Materials wish list
Create a material wish list
Founder’s circle member Yves Behar said it best:
“I wish we designers had the tools to design according to certain materials at the start, rather than looking for material trade-offs down the line, when they are less likely to be adopted.
Currently, the responsibility rarely falls into the hands of the designer. We lack the tools to propose the right materials early on. Choices usually fall to the manufacturer, or to the factories building the products.”
The Institute wants to help change this. Log in and make a wish for the “thing” you wish you had available. And be specific (that always helps with wishes): say what you need the material to do, its strength or durability qualities, if it needs to be different colors, if it has to hold up to heat or be water soluble, etc.
Over time, we will start to see our community needs, and our partners like Warner-Babcock can see the aggregated demand and make it happen. The Institute will also be sponsoring a C2C Materials Challenge, where we offer a grant to the entity that can develop solutions to meet the highest scoring wish. We’re like the fairy godmothers of the material world.
What’s your wish?
Sarah Redman
1. I would like for all sanitary towels and disposable nappies (7500 per babyhood?) to be made from completely biodegradable (earth-friendly) materials so that they can be conserved in the natural cycle. Perhaps the compost can be used to grow the next generation of sanitary products and close the loop?
2. I would like a fully compostable plastic (or paper?) bag designed specifically for collecting urban dog poo to deposit in special bins which are then emptied into AD tanks to create methane & slurry fertiliser.
3. We have wooden floorboards in our home - a relatively new oak flooring in our kitchen which we laid in an unconventional chevron pattern. It was laid with room around the edges to allow it space to expand & contract. Sadly the tongue and groove fitting has come apart in quite a few places. I would like to find a natural filler product that blends in aesthetically and is part of the oak family! Possibly a mixture of oak resin mixed with fine oak saw dust which would work as a filler which is sticky and hardens with some flexibility.
4. I would like a peelable, compostable or recyclable paper label which leaves the "host" product free of any contaminants that might interfere with the host product's composting or recycling.
Yves Behar, fuseproject
I wish for materials that are body and planet safe. We do a lot of products that are worn or touched a lot. Right now this requires using medical grade plastics. I wish we had different choices.
Brian Dougherty, Celery Design Collaborative
C2C certified printing inks made without chlorinated pigments. We can get good information about papers, but its almost impossible to get reliable information about toxicity of inks for commercial printing.