Baking in Plastic — We Bake Plastic for You

Baking In Plastic — We Bake Plastic For You

Park Hyungho, the plastic baker, still bakes bottle caps of unknown origin today — grinding them down, melting them in an oven, and shaping them into canelés, waffles, and tarts.

Words Parc Jinmyoung
Interviewee Park Hyungho (baker at Plastic Bakery Seoul)

Like an annual ritual, I buy a calendar for the coming year every December. Last year-end, a cute rabbit-shaped calendar caught my eye. It was a product sold through crowdfunding by Plastic Bakery Seoul. Reading that they’d made a black rabbit by melting down black, white, and gray bottle caps, I found myself completing the purchase as if under a spell. Watching a bakery concept that presses plastic into shapes like waffles or canelés, questions kept nagging at me — where did this idea come from, and are there any limits to the materials used? Eventually, I met baker Park Hyungho in person and found myself drawn into the world of plastic baking he introduced to me…

Note: Baker Park Hyungho refers to Plastic Bakery Seoul by its shortened name, ‘Peulbe.’

The idea of baking plastic is fascinating. Where did the inspiration come from?
It came together naturally as I adapted to the circumstances I was in. Originally, the injection molding machines used to melt plastic are quite expensive. At the time, a friend I was working with had an oven. We used it to melt plastic and tried shaping it with baking molds. Since baking molds are made of metal and coated, they turned out to be perfect tools for shaping melted plastic. As an aside, part of the reason I approached it from a baking angle was because I wanted to keep working with that friend long-term. He loved cooking, so I threw out some bait to spark his interest. (laughs) The concept came together naturally, but I was confident about it — I felt this was the perfect timing to start working with plastic.

Are you still working with that friend?
No. He got a job. And here I was, putting so much effort into keeping him around. (laughs)

I’m curious why you added ‘Seoul’ after the name.
While preparing Peulbe, I thought the context was similar to fashion. Just like being a ‘well-dressed person’ requires a proper balance between how you’re perceived by others and what you personally like, we needed to blend the outside perspective with the story the maker wants to tell. So I borrowed from names like Burberry London or A.P.C. Paris. (laughs) I also wanted to express a sense of locality.

Were you interested in upcycling before this?
It wasn’t so much environmental concern as a lingering attachment to things being thrown away. I also just loved making things by hand. Around 2013, I took part in a workshop where we cut up toilet paper rolls to make speakers. That’s when I really started getting into upcycling design. But back then, the upcycling market was so small that I didn’t have any concrete plans — I just felt like I should watch for an opportunity, whenever it came. After that, I worked at a design company, went to graduate school, and eventually ended up here.

These days, ‘upcycling art’ has become its own genre.
Right. This is definitely the timing I was waiting for. (laughs) Right after we created Peulbe, the first thing I did was post it on a crowdfunding platform. I had just one goal — even if the idea itself might be hard to patent, I wanted to stake a claim on the concept of ‘baking.’ The funding ultimately failed, but I think the attempt alone was worth it.

What do you consider first when designing a product?
Honestly, lately I’ve been focusing more on optimizing production than on design itself. There are a lot of constraints in color and detail when trying to express bread through plastic, and I think I was stuck for a long time within the brand framework of being a ‘bakery,’ unable to let go easily. When I thought about what the endpoint of the brand should be, I arrived at this answer: the design just needs to capture Peulbe’s own feel, and instead I should focus on systematizing production.

From the outside, I thought Peulbe’s identity was closer to that of a ‘design studio.’
In a way, production is also part of design. I used to like designs that were difficult for others to grasp, but now I want things to be easy to convey. I’m trying to make things a bit more straightforward.

The patterns created by mixing the colors of plastic bottle caps also feel like part of Peulbe’s unique sensibility. I heard that bottle caps can’t be recycled unless they’re separated by color.
Generally, larger companies treat any product with mixed colors as defective. But for small studios that recycle materials, that can actually work as an advantage. Since people understand what we do in a positive light, we’re free to experiment with materials without restriction. On the other hand, once it connects to industry, the story changes — even a slight increase in project scale makes it much harder to guarantee consistent specifications and quality.

You must run into certain limitations while working with bottle caps.
Strictly speaking, there are loopholes even in ‘bottle cap recycling.’ If bottle caps are collected and recycled separately, the recycling rate for PET bottles themselves actually goes down (in principle, PET bottles should be disposed of with the caps still attached). Also, the waste generated at production factories is a more urgent issue than household recycling. Honestly, Peulbe’s lifespan was limited from the start. The barrier to entry is low, so anyone else could try the same thing. Even when we were starting out, there was already someone who had tried pressing plastic with a waffle machine before us. I think it’s time to move on from bottle caps to other materials. Lately I’ve been thinking about organic materials. While researching organic materials, I’m also considering how we might systematize the production techniques Peulbe has built up so far and present them through a variety of content.

Last year must have been busy with collaborations with brands like L’Occitane, Monami, and various local governments.
We were truly fortunate to have many projects, big and small. My Instagram followers had been slowly growing after participating in the Seoul Design Festival, but after doing an event hosted by L’Occitane, the response was really great. Thanks to word of mouth, opportunities arose not only for outdoor events but also for brand limited editions and exhibitions, helping spread Peulbe’s value far and wide.

Was there a particular project from last year that stands out to you?
We took part in Seoul Design Festival 2022 with paper pulp and pine resin as our keywords. The theme was ‘you can make even your own trash this beautiful,’ and the key point was to optimize everything using 100 percent biodegradable, fully natural materials. We mixed tea leaves and tangerine peels with pine resin to create tiles, and mixed starch powder into paper pulp to make books, which we then used as structural elements to build furniture. Going forward, I want to grow into a company that can showcase the versatility of organic materials in fresh and diverse ways.

What are your plans for this year?
First, in January, we’re moving to a bigger, more spacious studio. We’re planning to turn our current studio at Daerim Sangga in Euljiro into a workshop space starting in February. This year, I really hope to find someone to work alongside me, and I’d modestly love for the company to grow to about 1.2 times its current size.