The Spanish designer Alvaro Catalán de Ocón’s repurposed plastic furnishings weren’t just born from a sense of duty. While fully aware of plastic’s alaming impacts—including environmental damage, lifelong effects on human health, and levels of pollution that the president of the U.N. Environment Assembly recently deemed an epidemic—he also appreciates the material for what it is: a lightweight, flexible, yet strong substance that can be sculpted into countless forms. Plastic bottles in particular, which can transport liquid indefinitely without the risk of shattering or leaking, are modern marvels—and yet most of us use and dispose of them without a second thought. “Plastic is, I believe, the most important material of the twentieth century,” says Catalán de Ocón, who manufactures and distributes self-initiated projects via his Madrid-based studio, ACdO. “The problem is that the price and the value of the material does not match at the moment.”