Fish Scales Plastic

Would you ever believe that the plastic cups shown above, are made from fish scales? Believe it or not, designer Erik de Laurens has come up with the idea; fish scales has become the novel raw material for making plastic.

By dying the scales and treating them under heat and pressure, he can make them act much like a plastic.

de Laurens states, “The fishing industry generates several circumstances where many tons of fish scales are leftover. Using this waste as resources for the production of his fish-scale-plastic, I tried to highlight the potentiality of these industrial flaw.” But what make the designer think such an innovative recycling project? As de Laurens claims “all started when I was asked to design objects for the canteen of a primary school of Macassar, a township of Cape Town.” The designer ask students to catch a fish and prepare a meal from what they caught. To go with the meal, de Laurens created objects that used more parts of the fish, such as a water dispenser made of fish leather and, of course, the drinking glasses made from scales. For further information visit Eric de Laurens site!