Plasticful Foods

Long description

Plasticful Foods is a speculative design. Developed to make the largely invisible problem of irresponsible waste management visible and personal. The project asks how we can begin to treat waste as a resource. By taking facts from the present day and projecting them into a possible future, we confront the audience. Through the use of humour and uncannily real marketing, we provoke curiosity rather than guilt. This creates a physiological disruption in the audience which is uncomfortable. Luckily, by including QR codes with all products, we lead the audience to a collection of educational resources, which thereby resolves the discomfort by providing possible actions towards sustainable waste management solutions. By presenting the problem in a new way, we provide the space for our audiences to see the problem from a new perspective. By using food as the medium for our message, we make the problem personal and invite citizens to imagine alternatives to our current waste system. We ask them to critically rethink waste: “is eating plastic a future you want? Or would you act to avoid it?” As such we introduce a path to meaningful and sustainable behavioural change and shifts in values and attitudes for a diverse audience. Having tested our concept at UvA and HvA universities, we wish to scale the project up so more audiences can encounter it. As such, we are proposing the development of the project for application throughout public places in Amsterdam.

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