In recent years, repairing and upgrading electronics has largely given way to a trend of disposable gadgets which fill up landfills – especially with regard to home appliances like coffee makers and toasters. However, French designer Gaspard Tiné-Berès proposes to repair and re-use discarded and damaged appliances, with readily available reclaimed materials providing the necessary components, and the bodies constructed from cork.
The Short Circuit project grew out of the UK’s Islington City Council initiative Bright Sparks, which seeks to re-use unwanted electronics and sell them at a significant discount. So far, Tiné-Berès has created a coffee maker, toaster, and several kettles – all from discarded or damaged appliances, reclaimed materials, and natural cork.
“My coffee-maker, kettles and toaster are made out of re-used components, and factory seconds glassware such as wine bottle and chemistry beakers, in order to take advantage of its ubiquity, and standardized dimensions,” explained the designer.
In addition to offering consumers inexpensive and environmentally responsible products, Tiné-Berès also reckons that a business built around reusing and recycling electronics poses an opportunity to create new jobs and train workers with new skills, benefiting the local community, as well as the environment at large.
On this note, the designer has joined forces with Tristan Kopp in order to launch a new design studio named RE-DO Studio, which is dedicated to pursuing sustainable design. The pair are working closely with Bright Sparks, and aim to launch a collection later this year with some products available for purchase.
The video below sheds some more light on both the Bright Sparks and Short Circuit projects.
Sources: Gaspard Tiné-Berès, Tristan Kopp via EcoChunk
I personally have thought of a side business repairing, reusing, and redesigning so much of today’s consumer clutter. Not only does this help in our endeavor to clean up the planet, but maybe get consumer’s involved with the recognition, understanding how a quality simple design should be, how it works, and how it can last, till it is recycled once again…
Hope to see more get involved and perhaps with 3D scanners, & printing some parts can be re-built as well.
The cork is a fail. Americans won't trust it to be fireproof.
Printing 3D appliances out of carbon composites or ceramics is a win; cork is not.
People have enough of a phobia about buying "used" in the first place.
Sell them a kit with the parts a few years down the road, so they can print their own chassis for a toaster. THERE you have a good hobbyist market.
If people could break down all their old plastic appliances drop them in a machine and receive the ready to use cord that goes in the 3D printer what a difference that would make.
Any plan to increase sustainability should be given the praise it deserves though. Excellent work Gaspard.