Shifting society’s views on waste.
A waste based planter that prevents landfill emissions.
One of the biggest tasks ahead of us in the effort to mitigate climate change is completely re-engineering what we do with our materials when we’re done with them. The ‘Blue Marble’ photo of 1972 showed a generation that there is no ‘away.’ Now, our generation is faced with this reality and a need to create systems where nothing can be called ‘waste.’ OurCarbon™, a base material made from ‘waste’ organics, are achieving this goal through the design of beautiful products and preventing tons of greenhouse gas emissions in the process.
Every day truckloads of organic materials mixed with non-organic garbage are transported over long distances to landfills where they are piled together for the indefinite future. Home and restaurant food waste, green waste from park maintenance and yard trimmings, agricultural byproducts like nut shells and corn stalks, and municipal residuals like biosolids add up to millions of tons of organic materials that end up in landfill every year. These organics layer up under non organic materials like plastics that cut off their access to oxygen, causing them to decompose anaerobically and release methane. Methane is over 20 times as powerful as CO2 in its ability to warm the planet, making these landfill emissions from organics amount to over 20 million cars added to our roads every year. 15% of all US methane emissions came from landfill in 2018.
The Potted Carbon planter is a one of a kind product that turns waste into beauty through design and material innovation. It features a mix of OurCarbon and porcelain that are fine tuned to vitrify together when fired in a kiln. Once fired, the two materials are inseparable. This behavior is achieved thanks to the inclusion of waste silica that flows through our municipal systems known as ‘grit.’ The grit, usually seen as a nuisance to the waste industry, melts into a glass-like material during firing and then solidifies as it cools, binding the OurCarbon to the porcelain. The design of the planter is simple and modern, showing a flat vertical face to frame its carbon locked material. Two indentations on opposing sides of the planter pay homage to handles on ancient vessels and invite you to lift the planter up in both of your hands to appreciate it. The indents also give flexibility to the diameter of the planter’s edge so that varying nursery pots can be set on the rim to display a plant without fully potting it. Suspending the nursery pot leaves room under it for drainage to reduce risk of overwatering.