A fruit alternative to animal leather
Berlin-based designer Youyang Song used the peel of fruit and algae to create plant material that is an alternative to leather. Peelsphere is not only flexible and waterproof, but also completely biodegradable.
Peelsphere is a biodegradable material made of algae and fruit skins. Youyang Song deals with designing textiles on a daily basis, she came up with the idea of creating a fruit skin when she realized that there was no product on the market that would meet her own expectations.
"I started out as a textile designer and was surprised that I couldn't find a completely biodegradable material for my projects on the market," she says.
She wanted to create a versatile material that would retain all the features of animal skin, but would be biodegradable.
“As an ideal alternative to leather and synthetic leather, Peelsphere is beautiful, durable, versatile and biodegradable,” she adds. The design process began by contacting local fruit juice suppliers to ask for leftover banana and orange peel leftovers. The Peelsphere team then developed a manufacturing process that involves extracting the fiber and pectin from the peel and mixing them together before being ground into fine pieces using a biofuel binder. This mixture forms sheets of imitation leather that can be dyed with natural dyes. Finally, the team laser cuts the sheets and prints the sheets in 3D.
The material can be recycled after use by Peelsphere studio or by the customer. According to Song, Peelsphere is a 100% biodegradable material.
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