A WASTE PROJECT
Objective
The Waste Project collection is made from by-products of poultry industry like eggshells and feathers. The aim is to create alternatives for plastic disposables and encourage sustainable living. All the objects are 100% biodegradable and once their purpose is over, they can literally be crushed and thrown away in the compost.
Description
EGGWARE
“Annually, an average of 6.4 billion hens lay 1.1 trillion eggs. Simultaneously, one-third of all food per year is lost or wasted, which includes eggs that have a short shelf-life and whose fragile shell is not the most suitable protection against processing and transport.” That’s the basic premise which led Midushi Kochhar through the experiments on Eggware products.
In terms of process, she collected unused eggs and waste eggshells from local cafes around London. The final material she got is only made from 3 components: eggshell, water an calcium alginate. She creates disposable tableware which is ergonomically enhanced to support the act of eating while standing in a street food scenario and the material has many other applications in interior panelling, furniture etc. Once the function is over, you can literally crush and throw these objects in the compost as they are designed to disappear.
PLUMEWARE
An eco-friendly surface material, made from up- cycled feathers from chickens which, prior to this, have had no use. After discovering their enormous binding strength, I combined them with Agar bioplastic and created a long lasting, flexible and wet- moldable material. To encourage sustainable living, this new material has been applied in lampshades. Its distinct, natural texture is enhanced as the light turns on.
EXPERIMENTATION AND PROCESS
Rigorous material exploration was conducted at Green Lab, Bermondsey (London). By maintaining scientific records and learning from each observation, finally, material solutions were invented that could potentially be an alternative.
The DIY recipes were developed through continuous iterative method. The final process is easy with a potential to scale. The procedure has been kept open-source to encourage knowledge sharing and can be found on: materiom.org/recipe/122
Targets
EGGWARE is mainly addressed to food industry or food service as restaurants, bars, catering and PLUMEWARE is addressed to art and design industry
Pros
- Flexible
- Light but quite resistant
- It could take almost any color
- Easy to shape
Cons
- May not so suitable to contain hot or liquid meal
