The jar tops project by Jorre van Ast is a great example of how design can put just one more (positive) obstacle between the consumer and the waste cycle. The application of the different jar tops with ranging functions creates several functional consumer objects from existing ones that would have been put in the bin, or recycled (individuals may keep some jars for storage, but the good intention can end up with you overun by jars!).
Do other objects have the potential for second-life purposes? If so, what type of objects? High tech or low tech? Are these objects found in the street or are they used by the individual?
Take glass jars for example, my grandparents generation would keep jars because of their storage functions. However, this was in a society and culture that had to reuse and repair because there simply wasnt the money to buy everything new. Times have changed.
But projects and products like jar tops act as a statement about the difference between the reusing habits of my generation and those previous, and are also very useful!
Plastic bottles are viewed in a similar way as glass jars today - the individual is buying the contents of the container (bottle or jar) rather than the container aswell as the contents. Therefore, when the contents have been emptied, the individual sees the container as simply a by-product of the soft drink or sauce, making it much easier to either litter, or bin or recycle the object.
The latter is a positive but even better and more energy efficient that recycling is to gain another function from the object, and then recycle it.
Jar tops and also the screw-on watering spout by Nicolas Le Moigne are examples of this.
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