project two: upcycling

Recycling unwanted materials into a new product is very beneficial for the environment, it’s very important in modern times because of the excess waste in our society. When I started this project, I strive to use materials that we would usually thrown away after been used.

I choose disposable away chopstick, throw away chopstick makes up a large portion of waste in restaurants. The chopsticks I used are made from bamboo. Although growing and using bamboo has no negative impact on environment, disposing the chopsticks is a significant problem to landfills as the chopsticks cannot be recycled and take a long time to decompose.

My first impression of the material was that the bamboo chopsticks had given me a feeling of nature. My idea was to make something that is both stylish and functional, yet at the same time encourages the user to think of the environment and the consequences of his or her actions. I decide that the theme of wastes and reuse would be main focus of my project, for this purpose I constructed a fruit bowl using chopsticks that had been thrown away to remind the user that even garbage potentially still have a use.

I collected chopsticks from restaurants, however when I received them they were dirty and potentially unsafe to use due to the chopsticks possibly carrying disease. I first had to clean the chopsticks and sanitize them by boiling them. To construct the product I needed to connect the individual chopsticks together. I first tried to drill a hole on the end of the chopstick and connecting the chopsticks using toothpicks to maintain the natural feel of the piece, however I found the process too difficult as the angle of each chopstick need to be determined for a proper shape to me maintained. My eventual approach was to use pin and cable tie. Also use hemp rope to create a nature feeling of the whole product.