Exhibitor’s Stories
BRINGING A GREEN ATTITUDE TO THE TABLE
Designer-entrepreneur C.L. Lam has been experimenting with solutions that breathe new life and sustainability into daily waste. He launched the innovative and eco-friendly design brand OOObject in Europe in 2009, and then in China and Hong Kong in 2012. The brand aims to promote a sustainable lifestyle by smart recycling, regeneration and redistribution.
Lam believes passionately in going straight to the source of the waste. The company has set a target radius of 800km within which waste should be collected, eco-designed, produced, and packaged so as to avoid trying to protect the environment by recycling while incurring a substantial carbon footprint. In the OOObject range, eggshell products such as brushes, yoyos, and fresh egg holders are made from eggshell waste from China’s largest custard factory in Beijing. Other food waste such as coffee grounds, apple pomace, orange peel, and watermelon rind is collected in Dongguan, where the company has a production centre that gives various kinds of waste a new lease of life. China is often described as the world’s factory, and there is certainly a rich supply of by-products and waste materials for Lam’s company.
Over 50 kinds of food waste and 20 kinds of non-food waste are used at OOObject. Carpets from exhibition venues and fairgrounds are made into wardrobe/household organisation tools, ranging from wall-mounted shoe racks, hangers for ties, scarves, socks, and clothes, and hooks for hats, coats and bags. Grape pomace, collected from wineries in China, and beer lees become handles for dumb-bells. Apple pomace, coffee grounds, eggshells, and used tea leaves are transformed into toy cars and yoyos. There are also ceramic cups that biodegrade after only two years, shopping bags made from milk fibre, and anti-bacterial organic cotton which is ideal for anyone with a skin allergy. In 2021, OOObject collaborated with Converse, the lifestyle brand famous for its iconic sneakers, to come up with sustainable green solutions to upcycle their unsold goods – and a skateboard upcycled from sneakers was born!
As a leading advocate for waste reduction and upcycling in Hong Kong, Lam sees design, green or not, as a means to persuade and convince, and, ultimately, to spur people into action. He often says that design cannot exist without society, and his environmentally friendly design reflects contemporary social issues.
