The exhibition proposed by Kowalski and Szczelina faces the global problem of waste overproduction. Our modern consumerist societies neglect the “after-life” of their mass-produced items, packed-tight in successive layers of plastics. The stake of “Let’s talk about garbage” is an attempt to present new, alternative strategies of coping with the flood of waste pouring down the streets of our cities.
The creators of the exhibition show how architecture can stimulate the reduction of the amount of waste and how it can take part in the process of recycling.
Designing disposable or short-lived items, usually made of plastics that will decompose in landfills for hundreds or even thousands of years, contributes to creating masses of carelessly generated waste. The exhibition present the life cycles of some discarded items – their collection, sorting, processing and reuse. Such processes as recycling, upcycling (i.e. recycling which raises the value of the processed material) or product design which take into account its future processing propose solutions to the problem of waste overproduction.
