
Ellen MacArthur Foundation Circular Design Challenge Submissions - telotortium
https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/circular-design/ideas?order=applauds%20#contribution-list
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telotortium
Ever since hearing about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch[1], I've been getting
interested in what people are doing to try to reduce the amount of plastic
waste that is landfilled or is released into the environment. This weekend I
came across the challenge I linked, which seeks to fund promising ideas to
implement a "circular economy". I've become a little dismayed about the
limited benefit that most of the proposals there would have on the plastic
pollution problem.

Take Funcap[2] for example. Their idea is to turn the plastic caps of drink
bottles into Legos. Unfortunately, this doesn't reduce at all the demand for
plastic bottles (and thus bottle caps), and so we're still left with untold
numbers of bottle caps to do something with. Sure, kids will probably end up
using some of these, but (a) eventually they'll get bored of them or just have
more than they really need (like Happy Meal toys) and (b) ultimately they'll
be disposed of and probably not recycled (even plastic bottle caps today are
often not recycled because it's hard to sort them efficiently at the
recycler[3], and Legos are made out of ABS, which is harder to recycle even
that bottle caps).

Many of the other ideas submitted so far propose some form of reusable
packaging, in particular bringing reusable containers back to the store to be
refilled (for example [4] -- bonus: IoT buzzword bingo!). This is such an
obvious idea (evidenced by the number of submissions to this contest using
that idea) that if it were feasible and actually desired on the consumer
level, it certainly would have been done. Trends are pointing in the direction
of more disposability if anything -- people now would rather have Amazon
deliver their goods to them and throw out the packaging at home than go to the
store for any reason, let alone lugging containers to reuse them.

As far as I can see, the only real solution to the plastic waste problem is to
make it economically feasible to separate plastic waste from the wastestream
and turn it into products whose value will repay the effort of separation.
Ideally, we could even "upcycle" this waste into raw materials that are more
valuable than recycled plastic, especially because recycled plastic is lower
quality than virgin plastic and eventually becomes too contaminated to reuse.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch)

[2] [https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/circular-
design/id...](https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/circular-
design/ideas/funcap)

[3] [https://livegreen.recyclebank.com/because-you-asked-what-
s-t...](https://livegreen.recyclebank.com/because-you-asked-what-s-the-deal-
with-plastic-bottle-caps)

[4] [https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/circular-
design/id...](https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/circular-
design/ideas/sustainable-low-cost-customized-sachet-replacement-for-the-
bottom-of-the-pyramid)

