I had the idea of developing new materials that has the potential to replace plastics that does not biodegrade. As I develop more recipes with bioplastics, I also started to think about what things are made with synthetic plastics that cause huge pollution. It did not take me very longtime to find out that there is one thing that have always come up in beach clean ups-flip flops. Flip flops are often found during beach clean ups. According to article The challenge of the Flip Flop, one of the largest pollutants in the ocean is polyurethane from flip flops. So I thought, what if I can make flip flops with bioplastic? What if people can actually make their own flip flop with the food waste material from their kitchen.

With this idea in mind, I started to research how flip flop are made in the factory and how to make your own flip flop.

(https://theoceanpreneur.com/plasticfreenomad/make-positive-ocean-impact-with-your-flip-flops-flip-the-flop/)

I developed a template for all the parts needed for the flip flop and laser cut a prototype of the mold with MDF.

by Cecilia Cecchini

I came across this awesome paper while I was doing research on bioplastic made from food waste. I was very pleased to find such a comprehensive article on this topic.

She discussed the past and current trend in developing bioplastic as an alternative to synthetic plastics and the challenges to create new material from food waste and not from specially grown crops, whose production in any case comes at an environmental cost. Because the first generation of bioplastics were made from corn. It is urgent to find alternatives to replace synthetic plastics, particular for items that do not require considerable mechanical performance.

There are enormous family of materials produced from living organisms such as silk from silkworms, lacquer from a tree, natural rubber-latex of a tree, pine resin, amber, horn, shellac secreted by an insect(kerria lacca) and abundant food waste produced by food processing such as fruit and vegetable skins, spent coffee grounds, egg shells, sea food shells, fish scale, alginates etc. From these materials, we can obtain the starches, cellulose, pectin, chitin, lactic acid, collagen, blood proteins and gelatin that form the basis of bioplastics. The potential combination of these materials are endless…

Many artist already made work in response to this trend and became part of the movement. Such as Julia lohmann, Raul Lauri, Alkesh Parmar, Jonas Edvard and Kosuke Araki.

Growing design is another trend with Neri Oxman’s silk pavilion and Maurizio Montalti’s MYX mushroom textile project as some of the examples of these explorations.

I want to be part of this paradigm shift in the filed of design and working towards more material innovation around food waste and bio-based design.

I was so intrigued by the Reduce, Reuse ,Rethink exhibition, a display presents a project by London-based design firm PriestmanGoode that aims to raise awareness of how much waste is generated through air travel.

They tracked all the waste produced the minute we arrived at the airport till the minute we leave the airport at our destination. I really like this approach of research because it is the best way to help identify any possible solution within that process. This got me to think about other waste streams within our daily life. Maybe I can create a project to investigate that.

I am thinking about examining the kind and amount of organic waste created in urban settings such coffee shops, tea house, flower shops, bakeries, juice stands, sea food restaurant, food market etc. I can observe the workflow in those places and document any organic waste produced in the workflow and consumption onsite and think about what waste can be used to create things they can use in the shop.

There are a lot of products made from food waste if by-products from food processing. It was really eye opening and inspiring.

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I wanted to do more material experimentation with bioplastic which has became my main interest since my last project. There are so much potential to this material, I wanted to explore the possibilities of creating a complete, localized, circular design within those individual small business where they source the waste materials produced onsite to manufacture products that can be used in the shop in small-scale onsite, therefore, create a localized, closed loop. Me as a designer, can create a booklet with recipes for materials and instructions on how to make the materials and products and molds needed for the production and provide workshops to help with the knowledge transfer. And work with local small business owner and employee to integrate the production process into their daily workflow.

I can customize the design based on the waste materials produced at each specific location and depends on the type of the business there are, I can create customized products tailored specifically for the business.

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When Julian gave his talk about subtraction cutting last time, I was so inspired by his process so I decided to sit in with the fashion students today for his workshop.

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We were paired with a partner to make a dress using the subtraction cutting technique. We started with measuring the hip width of the person who were going to wear the dress. I love how Julian did not use ruler to do the measurements and how interactive the entire process was. Not using a ruler making the whole process more personal and intimate. All measurements comes from the body of the person who are going to wear it.

After the measurements, you start making a duvet by sewing two pieces of fabric together and leaving the bottom open. Then we cut out the pattern for the front and back of the dress and drew a line to connect the pattern together. After cutting out the fabric from the top layer, a dress form emerged. I was so shocked by how simple it is to construct a garment and how quickly everything took shape.

The circle pattern from the hip measurement were strategically placed in pairs on the dress to create the circle to form the tunnel in the dress. Depending on where the holes are placed, the garment will present different structure. The stiffness of the fabric also plays an important role but I was not aware of that at the time when I purchased a really soft, silky, slippery fabrics instead of a stiff, cotton, textured one. Everyone created their dress with slight variations and they all turned out nicely. No two dresses are the same.

I keep thinking about how I could potentially use this technique to create something functional, such as a garment tent that can be transformed in to a tent but also wore as a jacket.

I like how Julian talks about his process and philosophy behind why he does what he does. He incorporated all his thinking in his process and delivered it in such a poetic and performative way. True inspiration!

We presented our project for artefact today. Since I am still developing the material, Kyung hwa gave me the advice to involve some community members to co create the recipe for the coffee biocomposite, turning this project into a community collaborative project. And potentially, encourage people to make their own compost bucket out of the common ingredients at home.

The idea sounds great in theory, I would love to involve people from the community to codesign the product. However, the idea of letting people DIY their food compost bin seems hard to realize. How many people are willing to spend a lot of time to make a disposable compost bin at home every week? My idea was to create a compost bin that are disposable so people don’t have to deal with the bring to bank scheme that most councils in London are using. People in London live a very fast paced life, I am not sure how many people will even have time for making something that will be consumed so frequently.

I do agree that since my target users are people from my community, it is important to involve community members to help tackle the issue of waste management together. But maybe I can think about other ways to get people involved.

After an overnight drying I checked my test results in the morning. Yet another disappointment as it curled up AGAIN! Also split and cracked this time!!

After another day, it got stiffer and even more warpped.

I did not have more time to experiment during this project, but I will continue to explore my future projects.

Since I loved the result of bioplaticoffee from my first test, I decided to continue to explore the possibilities of the material. I sourced more coffee grounds from the school canteen at white city for my experiments. And altered my recipes in seek of a more diverse results from these experiments.

As part of this test, I placed a piece of fabric made of hemp fiber on top of the cooling mix in order to provide more structural support while drying and shrinking. The hot and wet mix looks like brownie batter but it cooled down and solidified fairly quickly. Then I will let everything dry over night and keep track of the progress as they dry.

While I was doing my research about waste disposal behavior, I documented all the trash from the waste bins in school. After we had the Riso printer induction, I wanted to experiment with the Riso Printer to produce some prints from photos I took.

The process is very similar to screen print. I had three separate color layers to create the final print. The black and pink layer printed together but when I feed the blue layer, I put the image upside down by mistake. The accidental result is surprisingly interesting!!

Maybe I can use this image to create a poster to raise awareness for proper waste disposal behavior?

To help solve the problem of the warpage from drying on a flat sheet, I borrowed the concept of slip casting with plaster mold from my past material experience working with clay. The plaster will suck the moisture out of the material, drying and molding it at the same time. I thought that might be an idea worth trying. So I made a plaster mold.

The bioplasticoffee started to form a thick lay on the wall, however, I did not have time to let the mold dry completely before casting in it so the mold could not hold the material in its place and all the material end up pooling at the bottom of the mold.

Eventually, it did gelled up but because the mold keep feeding the moisture back to the material so it might took forever to dry!!!