Research

Fries companies produce a lot of potato peels waste. The idea of this project is to use this waste material in order to create a street food packaging. The potato peel is made up of starches and fibers components, which after maceration and natural drying, acquire the ability to bond with each other and harden. The obtained material is completely made of production waste and is 100% biodegradable. After being used, the packaging can be usefully re-inserted in the biological cycle becoming animal food or fertilizer for plants.

Traditional street packaging has a very short time of use, immediately becoming a hardly recyclable waste. Peel Saver is a sustainable remedy whose aim is to replace plasticized paper packaging.

Click on the source button to go to an article about PeelSaver:

The idea of this project is smiliar to mine. To create packaging from food waste. In this project they only focus on potatoes and I want to expand this more with other food types. In my previous project for circular design I used vegetables that had more color. I liked the look of this much more than the grey/brown bag for fries.

London-based designer Robin Grasby uses offcuts from luxury marble workshops to create a terrazzo material he calls "beautifully chaotic". Called Altrock, the material can be used for worktops, wall coverings, tables or tiles. It is produced using 87 per cent recycled materials, including marble flour, which is the powder that results from cutting through marble, along with marble chips, chunks of offcuts and broken slabs. The remaining 13 per cent is made up of resin, used to bind the marble together into a durable material. The surface is sealed with wax oil to resist staining.

"I wanted to develop an application for marble that can showcase the beauty of the material and utilise its properties as a hardwearing surface, but in a unique and contemporary way," explained Grasby.

"I've always had a thing for natural stone. Materials used in their rawest forms always appeal to me; they have an honesty and simplicity that is reflected in my entire approach to design," he continued.

The idea to reuse rest material is great but when you need to add something like resin, the new material is not biodegradable anymore and that is unfortunate.

Most companies use fancy phrases such as corporate social responsibility and talk a big game about their sustainable value chains. But dig deeper and it’s hard to understand exactly what phrases like these really mean. We make it simple for you: Regardless of what it costs, we will always pick production materials that have the least environmental impact. We only work with suppliers that we know inside out, to ensure we share the same values and get an intimate understanding of their production techniques. We never ever use harmful industrial chemicals in our production, such as acidic bleach or Bisphenol A plastics. We meticulously identify the potential environmental impact of all our operations and make sure to always compensate for emissions resulting from shipping & travel.

This company makes product out of waste, like phonecases;

0% plastic. 100% design.  Our fashionable phone case is made in Sweden from linseed plant waste grown by a local farmer not far away from our headquarters. It is 100% back yard compostable - truly eco-friendly without compromising on design. Cases can be swapped and recycled at any time via our circularity program. We also plant one tree per case sold.

This product is not using the waste of food but it is still produced by rest material. I really like that they make different type of products. The phone case is one you see more often but they also make tooth brushes and stationary items.

The new right is round. High time for circular products in the spotlight. Here you will find a surprising collection of products for consumers and businesses. The products contribute to a circular society: they are made from residual material or encourage a sustainable lifestyle. Don't shop right, shop around!

Linear production and consumption is outdated. The world turned round, not flat. Waste does not exist. We are ready. Ready for an economic system that maximizes the reusability of products and raw materials and minimizes value destruction. Join. Together on the way to a circular economy!

LoopedGoods is a company that sells product made out of waste like parts from a train.

LoopedGoods sells many different items from different sellers. In this case the production is not the same in every item. But circular design is the focus in all of them.

To counter the amount of waste porcelain, Dutch designer Lotte Douwes developed a circular tableware collection in which she reuses ground up porcelain.

One of the characteristics of porcelain is its white translucently. This effect is reached by using kaolin, a pure white clay that is mined in the mountains around Jingdezhen in China. This area has been famous for its fine porcelain for over 2000 years. To mine kaolin, you have to dig deep, through brown layers mixed with iron and layers of grey kaolin. However, in recent decades, the kaolin has become less pure and greyer. Nearly half of porcelain produced is unsellable because its imperfect.

The aim of Douwes’s ongoing research is to develop sustainable and innovative materials. “I want to create an alternative to pure (white) kaolin and use this as a starting point for new designs,” she comments. “Through my designs I want to tell the story about making ceramics and the origin of materials.”

This project emphasizes a problem and a solution all in one. The concept is more based on the material than the end product.

In the project I did in the elective I made natural glue using glycerin, cornstarch and vineger. But maybe there are even better natural glues. I will test the different glues and hope to get the ultimate natural glue.

Click on the links to go to the websites:

Natural glue recipes

Or click on the video to watch how to make natural glue

Fruitleather is a company that makes leahter out of fruit.

"What if we did not see fruit waste as a residue but as a valuable starting material? Over the years we have been experimenting on how to convert left-over fruit into leather-like material. By doing so, we are able to bring a eco-friendly and animal-friendly product to the market. Our aim is that Fruitleather can be made into footwear and fashion accessories and can be used in the interior and furnishing industry. The two worlds of fruit and leather are combined where the waste of the fruit industry is used to radically change the world of the polluting leather industry."

Koen Meerkerk (26) and Hugo de Boon (26) are a Rotterdam based designer duo, graduated from our school Willem de Kooning academy.

This project is really special because it is from graduate student from our school. I really like that they made a final product that can really be used for a longer period of time. I don't want to focus on leather but more on materials for plates or packaging. But this technique is really useful.

Below you can find some videos on how to make the leather at home. These sheets are still edible, and I want to create a version where it is used as material and not food. But maybe it is nice to try one of these and adjust the method to develop a new technique.

The Protein project is an investigation into the use of cow’s milk proteins as a natural material for the handcrafted production of sculptures, objects, and furniture. Milk has been a fundamental part of cultures and civilisations throughout the ages; it was of such high value that the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for the word milk resembles the verb ”to make”. Originating from an interest in pre-industrial plastics – particularly the processes used to create materials prior to the mass-manufacture of synthetics - the project draws inspiration from the past to influence the future of making. The material utilises milk sourced from the waste generated by organic farms in England, and is sponsored by Hook & Son Farm. The project does not support industrial farming, but instead seeks to re-envision surplus milk as a resourceful and valuable raw material.

This project is still ongoing and really fits my idea. To create plates or cups out of natural material. They only use milk and the end project looks like ceramic tableware. I want to create disposable tablewere that now is made from new materials or not natural ones.

AGF Class 3 - Renee Boute

"Inform people in a tasty way about the large amount of fruit and vegetables that are rejected every season.”
With this description, Renée Boute graduated from the High School of the Arts in Utrecht.

Because many growers actually see that a significant part of their harvest is never consumed, they have been the ones who have made large amounts of rejected fruit and vegetables available for this project. These obtained products were subsequently processed into wafer-thin dried sheets. Together with Souschef Willem Versteeg, the battle was then drawn up to draw up recipes from this starting point and to discuss this subject in a tasty way. The main ingredient of these dishes is the dried sheet of AGF Class 3 for each dish. They form the special ingredient of the dishes and therefore act as icing on the cake. The role of these foods is turned 180 degrees in this way: from compost to sustainable food / raw food / citizen food / farmer's food. the individual elements bound into an edible book.

The rejected fruit and vegetables are ground into pulp, after which it is scooped to paper using a fine mesh window. During this scooping, a thin sheet of wet vegetable or fruit paper remains on the window. This is then pressed and dried, until it has the correct thickness and structure of paper. The dried sheets are placed in the book in such a way that they are removable and can work in the dish.

The technique that is used in this project is something that can help my concept. I was focussing on making a new material with glue, but making paper doesn't need anything added.

Retaining knowledge and skills of artisanal papermaking and applying this skill intelligently for a circular economy. Papiermakerij de Hoop came up with the idea to create a space to have 100% focus on the new residual flows of the city. In the Middle Ages, life was circular. The industrial revolution has taken papermaking out of circularity. It is sustainable to a large extent, circular as well, but there are new problems that we need to pay attention to.

We focus our attention on this in PapierLab Rotterdam. The residual flows come from every nook and cranny of the city: residual waste, paper waste, green waste, but also from the port, where sometimes loads of vegetables, fruit or other natural fibers are dumped, because they are no longer edible, but can be further processed by other industries. Founder Marieke de Hoop aims to share her knowledge of the processing of vegetable fibers into paper and cardboard.

In rotterdam this papermaking studio makes paper out of (almost) every fiber based material. When I saw this I realized really everything is possible with making paper out of rest material from food.

The real research question is; can waste be transformed into packaging? This question is based on researching a big company like Unilever (a multinational food, personal care and cleaning supplies company). 'Plastic is a valuable material that has a vital place in the economy and in our business. It is crucial for the safe and efficient distribution of our products – and it has a lower carbon footprint than many alternative materials. But it has no place in our oceans, rivers, streets and countryside.’ – Unilever. As the statement says they use plastic for a lot of their products but agree it’s not the best material for the environment. An alternative material with the same qualities and possibilities to use as packaging is something they are looking for. Besides the plastic use they also talk about too much food waste.

It's really nice to see that companies like Unilever are looking for new ways for packaging their food.

Plastic use in restaurants (take-away)

A local restaurant in the city where I live (Tilburg) normally serves 7-course high end meals. But due to the corona virus they can't offer their services in the restaurant. To still make some money and let costumers enjoy their dishes, they are doing take-away meals. The meals are prepared in the restaurant kitchen, the customer needs to finish the dish at home. They get an instruction video on how to warm everything and put it on the plate. To still offer the same quality people are used they pack every ingredient in a different plastic box. In the pictures you can see how many boxes this is in just one day.