The Identity of Recycled Plastics: A Vocabulary of Perception

Veelaert, Lore; Bois, Els Du; Moons, Ingrid; Pelsmacker, Patrick De; Hubo, Sara; Ragaert, Kim

doi:10.3390/su12051953

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Veelaert et al [21] define Design from Recycling as a design strategy that starts from the technical properties and characteristics of the recycled materials [21,124,125]. One might see this option as not necessarily favoured by the producers, in that it would require both an adaptation of the manufacturing infrastructure as well as of their marketing strategies (colour, shapes, labelling, etc.).…”

Section: Product's Designsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards Higher Quality of Recycled Plastics: Limitations from the Material’s Perspective

et al. 2021

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The increasing consumption of plastics and plastic products results in correspondingly substantial volumes of waste, which poses considerable environmental burdens. With the ongoing environmental actions, the application of circular economy on this waste stream is becoming inevitable. In this paper, the topics of plastics recycling, circular economy on plastics, and challenges to plastic waste recycling are critically reviewed. In the first part of this paper, the development of research on plastic recycling was viewed from 1950 until 2020 using the scientific database Web of Science, and 682 related studies were found and used to assess the changing research priorities along that timeline. The following sections discuss the potentials and requirements to enhance the quality of the produced recycled plastic, in connection with the factors that currently limit it. In conclusion, the quality of recycled plastic is generally determined by the homogeneity of the recovered plastic feed. There are various strategies which could be implemented to overcome the hindrances identified in the paper and to improve the quality of the recycled plastic, such as working on enhanced product designs for minimised waste heterogeneity and controlling the materials’ degree of contamination by applying advanced sorting.

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Section: Product's Designsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are many additional factors affecting the plastic mechanical recycling practices, including separate collection schemes [17,18], polymer type [19,20], product design, and product category [21]. The different polymer types have different potentials for mechanical recycling.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Higher Quality of Recycled Plastics: Limitations from the Material’s Perspective

et al. 2021

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“…virgins, recycled plastics, bioplastics, etc.) that face issues within a circular economy such as sustainable perception or being identity-less imitation materials (Karana and Nijkamp, 2014;Rognoli et al, 2011;Veelaert, Du Bois, Moons, De Pelsmacker, et al, 2020). Furthermore, Fisher (2004) addresses the specific significance of plastic materials for consumers' perception of objects, and its affective consequences.…”

Section: Casementioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Angelini et al, 2015;Cutkosky, 1989;Lederman and Klatzky, 2009). However, additional experiential qualities can be interesting for characterization experiments too, as used in previous work focussing on (recycled) plastics (Veelaert et al, n.d.;Veelaert, Du Bois, Moons, De Pelsmacker, et al, 2020).…”

Section: Dependent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formulating Guidelines for the Systematic Set-Up of Experiential Material Characterization Studies: A Case of Plastic Demonstrators

2021

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Materials can be considered from a technical and experiential perspective. However, the latter perspective is more complex to study systematically. Four intertwined experiential levels describe the overall materials experience: sensorial, interpretive, affective, and performative level. Building upon the need in experiential material characterization for comparable physical material representations to enable within-material-class comparisons and the inclusion of extensive user aspects, this paper sums up the reasoning process regarding the understanding and design of an experimental set-up and its parameters of a specific case. The case objective is to formulate guidelines for the designer/researcher to set up experiential material characterization experiments with (i) plastic demonstrator forms and (ii) by consumers. Following elements are discussed: Assessors, Stimuli, Interaction Modalities, Dependent variables, Method, and Practical considerations. Next, future experiments can be carried out in order to generate holistic plastic material data on a larger scale, that can be collected in an experiential database and used by designers throughout the design process.

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“…Even though the materials do have a sound lower environmental impact, it is down to the users' appreciation of those materials that ultimately determine their commercial success (Sauerwein et al, 2017a). This lack of identity of recycled plastics is also caused by the fact that there is not just one type of recycled plastic, but a collective for thousands of different materials (many more than the existing virgin materials due to various blends that end up in recycling processes), each having their specific technical, sensorial, emotional, economic and ecological characteristics (Veelaert, Du Bois, Moons, De Pelsmacker, et al, 2020). In order to strengthen the identity of recyclates in general, understanding and emphasizing the sustainable perception of a material would be a welcome manner of identifying the sustainable added value for the product users and would enable designers to design with it accordingly in an ethic manner.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Should Plastic Recyclates Look Like to Be Perceived as Sustainable: A First Exploration

et al. 2021

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Notwithstanding the positive environmental impact of recycled plastics, they are only scarcely used in new designs due to unfamiliarity and lack of material identities. This research aims to touch upon the sensorial attributes that characterise the sustainable perception of recycled plastics. Understanding this would allow to respond to the new trend of sustainable living by offering recycled materials that are successfully perceived as sustainable, and that could support the identity building of each specific recycled plastic material. Three research activities were executed to explore (i) the designerly understanding of sustainable perceived plastics; (ii) the consumer understanding of sensorial material attributes that influence the sustainable perception; (iii) the understanding of these attributes towards recycled plastic materials. Five variables were found that interfere with the perception of the participants: A weaker colour intensity, the use of colourless colours, a rougher texture, a speckled structure and the usage of a matte gloss can give a sustainable look towards a sustainable plastic material. Further research should detail these variables, its limitations and try to make defined guidelines to avoid greenwashing.

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The Identity of Recycled Plastics: A Vocabulary of Perception

Cited by 13 publications

References 25 publications

Towards Higher Quality of Recycled Plastics: Limitations from the Material’s Perspective

Towards Higher Quality of Recycled Plastics: Limitations from the Material’s Perspective

Formulating Guidelines for the Systematic Set-Up of Experiential Material Characterization Studies: A Case of Plastic Demonstrators

How Should Plastic Recyclates Look Like to Be Perceived as Sustainable: A First Exploration

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