Specifying Recycled Materials: Colour Variation in Recycled HDPE

STUDIO JOURNAL

When is variation a defect?

ZERO Umbilical is Klaro Designs’s recycled HDPE cable-management umbilical, made in Sydney from locally collected plastic. It is produced in a defined range of stock colours so designers can specify it with confidence across commercial interior projects.

Recycled HDPE, however, can naturally introduce colour variation. The ZERO links pictured here perform exactly as intended — they simply fall outside our accepted colour range.

This highlights a wider challenge in specifying recycled materials for commercial interiors: the tighter the visual tolerance, the harder it can be to make full use of variable recycled feedstock.

For designers and manufacturers, the question is not simply whether variation exists, but where it is acceptable, how it is communicated, and whether it affects performance or design intent.

Perhaps the next step isn’t eliminating material variation, but learning how to specify it.