Material Potential

As I stated earlier the majority of our class will revolve around reconstituting agricultural byproducts into real products or materials with value. This process of reclaiming so-called "waste materials" and making them into useable materials is called "up-sourcing" and it is a great way to reduce our impact on the Earth while continuing to produce viable materials. This idea of up-sourcing can be traced back to the Native American tradition of using every part of every animal killed to reduce environmental impact while increasing food and goods. It is a great way to be green and I am excited to start working with the materials we have.

Throughout the semester we will work with four primary byproducts: sugar cane husks, sugar cane pulp, rice straw and rice hull. I will post labeled pictures when I have access to the materials. All of these materials are natural byproducts of different agricultural processes and have very little use beyond burning them for fuel. It is our goal to experiment with these materials and transform them into viable material samples that could some day be used in an industrial process to create goods. Sounds easy right...