Chilean Musuc’s N+ew: A Design Piece and a Statement

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N+ew, which stands for No More Electronic Waste, is a bench, a sculpture and an installment by Chilean designer Rodrigo Alonso Schramm and his design studio Musuc. The idea might not be entirely new, but it is a powerful statement in Latin America, where recycling is not an easy task (in Buenos Aires, the government recently re-launched its recycling program in order to try to make it work). So says Schramm: “In South America it is not easy to return to manufacturers the electronic waste to be re-used, because such policy does not exist. The reuse of these types of products is poor for its low re-selling prices and the large space they take in containers, also for the fact that they can only be reused three times before loosing their molecular consistence. Having this in mind, N+ew aims to become an ‘aesthetic container’ whose goal is to immortalize something that will have no other life than contaminating”. Built with different types of e-waste, epoxy resin, and recycled-aluminum legs, the bench was first intended to be made with bio-resin, but the producers of such material were scarce, too expensive and hard to find in Latin America, explained Schramm. N+ew is a limited edition product made under special request, and will be exhibited in the Korea Gwangju Design Biennale Designflux next October 2007 and during the Passion Tour Symposium that will take place in Chile in the same month. It is also part of a collection with the same material, and the Chilean designer is in process of developing other products from with e-waste, so we will keep him in our radars. If you are into green computing, check our post on How to Recycle your computer and also our How to Green Your Electronics guide. ::Musuc ::Rodrigo Alonso