Design Intelligence #8: Perpetual abundance
Research notes on tech, ecology, design, and design futures. This month: the perpetual promise of recycling, and the innovations that might unlock its potential
The idea: Recycling’s untapped potential
Recycling is not a silver bullet - we need to reduce our consumption of resources overall, and prioritise refusing, redesigning, reducing and reusing over recycling. But if we want to achieve a truly sustainable material culture, recycling will have to be part of the mix. Innovation has the potential to draw both investment and attention to recycling, which is a sector full of potential - both economic and behavioural - that just needs to be unlocked. Here are three areas of innovation I’ve been tracking.
Solar panels and wind turbines have a lifetime use of around 25 years, meaning that we need to plan now to recapture the materials that we will need in large quantities for clean energy, and put systems of effective reuse in place for them. Solarcycle does this for solar panels, and is able to extract 95% of their value to return to the supply chain. Around 90% of a wind turbine’s total mass can be recycled, including its tower and foundations, but the blade is challenging as it’s made of a composite. Researchers at Aarhus University have used chemical recycling to break down the turbine blade into its constituent glass fiber and epoxy resin. Swedish startup Modvion makes wind turbines from wood, which is lighter and lower-impact than steel or cement, as well as being renewable; the tower walls can then be reused as high-strength beams by the construction industry at end-of-life.
Transitioning to renewable energy will require vast increases in use of materials including lithium, cobalt and nickel. Gomi’s speakers reuse lithium from e-bike batteries and Toyota has signed a deal to buy recycled EV battery components from US recycling company Redwood Materials (with a minimum of 20% recycled nickel, 20% recycled lithium and 50% recycled cobalt). These forward-planning approaches and cross-industry systems of reuse will need to become scaled and designed in by default to minimise the material extraction and waste created by clean energy systems.
Another hotspot of innovation is AI. Recycling is one of the areas where AI has the most potential to bring about major increases in efficiency and usage. Greyparrot uses computer vision to analyse recycling; its plug-and-play solution works by installing cameras in existing sorting facilities. Founded by a former Facebook engineer, Glacier uses AI-powered robotics to reduce contamination in recycling. Purpose-built for sorting recycling, the robot can identify more than 30 materials and sort 45 objects per minute, paying for itself within one year of operation by delivering cleaner bales of materials for recyclers to sell on.
The third area of innovation - plastics recycling - is a contentious subject. Petrochemical executives have known since the 1980s that plastics recycling is not a permanent solution, and the plastics recycling rate in the US has never risen above 10% (although other countries have achieved higher rates). We need to use drastically less plastic, and legislate its production down to the bare minimum that is needed for purposes such as healthcare. And yet, plastic is not disappearing in the near-future; it still surrounds us in landfill and pollution, and it is still being produced - in increasing quantities. Concurrently, scientific breakthroughs and materials innovations are proceeding at a high rate in chemical recycling. In one of the most recent examples, scientists at Kings College London have identified an enzyme found in laundry detergent that can depolymerise PLA bioplastics that are headed to landfill - like single-use coffee cups - in 24 hours. The resulting material, once processed, is equal to new plastic in its quality and is suitable for multiple reuse.
Although reduction and replacement are still preferable design strategies, it’s worth holding as a wildcard that there may yet be a plastics recycling solution that can be commercialised, scaled up and deployed effectively - galvanising the wider recycling industry and opening up new possibilities.
💻 My work
I’m writing a book! More details to come, but for now: if the themes in this newsletter resonate with you, the book will too
📑 Research notes
The upcoming Phoenix neighbourhood in Lewes will be the most sustainable in the UK, built in part from timber and prioritising walkability while minimising and decentering car use
The power of language: when you're clear with the words you use, greenwashing is washed away. A proposed California law would replace the words “natural gas” with “methane” in state statutes
Lenovo’s transparent laptop concept looks very sci-fi
Matt Webb argues that we’re in the middle of a vibe shift in tech, where the dominant influence from sci-fi has shifted from Star Trek to Douglas Adams - in part because it’s all become absurd
Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian’s new film Doppelgangers³ examines the ongoing colonisation of space and asks “Can the experiences of the past help us imagine a future of space that is free from the traumas we’ve encountered on Earth?”
🪴 Interesting products
Fablab’s Fab-In-A-Box starter kit is a cart that comes equipped with a commercial laser cutter, 3D printer and vinyl cutter, as well as an electronics kit so makers can actuate their creations - all for less than $10,000
Smithery’s Regenerative Design Field Kit prompts people to interrogate the world around them
Light Bio's glow-in-the-dark genetically modified plants are available to preorder and start shipping in April
📺 Watching
Extrapolations, Apple’s cli-fi futures anthology, starts in 2037 and goes up to 2070