Yang Liu

Grain-Again is an innovative manufacturing method for plywood off-cuts, aiming to use the waste to promote existing plywood furniture.

Within the world's existing recycling infrastructure, incineration is the most common method for recycling plywood waste. Compared to natural wood, plywood is made from bonding wood veneers with various adhesives, which will release formaldehyde during the burning process.

Back to the plywood furniture industry – recycling off-cuts is extremely hard for CNC workshops, as the size and shape are quite limited; and recycling them is labour and time intensive. In contrast, to sell more products, plywood furniture is laminated in colourful plastic sheets. This only increases waste from the industry, which is a problem that is barely being handled.

In this project, instead of cutting shapes out of the surface, strips are used to maximise the usage of waste. Different shapes were cut from the narrow plywood edges to appreciate the artificial grain produced during the veneer manufacturing process.