Not just useless
Home Textiles
Notjustuseless was influenced by the straw-littered streets of Bairro Alto (in Portugal), the project aims to create an environmentally friendly mindset addressing a seemingly trivial, yet troubling phenomenon. The idea is to collect used straws from consumers at dedicated locations and institutions and let designers create new objects, installations and textures from them. The design then returns to the location, offering consumers a chance to see their not-so-useless waste transform into use again. NOTJUSTUSELESS works best as a collaboration between designers, institutions and consumers. Through something as simple as a straw, the initiative fosters a thoroughly cocreative design process. As an institution you give space to the containers labeled with a QR code and help collect the straws. As a consumer you have a strong impact on how the project progresses. You contribute by using the containers and donating the straws you used. By scanning the QR code you are able to follow the progress of the project throughout. As designers, we make sure that your used straws get a second life. Ideally, our creation can be showcased where all contributors can engage with it again. Together. The results can take many different forms depending on the context of the collaboration and the materials donated. “I have been experimenting with many kinds of plastics since 2014. With time I noticed I was using more and more discarded or waste materials, due to the interesting textures and properties. At the same time, I felt I wanted to work on design with a purpose other than pure aesthetics, and the course on sustainability I went through was the perfect catalyst. Immediately everything fell into place and made sense: using these waste materials to create design objects, making them again useful while raising awareness! Therefore, my material research transformed into a more conceptual project that reaches people and encourages their intervention, instead of having me create a design and 3/5 showing only the final result of the work to these people. “