Green X Modish: A collection of product designs

Bob the mini dishwasher
Developer: Daan Tech

It consumes only 0.35 kWh per cycle and uses only 3 liters of water per load, representing five times less than consumed when doing the washing-up by hand.

Besides, multiple programs, LCD screen, automatic magnetic opening, Wi-Fi function are available. Currently, 3000 Bobs are produced every month at the Daan Tech factory in the Vendée region of France.

Violins made from PVC pipes
Developer: Locomotiva Project

Locomotiva Project, a non-profit organization launched in Brazil's Sao Paulo, aims to socially and culturally integrate children and adolescents through musical education. It offers free access to music lessons for those who could not normally afford them.

In addition to the lessons, the students also need instruments, in this case a violin, in order to learn and practice.

However, the issue is that a high-quality handmade violin can cost up to €1,250 depending on the type of wood, whereas the cost of a mid-range wooden violin is around €125. In both cases, these sums are out of reach for the students.

One of the project's violin makers, therefore, had the idea of reusing old polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes and tubes to make the instruments. And Braskem, a sponsor of the project, donated the PVC materials from its construction sites and hydraulic installations.

Specifically, the production process consists of 42 steps involving activities such as cutting, heating, framing and trimming. In the end, these new violins will cost only €45.

A guitar made from recycled marine plastics
Developer: Burls Art, 4ocean

An artist Burls Art partnered with Florida-based 4ocean to make a guitar from recycled marine plastics. He joined a team in South Florida to go diving for ocean plastic waste and then the haul was taken to the 4ocean facility to be weighed, sorted and processed.

Next, Burls Art brought bags of shredded high-density polyethylene and plastics from such things as bottles, caps, forks and so on and returned to his workshop.

The plastic pieces were poured into a lined steel box and placed in a specially-bought domestic oven and set to bake at 350 °C to melt and merge. The hardened block was then cut to a double-horned body template, routed for the pickups and pots, and shaped before being buffed up.

Burls Art opted for a maple neck with an epoxy fingerboard embedded with plastic straws. The top of the headstock is also epoxy, with a few bottle caps thrown in and topped with logos. The finished product has two pickups, chrome hardware and three control knobs for volume and tone.

Flip-Clip Go
Developer: Newlane, Cameron-Price

Flip-Clip Go is a ‘packable’ helmet that comes made entirely from recycled plastics salvaged from oceans and landfills, before being treated, processed, cleaned, and re-molded.

Manufactured in partnership between Newlane and Cameron-Price, each helmet helps recycle as many as 20 plastic bottles worth of plastic.

Flip-Clip Go
Developer: Newlane, Cameron-Price

The patented design of the helmet features Flip-Clip Technology, meaning there is a flippable top that changes its dome-shaped form into a frisbee. Measuring 81mm in thickness when closed, its bulkiness gets reduced by up to 50%, making it much more convenient to carry around.

Moreover, it comes with a relatively bare-basics design, featuring an airy construction that relies on honeycomb structures, and is supported by a protective inner layer of expanded polystyrene (EPS).

pong
Developer: préssec design

Designers of Sydney-based préssec presents this terrazzo-like ping pong paddle made from recycled HDPE.

The innovation began during lockdown when the designers played ping pong on the kitchen table to kill time. Later on, they came up with the idea that ping pong paddle would be a great product to explore manufacturing with recycled plastic.

pong
Developer: préssec design

According to the designers, they were interested in terrazzo-like recycled plastic and wanted to explore the material further to understand what it is like to work with.

As well as utilizing the recycled plastic, they also took the opportunity to rethink the traditional ping pong paddle. As a result, they shaped a hollow handle to reduce weight and produced the paddle from a single piece instead of the conventional 3-layer construction.

préssec explored and tested many prototypes before it finalized the design and started cutting the recycled plastic with the unique pattern.

future fossils
Developer: Polina Krichko

Sharing by Polina Krichko, 'future fossils' is a shoe concept collection made of recycled silicone rubber.

Shoes are fused, stitched, and glued from different materials, of which PVC and EVA, in particular, account for about one third. These make shoes difficult to recycle and cause landfill pollution.

In the project, Polina Krichko works with silicone rubbers, which are often used as auxiliary material, to replicate a master model and scale for production.

By breaking down and reorganizing the process, she combines additives and catalysts in such a way that she can shape the silicone rubber waste into shoes. She then adapts the process to utilize the casting material as classic sculptural clay.

As per Polina Krichko, she reuses and recycles uppers and TPU pieces, often transforms outsoles into crumb rubber, and uses it in new molds.

Alchemy-Χ
Developer: Effekt Footwear

With aims of creating value from waste products and promoting the circular economy, Austria-based start-up Effekt Footwear has launched Alchemy-X, the sneakers contain more than 90% recycled materials.

Constructed from reclaimed ocean plastic, recovered footwear industry waste, and recycled textiles, the sneakers are hand-made in Portugal. After researching materials and designs for one and a half year, 'the world’s most rubbish sneakers' was born.