Bold, bright and beautiful, it’s hard to believe that the colourful marble effect planters for sale are actually made from a mix of empty mayonaise tubs and DVD cases.
But it’s through these small but mighty recycled plant pots that the seeds of change are being sewn on plastic waste in Aberdeen.
Based at Robert Gordon University’s Gray’s School of Art, a determined team of staff and former students have set up Origin, a small start-up business where plastic waste from local businesses is transformed into planters for people’s homes.
Educational city centre hub
The project has proved to be so popular that the team are about to launch more planters and have also applied for funding to open their own city centre educational hub where people will not only be able to buy sustainable products but also learn more about plastic waste.
“The only way we see plastic waste being reduced is to empower everyone to affect it because unless we can work together we’re not going to impact it,” said Ben Durack, one of the co-founders of Origin.
“For us it’s the only way.”
Gray’s School of Art
Thanks to stellar support from the university, Ben, a lecturer who runs the 3D Design course at the art school together with his senior colleague Daniel Sutherland, a strategic leader, and Scott Robertson, a student at the time, collectively launched Origin in February 2019.
Since then the project has continued to grow with the community queuing up to buy the sustainable planters.
“Robert Gordon University has been incredibly supportive throughout as they gave us a space on campus which is where we operate out of,” said Ben.
“We now have one full-time employee, Ross Bakke, and through that space, it gives us the ability to collect waste plastic from the local community, businesses and individuals and then use the machines we built to break it down and turn it into some of our products.”
Six billion tonnes of plastic
Ben believes that their business is probably one of very few in the world where people will know exactly how their product was made and where the recycled plastic came from.
“The reality is that there’s six billion tonnes of waste plastic in circulation just now and if you were to take that plastic and put it across the whole of the UK and its islands, we would all be standing up in our knees in it,” said Ben.
“Only 9% of that gets recycled and the other 93% nothing happens to it which is why it ends up in our waterways and our oceans and it gets incinerated and landfilled, so it’s not a good situation.
“For us we felt that because that circular economy involved in recycling was just so big that it becomes quite opaque – you can’t see what happens and no-one knows what happens to it
“So we started Origin as a way of empowering the local community to actually affect change on plastic waste.”
From Belgium to Aberdeen
Growing up in Belgium, Ben’s talent for product design was evident from an early age.
“For one of my final school projects, we were tasked with designing and making something,” said Ben.
“Traditionally, the things kids have made were quite conservative.
“But I ended up designing and making an air hockey table that worked.
“My grandad was an electrician so I worked really closely with him to understand air flow and the right type of fans and the right size of holes to create the right type of flow for the puck.”
Community space
Through Origin, Ben hopes to encourage the next generation of young designers who have the power to change the world for the better through their sustainable designs.
“Our goal is to base Origin in the city centre and increase our team from one employee to about four,” said Ben.
“By doing that we could be running events in the space such as Saturday clubs for children to get them interested in product design and recycling.
“We could also run artist talks for the community.
“To get the city centre hub up and running will take quite a bit of funding but it will create a bigger impact as we could be saving up 11 to 12 tonnes of waste plastic annually.”
The next few months are an exciting time for the start-up as they are on the verge of launching a new product.
“The biggest request we’ve had is for a larger planter so off the back of our sales at the last Christmas market we’ve developed and invested in the tooling for a larger planter,” said Ben.
This one is about twice the size of the small planter so it will celebrate recycled plastic in all of its marvel at the biggest scale we’ve ever gone to so we’re excited to launch that one.”
The team are also busy working away on a big partnership with a Scottish business.
To find out more about Origin, check out their Facebook page, Instagram or website.
