Rethinking Plastics in Product Design: A Guide to Sustainable Transitions for the Environmental Emergency - Hardcover

Isaac, Geoff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 135044913X ISBN 13: 9781350449138

Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2025

Synopsis

This book addresses the urgent need to reduce our use of virgin fossil plastics. It provides a framework for designers and manufacturers to re-evaluate their use of plastics and promotes the use of alternative materials with lower environmental impacts.

Lightweight, strong and cheap plastics are often the obvious choice when designing consumer durables, but their use is resulting in devastating health and environmental consequences. Recycled plastics and bioplastics are often suitable replacements; however, mechanical and aesthetic differences mean working with these materials is often challenging and expensive. In this book, Geoff Isaac outlines strategies for developing more environmentally friendly design solutions and provides practical guidance for designers who seek to use plastics more sustainably.

Chapters include case studies selected from sixty chairs made from renewable plastics, as chairs are often developed to showcase the potential of new materials and their suitability for applications across other consumer products. The book also features interviews with a range of industry representatives and international designers including Philippe Starck, Barber Osgerby, Konstantin Grcic, Bertjan Pot and Karim Rashid to illustrate recent designs using renewable plastics. This book provides an empowering blueprint for designers to make environmentally responsible decisions in today's business landscape

About this title

About the Author

Geoff Isaac is a Research Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney and a casual academic at the Australian National University. His PhD focused on the history of the plastic chair and the challenges of working with plastics in the age of environmental emergency. He has written papers for journals including Fusion Journal, Plastiquarian and Journal of Applied Psychology. His book, Featherston, on the life and work of the Australian mid-century industrial designer Grant Featherston, was published in 2017

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 135044913X
• ISBN 13: 9781350449138
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336