Alcarol
Country: Italy
Ocean Network
Design
The project aims to represent one of the main problems submerged in the oceans of our planet: the ghost nets. Almost half of the ocean plastic waste consists of abandoned fishing nets turning millions of sea creatures into victims. Fishing nets are made of nylon, a high performance plastic that is now also completely recyclable. The tabletops of our prototypes are made of some coloured nets from the oceans melted together with Econyl, the translucent regenerated nylon produced through an innovative and sustainable depolymerization of waste such as fishing and aquaculture nets. The result is exactly the same as virgin nylon and can be recycled, recreated and remoulded infinitely. Currently there are many panels in recycled plastic in the market, but the nylon ones – more complex to produce – are a necessary innovation which required a long experimentation in our laboratories, with the aim of promoting its use and drive the industry towards a sustainable future, by reusing about 640,000 tons of nylon left in the oceans each year, so far only used in the textile industry. As well as being a solution on waste, the regenerated nylon is also better when it comes to climate change. It reduces the global warming impact of nylon by up to 80% compared with the material from oil. The tabletops of these prototypes are multicolored since we melted together nets of various colors, dramatically tangled as in the seabed, with a surprising marbled effect. The legs of the tables are made of glass slabs and aluminum fixings – two of the best examples of recyclable materials in the world – simply wedged and screwed in the nylon tabletops, so each part can be easily removed in order to make the prototypes 100% recyclable in the future. Through the transparency and reflections of the glass at different heights, the coloured fishing nets of the tabletops seem to float, as an abstract reflection about the fragile condition of our oceans.
