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/03ACT 2Material Upcycling · Circular Economy2023

Selayar Buoy

Bottle caps reborn as buoys for seaweed farmers.

The question

Can one economy's waste become another's infrastructure?

The problem / context

Seaweed farmers in Selayar need cheap, reliable floats to hold their growing lines at the surface. Commercial buoys cost money they would rather not spend, while plastic bottle caps pile up as near-worthless waste nearby. Two problems sitting next to each other, unconnected.

The outcome / reflection

A method to turn discarded plastic bottle caps into low-cost floating buoys for seaweed lines - waste from one stream becoming working infrastructure in another. The value isn't only the float; it's proving the loop can close locally, with the people who farm the water.

// OVERVIEW

Selayar Buoy is circular-economy thinking made literal and material. Working with seaweed farmers, the project reclaims one of the most common pieces of plastic litter and gives it a second life as a tool those same communities depend on.

// MAIN IDEA

Close the loop where the loop already exists

Recycling usually means shipping waste somewhere far away to be reprocessed. Selayar Buoy keeps the loop local: the caps, the need, and the making all live in the same place. The buoy is designed around what bottle caps can actually do, rather than forcing the material to imitate a conventional product.

// DESIGN PROCESS

  1. Understand the farmers' need

    Spend time with seaweed farmers to learn how lines are floated, what fails, and what a buoy really has to do.

  2. Characterise the material

    Test what reclaimed bottle caps can withstand - buoyancy, saltwater, sun - and design to those limits.

  3. Prototype with the community

    Iterate the buoy with the people who will use it, not in a studio far from the water.

// TECHNICAL DETAILS

  1. Material reclamation

    Collecting and processing bottle caps into a usable, consistent feedstock.

  2. Buoyancy design

    Shaping and sealing the upcycled material so it floats reliably and holds a line under load.

  3. Durability for marine use

    Designing against UV and saltwater so the buoy survives where it has to live.

// MAKING

Manufacturing

Low-tech by intention: the making process is meant to be reproducible by the community itself, so the buoy is not a thing delivered to them but a thing they can keep making.

// BACKGROUND

Selayar Buoy comes directly out of the industrial-design training - material, use, and context negotiated together - aimed at a real circular-economy problem rather than a brief.

// WHAT DID I LEARN?

  • The best upcycling designs around the material's real properties instead of disguising them.

  • A solution made with a community outlasts one delivered to it.

  • Closing a loop locally is often more valuable than closing it efficiently somewhere else.

// CREDITS

  • Laurensius Rivian Pratama - design & research
  • Selayar seaweed farmers - collaboration & testing

// WHAT’S NEXT

Document the making process well enough that other coastal communities can adapt it to their own waste streams.

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