Peel Pressure Made Us Do It
Creating biodegradable products from organic waste – thats Caracara Collective’s calling. The team has spent the last years experimenting with different recipes and techniques for turning bio-waste into functional objects. Their first collection includes hand-crafted lampshades made of orange peel, and they aim to implement the technology into packaging solutions of the future. With a binder made from 100 % natural ingredients, almost any type of organic by-product of agriculture and industry - fruit peels, coffee chaff, you name it - can be turned into new materials and products. Furthermore, the diversity of the world’s organic waste creates a beautiful color palette to work with, adding a special characteristic and story behind each product.
The long-term aim is to share the techniques open source so that people around the world can utilize their waste to create solutions locally. Years of experimentation have proven that these materials and techniques are highly adaptable, scalable, and easy to produce. One could create a low-budget and low-tech setup for recycling bio-waste into artisan products, or a whole factory for producing large batches of biodegradable packaging. The goal is to create a global impact through local initiatives.
The story starts in the summer of 2015 when designer mates Aleksi Vesaluoma and Richard Sullivan started playing around with orange peel in their kitchen in London. Then they encounter an event that leaves the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall full of orange peel. After a chat with the organizers, the guys walk out with as much orange peel as they can carry, which starts a new passion and a journey of material development. Alongside their industrial design studies in London, the guys keep testing new recipes and techniques for working with organic materials. In 2018 Aleksi moves back to his hometown Helsinki and starts Caracara Collective with designer Aleksi Puustinen. They work in a studio space which is a hybrid between a workshop, kitchen, laboratory, recycling station, and an urban farm. Most of their raw materials come from the orange juice machines of their local supermarket and pine needles fallen from discarded Christmas trees. The next stage in their journey is to travel to different places in the world to start sharing their knowledge of working with local biomaterials.