Science & Tech

Design Conjecture: Unplastic

Sophie Chu

25 Sep 2025 — 1 min read

Mockup of an Unplastic design exhibition.

Unplastic is competitive design fair and exhibition focused on plastic alternatives. Once a year, designers, researchers, and businesses have the opportunity to submit projects in two categories:

Reimagining common plastic items using alternative materials

Ideas such as The Gourd Project would do well here as they turned gourds into biodegradable containers. Read more about it here.

Inventing entirely new materials

The new material category would be judged on criteria such as carbon emissions, physical properties, biodegradability, and scalability.

Unplastic is meant together creativity, science, and industry to accelerate innovation beyond plastics and showcase pathways toward sustainable material futures. Beadle (2025) and our interview with microplastics expert Prof. Lenhart have shown us that there is very little research into viable plastic alternatives at the moment (Beadle, 2025).

References

Beadle, A. (2025, July 22). Biodegradable bioplastic designed to tackle deep sea plastic pollution. Applied Sciences from Technology Networks. https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/biodegradable-bioplastic-designed-to-tackle-deep-sea-plastic-pollution-402599

The gourd project. The Gourd Project. (n.d.). https://www.thegourdproject.com/

Survey

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