Materials for Design

Orange Peel

This by-product of the fruit juice industry is a renewable and compostable material. As many other case studies in this book have demonstrated, designers are turning uncommon waste and biomaterials into manufacturable new forms using design creativity and experimentation to produce new recipes for materials from natural ingredients. Suzanne Lee is one such example with her BioCouture projects, and APeel – by Alkesh Parmar – is another.

Parmar has taken the rind, pith and seed waste from the orange juice industry and transformed it into a viable mouldable, rigid material. And a huge amount of waste it is: according to the Food And Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Brazil accounts for the largest production of oranges ...