Circular Colour: A Contentious Issue for Brands
Dan Dicker, circular design pioneer and founder of Circular&Co. talks to Sarah Conway about the troubled relationship between colour and circularity.
When we talk about waste, recycling, and even circularity, we are generally talking about materials. Despite everything we know about the environmental harm done by many of its processes and applications, colour rarely gets a mention.
Perhaps colour is considered too frivolous to take part in these serious conversations, too difficult or too contentious. Whatever the reason, we can no longer ignore colour’s ubiquity in linear take-make-waste systems. It isn’t just the impossibility of achieving circularity without considering how we make, apply and reincorporate colour; allowing colour to be an afterthought is also a wasted opportunity. Colour is the most emotive element in design. If we want to get people excited about circular products, we need to harness the power of colour.
“ ‘Here’s a new product we’ve created, made out of recycled so and so, isn’t it great! We’re launching it in two months, and by the way, it’s a different colour.’ That obviously isn’t going to work.”
— Dan Dicker
If anyone can align the people and technology needed to make regenerative design more colourful, it’s Dan Dicker. Dan has been pioneering circular materials and processes since launching ashortwalk (now Circular&Co.) from his garden shed in 2003. While many of us accepted that throwaway plastics like plant pots and single-use cups couldn’t be recycled — their light weight and colour material profiles making reprocessing them commercially unviable —Dan quietly got to work and created high-value products such as Eco-pots, Tide clocks and the multiple-award-winning Circular Cup.
Having created reusables from waste for Cafe Nero, Costa, The Design Museum, MacDonald’s, The RSPB, Starbucks, The V&A, Waitrose and The Woodland Trust, it’s clear that Dan’s egalitarian, planet-first approach to business is unmired by the snobbery that can pervade the design scene. On the eve of the launch of Circular&Co’s NOW cup, a consciously colourful product designed specifically to engage consumers who are not yet buying into sustainability, Sarah caught up with Dan to talk about the role of colour in our transition to a circular economy.