Designer Erik de Laurens has come up with a novel raw material for making plastic — fish scales. By dying the scales and treating them under heat and pressure, he can make them act much like a plastic.


Dezeen reports, “Called The Fish Feast, the project was inspired by the huge number of scales that the fishing industry discards.”
de Laurens decided to make use of these scales and devised a way to make them into a plastic-like material.


de Laurens states on his website, “The fish feast started when I was asked to design objects for the canteen of a primary school of Macassar, a township of Cape Town.” He devised a plan in which once a month, the students would go catch their own fish and prepare a meal from what they caught. To go with the meal, de Laurens created objects that used more parts of the fish, such as a water dispenser made of fish leather and, of course, the drinking glasses made from scales. The “plastic” is made just from the scales, with no other bonding agent used.


de Laurens states, “The fishing industry generates several circumstances where many tons of fish scales are leftover. Using this waste as resources for the production of his fish-scale-plastic, I tried to highlight the potentiality of these industrial flaw. In order to test the material I have designed 3 pairs of goggles and glasses inspired by swimming goggles and a table with an inlay of a fish. I have also extended the range of colours in the tumbler previously designed. I am currently looking for funding to push the development of this material further.”


The project is colorful, creative and resourceful. We love that it also stems from a project teaching children about how we can use the entirety of what we catch. Waste not, want not.

(Source: www.treehugger.com )