Upcycling of agro- and plastic waste to create conglomerate material protecting rural lifestyle
How can we reuse tons of plastic agricultural waste and create a material that could enrich the aesthetic of our villages? Foil&Soil Mishmash establishes a bridge between material science technology and artistic point of view by forming a unique, nature-based, locally-sourced material for social use. Creating a series of various, public artefacts will help us to stop, relax and rethink how much we depend on the countryside. To be a human means to be the foil and soil of the current times.
Local
Poland
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Mainly rural
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: Magdalena Last name: Gorecka Gender: Female Age: 28 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Poland Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Marszalkowska 9/15/7 Town: Warsaw Postal code: 00626 Country: Poland Direct Tel:+48 790 589 026 E-mail:magdalena@moffb.com Website:https://www.modelsoffbeauty.com/
First name: Magdalena Last name: Skowyra Gender: Female Age: 28 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Poland Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Lærkevej 11, St. 4 Town: Copenhagen NV Postal code: 2400 Country: Denmark Direct Tel:+45 50 20 77 73 E-mail:magsk@dtu.dk Website:https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/persons/magdalena-skowyra
The greenhouse industry covers an estimated 405,000 hectares of land throughout the EU, with a constantly growing tendency. A big part of this kind of agriculture is based on intensive and high-energy demanding farming utilizing a common plastic - low-density polyethylene (LDPE), which is used in form of foils covering the greenhouses. Unfortunately, in order to maximize agricultural production, the foils are imported and replaced nearly every year, resulting in an increase in waste that piles up in polish villages. Therefore, we propose a concept that makes use of the presented challenge and has great potential to become an impactful material, bringing changes both locally, as well as globally.
Foil&Soil Mishmash (/ˈmɪʃmæʃ/, a confused mixture of different kinds of things, styles, etc.) is an innovative post-plastic conglomerate produced from upcycling LDPE foil- and soil- waste, collected in a village next to our hometown in the south-east of Poland. The concept aims to find ways to give importance and admiration to agro-waste alongside bringing back the second life to forgotten villages, in the most unique and sustainable manner. The material is both reproducible, in terms of its chemical composition and functionality, as well as exceptional, in terms of its aesthetics and beauty.
The first prototype of the project is a public sitting space, giving rest to village inhabitants and produced locally from their agro- and plastic-waste. Our idea serves not only as a physical product but also as a symbolic reminder of how much villages have to offer and how our tendency of village desertification keeps deepening.
Plastic is a material of the same chemical composition and properties all over the world, hence, Foil&Soil prospective usage could be expanded to other European countries, where intensive agriculture using LDPE foils is performed. The opportunities are countless and we, two young women from a polish town, will make sure to take advantage of them.
Restoring village second life
Plastic and agro-waste upcycling
Rural circular ecosystem
Sustainable architecture
Design-for-all principle with communal engagement
The main goal of the Foil&Soil Mishmash project in terms of environmental sustainability focuses on two main areas: creative waste management and civic process of the making and assembly.
Our concept brings novelty in terms of reusing worn-out, post-agricultural plastic foil, intensively used to protect the crops from cold, by giving them a second life in a changed, beautiful form. By inserting the waste into a functional material, we remain in harmony with the local environment, by recycling on-spot, and with the planet, by preventing waste agglomeration in rural places. Additionally, collaboration with municipalities could help with defining the needs of local communities and adequate material modifications based on waste accessibility.
Taking the waste out of its place and bringing it back in a new, changed appearance, creates a new way of thinking and living, where nature, culture, humans and the environment are all together, building a sustainable future. The act of making will potentially reunite village inhabitants, while the usage is supposed to reunite all living organisms, learning how to live together again.
Example scenario: a village inhabitant going out for a walk notices beautifully looking shapes at the nearby bus stop. He goes back home, talks about them with other home members and they all admire the art, which was formed from their agricultural waste. They feel proud from being part of the sustainable circle.
Additionally, the proposal is not only a series of eco-friendly artefacts. Very importantly, it is a know-how and knowledge that will stay in the village but also meander in the region, on national level or even European, which is our goal. The material-making methodology and construction process can be easily replicated in other settlements with high density of polyethylene greenhouses or other forms of extensive agriculture.
Atmospheric radiant. Foil&Soil Mishmash will create a variety of atmospheric spatial scenarios while bringing back forgotten cultural activities and festivities. Countryside, bus-stop sitting space will become our first spatial implication of conglomerate matter. The bench was once the main meeting spot in polish, rural areas. Nowadays, due to several factors, it lost its very important role. Here, we use the "rural acupuncture" strategy: creating minimal physical change with a huge impact on village inhabitants.
Sensual aesthetics. The conglomerate, being a mixture of in-fertile soil and polyethylene foil, takes over the roughness of sediments and the reflectiveness of plastic. The synthetic sensuality was achieved by manipulations of the ingredients, providing depths and spatial arrangement. Each piece is considered a state-of-art object, which appearance bridges deep geological times and current consumerism. As reproducible in terms of composition as the conglomerate can be, this much unique remains in terms of its beauty and charm.
Underestimated beauty. Example scenario: the visual aesthetics of each piece of Foil&Soil Mishmash talks to us via an infinite number of shapes, colors and patterns. All of them are the purest evidence of the beauty available in the waste we are surrounded by. The act of squeezing the most out of it and obtaining a sustainable product serves as a great example of the quality of experience beyond functionality.
Diversification of rural economic sector. Our concept goes beyond agriculture as a main source of income, to revitalize the selected countryside. This does not mean that farming and planting should not be recuperated; rather, diversity must increase to attract entrepreneurs and workers, and boost city-village migration.
Knowledge transfer. Our goal is to build a community of farmers who will have an income opportunity during the non-farming season. The financial situation of the village population depends on the lifecycle of crops. Therefore, farmers who will get the new "making" knowledge could become new masters of environmentally friendly farms and future local educators.
Recover. The construction of genuine and eccentric artefacts is one of the most sustainable ways to engage inhabitants and farmers. New, communal spaces will provide gathering areas and accompanying events will be organized. One of them could be a celebration of Spring, where the Foil&Soil Mishmash bench would be exposed as a symbol of the new energy and vigor that springtime will bring.
Satisfaction. The idea of Foil&Soil Mishmash in terms of benefits and their impact lies within the fulfillment of locals' needs and their engagement in the process. The concept aims to involve locals, including farmers and unemployed inhabitants, in the production workshop, which could be set up on the spot and be led by local masters. The growth of a product, even from their agro-waste, would be seen directly and could serve as a sort of happiness factor among their daily ordinary tasks. With time, the youth of the villages will become genuine know-how specialists and educators for future generations.
The satisfaction will be also reflected in the unique and exceptional public spaces, available for all inhabitants, where each and everyone will find their rest and calmness.
Opportunities. At the same time, the work of most of the farmers is concentrated around the summer months, leaving a long period of the year with much more free time and much lower income. The impact of Foil&Soil Mishmash will be to mitigate this disproportion by offering seasonal work opportunities for every generation in the local workshops. The workshop could even take a form of a wandering camping truck, rearranged for our needs and able to reach even the smallest of villages. The opportunities are countless and will surely grow together with the concept.
Foil&Soil Mishmash is a fusion of thoughts, dreams, and the determination of two innovative souls, whose vision is to make sustainability and beauty part of everyday living. The idea sparkled exactly there - in a small Polish town in the Subcarpathian region, an area with over 83% of land occupied by agricultural fields, where we both grew up and shared our best memories. There was a strong incentive to bring the best of our knowledge and expertise back to the roots and symbolically connect with our home again. Behind the idea, there is the hard work of an interdisciplinary team consisting of an architect, a material scientist, a regional recycling laboratory, and local craftsmen.
An architect is a leading person in terms of aesthetics, design, modeling, and functionality assessment. She gathers her expertise in multiple universities and architecture studios all over the world, designing social artefacts, such as female hubs, markets or art centers. Currently, she works as an educator at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria.
None of it would be possible without a material scientist, who takes care of the material characterization in terms of chemical composition and structure. She has a previous experience in state-of-the-art polymer material development, for which she earned a PhD degree at the Technical University of Denmark. She continues her academic successes as a postdoc at the Danish Polymer Center.
Our collaborator, a regional recycling factory is the heart of the material preparation at the current stage of the project. Their excellence in batch fabrication, access to modern equipment, and its operation, are the driving forces toward our goal. They share our sustainability-driven idea, they could be users of. Similarly it is for local craftsmen, who are inhabitants of the chosen village, and who help us with the agro-waste collection and separation. They possess knowledge we cannot find in books, which is the local expertise.
The Foil&Soil Mishmash methodology is defined by working methods in the fields of chemistry, material science, agriculture, architecture, and art. Within our concept, we accessed and worked together with different laboratories, such as the University of Applied Arts in Vienna Architecture Department, the Technical University of Denmark Chemical Technology Department, and the Plastic Recycling laboratory in Poland.
Making: internal. The architecture studio served as a practice space for finding different formal and artistic approaches, while the practical tests were conducted on the terrain of the Recycling Laboratory nearby our hometown. We considered our meetings as a communal workshop therefore there was an equal flux of knowledge from each field. The hands-on collaborative and interdisciplinary work built trust between disciplines.
Exhibiting: public. The first physical pieces were exhibited at the Angewandte Festival in 2020 in Vienna, Austria, and in 2021 at the Sonic Blur exhibition in a virtual metaspace. However, our concept significantly developed from that time to larger set-ups, different contexts, and architectural scales.
Discussing: potential clients. Apart from the internal exchange of knowledge, we also spent time in one of the villages - Mokre, to discuss the potential advantages and threats of our concept. The participatory process of each party involved, evolved into a tangible proposal with a clear structure and plan of implementation.
"Matter does not refer to a fixed substance; rather; matter is substance in its intra-active becoming - not a thing, but a doing, a congealing of agency." / Barard. K, ibid, p.822
Celebration of the countryside. The government implements standardized spatial solutions in every village, therefore the locality and contextuality of landscape, culture, and tradition diminish. Standardized, imported materials such as corrugated aluminum-zinc metal sheets, or cement could be replaced with the most beautiful form of reflection on and celebration of countryside flora and fauna, all grown and prepared locally.
Social and cultural phenomenon. Seating spaces inside villages always served as a main public spot to engage with other inhabitants. A bus-stop bench is an outstanding social phenomenon in the countryside. It is a place for shelter and celebrations, dates, meetings, festivities, and exchanges.
Importance of process and performance. Our concept emphasizes the importance of "the act of making". The locality of the process and openness for everybody's contribution are novel but ancient procedures.
The intention of Foil&Soil Mishmash is to give and take - an artefact, which at first glance seems like a mishmash, can be both replicated, in terms of material composition and preparation technology, and keep its uniqueness as an artistic object. Depending on the geological location, the 'takes' will be different, with some places specializing in the foil, and others in the soil. The concept assumes a constant preparation technique and its scalability, at the same time adapting to the needs of local groups. A huge part of the transferability will be based on knowledge propagation, with local masters being the educators of the coming generations.
Plastic is a material with no history, no birthplace, and home, though, we see it everywhere. Due to the fact that its chemical composition remains unchanged all over the world, it has the potential to be a building material of the future. Hence, our concept can be similarly transferred to other areas, such as the furniture industry or interior design, even while leaving the methodology and process not touched.
Additionally, plastic waste is a building material with huge potential. Plastics are strong, durable, lightweight, easy to mold, and mostly waterproof and recyclable, which are the key properties of construction materials.
Rural depopulation. The world’s rural population currently stands at 47%, although forecasts indicate that this percentage will have fallen to 30% by 2050. This will mean that some 6.7 billion people will live in increasingly populated cities (source: Julius Baer). While, according to the UN, there must be a balance between urban and rural environments, because only then greater sustainability in all such environments can be achieved.
Rural desertification. Because of crop abandonment, the countryside is emptying. This phenomenon is caused by the break of an ecosystem that had been in place for centuries. Such changes also affect the local fauna, which can disappear, and villages themselves, which can become ghostly deserts.
Waste management. Modern waste management facilities reflect the separation between society and what it discards. Waste and its disposal are supposed to remain as invisible as possible. Currently, in polish villages, there is no plastic recycling program, its utilization remains very costly and waste is piling up over the polish countryside landscape. The implementation of a systemic solution for the management of plastic waste that generates agricultural production is needed.
Climate change. Reduction of cement and metals footprint. Our conglomerate's major constituents are synthetic waste and organic products.
Preconceptions urban-rural. Change of common preconception regarding villages as an obsolete and old-fashioned settlement supplying vegetables, flowers, plants, and meat products to the towns. Contrariwise, the villages could be the future of high-end design and innovations.
