less by design
Archives
Leafing a smaller environmental footprint.
By Lorrin Windahl. Eating off a leaf. It’s not a new idea. People from different cultures around the world have been doing it for years. But mass producing a leaf plate. Well, that is a different story entirely. Can it be done?…
Read MorePinatex – an ethical leather alternative
By Lorrin Windahl. Leather. Like it or not it results in the death of the animal. Some may argue that it is the by-product of the meat industry and therefore a kind of recycling of a waste product. But others are…
Read MoreCocoForm – a sustainable packaging alternative
By Lorrin Windahl. Every now and then a new material comes along that I get a little excited about and try to imagine what product I could use it on. Such is the case with CocoForm, a new material made from coconut…
Read MoreIs bamboo all it’s cracked up to be?
By Lorrin Windahl. It’s true that bamboo is a highly sustainable material which has increased in popularity recently for this very reason. It is seen as a more environmentally friendly alternative to plastic, metal and even timber. But is it…
Read Moredecafé – grinding a halt to ground coffee waste
By Lorrin Windahl. It’s no secret that Melbourne is (well ok, maybe we just think we are) the coffee capital of the world. So we certainly have lots of ground coffee waste. And you can only put so much in your compost bin, right?…
Read MoreHeartfelt for felt
By Lorrin Windahl. Let me introduce you to a little material that has been around for years, is made from renewable resources, is soft to touch and can provide shelter from the rain. Is there really such a wonder material? Indeed there…
Read MoreOrganoid: freeform moulding of natural fibres
By Lorrin Windahl. The guys at Organoid Technologies have developed an interesting material process. They have worked out how to turn wood chips into freeform mouldings. And the wood chips that they source are residue from logging so they are…
Read MorePulp – the green packaging alternative
By Lorrin Windahl. So I mentioned in a previous post that polystyrene foam, which has been used for many years as a good impact resistant packaging material, is slowly being outlawed worldwide due to its low sustainability credentials. So what…
Read MoreBagasse – not just a waste material
By Chris Morrish For a long time sugarcane crop has been harvested purely for its sweet sucrose. But now, with the increased development into sustainable bio-fuels, such as bio-ethanol and bio-diesel, demand for the fibrous grass has sharply increased.
Read MoreSustainable packaging
By Lorrin Windahl. When we think of product packaging we often think of polystyrene foam, cardboard and plastic bags. All of which when you have unwrapped the product go into the garbage or, at best, the recycling bin. But this…
Read MoreCreative Common License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
less by design 