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Crafting with food waste: makers reimagine milk leftovers


ByDebika Ray

14 August 2020

Meet the people transforming discards from the dairy industry into desirable recycled materials and products


Debika Ray

14 August 2020

  • Craft innovation
  • Sustainable craft

Bowl from Tessa Silva-Dawson’s Protein series using casein

As part of a series of articles exploring how makers are reimagining food waste (from meat and egg shells to fruit and vegetables), we meet the designers and makers transforming discards from the dairy industry into desirable, recycled materials and products.

The use of milk in craft and design is different from these other food groups, in that there’s no reason that drinkable milk should become waste. Yet at least 116 tonnes (16 per cent) are thrown away around the world each year, while daily production is growing rapidly, leading to a global surplus and price decreases.


  • Ceramic tableware from Ekaterina Semenova’s Care for Milk collection

‘Overproduction and continuous price drops have seen our appreciation of milk sink to an alltime low,’ says Amsterdam-based designer Ekaterina Semenova. Her Care for Milk collection of ceramic tableware is decorated in brown and cream glazes made from leftover milk collected from households – an attempt to restore the value that milk had before its mega-industrialisation. Different types of milk yield different shades, but all give the surfaces a matt, caramelised quality.


  • Detail of a vase from Tessa Silva-Dawson’s Protein series using casein

London-based Tessa Silva-Dawson is also working with leftover milk. For her Protein vessels she has used casein, an alternative to plastic extracted from milk protein in a 19th-century technique that’s similar to cheesemaking. ‘I don’t think it would be an appropriate material for mass production,’ she says. ‘It would be better if farms had such a tight loop that there wasn’t any waste at all, but as it’s happening now I am inserting myself into that system, drawing attention to waste streams that go unnoticed.’

Her method of working explores the possibility of a return to a more small-scale and localised form of making food, materials and products that might become increasingly attractive and necessary in coming decades, as we seek to minimise air miles and overproduction. ‘I source the material and make it all myself. I’m trying to bring attention to alternatives that can be found within local communities, instead of having to order materials from the other side of the world.’

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

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