Waste Lab

Useful information

Team members: Sonia Maria Ja?kiewicz
Country: Poland
Keywords: local waste sustainability circular economy new material

Short Description

Waste Lab transfomes local agricultural waste into new materials and products.

Detailed Description

While it is true that one cannot live one’s life without leaving a mess, we nevertheless lost control over the production of items which will never degrade. Modern culture is often referred to as “consumer culture”, while we ourselves are described as a “throw-away society.”
Waste LAB is interested in finding solutions for items, which are already manufactured and past their “best before” date — to restore them to their full value.
Rational waste management is one of the challenges of modern industry.
It is important to manage a production in such a way as to guarantee the exploitation of renewable raw materials while managing all by-products and created waste streams.
Research efforts focused on sugar beet leaves, which are the single largest agricultural waste product in Poland, as well as beet pulp, which is a by-product of sugar extraction. The materials created as a result of the process could serve as an alternative to non-biodegradable plastics.

Project Details

Does your design take social and cultural challenges and human wellbeing into consideration?: One of the main issue we all face nowadays is climate change - it already impact our lives, but it will even moere influence the wellbeing of future generation - of all species.
We need to take action and proviude solutions to create more sustainable future for everyone. We try to solve this global problem locally - working with a local waste stream of production which are particulary important in Poland.

Does your design support sustainable production, embodying circular or regenerative design practices?: Rational waste management is one of the challenges of modern industry.
It is important to manage a production in such a way as to guarantee the exploitation of renewable raw materials while managing all by-products and created waste streams.
We create biomaterials from by-products generated in sugar beets processing - leaves and beet pulp. Sugar beet leaves are the largest agricultural waste in Poland. About 20 million tonnes of pulp is produced each year in Europe.

Does your design use principles of distribution and open source?: Thanks to technology and tools developed for plastics, raw materials are shaped into a whole range of diverse products – vessels, packaging, building
materials and leather-like materials.

Does your design promote awareness of responsible design and consumption?

By the project we want to make a statement, and raise awarness of the fact that many everyday disposable items are made from durable and imported materials, but they could (and should) be produced from local, non-toxic and biodegradable substances.
Packaging industry in Poland is one of the leading ones in the world. Consumption of those type of products is huuuge and constantly growing... most of them are used only ONCE. How come we still use so durable material as plastic for short-live food??

The components we use are completely natural and do not cause an environmental burden. If our product is treated as waste, thanks to works of microorganisms and due to natural processes, it will again become part of nature.