesting Plastic Solutions (Using the “Bio-Thinking” Framework)

There is a large selection of shops on Etsy that specialize in creating products from recycled plastic:

1. AsterandQuail’s hanging lamp

The cool geometric shape of this lamp is made out of plastic drinking straws. I really like this lamp because it both looks beautiful and is a statement piece for interior design. What I’m curious about, however, is where exactly they get these plastic straws. Each one is made to order and takes about 3 to 4 weeks – does this include time to collect single-color straws? 

2. UniqueYarnsCo’s eco friendly yarn

This yarn is made from recycled plastic bottles. I like the idea of this product because it is completely transforming the shape, texture, and use of plastic bottles, which can then be turned into a wearable or any other project you can make with yarn. It gives a material for another person to make their own wearables with rather than buying something that isn’t necessarily environmentally friendly from a store.

3. OtagRecycle’s recycled plastic wallet

I know this one isn’t really introducing a new technique or concept since we have looked at wallets and things made from ironing plastic before…but I wanted to include this wallet because I think it’s just very well-crafted and uniquely beautiful. A lot of wallets using this technique that I’ve seen, I’ve always had the thought that while they were creative solutions, they would still look better visually and fashionably with a different, more conventional material. With this wallet, however, the opposite is true. If you were to recreate this design with say, leather, it wouldn’t look as beautiful because the plastic fusing technique in this case matches the design well. I think this is an important thing to consider when trying to use plastic as a material: rather than trying to make plastic look like something else or another material…what if we focused our attention on creating a design that works the best or looks the best with upcycling plastic techniques?

 

The problem with Etsy products is they are a bit hard to evaluate with some of the components of the Bio-Thinking framework:

• Cyclic: Depending on the type of plastic used, the product could or could not be recyclable.
• Solar: Unless the product is an appliance, this one doesn’t really apply use-wise. Since the manufacturing process is handmade, these products are potentially using less energy than an industrial product would.
• Safe: Again, since these products are handmade, they are potentially not releasing anything toxic or disrupting ecosystems as much as a factory would.
• Efficient: Because of the incorporation of recycled plastic materials, less overall energy is needed to originally produce each product (in this round of the plastic material’s lifetime). From a time efficiency and business standpoint, however, the handmade aspect negatively influences each product’s efficiency because of the amount of time it takes to craft a single product by yourself.
• Social: Assuming the Etsy shop-owner takes good care of themselves, this component isn’t really an issue because of, again, the handmade aspect of each of the products. However, we have less information about the raw materials and where each material comes from.

The Pleather Bag

Project Statement

Many people perceive trash or waste as something that is unappealing, unattractive and meant to be thrown away. The Pleather Bag aims to highlight the potential for plastic waste to be transformed into something beautiful, functional and fashionable. Through ironing techniques to fuse sheets of plastic waste together, durable, leather-like fabric was created to transform what were once single-use objects into a bag that can be worn over and over again.

Research

In a study conducted to determine what kind of environmental activist art is the most effective in inspiring proenvironmental behavior, Sommer and Klöckner found that works that offered solutions, rather than just the presentation of a problem, had the most potential to influence audience behavior. Their research findings served as motivation for me to produce a wearable that was as, well, wearable, as possible. If waste can be transformed into something both functional and beautiful, others will perhaps be inspired to do the same.

As for the material, I was largely inspired by the ironing experiment in class. Fused plastic can look almost leather-like, which makes sense for a bag considering a lot of bags are made out of leather.

Because I was pretty new to creating wearables, I referenced Nicole Gdula’s bag for the sewing technique in terms of sewing the sides and bottom of two sheets of material together before flipping them inside out so that the seam is hidden.

Significance

This project shows the potential for plastic waste as a material in the realm of fashion rather than just as a form of waste. Trash does not have to look like trash. The project is also very easily replicable: it does not take too much skill since you would only need to learn the ironing technique and how to use a sewing machine (to sew simple straight lines), and there is a lot of room for creativity with the design of the bag. The variety of material and tools used is also relatively small; all you need is an iron, baking paper, plastic bags or plastic packaging, and sewing materials.

Design

Since the main goal was to create something that would be deemed as fashionable, I drew my main design inspiration from Issey Miyake’s bags.

I love the geometric style of his bags, and the popularity of these bags serve as a kind of market confirmation that this kind of geometric aesthetic is something a lot of people also find appealing.

Based off of this aesthetic, I sketched an initial idea of how I visualized my bag:

This design evolved as I went into production mode, the details of which are discussed below.

Production

I started off by making the two layers of material that would become the body of the bag. The raw plastic material I used was largely influenced by the color I wanted (black), and ended up being the packaging that a lot of companies use to ship or deliver their non-fragile products, such as clothing, in. The size of the bag was, in turn, affected by how large this raw material was.

I folded and cut four layers of the raw plastic material before fusing it at 120 degrees with an iron, the temperature of which was decided because of the experiment Maya and I conducted a few weeks prior in class. The result was a leather-like material:

The next step was to create the geometric patterns on top of one of the new fabric layers. I was originally going to sew new created fabric on top, but Professor Marcela showed me bags from the company Up-Fuse, who fuse the layers on top instead. This was definitely a lot quicker and simpler than what I was planning to do.

 

The pattern that I decided on was a bit different from the one I originally sketched out. This was a combination of experimenting with shapes and how they looked and the fear of not being able to iron on the shapes perfectly straight. If they were purposely slanted, this would be a lot easier and look better should the shapes shift if I accidentally moved them around before they were completely fused. In hindsight, this decision makes the design more easily replicable because there is no need for perfection.

To sew the two sheets of material together, I referenced Nicole Gdula’s project in sewing the sides and bottom before flipping the bag inside out to get a cleaner seam.

The most challenging part of this project was the handles. At first, I planned to stuff strips of fused plastic with bubble wrap in a tube-like manner, and then fusing these handles to the bag. However, when I tried to do this the “pleather” material wrinkled very strangely when it was folded; it didn’t feel natural to hold like a bag. I ended up using bag handles from a Lelecha paper bag instead, but with this decision rose another challenge: how to attach it to the bag. I wanted to try and do this without any sewing techniques. I experimented with two ways of the fusing technique to trap the handle in the plastic, but this was not very strong. I ended up sewing the handles to smaller strips of the pleather, and then fusing that pleather to the main body of the bag:

Conclusion

This project is far from perfect, but I think the main goals were achieved: a bag was created out of trash without looking like trash, in a way that is easily replicable in order to inspire others to upcycle their plastic waste. With a geometric design inspired by Issey Miyake, this kind of geometric aesthetic hopefully aligns with many other’s concept of what is fashionable.

There are certainly many imperfections, such as how the edges are not as clean as they could be. I also wish I spent more time on transforming the handles. By simply taking handles from an existing paper bag, even if it is an example of reusing material, this material has not been creatively transformed. The main body of the bag shows that plastic packaging can be transformed into a material that looks and feels completely different, yet the handles of the bag have not been transformed to the same degree.

If sewing could be entirely replaced by the fusing technique, this would also be more ideal, removing the need for sewing skills (making it more easily replicable), and removing any non-recycled material (the thread).

If anything, my hope is for anyone who views this project to also think about these areas of improvement so that they can not only replicate the bag, but improve upon its design as well.

Project Inspiration

Nicole Gdula: created a tote bag by using the ironing plastics method

Issey Miyake: I really like the geometric style of his bag designs

 

Material + Methods Influence

• I referenced Nicole Gdula’s bag for the sewing technique of creating a bag since this was my first time trying to create a wearable from scratch. This included sewing the sides and bottom of two sheets of fabric together before flipping them inside out so that the seams aren’t visible.
• Professor Marcela introduced me to Up-Fuse, who also use the iron technique to create bags. I was originally planning on sewing geometric patterns on top of my bag, but the Up-Fuse bags simply fused different color plastic layers on top, which made a lot more sense.
• The ironing experiment we did in class was very helpful in guiding the temperature I used to fuse the plastic together.
• Since I was using the ironing technique, I wanted to use plastic bags. I also really liked the idea of using plastic bags to create another more durable bag. The plastic material I ended up using, however, came pretty much entirely from the plastic packaging that holds non-fragile products that are being delivered. The reason for this was because I wanted the base color to be black, and in an effort to match types of plastics when fusing, this same kind of packaging plastic was consistently used for different colors as well.
• In terms of material collection, I used some plastic packaging found around in the classroom from what people brought in, as well as from my trash stash I was collecting in my apartment (that I keep in anticipation for any projects for this class, haha).

 

Environmental Facts Research

In my capstone paper I explore the effectiveness of environmental activist art in influencing its audience’s behavior. One study, conducted by Sommer and Klöckner, finds that works that have the most potential to inspire proenvironmental behavior are ones that, rather than only focusing on raising awareness for a problem, also offer a solution for that problem. One piece of artwork that fell into this category was Cicia Hartmann’s Mur Vegetal, a large flower wall made from upcycled material.

What made this work successful was that it showed that waste could be produced into something beautiful, serving as an inspiration for others to do the same. Hence, with this midterm project the goal was to make the bag as nice as possible (with my beginner wearable crafting skills) to show that plastic material can indeed be transformed, and serve as inspiration for what people can do with their plastic waste.

Ironing Plastic Experiment

For this experiment, Maya and I decided to experiment with two layers of type 4 plastic. We ran four different tests before achieving a solid result, each test with two cut rectangles from the plastic bag sandwiched between baking paper.

Test 1: 20 seconds (two sessions of 10 seconds), 80°C

We initially just did 10 seconds of ironing, but only the center of the two layers were sticking this way. We ended up ironing them for 10 more seconds to see if it would stick better, but nothing really changed.

Test 2: 10 seconds, 150°C

Instead of increasing the time, we decided to increase the temperature. However, this resulted in a lot of little holes in the plastic.

Test 3: 5 seconds, 150°C

To try and get rid of the holes, we shortened the time to 5 seconds for the third test. While there were certainly less holes, there were nevertheless still holes.

Test 4: 5 seconds, 120°C

We figured the temperature was probably more of the problem rather than the time, so we lowered the temperature. The result of this test was pretty good: the layers stuck together nicely and there were no holes!

 

Midterm Project Idea

When I was younger, I would always see these tote bags made out of old Capri-Sun juice boxes at Barnes & Noble. I really wanted one but my mom would always say no because she thought they were too ugly. Now, I think she’s right.

My idea for the midterm project is to create an upcycled tote bag that someone would actually want to wear. The ironing technique we learned in class produced a nice almost leather-like material, which seems like it would work well as a bag material. Hence, I wouldlike to turn plastic bags into a bag that ismore permanent, transforming plastic bags as objects that are mostly single-use into a (hopefully aesthetically-pleasing) wearable that can be used over and over again.

A quick search on the web yielded people who have already used this technique to create bags that look nice:

I’m pretty new to making wearables, so I found that this portfolio page had a helpful sketch and explanation of how one student sewed everything together to produce an upcycled bag.

As for the actual style of the bag, I am mainly inspired by Issey Miyake. I really like the geometric style of his Bao Bao bags:

I want to incorporate this sort of geometric style into the design of my bag purely for aesthetic purposes. Since I am trying to create a bag that people would want to wear, I figured Issey Miyake’s Bao Bao bags are also a good source of inspiration because of their popularity, kind of like a confirmation that this sort of style is visually appealing to a lot of people.

With all of this in mind, I sketched out this design:

Notes from Mr. Yan’s Talk

Types of trash

• Residual
• “Wet” trash/household waste
• Recyclables
  • General rule: if the plastic container is clear it is usually good to be recycled
• Toxic trash

Process

• 5:30am: residual trash truck comes to collect residual trash from the previous night
• Mr. Yan then cleans the trash cans before they are opened at 7am
• 12pm: recyclables collection
• 6-8pm: usual trash collection time from residents
• Afterwards: he sorts and sells the trash, usually finishing his day around 10:30pm
  • As a regular, he can sell at around 0.8RMB/hour, though this price fluctuates. This year it has dropped to 0.6 because of government environmental campaigns so a lot of facilities were shut down

Differences after new trash sorting laws

• There is a lot less trash that has to be sorted, and everything is much cleaner
• He doesn’t have to buy trash from residents, though some Shanghainese families still call him to buy their trash for him to sort
• However, there are still some people who are not following the rules. These people are usually a few Shanghainese families that consistently don’t listen
  • 3 strikes system: take a photo of the person after they break the rules 3 times and submit the photo
• Mr. Yan used to be able to go pick through trash cans but now a lot of these bins have been locked up and can only be accessible at certain hours
• The government pays 8RMB an hour for people to stand by the trash bins (but this is only in Shanghai…new laws have not been implemented across China)

Other Notes

• Friday and Saturday are good business days.
  • Sundays and holidays are not
• More city development = more opportunity to collect recyclables
• Biggest worry = running into police while on a cart with trash
  • The police will take the cart and disassemble it, and you have to pay a lot of money to get it fixed
  • Really isn’t a way to work around this, except to be very careful and go at night when police are getting off of work…then you will likely get a 100RMB fine instead, which is cheaper than having to repair the cart

 

Art Installation

For our installation, we decided to create a comedic video to encourage people to properly dispose of their waste. By introducing a little bit of humor, it was our hope for Sofia’s character in the video to be memorable each time someone goes to throw something away in the cafe.

One point that is especially important in the video is when our friend Matt tries to throw a used napkin away in the recyclables bin when it should in fact go into the residual bin. This is a common misconception about sorting that Mr. Yan brought up in his talk as well as one that I was personally previously guilty of doing.

The question now is how to display the video. There are multiple screens that can be found around campus, but it would be ideal for it to be placed somewhere in a place that generates a lot of waste or where you would normally throw things away, such as in the cafe.