As the global community consumes more resources to make products that are more rapidly being discarded as waste, designers are placing themselves at the forefront of efforts to ‘unmake waste’.

The China-Australia Centre for Sustainable Urban Development recently hosted the Unmaking Waste 2018 International Conference in Adelaide, to address means of solving waste problems, pollution and environmental degradation caused by discarded products.

As a part of this conference, the Unmaking Waste 2018 Exhibition is featuring a display of innovative designs that repurpose waste products, including work by Flinders University’s Discipline Leader for Design Technology and Innovation, Dr Sandy Walker.

Dr Walker’s poster – promoting a Towel Tubes Grower Kit, comprising biodegradable seedling planter tubes made from recycled paper towels – is part of an exhibition that questions current resource usage and challenges other designers and artists to reimagine what designing with waste products can look like by highlighting new processes and mediums.

The Unmaking Waste 2018 exhibition is in the Office for Design and Architecture South Australia at 28 Leigh St, Adelaide, and will run until October 19. For more information, check the website.