Designing Plastic-Free Futures: Rethinking Plastic by Design
Técnico co-organises the Sustainable Interaction Design Summer School at the Politecnico di Milano, in Italy
What does it take to imagine a world beyond plastic? This June, a team from Instituto Superior Técnico set out to answer exactly that — not from a lecture hall in Lisbon, but from the shores of Lake Como. As Part of the ITI-led Erasmus + project Sustainable Interaction Design, Prof. Valentina Nisi, Prof. Nuno Nunes, and Dr. Shuhao Ma from the Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI), co-organized the event, which took place at the Lecco POle of POLIMI, from June 8 to 12.
Técnico was represented by four students: Vadym Volkovinskyy, Margarida Silva, Henrique Nogueira, and Islomkhuja Murtazoev who joined four international teams, working with students from Aarhus University, the University of Lapland, Eindhoven University of Technology, and Politecnico di Milano. The teams brought together participants from different academic, cultural, and disciplinary backgrounds. Under the theme “Plastic Free,” the teams explored the environmental and social challenges of plastic consumption and waste. Through research, ideation, and prototyping, they developed sustainable, innovative design proposals from multiple perspectives.
As part of the program, Prof. Nuno Nunes, Prof. Valentina Nisi, and Dr. Shuhao Ma delivered a lecture on Social Justice and Ethics in Interaction Design. They invited students to consider how sustainable interaction design can address not only environmental impact but also justice, inclusion, responsibility, and power, reflecting ITI’s commitment to more sustainable and equitable futures.
For Técnico, the week was a chance to deepen ties with European partners and to put students face-to-face with a real-world challenge in a setting as international as it is interdisciplinary.
More information is available on the Sustainable Interaction Design website (https://www.sustainableixd.com/).
