Adele Jordan
In 2024 I was one of 20 to win a Future Island-Island Design residency, enabling me to spend a week on the Island of Rathlin, the northern most point of Northern Ireland. The fellowship, run by Queens Universtity, Belfast was part of a larger long term project, proposing a regenerative solution for the island, with a view to be it being rolled out across the island of Ireland and beyond. The competition challenge was to address one of the six themes; landscape, building, infrastructure, products, representation and events. The group was made up of architects, designers, academics, marine biologists, chemists and artists whose vision was to collectively create an eco system amongst us, thus enabling the circular system, that is critically needed, to emerge.
My exclusive focus was upon the impact of th 40,000 visitors to the Island each year, an area of special conservation for endangered wildlife.
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I began with the premise that if each visitor brought a single-use plastic bottle and paper/plastic coffee cup to the island, returning with a replacement, how many would that amount to and what would its impact be? Research revealed that if all the paper/plastic cups consumed in America each year could form a paper chain, it could wrap the planet 55 times. How would that equate to Rathlin? I did the calculations.
