Sustainable design combines two great aspects: innovative eco-friendly solutions in everyday products combined with a great design. We can only applaud and bow down for some excellent examples of sustainable design. We discuss our favorite sustainable design examples below.
Sustainable design is basically an eco-friendly alternative to not sustainable products and it’s being applied in all sorts of product lines. Below I give you my favorite 10 examples of sustainable design that will blow you away, like a pollution absorbing bikini and a kitchen made from recycled bottles.
Why sustainable design?
When reading the examples of sustainable design, please realize that sustainability is not a new trend. It’s an obvious and necessary change in our mindset, in which we don’t depend on extracting and producing new materials, but we rather reuse, recycle and repurpose existing materials to make new products.
The absolutely amazing feature of sustainable design is that creative, innovative designers apply new solutions to the production process, creating completely new designs and products.
So if you like modern, new and unique items, you should totally go for sustainable design products.
Sustainable design examples
Below I give you my favorite sustainable design examples.
Sustainable shoes: Adidas x Parley
These are Adidas sneakers made from ocean plastics.
Parley is an organization known from removing plastics from the oceans. Adidas and Parley join forces in the Adidas x Parley clothing line, in which recycled plastic from the oceans is used.
Exactly. Adidas x Parley is an entire clothing line under the umbrella of Adidas. It looks great, has the high quality you expect from Adidas and is totally eco-friendly.
Discover new sustainable shoes.
Ikea Kungsbacka kitchen
Ikea’s first kitchen made from reclaimed industrial wood and recycled plastic bottles is named Kungsbacka.
It’s a new kitchen made from recycled materials. That’s great and an entirely new mindset in one of the biggest furniture producer in the world. For each part of the sustainable Kungsbacka kitchen, 25 plastic bottles are used.
Are you planning to buy a new kitchen? Try to keep it as sustainable as possible. Not only in used materials, but also in eco-friendly appliances that limit energy consumption.
Seabin: filter waste from water
De seabin is a garbage pin that floats on water in for example a harbor, in the sea or in a lake. The seabin is designed by Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinkski. It floats and is attached to a water pump. This way it continuously filters garbage from the water. It actually also filters out liquid waste from the water, like detergents and oil.
If you live at the ocean or at a lake, you should definitely contribute your part to a cleaner world by installing a seabin. You easily install is near your house at the waterside. I challenge you to discover how much pollution is being filtered out the water.
Just for your imagination: each seabin has the capacity to filter out annually:
- 90.000 plastic bags, or
- 35.700 disposable cups, or
- 16.500 plastic bottles, or
- 166.500 plastic utensils.
Sponge bikini to filter out waste liquids
This is a fun eco-friendly design. Imagine swimming in the sea and cleaning the water at the same time. The sponge bikini is made from a sponge-like material. This material absorbs oils and is specially designed to filter impurities from water.
I looks great and fits perfectly a eco-friendly lifestyle.
Milk protein as an alternative for plastic
This is pretty innovative. Silva-Dawson has found a way to replace polymers derived from fossil fuels with an organic material from milk.
The result is amazing: compression moulded objects that are made from cow’s milk. It’s a totally different material, making a new kind of design you haven’t seen before.
Pinátex leather made from pineapple
Pineapple waste is used as an animal friendly alternative to leather. In factories they separate pineapple waste and process it info a fabric that can be used in the production of shoes, furniture and clothing.
Pineapple leather is actually a real thing these days, being used by for example H&M. The good thing is: no animal has to suffer and die for your (fake) leather shoes.
Six-pack rings that you can eat
Do you know the six-pack rings that hold together six cans of beer or soda? And remember the many photos of turtles and other animals being stuck in it?
Saltwater Brewery found a solution: wheat and barley leftovers from the brewing process are moulded into six-pack rings that can be safely eaten by wildlife. This way no animals will get stuck in this rings anymore and die.
Multicolor windows that are also solar panels
Award winning Dutch designer Marjan van Aubel has made fantastic windows from colored solar cells. These windows produce energy to charge small devices.
The windows are available in different designs and look absolutely great. This is a great way to generate green energy through a great design.
Speaker from electronic waste
People People has designed a small speaker from electronic waste. They aimed to make a response to the enormous consumer waste being produced annually, and specifically electronic waste.
The great design feature of this speaker is that it has build-in sensors which send notifications to your smartphone about which parts of the speaker needs to be repaired, updated or replaced. This will support you in preferring repairing over a new purchase.
Eco-friendly sweatshirt with a 30-year (!) guarantee
Tom Cridland is a well known UK designer of menswear. He has created a unisex sweater with a stunning 30-year guarantee. Yes, the wearer can send it back for free repairs. No need to throw away this sweatshirt. Rather have it repaired and promote sustainable fashion.
Buy your 30-year sweatshirt by Tom Cridland here.
I hope you’ve gained some great inspiration and knowledge about the possibilities of sustainable design products. Seriously, design items are great. More and more designers are inspired to design eco-friendly sustainable products, resulting in new designer items that you will love. Also check out this blog that discusses about climate-friendly products, based on the weather.
Don’t be stimulated to buy a lot of new stuff, though. Rather consciously choose sustainable items the next time you actually need something new. And if you buy something new, you can always check out TreeClicks for Android. It plants trees for free while shopping online.