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How to make your pottery practice greener


ByLinda Bloomfield

20 October 2020

Eight easy ways to reduce your ecological impact


Linda Bloomfield

20 October 2020

  • Ceramics
  • Sustainable craft
  • Craft business

Throwing on a pottery wheel. Photo: Pxhere

Studio potters often worry about the large amount of energy needed to fire kilns to a high temperature to produce ceramics. In addition, the clays and glaze ingredients used are dug from the earth and are not renewable. Some colouring oxides such as cobalt are rare, difficult to mine and occur in areas of the world where unethical practices take place. Glazes can also include pollutants, including lead and barium.

A recent panel discussion hosted by Crafts magazine, and an associated article in its September/October 2020 issue, presented some of the most innovative approaches to making ceramics more sustainable, but there's plenty studio potters can do to make their practices greener without resorting to cutting-edge scientific experimentation or a wholesale replacement of materials. And while studio potters only use a fraction of the materials and energy of the ceramics industry, together we can make a difference and get our voices heard. Here are eight tips on how to clean up your act.


Electric kilns can be fired using renewable energy. Photo: Pixabay

1. Switch to a green energy provider

These companies generate power from renewable resources such as the sun, wind or water. Green energy can be used to fire electric kilns. When wood firing, ensure you use wood from a sustainable source or offcuts from woodworkers. To make firing economical, make sure the kiln is packed as full as possible every time you fire and consider reducing firing temperatures or firing times.

2. Reuse all unfired clay

Collect your failed pots, throwing slurry, trimmings and turnings. If they are still in the wet state, wedge them together by combining them into a large mass, cutting it in half and slamming the two halves together repeatedly. If the clay has gone beyond leather hard, dry it out until completely bone dry. Add water to allow it to slake down, leave it to settle, then pour off excess water and dry out the slurry on a plaster batt until it reaches a workable consistency. Wedge and knead well before using.


Reuse the clay slurry created by throwing. Photo: Pxhere

3. Rethink studio waste

Collect all clay washed down the sink in a settling tank, then recycle the slurry (as above). You can also re-use glazes: keep a separate bucket of water in the glazing area in which to wash hands, brushes, sieves and glazing tools. Leave this to settle overnight, pour off the water, then collect the settled glaze at the bottom. If you don’t separate the clay and glaze in this way, you will have a mixture of clay and glaze in the settling tank, which is more difficult to recycle. If you end up with a mixture, the fluxes in the glaze may cause the clay to warp and slump during firing.

4. Recycle excess glaze

Either wax the bottoms of pots to avoid glaze sticking, or scrape off glaze from the base using an old credit card, collect the scrapings and when you have enough, add to water and sieve. Overspray glaze from spray booths can also be collected (you will need to keep each glaze separate). Alternatively, you can collect all glaze scrapings together in one bucket, sieve and use as an ever-evolving mystery glaze, or add iron oxide to make a more consistent black glaze. If you must throw away glaze, leave it to dry out and dispose of the solids in landfill, rather than down the drain.


A wood fire can provide ash for glazes. Photo: Pixabay

5. Avoid using toxic glaze materials

These include lead, chromium oxide, nickel oxide and barium carbonate (use strontium carbonate instead). Black clays often contain manganese dioxide; avoid breathing in the dust or firing fumes from these clays. Ask your supplier whether your cobalt comes from an ethically mined source and if not, consider using other colouring oxides instead. Iron oxide is the most widely available and non-toxic colouring oxide and gives colours ranging from amber and rust red to black.

6. Reuse shards from broken pots

It is possible to recycle broken ceramics to make new glazes, if you have access to a ball mill to grind them up small enough. In order to recycle fired pots, you need to divide the ceramics into unglazed or biscuit ware for use as grog in clay bodies and glazed ware and glass for re-use in glazes. Otherwise, you can give your shards to a mosaic artist or use them as crocks for drainage at the bottom of flower pots.


Broken shards of earthenware pottery can be reused. Photo: Pixabay

7. Use waste materials

One easy place to start is using wood ash from your wood burner or fireplace. This can be soaked in water, sieved, then made into a glaze together with clay and feldspar. Wood ash acts as a flux and adds subtle colours from olive to bottle green. Other waste materials include ground sea shells and dust from quarries or marble workshops, all used as glaze fluxes. You can use small quantities of local clays as decorating slips and mixed into clay bodies, but if you want to dig larger amounts, you need to ask permission from the landowner.

8. Avoid using a gas kiln

You can achieve reduction glazes similar to those from a gas kiln in a cleaner, electric kiln: add a reduction agent such as fine mesh silicon carbide to the glaze and an oxidising agent such as zinc oxide to mop up the excess carbon (you only need around 1% of the total dry glaze weight of each material). The silicon carbide breaks down above 1,000°C into silicon and carbon and reacts with the oxygen in the glaze, changing the colours of iron oxide from amber yellow to celadon green and copper oxide from green to copper red. It is possible to achieve several classical Oriental glazes by this means, including chun blue and celadon. You can find silicon carbide glaze recipes on the glaze database, glazy.org.

lindabloomfield.co.uk


Learn more about ceramics and sustainability

Get your copy of Crafts issue #284: The Change Makers

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