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TASK 2

Fast Fashion Waste . Noise pollution . Sound Absorption

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Echo Panel

Echo panel is a great company to explore for product, service and aesthetic inspiration. The panels are created from a mix of recycled and virgin PET material (plastic bottle material), they use no adhesives and the company is fully committed to using eco-friendly dies. The company aims to create effective, aesthetic and easily customizable soundproofing materials to use in office spaces predominately. The panels come in different shapes and styles and each come with a variety of mounting styles. The materials they create have been used in sound proofing panels, however they have also used the materials to create different soft furnishings and statement wall designs. The vast application of this material is something that I would like to draw inspiration from for my own product. Particularly in terms of finding different ways to incorporate sound proofing into spaces apart from wall panels i.e. could the material be used as a patrician, soft furnishings cover or cat scratching post?

Bee Keeper Parade

Bee keeper parade is a Melbourne based company that makes bags from textile waste and offcuts. Their company philosophy is routed in the idea of sustainability and education. All the bags are made by woman in Cambodia that have been trained by the company to sew the bags. The money from purchases is then used to help fund education for children in the region. Bee keeper parade has found ways to sew these bags with almost all different types and thicknesses of material by layering and using interfacing to create the desired fabric properties. The use of interfacing and other thickening methods is a particularly effective way of changing the properties of fabric.

Anny Duff

Anny duff has been one of the founders of an Adelaide based sustainable fashion brand that works to create and support ethically made and manufactured, made to last, staple clothing items. They have a design and manufacturing philosophy that puts emphasis on the materials they use to create their clothing and making sure each item is going to last for as long as possible regardless of style. Anny Duff lead a team during Adelaide fashion week to create runway items using the left over reams of fabric and oversupply from other fashion labels. This has often been seen as a major taboo in fashion, but she believes it needs to be talked about to create a better discourse on how wasteful the industry has been and continues to be.

Case Study

Veena Sahajwalla

Veena Sahajwalla is a scientist who specialises in molecular alchemy and has consistently worked in the field of sustainability with aims to improve the way we as a society manufacture and recycle products at end of consumer and end of life waste streams. Her work includes green steel in which she aided in changing the steel manufacturing processes by introducing carbon from old tires as a replacement for coking coal, an integral component of steel. She has also studied ways in which textile and fast fashion waste can be re-used in building materials. Her study with other peers specifically looked at the sound absorbing properties of building materials that used textiles from end of life and end of consumer waste streams. The world health organisation classifies urban and city noise pollution as one of the most polluting factors that such areas create. This pollution has a direct negative effect on both animals and wildlife and the humans that populate these areas by casing hearing loss, immense and in turn cardiovascular health related issues. Using textile waste to help noise pollution therefore helps to reduce the negative impacts of both waste streams. Polymer fibres and different natural fibres such as cotton and wool as well as foam from discarded mattresses were all used as different bulk materials and tested at different densities. The tests analysed which frequencies were most effected by the different materials and in all the study found that different materials and fibres had different sound proofing effects when used in the same density and with the same other materials. Wool and natural fibre materials were particularly effective as a filler for higher frequency sounds. Sahajwalla and her team concluded that these methods of using textile waste as bulk additives to building materials is a viable and effective option for improving the sound absorbing qualities of building materials.