I recall an moment from my 1970’s childhood; I was standing in our driveway with Mum, as we put some broken toys in the bin. I recall asking where they went to. Mum looked slightly ashamed and disappointedly replied; “Into the ground.” Landfill wasn’t a term back then but that was what she meant. “Can’t they make it into something else?” Even as a small boy I recall my frustration with the linearity of the reality. From that point on I managed to do what the majority of humans manage to do; deny the problem, ignore it and focus on the selfish enjoyment to be had from short lived products. And so it was until 2019 when my mindset had a wake up call.
The catalyst for the mind shift came from an unlikely source; Netflix. “The Art of design” is a series of programs about famous designers, their motivations, techniques and lives, and I had been enjoying the episodes thoroughly. Neri Oxman opened her hour long program with a statement that cut me to the quick: “with carbon fibre and plastic we have created a problem”. This simple fact didn’t need explaining to me and I agreed with it completely, subconsciously. Over the next two weeks I wrestled with the consequences and considered packing in the composites business.
Between the seventies and 2019 I had grown my engineering career to a position of designer, engineer, chief engineer and vehicle architect. I had managed to create several cars, built in the hundreds and low thousands, that exploited composites to maximum performance advantage. After a short use phase, much of these cars would, and have, ended up in landfill. Here is one of mine in the British Motor Museum.
Only in 2023 have I realised that I have successfully been living the past 30 years in denial and that only now has the frustration of that small boy resurfaced, and my original and true voice is talking. Time to listen to it.
Suilven Automotive 