BEYONDPLASTIC Coffee Talk :: Episode 3 with designer Cinzia Ferrari and her PLANT plASTIC! project

BEYONDPLASTIC Coffee Talk

Cinzia Ferrari’s PLANT plASTIC! is a fantastic packaging material that doesn’t contain any toxic ingredient and that doesn’t become waste: Instead, at the end of its use it takes a new life form by growing into a house plant.

Packaging is not a passive dead matter anymore. It is alive and contributes to a better environment: By growing into a plant, CO2 is absorbed from the air and single-use packaging consumption is reduced as the user will grow fresh products as tomatoes that are normally sold wrapped in plastic. The material is made of sodium alginate, plant seeds and Azospirillum Brasilense, which is a soil bacteria harmless to us humans and because of its nitrogen-fixing property promotes plant growth. For this reason this bacteria is well known as biofertilizer.

The packaging made of this material is dry and organically inactive but alive. It will become active again only when it is planted into soil. For this reason, Azospirillum Brasilense won’t contaminate any packaged product.
Cinzia’s motto is that in terms of design efficiency we should pay closer attention to nature. We need lightness in materials which not only means less matter but more efficiency: products need to sense and respond to changes in the environment.
The project has been inspired by group work and experiments done during the MA Biodesign at Central Saint Martins in collaboration with Emily Roscoe, Meiqi Peng, Moises Hernandez and Paula Camiña.