offee
Offee is a project started as a research about already existing material. My base was a particle board also known as a chipboard. Material which was developed during second world war in Germany. It was made out of carpentry workshop’s waste materials such as planer shavings, offcuts or sawdust then hammer-milled into chips and bound together with a phenolic resin. With a fast development and need for this cheap building material process changed since then into cutting forests and hammer-milling whole trees to get this highly needed boards. Nowadays this material is used in many different industries from architecture, building constructions to furniture. I decided to focus on a two-component material. Binder and filler, the same like my base material. I also wanted to use an initial idea of using waste materials to create new upcycled one.
Since it should be made from local ingredients I was looking for a wastes around Stockholm, Sweden. After long research I developed a mixture of waste coffee grinds as a filler and a potato starch based bioplastic binder. Both of those materials are coming from food industry. Both are very common as restaurant's waste products. By mixing those two and also adding a bit of salty water which is very easy to find around Stockholm as well I achieved a mixture which heated to around 90C is becoming stable material. Material is highly biodegradable and also by its degrading is enriching a surrounding with nutritions. I decided to find a application for it in plant industry. I think it could find its usefulness as a temporary plant pot. The one is used in plants distribution. The idea is to be able to put a pot with a plant straight to a soil. Pot is degrading in approximately 14days enriching a plant with needed nutritions. There is no plastic wastes and plant has very good conditions for developing its rootball.
material research
