One Year of Wonderful Waste
Can you design your way out of disaster? We’d like to think so. Here at Never Too Small, we are marking one year since the release of Wonderful Waste, our documentary series that asks: What role does design play in the inherently wasteful, unsustainable building of our homes and the things that fill them? One year on, the central question remains as pressing as ever, so we’ve decided to revisit the series and its subjects to ask a new question: what more can be done?
Released in 2023, Wonderful Waste is a six-part iF Design Award–winning series that features six innovative design studio who are transforming overlooked materials – such as discarded furniture, plastics, construction waste, and obsolete appliances – into valued resources. And though they range from builders to scientists, the individuals featured share one thing in common: a commitment to sustainability and a vision for a more beautiful, sustainable future that is accessible to all.
Wonderful Waste in Review
The series begins with Pim Van Baarsen and Luc Van Hoeckel, two Dutch industrial designers who were inspired to found Super Local after they tired of simply producing more products for the sake of producing more products. “We were only making fancy stuff – things we don’t really need – using expensive materials that don’t last forever”, Luc framed as the origin that led them to the question: “How can we make products that have a value but also make a difference”? Super Local, as the duo describes it, finds solutions for global and local issues through design, working with communities and their specific waste challenges to create solutions that support happy and healthy lives.
Across the six episodes, the series continues a journey through the more focused applications of sustainable design to the more expansive. We see Robbie Neville’s Revival Projects, a Melbourne-based zero footprint construction workshop and consultancy crafting pioneering designs using existing material – and helping others to do the same. We see the innovative furniture and interiors made from natural and recycled construction materials by Five Mile Radius, a design and manufacturing studio led by architect Clare Kennedy.
Adam Fairweather and Rosalie McMillan of Smile Plastics show us how they make terrazzo-like decorative panels from recycled plastic for use in commercial interiors and product design, while Nina Tolstrup and Jack Mama of Studiomama take us through their playful practice of repurposing, repairing and upcycling for interior and product design. We also follow Professor Veena Sahajwalla, the director of the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology at the University of New South Wales, as she demonstrates how they are transforming problematic waste materials such as end‐of‐life rubber tyres into new revenue-generating materials and products like engineered Green Steel and Green Ceramics. (We loved these ceramics so much, we decided to use them in our new office kitchen!)
So Many More Wonderful Ways to Use Waste
Wonderful Waste ignited our imagination – and hopefully yours too. This series has introduced us to other pioneers in sustainable and circular design, and we've only begun to scratch the surface of the stories waiting to be told. Inspiring stories of waste being used in wonderful ways are all around us, including: industrial designer Brodie Neill who is designing and producing breathtakingly beautiful furniture pieces that create a platform for meaningful discourse on the climate impacts of waste; Ovy Sabrina and Novita Tan of Indonesia-based ReBricks who are transforming “rejected” plastic waste into construction materials for homes; and Polly Cadden of FUTURE re MADE, who is crafting beautiful, colourful tables from 90 percent post industrial waste.
It is inspiring to see these projects multiply and to imagine what the future holds, because as Robbie Neville of Revival Projects put it: “Change starts with just understanding what we already have and we’re not even scratching the surface of that”.
How You Can Help
We'd love to make more new series like Wonderful Waste. Your feedback would really help us make this happen. By answering a few quick questions and sharing your thoughts on the series it will help us to know what you’d like to see more(or less) of!
Help us make more content like Wonderful Waste and what you want to see more of.
