Conserve Delhi Project
Making good things from Commonwealth Games waste
CONTEXT
Under the direction of Endeavour Scholar Liz Franzmann from Melbourne, Australia, I helped upcycle waste from the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
The goal of the Conserve Delhi 2010 project was to "make good things from Games waste". In partnership with Conserve India, over the course of just 4 months, we procured waste, designed and developed samples, and created a system of operations for future upcycled vinyl products.
MY ROLE
Designer and project coordinator
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
Achieved national and international media coverage, including India’s two largest English newspapers (combined readership of 20 million people)
Generated buyer interest in upcycled Games products and secured partnership proposals from multinational corporations including Reebok, Dupont and Aviva
Banners on a highway in Delhi
Finding the Waste
Getting our hands on the Commonwealth Games banners that had already been taken down was much harder than we anticipated.
In India, Trash is seen as dirty, taboo, something only the lowest class touches so we were met with a lot of resistance.
Whenever we asked where we could find the banners, we were ignored or treated like a ragpicker. We finally learned where they were keeping a pile of unwanted banners and managed to take some to make samples.
At the recycling and waste station where the banners waited to be sorted
One of many, huge piles of vinyl banners
