Environmental charity A Plastic Planet has launched a web based platform to assist architects and designers supply plastic-free supplies for his or her tasks and keep away from the “minefield of misinformation” round extra sustainable alternate options.
Referred to as PlasticFree, the subscription-based service offers customers with in-depth experiences on greater than 100 plastic alternate options, offering key data on their properties, manufacturing and sourcing.
![Homepage of the PlasticFree materials platform by A Plastic Planet](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2023/01/plasticfree-design-platform-launch_dezeen_2364_col_1-852x479.jpg)
Half materials library, half design device, the platform additionally highlights case research of how these supplies are already being was merchandise on 5 totally different continents and permits customers to assemble them into Pinterest-style temper boards for his or her tasks .
The last word aim, in accordance with A Plastic Planet, is to “assist designers and enterprise leaders get rid of one trillion plastic waste from the worldwide financial system by 2025.”
![Screenshot of the Notpla Seawee Paper profile on the PlasticFree platform](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2023/01/plasticfree-design-platform-launchb_dezeen_2364_col_0-852x1064.jpg)
“No designer on the planet desires to make branded garbage,” the charity’s co-founder Sian Sutherland instructed Dezeen. “They did not go to design college and so they do not care about the whole lot they produce day-after-day for it to finish up within the trash.”
“However I do not assume designers had been ready for what is predicted of them at the moment,” she added. “So we needed to create a very authoritative, unbiased, material-agnostic platform that designers can use to find out about supplies and their methods.”
PlasticFree is the results of greater than two years of analysis and growth in collaboration with a board of 40 scientists, enterprise leaders and business representatives, together with Stirling Prize winner David Chipperfield, designer Tom Dixon and curator Aric Chen.
![Screenshot of a website showing different editorial content about plastic alternatives](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2023/01/plasticfree-design-platform-launch_dezeen_2364_col_2-852x479.jpg)
In an try to supply a dependable, reliable supply of knowledge, every materials has been rigorously checked by an “military” of scientific advisors based mostly on an intensive knowledge assortment type and A Plastic Planet’s Plastic Free commonplace, defined Sutherland.
“Designers wish to be a part of the answer, however there is a minefield of misinformation,” she stated. “It took us two years to do all of the analysis on these supplies, analyze and ask all of the questions so our viewers would not need to ask them.”
All this data is condensed right into a report, which summarizes the important thing options of every materials, its stage of growth and sustainable credentials comparable to water financial savings.
![Screenshot of the material report by A Plastic Planet](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2023/01/plasticfree-design-platform-launchb_dezeen_2364_col_1-852x1067.jpg)
Every profile additionally features a checklist of key questions that designers might want to take into account in the event that they wish to work with the fabric, comparable to whether or not it will likely be marketable over time or whether or not it must be built-in right into a reusable product for to supply emission reductions. .
“It is about how we will empower designers by telling them what questions they need to ask a fabric producer,” Sutherland stated.
“How will you go in opposition to that temporary that claims: solely use a recycled polymer or a bioplastic? How will you problem a life cycle evaluation? As a result of I am sitting on these calls and listening to the whole bullshit that is being thrown round on a regular basis.”
The PlasticFree database, which will probably be continuously up to date, focuses on the sectors that presently use probably the most plastic – specifically packaging and textiles, with buildings and development to be added later this 12 months.
It options uncooked supplies comparable to bamboo and cork, alongside extra particular improvements comparable to potato-based cling movie from Nice Wrap and algae ink from Residing Ink.
A few of these supplies – comparable to bioplastics and recycled plastic – are solely “transitional” and, in accordance with Sutherland, are “one foot on a greater path” reasonably than a viable resolution to plastic air pollution.
![Social posts about different plastic alternatives by A Plastic Planet](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2023/01/plasticfree-design-platform-launch_dezeen_2364_col_0-852x479.jpg)
The actual promise, she argues, lies in fossil-free “nutrient-based” supplies, comparable to Notpla’s edible seaweed wrap or Mirum vegetable pores and skin, which can be in a position to return to the earth as vitamins.
“This would be the way forward for supplies,” Sutherland stated, “for the whole lot from the properties we stay in and the material we put on, to the merchandise we purchase and the packaging they’re bought in.”
![Screenshot of a website showing different editorial content about plastic alternatives](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2023/01/plasticfree-design-platform-launch_dezeen_2364_col_4-852x479.jpg)
PlaticFree’s Tales part additionally hosts extra academic content material on the whole lot from clothes dyes to the “perpetually chemical compounds” in our plastics, in hopes of pushing for broader system-wide change that should associate with this materials transition.
“First, our focus is on system change, not simply higher supplies,” Sutherland stated.
“How can we’ve got everlasting packaging? How can we make issues that final, that really feel lovely in your hand, that make you are feeling much more keen on them as they age? How can we escape this ever-moving conveyor belt? “
![Screenshot of the material report on the PlasticFree platform](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2023/01/plasticfree-design-platform-launchb_dezeen_2364_col_2-852x1061.jpg)
Sutherland based A Plastic Planet with Frederikke Magnussen in 2017 with the purpose of inspiring the world to “flip off the plastic faucet”.
Since then, the charity has rallied each business and policymakers behind its trigger, creating the world’s “first” plastic-free grocery store aisle, in addition to working with the UN to ship a historic international treaty to finish waste of plastic.