Smart-thinking bods at Newcastle University have constructed a pop-up cafe within the university's main campus which is entirely made from recycled materials, apart from the coffee.
Local engineers, architects, and social scientists have spent three months building the cafe which is constructed from food packaging - including plastic bottle chairs, walls made from cardboard boxes, and aprons made from plastic bags.
Designed to challenge the perception of waste as well as explore new ways of creating sustainable buildings, the cafe is the brainchild of civil engineers Professor Stephanie Glendinning and Dr Mark Powell and director of architecture Graham Farmer.
''Upcycling is about taking material that would normally be considered waste and turning it into something of value,'' explains Dr Powell. ''It's already happening in areas such as the fashion industry but we wanted to see if we could take it up a scale and use what we would normally throw away to create a sustainable structure which not only raises awareness but also triggers discussion and motivates change."
''In other words,'' adds Farmer, ''The cafe itself will stimulate conversation and hopefully a change in mindset about what is and isn't waste. In this project we are exchanging coffee for conversation, asking people to think about how they might re-use stuff they normally throw away.''
The U-cafe project has been carried out largely by postgraduate architecture students as part of a linked research project. The project connects research directly with teaching and develops a sense of responsibility amongst young designers to use and source sustainable materials.
Professor Glendinning says the next step is to look at how materials could be re-engineered at source with a view to being reused at the end. ''This would completely change the way we view waste,'' she explains. ''For example, if we can design a milk carton like a Lego brick that could be fitted together with hundreds of others to build a garden shed then the carton ceases to be waste. If these carton components can be joined in a multitude of different ways, then the construction and business possibilities are endless, limited only by the imagination of each individual."
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