Lithoplast: a material from plastic waste

The subject of damages caused by plastic pollution is ever-present in our daily news. Researchers, firms and designers are investigating alternative materials that could reduce this problem over time, until its complete disappearance.
Public opinion is worried about the future perspective as well as the present situation:how do we remove all the plastic waste from the environment?

Photo credits: Shahar Livne – www.shaharlivnedesign.com

“My reasearch is based on what geologysts expect to happend to plastic in the future”
Shahar Livne per Dezeen

An Israeli designer, Shahar Livne, address this problem from a completely different side.
The project of the Design Academy of Eindhoven graduate, starts from the creation of a future landscape where plastic production will completely cease. In this new dimension, plastic debris will cover the earth mantle and they will blend with the surface, creating a brand-new material. Through a geological process called metamorphism, from which this project gets its name, waste undergo a process of physical-chemical mineralogical transformation that generates a hybrid with the rocky ground.

Photo credits: Shahar Livne – www.shaharlivnedesign.com

This fictional dimension is translated in a new material that speculates on the relationship we have with natural and artificial resources, altering the traditional correlation between them.
By means of this project, the designer makes the interlocutor meditate on the fate of non-biodegradable plastics that are not recycled by giving a central role to the single person in the creation of the geological future of the planet earth. Scientists have already renamed this new era Anthropocene.