Conference article

This paper presents an account of the design of the Undo-Replay project: a combination of strategies from design for sustainability and product, service system design aimed at redirecting plastic toys from entering waste streams at the end of their use lives. Aimed at equipping children and adults alike with opportunities to participate in their own transferences of value, the Undo-Replay project uses gameplay and narrative to create new cultures of repair and re-making that are critical in a transition towards sustainability. The authors offer an analytical account of the socio-material systems that underpin toy consumption and waste practices, and discuss how designers might build new constructive social experiences to foster more sustainable behaviours. In considering how the project unsettles existing relations to transfer value, this paper fleshes out the tensions of environment, material, and consumption at play for designers committed to notions of sustainable redirection.

design for sustainability, circular economy, redirection, consumption