Trash Mandala

[Image: By Jeffrey Inaba/C-LAB].

Jeffrey Inaba and C-LAB have created this mandala of consumption, refuse, and plastic waste, with one side dedicated to the "hydration compulsion" that helps puts millions of one-use bottles in places bottles aren't meant to be.

[Image: By Jeffrey Inaba/C-LAB].

There is even a deity of hydration, tempting us with its multi-limbed assortment of tasty beverages.

[Image: By Jeffrey Inaba/C-LAB].

But it's all part of a new project meant to rethink waste management infrastructure, complete with ironic and colorfully alluring designs for private trash cans.

In this project, the trashcan has been redesigned, and mostly over-designed, to celebrate the taste of suburban culture and to give a form to the can that describes the processes of use, disposal, and management of the things we trash.

The project is thus a look at "our eco-era obsessions that generate trash: the simultaneous rise in environmental awareness and in disposable cleaning goods... the simultaneous rise in global water awareness and the generation of water bottle waste... We made a series of suburban style trash cans to describe these contradictory tendencies."

The project goes on display today at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

[Images: By Jeffrey Inaba/C-LAB].

Read BLDGBLOG's interview with Inaba here.