Recycle
Awareness Project.

The Recycle Awareness Project began in 2019 at Asilo Infantile “Domenico Boldrini” in Musadino, thanks to the collaboration and enthusiasm of its director, Michela Bina.

For years, children had collected plastic bottle caps without knowing what happened to them. We wanted to close that circle, making recycling something tangible rather than an abstract environmental responsibility.

When the kindergarten needed new washbasins, an opportunity emerged: could the plastic collected by the children return to their school as something useful?

Working together through drawings, experimentation, and technical development, Ecopixel transformed the collected plastic into colourful washbasins for the kindergarten bathrooms.

For the first time, the children could experience the complete journey of the material, from discarded plastic to an object they could use every day.

The waste they collected had become part of their everyday environment.

Following the first experience, the collaboration expanded to include new objects and educational spaces.

Working with Asilo Infantile “Domenico Boldrini” and the primary school in Castelveccana, Ecopixel developed a series of modular cubes designed as storage units and cabinets for the classrooms.

Once again, recycled plastic became part of the children's daily environment, demonstrating that discarded materials could return as durable, functional objects.

The project was no longer simply about collecting plastic waste. It was about recognising its potential, imagining new applications, and participating in a circular process.

Recycling became something children could see, touch, and use.

In 2021, the project moved beyond practical school furnishings to explore the expressive possibilities of recycled materials.

Ecopixel developed spherical lamps, transforming recovered plastic into illuminated objects.

Light revealed a different dimension of the material: its colours, textures, and irregularities became part of the visual experience.

This new chapter demonstrated that recycled plastic could be more than a responsible alternative to conventional materials. It could become a creative medium with its own aesthetic identity.

From functional objects to expressive design, the possibilities continued to grow.

In 2022, the Recycle Awareness Project was presented within RoGUILTLESSPLASTIC, the international initiative founded by Rossana Orlandi and Nicoletta Orlandi Brugnoni.

The presentation brought Ecopixel's educational experience into a broader conversation about responsible design, recycling, and the cultural value of material transformation.

What began with children collecting plastic waste had become a project connecting education, industrial production, and environmental awareness.

The initiative demonstrated that circularity becomes more meaningful when people can experience the transformation themselves.

Awareness grows when an idea becomes something real.

Over the years, our collaborations with children evolved beyond environmental awareness, opening a new field of creative exploration.

We became increasingly interested in a different question:

What happens when design begins before the rules of design are learned?

Ecopixel is not exploring childhood as an aesthetic. We are exploring the creative freedom that exists before established conventions begin to influence how objects should look, function, or be imagined.

Children approach form, proportion, balance, and colour with an instinctive confidence. Their ideas are not necessarily concerned with what is technically possible or aesthetically acceptable.

Rather than correcting that intuition, we began asking how industrial production could preserve it.

This approach led to “What if the designers were children?”, developed in collaboration with The British School of Milan and Asilo Infantile “Domenico Boldrini”.

Original drawings by children aged four to seven became the starting point for a collection of functional objects. Through technical development, custom moulds, and rotational moulding, Ecopixel transformed these drawings into products made from recycled plastic, preserving their unexpected proportions, original forms, and intuitive logic.

The project was presented during Milan Design Week 2026 at Galleria Rossana Orlandi, with the support of Nicoletta Orlandi Brugnoni, bringing this new chapter of our research back to the gallery that has supported Ecopixel's creative journey since its early years.

Rather than teaching children how designers think, we explore what design can learn from the way children imagine.