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Crafting with food waste: makers reimagine fruit and vegetable leftovers


ByDebika Ray

30 July 2020

Meet the people transforming waste into recycled materials and products


Debika Ray

30 July 2020

  • Craft innovation
  • Sustainable craft

Totomoxtle decorative veneer, Fernando Laposse, Mexican heirloom corn

In the second in a series of articles on craftspeople working with food waste (including leftovers from the meat industry), we meet the designers and makers transforming fruit and vegetable discards into desirable, recycled materials and products.


Tableware, Atticus Durnell, coffee grounds

When it comes to food waste, plant waste-based alternatives to commonly used materials are showing particularly promising results – emerging both as a response to debates over animal wellbeing and the need to develop biodegradable substitutes for what we currently use. In the hands of Nathalie Spencer, fibres extracted from discarded pineapple leaves from London markets have been transformed into ‘wool’, which she has worked with spinners and weavers to turn into textiles, while Piñatex, a brand launched by Spanish leather goods expert Carmen Hijosa, uses the same fibres to make a leather-like material. Also produced in the UK, Chips Board is a biodegradable material for product and interior design made of non-food-grade industrial potato waste, while Italian company Orange Fiber partners with juice manufacturers in Sicily to create fabrics out of waste citrus rinds.

Working at the other end of the distribution cycle, Japanese designer Kosuke Araki has sourced vegetable waste from markets, shops and his own kitchen and mixed it with Japanese lacquer – or urushi – which was historically combined with leftovers like rice or tofu to adjust its viscosity before its use in craft. Meanwhile, Berlin-based Julian Lechner and Atticus Durnell, who graduated from the University of Creative Arts, Rochester, in 2018, are two designers using coffee grounds collected from cafés – the former making reusable cups that retain the scent of coffee, the latter producing a range of tableware, tiles, furniture and lighting, which started as a graduate project.

Agricultural production has its own environmental costs, but, unlike the meat industry, there is no suggestion that it should cease, so plant and vegetable waste is a potentially unlimited source of organic material – and an enticing opportunity to replace commonly used plastics and synthetic fibres and develop a truly circular economy. Many of the makers working in this field are already going beyond simply proposing a new way of crafting, and are reshaping processes and supply chains to make these materials more viable.


  • Totomoxtle decorative veneer, Fernando Laposse, Mexican heirloom corn

One example is Fernando Laposse’s work in Tonahuixtla, a farming village in south-west Mexico, that was hit hard by the arrival of highyield, genetically modified corn from the United States after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. Laposse has worked with farmers to develop Totomoxtle, a robust, wood-like decorative veneer made out of the husks of colourful Mexican heirloom corn, with the hope that the extra injection of cash from this product will make it more tempting to plant their native corn. ‘It’s a very handmade process – we produce everything using rudimentary machinery, diecutting, stamping, irons,’ Laposse says. ‘Now we have a system that can be repeated across the country.’

Malai, an initiative based in southern India, is also working directly with food producers – in this case, those using the flesh of mature coconuts. The liquid inside these is too salty and oily for drinking, meaning that every day a processing unit can throw away 4,000 litres, causing drain water to become polluted and soil acidified.


  • Leather-like handbag, Malai, material grown on waste liquid from mature coconuts

Malai produces a leather-like material made from bacterial cellulose grown on this water. With a soft sheen, a variety of weights and naturally dyed reds, browns and blues, it has been used to produce bags, accessories and shoes. ‘We started by developing a system with a few coconut processing units. Now we work with several and have a microbiologist taking care of the process,’ says Slovakian designer Zuzana Gombosova, who co-founded Malai with Susmith Suseelan from Kerala.

At present, they are focused on stabilising their existing production chain, but have an ambitious vision for the future. ‘We imagine a decentralised production system, where you have small manufacturing units in proximity to coconut-processing units or plantations,’ says Gombosova. At the same time, they are seeking to grow demand. ‘We work with an array of clients, ranging from individual designers and makers to companies. It’s particularly nice to work with people who have a sensitivity for craft, who can develop skills for this new material.’

This is an extract from an article that first appeared in the July/August 2019 issue of Crafts magazine

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