My research title topic

Plastic Waste Jewellery

Figure 1 - Mbeje .A. 2019. RING. Rendering - Silver (gold-plated), Resin and PET(Polyethene)

Figure 2 - Mbeje .A. 2019. NECKPIECE. Rendering - Silver (gold-plated), Resin and PET(Polyethene)

Recycling has always been my goal as a jewellery designer to reduce high rates of pollution while putting less pressure on virgin materials to produce brand new products. Recycling plays a bigger role in the process of recovering scrap or waste plastic and reprocessing the material into useful products. Plastic pollution is currently one of the biggest environmental concerns in the world. 

I have always wanted to do a jewellery collection that will bring awareness in the society by melting waste plastic into precious jewellery. My goal is to do a jewellery collection that has recycled plastic with resin and also uses precious metals as a support structure in the manufacturing process, which refers to rebuilding and assembling, I designed the above jewellery collection prototype in figures 1 and 2, while I was in Italy. I wanted to design a jewellery collection that involves geometric shapes and contrast elements of colour, such as light, dark; soft, hard; warm, and cool.