The Novel Bed Project by Cheil WW India

Eco Eclectic Technologies (EETech) has turned Covid-19 pandemic waste material from face masks and personal protection types of equipment into hospital beds in India.

Having faced a chronic shortage of hospital beds for many years, the situation in India was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, when thousands of people passed away when they could not receive treatment due to the lack of available beds.

At the same time, 100 million masks every month are being thrown into landfills, while many millions more are being thrown on streets, in landfills, and the oceans.

The campaign, called “'The Novel Bed Project” and created by Cheil Worldwide, aims to change this by educating people about the amount of pandemic waste generated by discarded face masks, how to dispose of it in a way that benefits communities and how it can be used to overcome hospital bed shortages.

It does this by showing a hospital bed being created from scratch, using discarded PPE kits, more than a thousand used masks, coffee waste, eco-friendly laminated paper, and scrap materials.

“I saw the amount of waste being generated by single-use masks and I started experimenting. I don’t see waste as a waste, I see it as a resource,” said Dr. Binish Desai, the founder of Eco Eclectic Technologies.

“As humans, we have created it, so it is our responsibility to get rid of it and so I started this particular project. Coming up with innovation from pandemic-related waste is very important.”

The first bed made has since been endorsed by doctors and donated to a hospital in Delhi.