Royal College of Art student designs compostable clay vases… out of waste milk - Yanko Design

It's hard to believe that something like milk could plow into a fabric that's as moldable as clay, and every bit strong as concrete when dried. Tessa Silva-Dawson, a pupil at the Imperial College of Art, developed a way to turn waste material milk into a compostable clay-like cloth by combining it with chalk. Titled Chalk Cheese, the material uses excess skimmed milk created in the production of butter or cream. Rather than throwing this milk away, she mixed it with chalk sourced from a quarry in Hampshire to create a moldable textile with the consistency of polymer clay. The series of vases designed using this material are molded from deadstock fabric to give it its unique aesthetic, but Tessa claims the material tin can hands be molded by hand too, to make other homeware.

Chalk Cheese is a modern reinterpretation of a material previously used in 16th century Britain, where sour, spoilt milk was mixed with limestone to create tough flooring that became as difficult as stone after drying. Silva-Dawson'south cloth possesses more structural integrity, allowing information technology to be molded by paw or fifty-fifty spun on a potter'due south wheel… and unlike fired-terracotta which doesn't biodegrade, Chalk Cheese can easily be composted or turned into fertilizer later on the product serves its purpose!

Designer: Tessa Silva-Dawson