Reimagining Plastics:Civic Design Sprints, Material Futures, and the Circular Economy at V&A Dundee

Plastics have long shaped the material and social fabric of everyday life. From food packaging to electronics, fashion, and architecture, the material’s ubiquity, durability, and malleability rendered it indispensable to modern consumption and design. Yet this material success came at a high environmental and social cost. As global plastic production exceeded 400 million tonnes annually, the issues of unsustainable extraction, waste mismanagement, and pollution, particularly in marine ecosystems, reached critical proportions. Plastics, once imagined as symbols of modernity and innovation, became entangled with global crises of environmental justice, climate change, and ecological collapse. This paper reports on a civic design sprint embedded within the Plastic: Remaking Our World exhibition at V&A Dundee in Scotland in 2024. The sprint aimed to explore design led futures thinking for addressing plastic use and waste by programming public facing engagement. The paper begins by examining the plastic pollution crises at both local and systemic levels, paying particular attention to circular economy principles, speculative design and material futures. It then goes on to describe the structure and process of the design sprint, positioning it as a framework for knowledge exchange and the cross-pollination of innovative ideas to environmental challenges. Insights from the sprint were gathered from participants through surveys, observation, and informal feedback, offering a multi-layered view of outputs and outcomes. The paper concludes by reflecting on the success of the design sprint as a driver to advance design-led approaches to public policy.