Accents
Recycling Is an Art
By Francesca Colombo

Recycled plastic, paper and aluminum are the raw materials for eco-designers, who dream up new manufactured objects that save energy and reduce industrial waste.

ROME, (Tierramérica).- A cardboard kitchen counter and cabinets made from 70 kilos of newspaper, a plastic overcoat and a lamp made from paper are some of the examples of Italian eco-designs, which combine environmental protection and sustainable economics.

''Green design'' is an aggregate of ''innovative strategies, methods and instruments for preventing and reducing negative environmental impacts in all phases of making a product,'' without ignoring esthetics, architect Lucia Pietrosi, professor of industrial design at La Sapienza University in Rome, told Tierramérica.

In 2002, Italy threw out 29.8 million tons of plastic, according to the Italian Environmental Protection Agency. Nine hundred tons were salvaged to make things like furniture and clothing items.

Ten plastic bottles were used to make a chair, 45 plastic cups were used in making a bench, and 31 bottles produced a Christmas tree.

Cardboard, aluminum and steel are also being recovered for use in making an array of products.

Eco-innovation exploits renewable resources, separating out the components of a waste item and eliminating dangerous substances.

With the component materials, artists are inspired to experiment and to create. One example is the exhibit ''Beyond the Boxes: designing with paper and cardboard'', held each year at the Ludovico University's school of architecture in the Italian capital.

The main attractions of the exhibit were the Recall chair, made with 70 percent recycled aluminum and cardboard (by Marco Capellini, of the Remade company), the Medusa dress, made of paper (by architect Caterina Crepax), a table-desk made of corrugated cardboard and capable of holding 80 kilos, and ''Lucky'', the cardboard toy horse for children (by Ilaria Vitanostra).

''In Italy we drink a lot of coffee and the espresso-maker is made with recycled aluminum, but nobody knows that,'' but doing so saves 85 percent of the great quantity of energy needed to produce new aluminum, architect Capellini told Tierramérica.

He founded Matrec, the first Italian database on eco-design and recycling, available free of charge on the Internet.

Just a few years ago, Italians tended to look down upon products made from recycled materials, but today 90 percent of consumers polled say they are willing to purchase merchandise from some 3,000 firms that produce recycled goods. However, some retailers complain that eco-design products are not yet as well received as traditional items.

Nevertheless, there are more and more Italian-made products bearing the ''Ecolabel'', a European certification for environmentally friendly items.

The European Parliament this year adopted regulations that require, at least until 2008, the reutilization of 60 percent of paper and glass waste, 50 percent of steel and aluminum, 22.5 percent of plastic and 15 percent of lumber, in order to cut down on the environmental impacts of garbage and packaging.

The notion of eco-friendly design and construction did not catch on in Italy until the 1990s, even though it had been part of the public debate in northern Europe since the 1960s. An August 2003 decree establishes that 30 percent of the goods acquired by Italy's public administration must come from recycled raw materials.

The current trend for companies like Merloni, a leader in kitchen and laundry appliances in the European Union, is to highlight the functionality of their products, and the fact that their negative environmental and social impacts are reduced.

Merloni, which in 2003 produced some 13 million appliances, recycles the raw materials involved, not to make more appliances, but rather to manufacture such things as bicycles and home furnishings.

''We respect the EU rules and we have an oversight committee that monitors style and construction in terms of energy saving, because we work with the concept of respect for the environment,'' Merloni spokeswoman Chiara Pascarella told Tierramérica.

The eco-designers face the challenge of using more imagination perhaps than their colleagues working with non-recycled materials -- and sometimes their products are not very attractive. Mixing several types of plastic, for example, does not always produce homogenous results.

''Eco-design is not only working with recycled materials. It also means producing sustainable appliances, ones that don't hurt the environment, are easy to set up and dismantle, and which save energy,'' Capellini said.

The Indarte company produces items -- at low cost and in small batches -- such as watches made from bicycle lights, lamps made from jars and even an aluminum broom built to last 20 years.

''We are not in this out of ecological awareness, but rather for the lack of capital for other proposals. True eco-design is valued for the amount of energy saved and materials used, with nothing wasted, creating indestructible objects that do not go out of style,'' Indarte owner Marco Gilioli, in the city of Turin, told Tierramérica.

''Consumers make their purchases based on three factors: beauty, quality and price. If we add respect for the environment, it is one more positive point when it comes time to buy,'' says Giuseppe Lotty, an architect with the experimental furniture design center at the University of Florence.

* Francesca Colombo is a Tierramérica contributor.