Pretty Plastic

Pretty Plastic aims to produce cladding products made of upcycled plastic waste that look great, are safe in use, easy to apply, and last forever. From trash to tile! Pretty Plastic contributes to a circular economy where waste does not exist and raw materials are used over and over again. PrettyPlastic is a cladding material that gives discarded building products a second life. Made of old window frames, downspouts, and rain gutters, PrettyPlastic shows that waste can become beautiful. PrettyPlastic tiles are now available in a range of greys. Because of variations in the recycled material, every tile is unique. From waste to resource: how it started At the beginning of 2015 Reinder Bakker, Hester van Dijk, and Peter van Assche, with their design studio’s bureau SLA and Overtreders W, got hold of a shipping container full of household plastic garbage. They immediately saw the beauty and potential of this waste. What if, they asked themselves, it could be transformed into a precious building material? The discarded shampoo bottle would get a better life than ever before! To prove that plastic upcycling can be competitive they designed and built their own machine park: the Pretty Plastic Plant, which produced unique tiles for interior design projects. In 2017, the two design studios built the People’s Pavilion as the main venue of Dutch Design Week. The building was cladded with 9.000 upcycled plastic tiles. After years of perfectioning: a qualified product Perfection does not come easy. In the following year, tests were performed to ensure that the 100% upcycled plastic tiles meet all safety requirements. In 2019 approval for fire certificate class B (very difficult to burn) was obtained according to NEN-EN 13501-1. Pretty Plastic tiles can now be applied onto any building and are available worldwide. Credits: – bureau SLA | Pretty Plastic – architect – Peter van Assche – Overtreders W | bureau SLA – designer – Reinder Bakker – Overtreders W | Pretty Plastic – designer – Hester van Dijk