At this point, we can all agree that our take-make-use-dispose model of consumption has been nothing but harmful for the planet and that it’s about time we part ways with one of the biggest contributors to this problem — single-use plastics.
A creative agency in Vietnam, called Ki Saigon, surely thinks so. That is reflected in one of its latest projects, called Letters to the Future, a book made from recycled plastic pages, featuring letters that were written by people from all over the world to their imagined descendants.
The aim was to bring together like-minded people concerned with safeguarding a resilient and sustainable future for our planet. The idea behind the non-profit art project started with the fact that much of the plastic we toss away on a daily basis takes hundreds of years to biodegrade, meaning that a single-use plastic item that ends up in the environment today is likely to still be around when our great, great, great-grandchildren are born decades and even centuries later.
As such, the team at Ki Saigon wants to leave the future generations with hope, compassion, and optimism, while also putting the spotlight on the duality between this and our current wastefulness. In a bid to bring this duality to the forefront, the agency asked people from all over the world to write letters to their great, great, great-grandchildren. In about four months, the team collected 327 letters from 22 countries.
Ki Saigon then took these inspiring messages and printed them on the very plastic that litters our streets and streams. Teaming up with local recyclers to source the plastic, they were to collect different types of plastic bags, styrofoam boxes, bubble wrap, and plastic sheets needed to create the base material. The plastics were then ironed in between baking paper to fuse them together.
Each letter was then scanned and individually hand-printed on each page, preserving the original handwriting of the author. The printed letters to the future were hand-bound together, creating a book that will now last more than 1000 years.
Image source: designboom
