Briton Richard Liddle is taking on the huge problem of plastic waste in his country, and the impact of his efforts is creating a ripple effect --not only in Britain, but around the world. In a terrific Business Week article entitled Richard Liddle's War on Plastic, the sustainable designer explains how plastic can be turned into a fully recyclable material.


Liddle began exploring the concept of sustainable design as a student, and became convinced that Britain's use of imported plastic products that were filling up the landfills was such an important issue, he wanted to tackle it. As he saw it, Britain's landfills were not only filling up with plastic waste, but the country was compounding the problem by importing more and more plastic that in turn, would be dumped.
The article states the problem succinctly: "How, Liddle wanted to know, could all of that plastic waste be turned into something productive, its energy and value reclaimed?"
Liddle then spent two years at London's Royal College of Art studying the problem and developing a solution–a proprietary process that melds plastic recycling and manufacturing into a single, seamless process.
The designer founded Cohda Design back in his hometown in northeast England, Newcastle. Cohda's small studio has been fitted with retooled industrial machines that take HDPE plastics, used in myriad household, automotive and packaging products, grind them down, melt them and refashion the molten plastic into chairs and other home furnishings. Richard Liddle refers to this process as URE–uncooled recycled extrude.
Even more importantly, the first chair Liddle has produced, dubbed the RD4 for "roughly drawn," has drawn raves for its iconic, artistic design. Proof that waste plastic can be made into beautiful, useful objects again.
Better yet: Liddle estimates that his proprietary manufacturing process using waste rather than virgin plastic saves enough energy to give more than 1400 hours of life to a 60-watt bulb. The ultimate goal for Liddle and others like him: the reclamation of lost energy while saving valuable natural resources and zero–or as close to zero as possible--waste.
Liddle firmly believes that most furniture designs created from plastic can be melted down and reused over and over again in fresh, new designs; whereas almost all of the furniture being made today has a specific lifespan, and will end up in landfills when obsolete, recycled plastic can offer a great alternative and a real solution to a pressing problem.
This concept is referred to as "cradle to cradle" cycle. Products and packaging created in this manner feature materials that are perpetually circulated and reused in what industry experts refer to as "closed loops". This extracts maximum value from materials already in use without ever ending up in landfills, damaging ecosystems.
Coming back to designer Richard Liddle and his next exciting project: He is currently working on what he has dubbed URE Live–a public recycling and manufacturing concept that will debut this coming October at northeast England's Design Event as part of 'a yearlong series of sustainable design events and community projects' known as Design of the Times '07. For Liddle's part of the event, the public can bring their plastic trash and have it recycled into various useable new products–on the spot.
The designer envisions the potential for home-based fabrication one day. Ambitious? Yes. Impossible? No. Stay tuned.