An assessment by Chris Lefteri, internationally recognised expert in the field of material design and organiser of the guided tours at K 2025.
There’s a paradox at the heart of designing the aesthetics of products with sustainable materials. If you replace a less sustainable material with a more sustainable material but do the job so well that the newer, more responsible version is visually indistinguishable from the original, less responsible version, the question becomes: where does the sustainability story go and how do you communicate your wonderful achievement?
If the bio-based, recycled, low-carbon or whatever flavour of environmentally responsible material you’ve used looks like the original plastic, it’s difficult to communicate the sustainability of it, because the end result looks exactly the same. Visually, there’s no difference. The paradox at the core of what we as designers do is: in our quest to be sustainable, the sustainability story itself often vanishes. Or does it? It’s an important question to ask because so much importance is placed of the environmental angle and making it a feature of the product story - by product I mean anything from car interiors, appliances, sports goods, consumer electronics, etc.
A lot of our work as designers is about replicating our existing knowledge of common plastics and processes but now having to think about it in a responsible, sustainable way. Instead of electroplating plastics to create shiny premium finishes, for example, we might use some sort of recycling-compatible process instead, where the end result is very similar, if not identical, to the original way of doing things. But do we simply want to replicate what we have always done (metallised plastics, shiny surfaces) in a more sustainable way? Or do we actually want to do things differently, capturing the imaginations of consumers and getting them excited about a new way of doing things? From a strictly environmental point of view, progressive aesthetics are less of a concern so long as everything is achieved in a more responsible way. But are we missing a big opportunity to do something actually very different? Shouldn’t we challenge expectations of what is good and desirable CMF (colour, materials & finishes)?
We’ve long accepted that materials like wood and metal carry their own natural imperfections - knots in timber, patinas on brass or copper - and we even celebrate them as marks of authenticity, age, and beauty. So why don’t we do the same with injection-moulded plastics?
Some pioneering brands are starting to rewrite the aesthetic of plastic. The Microsoft Xbox Remix Special Edition Controller is a perfect example. Made from post-consumer recycled plastics, its surface shows subtle swirls, flow lines, and colour variations - visible traces of the recycled content. Instead of covering these “defects,” Microsoft chose to manifest them, making each controller visibly unique.
The Steelcase Perch stool takes this idea further. Produced from hard-to-recycle e-waste plastics, its finish is full of colour inconsistencies and ghosting lines caused by the irregular melting behaviour of recycled material. Rather than trying to improve the quality of the recycled plastic, Steelcase embraced the imperfect surface - and went even further by donating the most “messy-looking” stools, produced during colour transitions, to social innovation partners. They framed these unpredictable aesthetics as a reflection of real-world complexity and change.
These examples point to a new opportunity: to shift how we define beauty in plastic and embrace an aesthetic language where the marks of manufacturing processes and raw materials aren’t hidden - but become a badge of value and honesty.
When it comes to more high-end products, where traditional notions of luxury play a crucial role - the challenge is even greater. There’s often a strong desire to maintain familiar, high-end aesthetics such as that of metallic surfaces, which can make it harder to introduce new, visibly sustainable materials.
In addition to looking for sustainable solutions to established materials and finishes like chrome, for example, should we be finding different sustainable processes to denote a new kind of luxury? Should sustainability actually be helping consumers shift their understanding of luxury, rather than just replicate their current one?
Some forward-thinking brands are already showing how this shift can happen. Panasonic, for example, developed Nagori - a plastic material made from minerals leftover from the water purification process. Its layered, precious stone-like aesthetic offers a unique, refined look that can easily compete with the most luxurious conventional materials used for accents and details.
Similarly, unidirectional polypropylene (PP) fibres, commonly used in structural composites, bring a new visual language to nonmaterial plastics. Their linear texture introduces a distinctive, high-end aesthetic that could be embraced as a modern marker of luxury - one rooted in material innovation and 100% recyclability.
