Camillo Feuchter

Reducing waste through reuse: A virtue ethics perspective

This research is focused on reducing waste through re-use, framed within a virtue ethics perspective. Positioned as a designer, maker, educator, and advocate, Camillo emphasises re-use across furniture, textiles, and community projects. The research proposal concentrates on textile waste, highlighting the fashion industry’s environmental impact: a doubling of clothing production between 2000 and 2015, a 36% reduction in garment lifespan, and significant contributions to greenhouse gases, water consumption, and microplastic pollution. Drawing on Aristotle’s virtue ethics, the project contrasts wastefulness and overconsumption (vices) with virtues such as re-use, generosity, humility, and awareness, suggesting that habits shape both ethical character and sustainable behaviour. Spatial contexts—domestic, community, and digital marketplaces—are examined for their influence on re-use practices. The methodology includes secondary research, interviews, wardrobe studies, experiments, and ethnography to co-design circular systems. Centred on Dundee’s textile history, charity shops, and local makers, the work aims to foster regenerative design practices that align ethics, space, and sustainability.

Supervisor team: Dr Stephanie Schreven and Dr Jennifer Ballie