Hi I’m Fiona Bell, a PhD candidate at the Atlas Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder
and today I’m going to discuss ReClaym our Compost: Biodegradable Clay for Intimate Making
In this work, we wanted to explore what it means to develop and design with a new material
that is both sustainable and personal.
This motivated us to create Reclaym, an intimate, clay-like biomaterial made from our composted
food waste.
We found decomposed food waste, known as compost, to be a compelling material to work with given
that it is
inherently sustainable and unique to each person,
food waste revealing personal aspects such as
food preferences,
physical location,
cultural identity,
cooking techniques,
and temporal relationships with food.
Consequently, ReClaym mirrors our food waste, adopting different textures, colors, and smells,
based on the types of items we compost.
To transform compost into ReClaym,
We add sodium alginate, which is a brown seaweed extract,
calcium carbonate, which is a common mineral,
and water.
When combined with water, the sodium alginate creates a gel, which we stabilized with the
calcium carbonate.
We mixed our gel into the compost to bind it together, creating a biomaterial that acts
like clay and fully biodegrades when composted.
To identify our optimal recipe for ReClaym, we experimented with a variety of ingredient
ratios, ranging from recipes that were primarily made from calcium carbonate to recipes that
were primarily made from compost.
For each recipe, we fabricated a small pot with an extruder to examine how well the recipe
held three dimensional form and how easy the material was to work with.
Our optimal recipe is mostly made from compost, can be extruded with minimal effort, and easily
holds three-dimensional forms.
Despite finding an optimal recipe, we realized that each batch of ReClaym came out slightly
different due to our ever-changing compost.
Thus, we were inspired to develop a corresponding practice for working with ReClaym’s inconsistencies
that we call "Intimate Making" which utilizes
familiar techniques to foster
maker-material communication, that leads to a
material understanding.
Intimate Making specifically employs familiar, hands-on fabrication techniques
like sculpting,
molding,
and extruding to foster direct communication between the maker and the material through
the sense of touch.
The constant physical communication with ReClaym, led to an embodied knowledge and eventually,
to a deep understanding of the material.
By fully understanding ReClaym’s capabilities and limitations,
we learned to collaboratively work with ReClaym rather than forcing ReClaym into predetermined
forms.
Thus, Intimate Making often results in imperfect, yet meaningful artifacts that reflect both
the agency of the ReClaym and our personal handiwork.
Through Intimate Making, we gained confidence working with ReClaym, which spurred an exploration
of how ReClaym could be further customized and utilized.
We first took inspiration from ReClaym’s naturally, non-sterile nature, using its origin
as compost, which contains many living microbes, to create a living sculpture.
This then led us to devising a method to sterilize ReClaym by baking it in the oven, effectively
killing all the microbes.
We tested our baking method by performing microbial growth tests,
the petri dish inoculated with the un-baked ReClaym resulted in the growth of microbes
while the baked ReClaym resulted in no microbial growth proving its sterility
These tests then led us to the creation of food-safe tableware like bowls and plates
that highlight the circular aspect of eating a meal off of food waste that has been given
a second life and then composting the tableware once done eating to create more ReClaym items.
We then explored adding conductive properties to ReClaym by coating still drying ReClaym
with
activated carbon and
graphite powders.
We measure the resistances of each of these conductive ReClaym tiles finding that activated
carbon was more conductive.
We then used our activated carbon tiles as capacitive touch sensors that we transformed
into an instrument.
Similarly, we coated still drying reclaym with a thermochromic pigment that changes
color based on temperature going from light blue when hot to dark blue when cold,
a photochromic pigment that changes color based on UV light exposure going from light
pink when not exposed to dark pink when exposed,
and lastly, a photoluminescent pigment that we used to create a collection of garden sculptures
that charge throughout the day with UV light and then luminesce in the dark when the sun
goes down.
We also colored ReClaym, by adding
plain food dye,
A biodegradable glaze that we formulated from food dye, cornstarch, sodium alginate, and
water,
and a cosmetic-grade biodegradable glitter gel.
We used color to create game applications
such as custom figurines for a Dungeons & Dragons sorcerer character
and Carcassonne tiles.
Lastly, we explored adding textures to ReClaym
by imprinting leaves,
the tongs of a fork
and the edge of a spoon.
We took this exploration a step further by creating a memory keepsake for a puppy, in
which we took an imprint of its paw.
Once our ReClaym artifacts were no longer needed or wanted, we disposed of them circularly
by either composting them with our food waste to create new batches of ReClaym
or by letting them biodegrade in the environment, in which case the compost within ReClaym actively
replenishes nutrients in the soil and encourages the growth of new plants that we can harvest
for food, effectively re-start the ReClaym life cycle.
In conclusion, we developed ReClaym, a sustainable and personal clay-like biomaterial made from
our composted food waste, and a corresponding practice for collaboratively working with
Reclaym called Intimate Making.
Thank you all for listening, I want to thank my co-authors Netta Ofer and Mirela Alistar,
and I am now happy to take questions.