Growing artificial leather
In this video, i will be presenting the subject of my Bachelor project, the Scoby. The Scoby is a byproduct of Kombucha, a fermented tea dating back to ancient China. The Kombucha consists of symbiotic culture of Bacteria and yeast, and it is the Bacteria that makes the Scoby, which is a layer of cellulose, on top of the drink.
In my Bachelor, i will try to use this material as a sustainable alternative to both real and fake leather... So far it seems interesting, so i am looking forward to continuing it.
Music:
Perspectives Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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Man this is crazy, never heard of this before. Thanks for sharing!
This is interesting! Sustainable, non-animal killing alternatives seem to be all over the spectrum.
Yeah, it's definitely interesting. Can't wait to continue with this :)
That is really interesting. I thought I knew about kombucha. I knew about its probiotic properties, but I never realized it grew potential clothing material, too!
Now following...
Awesome, i'm glad to hear :) Yeah, i hope i'll be able to use it as textiles. Maybe even as a form of paper as well?
Great video @emilclaudell! I read your article about attempting to grow the scobies for leather production. It should work and I'm keen to learn the outcome of your experiment. Was there any smell to the scoby after it dried and did it naturally turn that colour or did you add colour to it?
Thanks a ton for reading and watching :) To answer your last question first, no, i didn't color it. if you are referring to the brown piece of dried scoby, i forgot to wash it before drying it because i was in a rush. My best guess is that it has to do with the tannin's in the kombucha, but i'm not totally sure. In the future, i will try to deliberately dye it, which should be possible to do before the drying process (maybe also after).
I'm thinking about using some of the methods that people used for dying eggs around easter, since a lot of them are quite natural. The normal color seems to be a pasty, opaque sort of white.
About your question concerning smell, as of now, it does smell, unfortunately. The unwashed one obviously smells a lot stronger than the cleaned ones, but the smell is still there.
It smells of vinegar, and people seems to be having different tolerances towards the smell.
The next time i'm washing the scobies for drying, i will experiment more with different cleaning solutions. I will try using baking powder for once, as it seems to be an old remedy to remove the smell of vinegar. In order for the "leather" to succeed, it can't be off putting to people, and being smelly is definitely part of that :)
Thanks for commenting, i hope you're having a great day
I think you would be able to colour the scoby with fruit. I've noticed when I've made kombucha and have added fruit to flavour the batch, the scoby seems to absorb the colour.
The vinegar smell may be a challenge...your project is interesting. Well done!
nice post
very nice post
greetings