Actus & crush

PET Lamp Collection

When design meets recycling

PET Lamp Collection

Álvaro Catalán de Ocón lights up the world with recycled plastic

Faced with the invasion of single-use plastic, some designers do more than denounce the issue they transform it. This is the case of Spanish designer Álvaro Catalán de Ocón, the mind behind PET Lamp, an emblematic project of ethical and responsible design. Combining recycling, craftsmanship and social impact, this initiative launched in 2011 has since given birth to a collection of lamps that has become iconic in the world of sustainable design.

A project born in the Amazon, amid an ecological emergency

In 2011, during a trip to the Colombian Amazon, Álvaro Catalán de Ocón was confronted with a striking reality: rivers, once crystal clear, were now overrun with PET plastic bottles (polyethylene terephthalate). Uncollected and unrecycled, they piled up, threatening ecosystems and local communities.

Instead of designing a single object, the designer imagined an integrated solution where plastic became raw material, and traditional weaving became a universal language of revalorisation. This is how PET Lamp was born a collaborative design project with strong environmental and social ambitions.

PET Lamp Collection 2022: a global artwork

In 2022, Álvaro Catalán de Ocón created the PET Lamp Collection, a monumental installation composed of 22 lamps, each representing one of the collections born from different collaborations around the world:

Colombia (2013)
Chile (2014, 2017)
Ethiopia (2015)
Thailand (2019)
Ghana (2020)

Each pendant lamp is the result of collective work with local artisans, blending recycled PET bottles with ancestral basketry and weaving techniques. Together, they form a luminous symphony of cultures, colors and forms.

A circular and profoundly human design

PET Lamp is not simply a recycling project. It is a successful example of circular design, where waste becomes resource and the final product carries multiple values:

Environmental, by reducing plastic waste
Social, by generating income for marginalized artisan communities
Cultural, by highlighting vernacular know-how

The PET lamps are thus hybrid objects, between tradition and innovation, local and global, aesthetic and committed.

Between design and anthropology

The PET Lamp Collection carries not only artistic value, but also ethnographic significance. It captures the diversity of patterns, materials, gestures and stories unique to each culture. Each lamp is singular, yet connected to the others through the recycled material that unites them.

The work becomes a living repertoire, a luminous atlas of the planet, moving from Chilean plant fibers to Ghanaian basketry, and from Thai and Ethiopian weaving techniques to Amazonian know-how.

Institutional recognition for engaged design

In 2022, the PET Lamp Collection entered the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, thanks to the patronage of the Cercle Design 20/21. This represented a major institutional recognition for a project born from a simple yet powerful gesture: giving a second life to a polluting object by involving communities in its transformation.

With an impressive 4-meter diameter, this installation invites visitors to look up — not only toward the lamps, but toward the possibilities of conscious design.

Why PET Lamp inspires the design of tomorrow

Because it links ecological issues with local know-how
Because it proves that design can be functional, beautiful and engaged
Because it raises global awareness by showing how a polluting material can literally become a source of light