Waste generated where?

After researching and documenting the use of waste by designers, Boontje and Hein Eek, im intrigued as to where the waste is coming from, who wastes more: manufacture or consumer?

Eliminating this waste from the manufacture process is not detrimental to the above designers, as they were providing a use for waste that already existed. It is also highly unlikely that all the waste produced during the manufacture process would be able to be preveted as it is generally a by-product of the process to achieving a finished desirable consumer object.

A more important and potentially fruitful approach to the waste cycle issue is to make sure that all of it is either put back into the manufacture cycle in the form of recycling, or that every time designers like Boontje and Hein Eek create a piece of furniture such as a table, other consumer manufacturers produce one less unit of their table.

It is important that designers do not just litter an already flooded marketplace with extremely intuitive pieces of design but ones that the normal individual focused on the finished, perfect aesthetic will not appreciate in their home.



INSIGHT: The fight is not to reduce our consumption levels, but to reduce the wrong kind of consumption - irresponsible and harmful to the planet's resources. Designers such as Boontje and Hein Eek are an extremely important part of this fight as they lead by example and can change the consumption behaviours of many others, but if the global manufacturers keep spitting out the ever increasing levels of finished desirable objects, then there is simply more waste than before.

We, and I, must focus on both where the waste ends up and what use it can be put to, but maybe more importantly where the waste comes from and if there are any ways to prevent the amount of needless waste produced.