AGAR PLASTICITY | A POTENTIAL USEFULNESS OF AGAR FOR PACKAGING AND MORE
Agar plasticity is an ongoing material research project, in which we are exploring the potential usefulness of agar as one of alternatives to synthetic plastics. This project was submited to Lexus Design Award 2016 under the theme 'ANTICIPATION' and has been selected as the Grand Prix winner.
Goods are usually shipped wrapped in plastic materials. Once unwrapped, they soon become waste or are collected to be recycled. Considering the raw materials and energy for processing, this situation is undesirable.
In 2012, two hundreds and eighty eight million tons of plastics were produced worldwide, and more than 36% of materials used for packaging were plastics. But synthetic plastics do not biodegrade. This is the motivation for this project.
Anticipating effective and sustainable urilisation of natural resources has become more and more indispensable. To challenge this seemingly ignored problem, we began this project.
Agar is traditionally consumed as food in Japan, which is often used for making sweets. It is, also, used in scientific and medical fields worldwide.
It is sold in dried state in shapes of block, flake and powder. Block agar shows porous, feathery structure and is very light despite its volume. These feautures led to explore its possibility as packaging material.
Its raw material is seaweed - precisely, two kinds of red algae, which grow and is harvested worldwide, and agar can be extracted by boiling the red algae