Turkish startup creates products from organic waste

ANKARA

Turkish startup Ottan Studio has produced a range of furniture and decorative items made from up-cycled organic materials, which will be available for sale online next week, the startup, which is committed to promoting sustainability, said Friday.

With the motto "Don’t produce waste, consume it!” Ottan Studio has made a name for itself converting food waste into bio-composite material from which it makes furniture, decorative items and wall paneling.

“We use organic materials – mowed grass, fruit pulp, expired legumes – to make our products,” Ottan Studio founder Ayse Yilmaz was quoted in the statement as saying. “We are now making high-quality lampshades out of orange pulp and carrot peels.”

According to Yilmaz, waste materials are collected from companies and municipalities throughout Turkey. These are then converted into raw materials with which Ottan Studio manufactures its products.

Yilmaz explained that not only can the organic raw material be used to make furniture and decorative items, but it can even be used in construction projects and the automotive and home-appliance sectors.

The natural wastes are cleaned, dried and ground to create natural raw materials before mixing them with green resins and injecting them into molds to create minimal yet multi-purpose products, according to Ottan’s website.

‘Don’t produce waste, consume it!’

Bringing an aesthetic perspective to the notion of recycling, Ottan Studio strives to make a difference, both environmentally and economically, by recycling what is referred to as “green waste.”

The studio’s design concept aims to reduce waste by creating high-quality, long-lasting products from these all-natural materials.

‘Trees grow new leaves, fruit every year’

“There is a misconception that wood is the greenest solution in the furniture and construction sectors,” Yilmaz said. “But the equivalent of 40 football fields of woodland is destroyed every minute due to the intensive timber consumption that these industries require.”

“Meanwhile, roughly one-third of the food produced worldwide goes to waste,” she explained. “But all this can be recycled for use in a range of manufacturing sectors.”

Stressing the importance of Ottan Studio’s zero-waste approach, Yilmaz added: “A tree takes about 30 years to grow, but its leaves and fruit grow anew every year. We perceived this as an opportunity, and developed a more sustainable approach to manufacturing.”

Reforestation not deforestation

Yilmaz is also mindful of the prediction that all forests will disappear within the next 100 years, and through her company has decided to plant a new tree sapling for every product that Ottan Studio sells.

“So instead of cutting a tree down, we convert its leaves into useable material, while at the same time planting 70 new saplings,” she said.

“If one in four trees were processed this way instead of being cut down for timber, we could reverse deforestation within ten years and make our world a much greener place."