Rubber Impact Project
Rubber Impact Project is an “opportunity template” for disrupting the bike inner tube waste stream.
This rhizome-like project takes a broad-based approach to sustainability by collectively harnessing various drivers—data, technologies, products, experiences, systems, and implications—to blend inspired design and human interaction. The result is a reproducible nodal network that leverages a community’s existing opportunities so as to facilitate needed systemic change. Inner tube rubber, often rendered useless by a puncture in one small area, is an industrial skin offering unique opportunities for reuse when no longer functional inside a tire. Our initial research suggests that San Francisco discards over 100,000 tubes each year. This current dead-end material flow demands redirection to unleash its potential for reuse. Our opportunity template is designed to reach a range of stakeholders with its toolkit of digital materials, physical products, and modeled human centered engagements. It offers great potential for activating platforms, movements, schools, and governments nationwide.