Huella
Conceptual Product Design to Recycle Plastic Off-the-Grid at Home
Imagine you are living on an island.
Your nearest neighbor lives 1.5km away from you, you suffer days-long power outages, and there is no waste collection service. How do you responsibly dispose of your plastic waste?
That was the challenge I faced upon hearing the isleños’s stories when I visited their homes and shops. They showed me their plastic-bottles-based art, and even the holes they dug for the plastic waste they could not handle anymore. An autonomous, domestic system to manage plastic waste and to give value to those resources again needed to be designed.
That is how Huella was created. A two-product system to provide users a way to dispose of plastic waste by seizing the power of their steps, and to provide a way to weave value into the plastic by transforming it into usable plastic filaments that could be sold.
Process
My list of requirements was long - reduce plastic waste at homes, no electricity, add value, transportable on boats, cheap, durable and easy to use - and the scope of the project was big. I had to focus on one product of the family, and that was the autonomous plastic shredder. This focus allowed me to maximize my efforts, and guaranteed a reliable product design and user-experience.
My list of requirements was long - reduce plastic waste at homes, no electricity, add value, transportable on boats, cheap, durable and easy to use - and the scope of the project was big. I had to focus on one product of the family, and that was the autonomous plastic shredder. This focus allowed me to maximize my efforts, and guaranteed a reliable product design and user-experience.
