Waste Age : What can design do?
We are living in an age of waste. The world produces 2 billion tonnes of rubbish each year, seven times the weight of the world’s adult population. Only 15% of this waste is recycled. Despite initiatives over the last 20 years to reduce waste, we are consuming more, throwing away more and recycling less. How did we become so careless with our planet’s resources?
Waste Age exposes our ‘take, make and waste’ economy, which has created an environmental crisis. The exhibition explores what design can do to rethink the way we produce and consume goods. It reveals the visionary designers who are transforming waste into valuable resources and developing new materials and systems to reduce waste and its impact on our planet. By promoting new – and old – ways of living with nature, design can help steer us to a cleaner future.
Will future generations be able to say that our society acted in time to prevent environmental disaster? It is not too late.