Cardboard is a significant portion of the waste that has accumulated around us as a result of the rapid growth in online shopping and deliveries. Additionally, because cardboard is the cheapest and easiest material available for prototyping, it accounts for the majority of the waste produced by design students while working on their projects. While researching cardboard recycling, there is mainly the usual process of it being turned into egg cartons and repacking done by large recycling plants but what interested me the most was I came across an idea inspired by a 3D Brooklyn experiment by Will Haude.
My initial concerns where on the fact of using 3d printed molds and on whether it was sustainable approach or not but on my further research and help from the technicians in the 3d printing workshop I learnt that the filament used for 3d print is a plant based biodegradable filament containing 80% glucose and 20 % plastic fibres which can be shredded and remelted back to filament. Which served my concept of the proposal of circular design approach.
I started by creating different moulds like a dish , pencil holder a clock , a lamp shade and so on, One of the main issues I had with the material was that even though it was strong as MDF when fully dried once in contact with water it disintegrated. I shared my concerns with my tutor and he suggested using bio resin like shellac or osmo oil to make it water resistant as it would give it a protective layer against water at same time remain a biodegradable material. I researched on the bio resin its properties and found that shellac/ osmo oil would be an excellent waterproofing agent for the material.
As I had limited time I couldn’t experiment with large scale mold’s using wood which I would have loved to do as I feel we can compress the cardboard pulp into seating for chairs or topper for side tables etc. I will definitely try implementing some of this in my future projects as I feel it is very interesting material to experiment with at the same time I will be using design conscious material for experimentation
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