Precious plastic: smashed iPhone screen tumblers and melted bags for table tops as young designers recycle to save the planet

'Plastic rehabilitation' is a common theme for many of the demonstrations and talks taking place at this year's London Design Festival.

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Barbara Chandler10 September 2018

Appalled by images of polluted oceans and brimming landfill sites, many consumers are enthusiastically endorsing plans to expand the levy on plastic bags to takeaway coffee cups.

The London Design Festival, with multiple events across the capital from September 15-23 is bullish about the whole business, hosting innovative shows backed by demonstrations and talks with a common theme: plastic rehabilitation.

Recycled plastic is seen as a desirable and appealing resource by Laura Houseley, editor of the Modern Design Review and co-curator of PlasticScene, an ambitious assembly of artefacts by 13 international designers in a stunning rounded space in a redeveloped gasholder at King’s Cross.

Everything is made of recycled plastic, from a chandelier of “blown” soft drinks bottles, to a table fashioned from old CDs. “Here are objects that are bold and desirable,” Houseley adds. “These designers felt excited by their material, not obligated.”

Put a hot wire in a box of nylon powder left over from 3D printing and what do you get? As the powder melts, it forms a nicely moulded and very strong sculptural shape around the wire. This process has been invented by Fabio Hendry and Seongil Choi at Studio Ilio in E14 and their seating and lighting are on display.

Meanwhile, Sasa Stucin and Nicholas Gardner of Soft Baroque create furniture from chunks of plastic waste, and James Shaw, the show’s co-curator, forces old plastic through a giant nozzle, twisting the extruded strips into candy-coloured bowls, tables and candlesticks.

London Design Fair on the other side of town has made plastic its material of the year for its Beyond the Chipper show. (Old Truman Brewery, September 20-23).

Precious material: Louise and Madelaine Thilley of Weez & Merl make marbled tabletops from melted, reformed plastic carrier bags and bubble wrap that would otherwise be thrown away

“Plastic is a precious material for us,” say Louise and Madelaine Thilley of Weez & Merl in Brighton. They collect carrier bags and bubble wrap, made from low-density polyethylene, from local stores and workshops and melt and reform them into seductively marbled tabletops and small accessories.

Plastic is also a thing of beauty for London designer Charlotte Kidger, with a new MA in the innovative Materials Futures at Central Saint Martins. Using cold casting, she gives new life to polyurethane foam dust left from CNC milling, creating layered shapes for tables and containers in shades of moody blue and sunny yellow.

Recycled polyurethane foam dust: tables and containers from a range by London designer Charlotte Kidger

From Japan comes Kodai Iwamoto with glorious vessels blown from PVC piping, and arriving from Holland is Dirk Vander Kooij with exuberant lights, vessels and vases made from old CDs and chocolate moulds.

“Plastic is not the problem, it’s what we choose to do with it,” says eco-activist Jane Withers, curator of the festival’s Brompton Design District. She is attacking waste with a theme of Material Consequences for shows in vacant shops and offices near the V&A.

Adds Withers: “Plastic is an extraordinarily versatile material that can be easily shaped and can be brilliantly colourful, but we must stop thinking it is cheap and disposable.”

Less than 10 per cent of the world’s plastic is presently recycled. Labelling is confusing. “People simply don’t know which plastics are okay and what to do with them,” she says.

Miroslav Král and Vlasta Kubušová of Crafting Plastics! studio in Bratislava and Berlin will show us bio-plastics, as will London’s Franklin Till.

New materials: Miroslav Král and Vlasta Kubušová of Crafting Plastics! studio in Bratislava and Berlin will show bio-plastics, which use no oil

The #OneLess project is weaning Londoners off bottled water, food wrappings are made from seaweed at Skipping Rocks Lab, and in the central courtyard of the V&A is a beacon of hope: the elegant new Fountain for London by Michael Anastassiades. The lighting designer and Jane Withers will present the fountain in a talk at the museum on September 19 at 11am.

To see a revolutionary interior 3D printed from recycled plastic, visit luxury handbag brand Bottletop, where a design forum is planned for the festival.

Chic homewares made from recycled plastic are at the Conscious Creators pop-up at Selfridges, opening Friday until October 17. Look out for the terrazzo-style ecopixel champagne cooler (£95), and tumblers made from smashed iPhone screens (£45 for a set of four).