To help prevent the spread of coronavirus face coverings are mandatory in public spaces almost everywhere in the world. Most face masks available for sale are made from layers of plastics and are designed specifically to be single-use. Being medical waste these can't be recycled through conventional recycling facilities thus most of the time they end up being incinerated and leading to toxic fumes that contribute to climate change. In other cases they don’t get disposed of properly and they stay around polluting our streets.
Italy, one of the European countries hit hardest by COVID-19, faces a big problem due to this kind of pollution. The project "COUCH-19" wants to highlight this environmental issue in a creative way involving locals and asking them to pick up disposable masks from the streets or storing the ones they use daily.
Few cubic meters of light coloured masks were collected, thoroughly disinfected with ozone and safely stored before becoming an unusual stuffing for a recyclable crystal PVC modular pouf. The pouf has been shaped irregularly so that together with the "icy" colours of most of most of the disposable masks, it recalls the aesthetics of an iceberg: one of the most iconic symbols of global warming.
