Mariana Benitez Corona
Mariana Benitez
Team
ELISAVA Final degree bachelor project
Project
Year
2021
Teranima is furniture for children where their imagination and creativity allows them to create and design their own seat.
Teranima has a double functionality, in addition to serving as furniture, it is a toy for children to enjoy and learn while using it because it has interchangeable pieces, allowing each seat to be customized and unique.
Teranima
Companies involve
Kavehome
Proplast
Create a collection of furniture designed by students, produced by Proplast in Senegal, and communicated and marketed by KaveHome.
With more than 8 million tons of plastic entering the ocean each year, humanity must urgently rethink the way we make and use plastics so that they do not become waste in the first place.
There are over 5 trillion pieces of plastic already in the ocean, with 300 million tons of new plastic used worldwide every year; very little of which gets recycled or reused and often ends up back in the ocean. There are now more microplastics in the ocean than there are stars in the Milky Way and, tragically, if we continue on our current trajectory, there will be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050.
Oceans are primary sources of food, jobs, and economic development. In addition to dangers to humans, microplastics are a threat for fish and birds that mistake them for food and starve to death. With an estimated 9.7 billion people to be fed by 2050, fish stocks contaminated with microplastics and their associated toxins are a growing problem.
Our society has the plastic tap turned on, pouring 18 billion pounds a year. That’s 34 lbs per minute. If we keep going at this rate by 2050, there could be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Accumulating plastics belong to over 200 polymer families, varying in composition and properties.
Plastic does not degrade like natural materials; it breaks down into very small pieces that animals mistake for food. If marine life is ingesting them, so are we. But we have time to change it.
Challenge
Background
Recycling is the first step in breaking the cycle, but we need to change our way of thinking and reinvent ways of disposing of plastic waste.
The pollution in the ocean is evident and it is something that day by day is becoming a problem that if we do not take action as soon as possible we will reach a point where the damage will be irreversible. This tells us that starting to use recycled plastic as a raw material is and should be paramount to improve the situation in the environment. The problem is that the perception of recycled plastic is that it is dirty and therefore it is related to the fact that people do not like to use it. However, lately, all the companies are making sustainable products whereby recycling plastic, they use it as raw material to generate new material.
That is why we are working with two companies that are making use of recycled plastic as raw material. Among them are Proplast, a company that specializes in recycling plastic waste in Senegal, and Kavehome, a world leader in the design, development, and distribution of furniture, with a Kavecares program that is designing products using recycled plastic.
Therefore having to create furniture with recycled plastic for the new collection of KaveKids where the little variety of products they have in this collection are only wood, could increase the variety of products for children giving this value of using recycled plastic, this being a material for easy cleaning, lightweight and very durable and complement the stay of children giving a little color to space where it is considered to put this furniture, also giving a value to achieve that this furniture could be part of their playtime.
The value of the proposal lies in creating a piece of recycled plastic furniture, with different accessories with an aesthetic and multifunctional coherence. It will serve as furniture that the users, in this case, children, can sit on and also serve as a toy to develop psychomotor skills, attention, and concentration, creativity, language, and communication.
We also incorporated the references of the Senegalese culture, “Teranga”. Creating a piece where they can join seats and more people can play and share the moment and thus achieve the goal of the product expressing its origin.
Create recycled plastic furniture from the company Proplast, which develops creativity, imagination, fun, and learning for children between 3 and 8 years old, to be distributed by the company Kavehome.
Value proposal
Structure of proposal
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