Background

The Uncooled Recycled Extrude (U.R.E.) process is the conclusion of a two-year research project by Cohda into the use of plastics waste in design, the associated environmental problems and design limitations imposed since the early 1990’s by pre-manufactured recycled plastic sheets and lumbers.

The aim of the U.R.E design process is to:

  1. view waste packaging as a valuable resource as opposed to an ecological difficulty,
  2. utilize the embodied energy present in waste plastics as effectively as possible, and
  3. generate a new recycled design aesthetic, breaking from traditional flat-pac

The resulting designs use the intrinsic qualities inherent in the original plastic packaging and exploit these qualities to produce designs in 100% domestic packaging waste. Colour variations for designs arise from the mixed or blended plastic waste. U.R.E. has additional benefits of eliminating large sections of the recycling process by reforming waste packaging almost instantly and breaking away from the currently understood industrial recycling process.

The reason URE is so effective is that we remove the reliance on new materials, or on pre-manufactured recycled sheet and lumbers, and reduce the need for additional manufacture processes. In starting directly plastic waste it is possible to half the embodied energy¹ in the recycled designs, in direct comparison to manufacturing an equivalent virgin product. (See Important facts, for further information on energy savings and what this means.)

¹ Embodied energy is the total energy used in bringing a product into existence. It includes the energy consumed in producing raw materials, processing them and manufacturing, as well as transportation between and within these processes.  Every product has an embodied energy, but if the product is landfilled after use, this energy is lost. If we can recycle into new products then this embodied energy can be re directed and energy savings for new products can be huge.