POSTPAPER STUDIO
Most companies are now switching from plastic packaging to paper ones, increasing the amount of paper and cardboard waste generated. Currently, the only way to recycle paper is through the large-scale recycling system, which relies on centralised facilities and industrial plants, often abroad. What if instead we created a system of many local manufacturers that turn people’s waste into goods for those very same people? A system where trash from our cities stays inside our cities? Ultimately, how can we enable paper recycling to happen closer to where paper is wasted? POST PAPER STUDIO aims to be a low-tech alternative to upcycle paper waste at a local level, promoting its value as material for both design and construction. It consists of a series of recipes, tools, processes and guidelines to enable designers, makers and small businesses to transform paper waste from their own communities and use it in place of conventional materials. Once combined with natural binding agents, and pressed using modular energy-efficient tools produced with digital fabrication techniques, paper pulp is easily moulded into sheets, bricks or other basic shapes that can become the building blocks of new objects and furniture pieces. The goal is to create an urban self-sufficient ecosystem of community workshops dedicated to paper recycling at a neighbourhood scale. Overall, the open source and low-tech nature of the project wants to turn the recycling practice from centralised and exclusive, to distributed and accessible, sparking a conversation around the efficiency of the current recycling system. The project wants to be an answer to the paradox of recycling as we know it: a carbon-intensive process that collects waste and moves it across cities, countries and continents to be sorted, recycled, transformed and finally shipped back to cities. Recycling paper locally is instead a way of limiting carbon emissions from transportation and keeping the city’s material resources productive for as long as possible. Moreover, our goal is to prove the potential of paper waste as a valuable material for design, interiors and architecture, which means moving away from the downcycling tendency and advancing instead an upgrade of paper’s qualities, so that its composites can become a valid alternative to virgin materials like wood, or to non-renewable ones like foams and polystyrene. With this experimental approach, we are also able to recycle those types of paper currently discarded by the mainstream recycling systems—like greasy cardboard or receipts. By making sure that each recipe we develop only uses natural binding agents (like starches, alginate, resins and gums—that can be sourced locally according to what is most available in the area), the resulting composites can easily go back into recycling or be composted.
The project created by BY THE END OF MAY.
More Info:
@postpaperstudio
