Food waste

Shed

According to the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Food Waste Index Report 2021, approximately 17% of global food production is wasted. With an astonishing 61% of this waste coming from households. An estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of food are discarded globally. Each and every year. There is an urge to change: food waste is not only unsustainable in the future, it is unsustainable now.

From this standpoint, designers Yuki Hadal and Siyuan Wang founded 'Shed', wanting to give a brand new life to the food products we discard every day. The colours of Shed are intended to follow the natural course of time and the products will always have different colours in different seasons.

'Shed' has many meanings, from the moulting of insects and reptiles, leaves naturally falling from trees or to change skin. All these meanings embody the philosophy of Shed.

Making process

The process began with collecting all the food leftovers over the course of a month, drying and shredding them into small pieces. The powder, then, was mixed with agar-agar, glycerine and water. The combination of these elements created a thin and elastic sheet with interesting textures and incredible flexibility. To show the incredible possibilities that this material offer, the designers chose to display gloves, furniture, cups and other accessories made with Shed’s material (in particular, red onions peel, shrimp shells and tea bags). In fact, the proportions of the ingredients can be changed to create a harder or softer material, as well as a more rigid or flexible sheet. By doing so, the designers managed to create sheets that resemble leather, vinyl and resin. These sheets have an unlimited range of colours since they depend on what food is used to make them: orange peels create a fantastic amber sheet, while red onions peel become a glowing rosy sheet.

Text submitted by the maker and edited by the Future Materials Bank. For information about reproducing (a part of) this text, please contact the maker.