Tea drinking is a global past time, but a quintessentially British tradition. Raw leaves arrive on our shores from Argentina to Zimbabwe, shipped in foil lined paper sacks. These un-recyclable bags follow a linear path from ship to shore to factory to landfill; and by the thousands. Through innovative re-use of this refuse we can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. Wasted showcases the throw away by-product of our penchant for tea, recomposed along with other disposables to form an immersive and jewel-like, semiprecious environment. The silver pleated tea-sack walls unfurl spilling dynamic seating strata made of re-claimed fire-hose.
Wasted is a project conceived and curated by Arts Co, presented in the tunnel connecting the London Underground to The V&A, which sees architect Ian Douglas-Jones and designer Ben Rousseau create a vast architectural seating strata using materials reclaimed by Elvis & Kresse. Wasted will interrogate a UK environmental problem – the tonnes of traditionally unrecycled waste that end up in landfill – and demonstrate how reclaimed materials can be used to create aspirational products.
This project for the London Design Festival forms the launch of the joint venture between Elvis & Kresse and Arts Co, to create a new line of everyday, beautiful products in collaboration with artists from waste.
In future millennia what will the strata of the UK look like if we continue to deposit 99 million tonnes of waste per year? According to DEFRA figures, 109 square miles of the UK is occupied by landfill. If this continues the UK will run out of landfill space in under nine years. What processes or opportunities are there for architects, designers and artists to use these materials heading for landfill, for the everyday, or in the urban landscape?
