Waste Reimagined

Soundbounce 

In the holiday season, often overwhelmed by disposable materials, innovative thinkers are redefining waste as a chance for transformation. As we’re challenging the norm of festive waste through utilitarian packaging designed to disappear,  Mathilde Wittock's Soundbounce project reveals a compelling narrative of creative design solutions.

The statistics are revealing: four hundred million tennis balls are manufactured annually, with only one per cent recycled. 

While these numbers are concerning, they also spark opportunities for creativity and innovation.

Mathilde's approach with Soundbounce shares our vision of sustainable design. Where others see waste, she sees potential - transforming 515 discarded tennis balls into a single chair, 270 discarded balls into a bench, 282 tennis balls per square metre of panelling, and 253 tennis balls into a divider, all while reducing carbon emissions by 8.5 kilograms per square metre.

In every hand-cut, carefully coloured, and ingeniously assembled piece of discarded tennis balls, there's a quiet revolution: transforming environmental challenges into design opportunities. Soundbounce shares a vision of how creativity can reshape our relationship with material waste into functional objects for our daily lives.

Like our packaging designed to dissolve or compost, Soundbounce transcends traditional recycling. Both narratives share a profound mission: redefining our relationship with materials through innovative design solutions that turn waste into purposeful, beautiful creations.

Mathilde's work challenges perceptions, demonstrating that waste is not an endpoint but a beginning - a canvas waiting for imaginative intervention.

The journey of discovery moves in multiple directions. As the trees adapt to environmental stresses, sending out their acoustic signals of change, the human participants in the project also adapt and grow. The flamenco artists learn to attune their rhythms to the subtle percussion of tree biology. Scientists find new ways to understand their data through artistic interpretation. Audiences discover connections between human culture and natural processes that they never imagined existed.

This holiday season, we invite you to see beyond the disposable, recognising that creativity can turn environmental challenges into opportunities for beauty and meaningful functionality.

These approaches represent more than design solutions. They are quiet revolutions, challenging our understanding of waste, and transforming environmental challenges into opportunities for creativity and functionality. In every carefully constructed piece - whether a chair made from tennis balls or packaging that returns to the earth - there's a vision of a better planet.

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References: Mathilde Wittock

Images Credits: @rodolphe de Brabandere