As environmental damage and the problem of waste become the defining issues of our era, designers and makers are exploring new ways of looking at their creative processes, with handbags made from decommissioned firehoses, door handles from discarded fishing nets and furniture from bonded industrial dust…We are, according to some climate and cultural commentators, in an anthropogenic age. This is an epoch defined not by the materials we harness – stone, bronze, iron – but by the irreparable damage we are causing to the planet. The Anthropocene, as it’s otherwise known, is not yet formally recognised as a subdivision of geologic time (that may or may not happen in 2021). While various unions and commissioning bodies are deciding what to call the current era, the designers and makers on these pages are grappling with a similar issue of nomenclature. Both boil down to the same thing: waste.

For Kresse Wesling, waste is a relatively new concept that requires rapid ‘dis-invention’. For Sophie Rowley, waste streams are treated as ‘future quarries’ – a starting point rather than an end point. All see the proliferation of waste as an opportunity to take a long, hard look at the creative design process and their place in this age – whatever it may be called.Charlotte Kidger
Material DesignerThe forms that Charlotte Kidger creates are the result of hours spent patrolling industrial estates, looking for manufacturers producing niche waste streams. ‘I saw a lot of corrugated roofing, shutters and pipes,’ she recalls. Industrial Craft – a collection of colourful moulded vessels and tables – is the project that has emerged from those excursions.

The collection is formed of bonded dust gathered from a model-making factory in Telford. Kidger first encountered the material in the woodworking studio during her MA in Material Futures. ‘The architecture and product design students would make prototypes from blue Styrofoam, turning it on a lathe, which created a lot of dust. I became interested in adopting a different approach to raw materials that are perhaps problematic, wondering how I might change that into something of value.’

Kidger gathers polyurethane and polystyrene dust from Telford in black plastic bags. The dust is then put through a sieve before being combined with resin and pigment and poured into moulds created from corrugated sheets and pipework. ‘Because I’m creating this new material, the only way I can learn how the material works is through the making,’ explains Kidger. Initially, this resulted in disappointment. ‘When I first cast the table pieces the material hadn’t quite fallen down into the mould properly. It had this crumbled, broken look to it, which you could see quite clearly in the design.
To start with, I wasn’t expecting it at all but it has become a signature of the design.’ The textured, open edges of Kidger’s forms have the appearance of kinetic sand – touch it and it might crumble. These delicate edges are juxtaposed with more compressed, smooth surfaces.

‘No two pieces ever come out the same: there are always slight defects that happen during the casting process,’ she says. ‘I’ve decided to celebrate that as part of the process, and not try to control it too much.’

From her studio in Camberwell, Kidger is developing her range, continuing to work with the corrugated curved leg that has become a signature shape for her, and exploring the use of different dusts and pigments. Though unpredictable, she describes the making process as peaceful. ‘The only mechanised tool I use is a handheld cement mixer: the rest is done entirely by hand.’
charlottekidger.com
You learn how their
joints and wings
work so you can move
them around without
hurting them – that’s
why the training
is so important’Elvis & Kresse
Sustainable luxury accessories‘People have their hobbies: some people go to the opera, I go to landfill sites,’ explains Kresse Wesling, co-founder of the sustainable luxury brand, Elvis & Kresse. Wesling was undertaking a personal research project into UK waste streams in 2004 when she first discovered the potential of decommissioned fi re hoses. ‘I’ve always been interested in the idea that waste is something that we invented,’ she continues, ‘and that it is something we need to dis-invent. The question is, how do we go about doing that in a modern society?’ The dis-invention of waste is what Wesling has been working towards since she founded the company in 2005.

Decommissioned fire hoses are now one of 15 waste materials that the brand rescues from landfill and transforms into accessories and homeware. At their workshops in Kent and Istanbul, fire hoses become bags and purses, black printing blankets become belts and wallets, and leather fragments from the cutting-room floor at Burberry become woven bags and rugs. Even their business cards and brochures are printed on reused paper Yorkshire Tea sacks, because using recycled paper ‘wasn’t good enough.’

‘Rescue, transform, donate, is the philosophy that runs through the business,’ explains Wesling. Fifty per cent of profits are donated to charities associated with the materials they rescue. Last year, the profits from their leather goods were donated to a scheme that enabled three women from Guatemala to be trained as solar engineers. 
‘‘Saving three tonnes of leather from landfill enabled these women to completely change the energy potential of their villages,’ Wesling explains. ‘I don’t think these are difficult choices to make.’

Wesling will go ‘to any length’ to source waste. ‘Yes it’s labour intensive but you either believe in these things or you don’t,’ she says emphatically. ‘We are not dilettantes. We were never out to rescue one hose and make something beautiful and provocative and move on. I don’t see the point in that.’ Her commitment informs every aspect of her life. ‘It means eating some fairly random meals and trialling 20 different bar shampoos before finding one that actually worked,’ she says of the minutiae, before readdressing the wider issue: ‘Since 1990, we’ve known what a terrible state we have put the world in. So unless you are actively working to address that every day, I do not understand what you’re doing.’
elvisandkresse.com
‘Rescue, transform,
donate, is the
philosophy that runs
through the business...’Watch the film hereSophie Rowley
Material DesignerBerlin-based maker and Loewe Craft Prize finalist Sophie Rowley is interested in the inherent value of materials. ‘I’ve always enjoyed taking something of very low value and making it more precious through a process that I apply,’ she explains.

As a textile design student, this process was often embroidery: nowadays her practice has broadened to encompass the repurposing of common waste materials such as denim, paper, Styrofoam and glass.

Rowley’s MA project, Material Illusions, became an extension of this notion. Taking raw materials such as wood, limestone and marble as inspiration, Rowley developed processes that reformed waste streams into new materials. ‘I decided to only work with waste, simulating nature by studying the sedimentation of natural materials and applying this process to a range of materials.’

Her Bahia Denim range, for example, is produced by draping denim offcuts on top of a mould and sealing them with bioresin. Once dry, the material is carved to create a flat surface. Through the carving, a unique pattern emerges that is visually similar to Azul Bahia marble, quarried in Brazil. The new material is then formed into sculptural furniture pieces that showcase the vibrant pattern of the Bahia denim.
Rowley sources her waste locally. While studying in the UK, her Bahia range was formed of off-cuts supplied by Diesel denim; in Germany, where she is now based, denim is sourced from a recycling centre in Hamburg. ‘There is the challenge of the inconsistency of waste,’ she says. ‘The colours and composition of a particular waste stream might be different, or it might be mixed with other materials, but I try to play with this and embrace it.’

The success of Rowley’s investigation into value and process is contributing to the redefinition of waste in design. Her new materials are now sought after by global companies and luxury brands, including Volkswagen and Stella McCartney, and she is currently working on a commission for a hotel, trialling processes that will enable them to repurpose existing soft furnishings. ‘More and more, people are approaching me – and it’s so nice to see how much you actually manage to stop going to landfill.’
sophierowley.com


Watch the film here
Monica Cass
Product Designer‘There’s something exciting about it, isn’t there? You wake up in the morning and they magically appear.’ Monica Cass is talking about her twice-weekly milk bottle delivery. ‘The debate about plastic versus glass is one thing, but for us,’ she continues, ‘the delivery is not just about that, it’s also about consumption. So when we order two pints every two days, we are limiting ourselves to that much milk.’

Cass’s approach to consumption at home also runs through her design partnership, par-avion co, which is dedicated to using carefully and locally sourced natural and renewable materials. Earlier this year, Cass received an open brief from Battersea Power Station to create an installation for London Craft Week. Partnering with the designer Claire Potter, the duo decided to highlight the levels of waste produced by the construction industry. ‘Up to 70 per cent of construction waste has to be reused or recycled,’ says Cass. ‘Yet even that remaining 30 per cent still contributes more than 50 per cent of landfill content in the UK. It’s staggering.’

The contractors on site at Battersea were able to demonstrate that only two percent of their waste goes to landfill. ‘We did our due diligence,’ says Cass. ‘We went to the waste plant to see what that two percent was.’ The materials recovered from the waste plant were predominantly soft plastics: wrapping, hard palette straps, and white, reinforced scaffolding wrap.

‘We decided to stick with what we know, and transform them in a way that stayed true to our elegant design ethos.’ Cass employed a traditional cordage technique to weave three panels from these different waste plastics. The panels were set into three large outdoor benches, which were displayed for the duration of LCW.
‘If we can show people how waste can be used in this way, using traditional methods, hopefully it will contribute
to a general slowing down.’Weaving from waste is a practice that par-avion co. are keen to continue, and the studio is now working to produce a collection of outdoor furniture from discarded fishing nets sourced by Potter from the South coast. ‘We’re giving a second life to this incredibly durable material,’ explains Cass. ‘And, as it has a similar diameter to the Danish cord we use, it’s easy for us to weave with.’

Cass’s versatile approach to materials, and the transportable nature of the woven frames, has taken the practice of waste weaving out of the studio and into their local community. The GroundWork Gallery in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, is organising a clean up of the River Yare and, with the waste recovered, par-avion co. will help them create their own woven bench. Similarly, a local school plans to create a bench from waste collected by their pupils from the surrounding heathland.

‘As a culture, I think we’re becoming more conscious about how much waste we produce,’ says Cass. ‘If we can show people how waste can be used in this way, using traditional methods, hopefully it will contribute to a general slowing down.’
par-avion.co
Claire Potter
DesignerThe designer Claire Potter is a self-committed minimalist. So much so, that she is in the process of packing up her possessions and moving on to a 35ft houseboat. ‘Living in the smallest space possible is one of the most responsible things we can do,’ she asserts. ‘Every single thing that is going on my boat has to earn its place. There is nothing superfluous, there is no ‘just in case’. That mentality has perpetuated a much wider consumerist lifestyle that actually isn’t serving us or the planet.’

Potter’s design studio is based in Brighton, where she grew up. (‘I learnt to run on the pebbles and was thrown into the sea from a young age.’) Her fascination with the marine world is deep-rooted, but it has only recently started to feed into her design practice, which is wholly concerned with the circular economy.

Potter, who trained as an interior architect, was running a local beach clean when she first discovered the potential of ghost gear – a term applied to fishing nets that have been lost, abandoned or discarded. Made of polypropylene, they are ‘one of the most devastatingly impactful forms of marine litter’ because they carry on fishing after they have been abandoned. They have a very low value if recovered and can’t be reprocessed in the UK so in 2017, as a member of the Global Ghost Gear Initiative, Potter began researching ways to create a range of small objects from unwanted fishing gear. 
The EL handle was created: a utilitarian green handle made from injectionmoulded, shredded polypropylene nets and named after the Emma Louise trawler whose nets had been used in the making. The handle was launched in 2018 and the studio are currently working on a series of new moulds for similarly durable objects with an equivalent longevity.

Potter sources her material from beach cleans and directly from fishermen along the South Coast, recovering end-of-life nets that would otherwise cost up to £400 to send to landfill. ‘Repurposing waste and giving it a second life has to be the future,’ she says. ‘We simply aren’t able to sustain our take, make, chuck lifestyle anymore. We need to be thinking about how we can make things much more responsibly and much more intentionally. And we need to be creating things that last.’
clairepotterdesign.com
‘Repurposing waste and giving it a second life has to be the future...’WORDS NELL CARD PHOTOGRAPHS WILLEM JASPERT