Context
Sustainability and Biodegradable Products

Material symbolism and communication

Case Study

Companies promote sustainability in daily life and are making an environmentally responsible call to themselves and others.

Example: Social responsibility as promoted by Coffee Fellows “Degradable Cup”.

The communication shows literally and ‘exemplary’ how the cup is composted in a traditional reusable glass ‘live’ in the store.

Cups become fertile soil for new growth, new plants, new cup material and new cup enjoyment – natural continuity.

A plant in the disposable cup enlivens and visualizes the life as a cycle. The slogan “Watch your cup return to nature” picks up on this and associates a kind of “rebirth”, or “resurrection” of a consumer product now in the form of a plant.

Live is created as plants are thriving in the used coffee cup. The world gains a place of inexhaustible resources and ‘zero waste’.

‚Rebirth’ of consumer products – raw material generation as and for nature

Life starts over – continuity of raw materials symbolizing the cycle of life.

Perspectives

Emotional image impact of composting in the context of a  Baroque attitude to life

Driven by a two-sided-ness of life with little in-between. Like today present in the image of ‘polarization’.

On the one hand: Exuberant living, intensity and rapid progress (technology), ‘live the day’ in all its fullness.

On the one hand and in focus here: ‘Memento Mori’ – “consider the transience of things “.

With uncertainty about the future, these imageries of composting and recycling are like a daily reminder of ‘mother nature’ – in terms of it’s and one’s own well-doing continuing from here.