Arthur Huang Architect and engineer

Using materials made from trash, like the reprocessed plastic bottles pictured here, Arthur Huang creates lighter, stronger, and more sustainable designs, from electronics to buildings. 

Arthur Huang Architect and engineer

Arthur Huang’s dreams are made of garbage. His latest? “A piece of trash that’s going to fly,” he says.

Huang’s dreams tend to become reality. This one is parked in his company’s top-floor office in Taiwan, and it’s called the EcoFighter—a two-seated aircraft with wings made of the material from recycled plastic bottles.

As a young architecture student, Huang grew disillusioned that despite all the talk of “going green,” it seemed no one was producing 100 percent sustainable materials. He decided to invent them himself. It wasn’t easy. He had to build his own manufacturing machinery, because the recycled materials broke existing equipment. But now his firm, Miniwiz, which he founded in 2005, transforms discarded plastic, clothing, and rice fiber into useful and beautiful things. Huang has opened “trash concept” stores for Nike, built a nine-story pavilion in Taipei, and collaborated with Italian furniture designers to re-create their classic pieces using boards made from cigarette butts. “We’re trying to sell the trash back to the people who produce it,” he explains.

Few have followed suit. “Our biggest problem right now is a lack of competitors,” Huang says. But his next dream may change that: Miniwiz will put its designs online so that entrepreneurs can build and sell their own unique products. “If trash can fly,” he says, “why can’t you make it into a shelf or clothes?