Since reconstituted wooden board is industrially intensive to recycle, it tends to be incinerated at end-of-life, releasing more carbon per unit fuel than coal.

LOØP imagines how IKEA might reinvent its wood based kitchen products by introducing a material that cascades through three product lifecycles and communicates its current stage via colour and texture. As the material approaches the end of its useful life, it gets darker, before finally biodegrading and returning nutrients to the biocycle. This is visualised using three example products which form part of the SENDBACK, REFROM and COMPUST ranges.

My primary responsibility was to develop and prototype suitable materials. After extensive research of potentially viable bio-based composites, I identified two compositions - a starch and algae thermoplastic - which when mixed with wood fibre, provided appropriate structural properties.