Paris is always full of surprises and, when on our way to Dehillerin, we discovered that the Metro system is no exception when we stumbled upon l’Allée du Recyclage/Recycle Alley in the Palais Royal station near the Louvre. At the meeting of lines 1 and 7, the station is the most frequented in Paris, home to several boutiques and steps away from the celebrated museum, so when Fabrice Peltier decided to do something about garbage, this was the place to go.
As founder of the Des!gnPack Gallery, a library and boutique dedicated solely to packaging design, M. Pelier felt compelled to find a creative way to encourage recycling of the approximately 360 kg of garbage Parisians produce every year.
Working together with the WWF, promo-métro, RATP, and Eco-Emballages, he created a permanent gallery of rotating exhibits, all by artists and artisans who might not otherwise have a venue in which to promote their work. This colorful display is made from those plastic shopping bags we forget to take with us to the store. These sartorial designs offer a much cuter interpretation, I’d say.
Materials include plastic, wood, glass, and metal. This delightful little chair displays a creative use of the last format.
In a stroke of corporate marketing brilliance, the Evian brand jumped at the opportunity to use the Allée to promote its new lighter packaging with the slogan “Allégeons, compactons, recyclons”/Lighten, compactons (no real translation available), recycle. Pretty clever.
Have some old packing boxes lying around? They could be transformed into a clever design like this chair. Maybe a side table to go with it?
In my college town, the popular bar had a Beer Cap Alley, an eighties notion of recycling. This design is so much more useful. Might need a pillow, though.
Labels adorn a table and shelf (made of recycled wood, no doubt), while at the same time, display the many languages/cultures in which some of our exported goods have been embraced. Ahem.
I look forward to my next visit to see what M. Peltier’s artists have dreamed up.
