Project 2
Sustainability / Waste
A material comparison about whether environmentally friendly choices are ever as straightforward as they first appear.
Year
2020
Location
Singapore
Beneficiary
Zero Waste Singapore
Not all waste has the same afterlife
The project began with a question that sounded simple: which material choice is most environmentally friendly? A fallen leaf, a plastic bottle, resin, and wood each carried a different environmental pathway. The work became less about finding a perfect answer, and more about noticing the trade-offs hidden inside good intentions.
Plastic leaf
A single-use bottle was cut, carved, and melted into a leaf form, turning something headed for disposal into something that could stay longer.
Wood offcuts
Wood offcuts became brooch supports, raising questions about natural materials, human intervention, reuse, and disposal.
Four material questions
Each material path is both a craft decision and a sustainability question. The point is not to crown a winner, but to make the trade-offs visible.
A fallen leaf preserved in resin extends the life of a natural material, but also introduces a petroleum-based material into the story.
A plastic bottle leaf avoids adding new material, but asks why the single-use plastic existed in the first place.
A failed resin attempt became a ghost-like print of the leaf, changing waste into a second object rather than discarding it immediately.
Wood offcuts supported the leaf forms and complicated the comparison again: natural does not automatically mean impact-free.
Processing each decision
This space can hold the process notes for how each material decision was handled: what was kept, what was added, what failed, and what changed meaning once the object moved from waste into craft.
The uncomfortable middle
The most useful insight from the project was not a neat answer. It was the awareness that sustainability is shaped by context: what an object was, what it becomes, how long it stays useful, and what happens after.
Conversation starter
Instead of presenting sustainability as a lifestyle label, this project invites a slower question: what are we counting, and what are we ignoring? The answer changes when the waste stream, added materials, object lifespan, and collective recycling habits are considered together.
What makes a material responsible?
This project keeps the question open. It asks whether being less wasteful is about choosing the right material, extending the useful life of what already exists, or learning to see environmental choices as shared systems rather than isolated actions.
Proceeds from the sale of jewellery made from these pieces were donated to Zero Waste Singapore