SIL’S Remake Room: Carving wonder out of waste
On February 22nd and 23rd, the Social Impact Lab (SIL) organised a two-day sustainability and creative innovation workshop named “The Remake Room” at the university’s exhibition hall. This on-campus initiative, born of “Project Loop”, the winner of the Zero Waste Campus Competition 2025, intended to transform how students perceive waste, creativity, and environmental responsibility.
“The Remake Room” aimed to convey that waste is not the end of a product’s life; rather, the beginning of something new. Participants explored upcycling as a practical and creative way to transform waste into artistic and functional products. Unlike traditional recycling, which requires complex processing and a heavy framework, upcycling promotes its immediate reuse. Participants worked with discarded paper, old packaging, recyclable items like plastic bottles, and other campus waste to create expressive calligraphy art, intricate origami pieces, and decorative and functional household items.
Under the guidance of mentors Nazm Anwar (Design Architect, Temnza), Mehedi Hasan Roby (Visualizer, WebAble), and Ruana Marzia Diba (Artist, Paint the Lily) for calligraphy, origami, and decorative items, respectively, the workshop was a grand success, with over a hundred students participating and creating over forty creative upcycled products. Project Loop received institutional, strategic, and logistical support from BracU, along with 15 thousand taka from SIL, to help with the smooth execution of the workshop. Mushfiqur Rahman (Coordinator, SIL) said, “Although the event was successful, alignment with university policies for organising such a large-scale initiative required the team to navigate design and implementation, but the effort was undoubtedly worthwhile.”
The Remake Room demonstrated that innovation and environmental responsibility can coexist, empowering the youth to rethink disposable waste. Significantly, the workshop was a reminder that meaningful changes begin with small, intentional actions, and remaking waste is a step forward to a greener future by remaking the mindset.
