It’s crazy how much plastic shrinks. Look at how cute these shrunken plastic bags are!

I always struggle with the huge gap between disposable products and valuable ones. It doesn’t make much sense that some disposable products (like plastic bags) are made out of a material that do not allow itself to really be properly disposed of (proper disposal being in a closed loop of course ).

It is so fascinating that a man-made material like plastic is associated with cheapness…  when its chemical make up suggests the exact opposite — robustness. Plastic has so many favorable properties (ex – waterproof, doesn’t degrade) to make a robust, valuable product. Why are so many disposable products made out of plastic?

Is it because of plastic’s low manufacturing cost? Or it’s aesthetic properties? Probably a combination of both.

I’m experimenting with molding plastic bags into a new form (like over a glass cup in the photo above). When melted, the plastic bag takes on this really interesting translucent, fibrous texture. As cliche as it is, I think it could look pretty cool as a light.

I think I just found a project to work on this weekend…

I met some amazing people from all different fields; interior design, architecture, graphic design, engineering, and more. I was one of the younger attendees and can only hope that, in ten years, I measure up to some of the other folks — their accomplishements and careers were off-the-charts impressive. Design professionals shared stories about how they started new companies, went against the status quo of company operations, and did their own thing!

This is just a general synopsis of my experience at the DFC Summit, I am going to list some links to inspiring projects I learned about in my next post. There are some amazing start ups all over the country that are devoted to public health and sustainability. Radical.

Some photos from the conference:

Woo!

A break out session, where a topic is given [ex-how to break out of the status quo within your company] 

Lovely lunch on the terrace! Gorgeous Atlanta fall weather and view of the city.

Alan Balfour, Dean of the College of Architecture at Georgia Tech, was one of many fantastic speakers.

The conference ended with a tour of Perkins + Will new office space.

Many of you who know me know that I absolutely despise graphic design. It usually takes me a pathetically long time to design a layout that works. A lot of times it just frustrates me because I do not think I have a natural “eye” for it. Last night I was working on some posters for the exhibit — it was rough. I hadn’t been in a studio-like “time crunch” in weeks and needed to crank out some graphics last night.

Up above is one of the layouts I came up with. I always have a hard time describing the Closed Loop experiment through graphics — through trial and error, I discovered a bunch of photos of trash isn’t interesting or informative. The Closed Loop was really about me sharing my experience of living sustainably with a lot of people. So, I decided to go a more story-telling route with an illustration of me in my Closed Loop apartment and a first person narrative.

$1300 covers the cost of airfare and a Chinese visa ($1100 + $200). Once I started diving deeper in the planning process, I realized I also needed to cover my Cumulus Conference registration fee ($100) and hotel accommodation for 3 nights in Shanghai (around $200).

A more accurate sum of money is $1600.  Keep the donations coming! This puts me at 69% there. Not bad!

I have been working on the graphic design of the Closed Loop T-shirts! Check back, I will post the final design soon.

Thank you for all of the support, I can’t wait to go to Shanghai!

Thanks a million to everyone that made a donation! I recently acquired a screen printing kit and will get cracking on those Closed Loop shirts ASAP!

It has been almost a year since the Closed Loop started– one year of composting all of my food waste. I have got to say, the transition was not that difficult. I should start weighing the amount of compost I collect every week, it would be interesting to see how many pounds of food waste is composted in one year.

The photo above is what the compost bin looks like in my apartment in Atlanta. Somehow it always morphs into a smiley face… basically, we collect the food in a bin that is [unfortunately] lined with plastic bags. It is the easiest way to transport the compost to my roommmate’s house in rural Georgia. We are hopefully going to switch to biodegradable plastic bags soon. The Georgia Tech campus dining halls compost all their food waste — but they are hesitant to let students compost their food waste there as well.

Wish me luck next week!

We are meeting tomorrow for a few minutes on our lunch breaks to discuss the progress of this week’s goals. Woo! The ball is finally rolling. One coworker today brought in her own cardboard box to collect scrap office paper in. Another took his own initiative to start researching if our factory recycles steel. I feel like now solving these sustainability problems have become something to talk about around the office.