Making and testing out the characteristic of Scoby. (Recipe included)
DELIVERED
Tool
Scoby Exploration
Kombucha scoby (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast) is a nature material that formed during the Kombucha fermentation process. It a rubbery raft that floats on the surface of the kombucha. Aside from being a home for yeast and good bacteria, the scoby seals off the fermenting kombucha from the air and protects it from outside, undesirable bacterias while it’s fermenting. Furthermore, dehydrated scoby shares the firmness of leather as well as the flexibility of plastic, hence, it has a huge potential of being alternative material for both leather and plastic which have wide range of application in our daily lives.
DURATION
TEAMmates
Problem
1.Global warming and climate change now are affecting every country on every continent. Climate change is disrupting the economy growth amount nations and affecting living features.
2.People know about climate change but not fully educated how climate change will affect our daily lives which result in us underestimate its effects.
3.Human do care about climate change but don't know much enough to act upon.
4.In our daily lives, a lot of materials are design for quick, one time use which causes series of pollution.
Opportunity
Dehydrated Kombucha scoby is a biodegradable low-carbon impact by-product which produce zero waste at the end of its product life-cycle. It has a huge potential of replacing materials like plastic, leather, food packaging and event paper which will eliminates massive or greenhouse gas emission. In order to reverse climate change, all humans must act together. Hence, there is an opportunity for me to provoke an national movement to reduce greenhouse gas emission by introducing dehydrated scoby as substitutes.
Kombucha's Application
The fermentation of bacteria and yeast will produce an organic membrane which can then be used to store a variety of lightweight foods like seeds, nuts,or even salads. The packaging material has long shelf life and stays edible for quite a long time due to its low ph. The food packaging is completely biodegradable and can be eaten after use thereby giving a zero-waste and eco-friendly alternative to plastic packaging. Anon, (2019). [ebook] Available at: http://www.rjlbpcs.com/article-pdf-downloads/2019/28/644.pdf [Accessed 28 Oct. 2019].
Scoby Ecosystem Mapping
Scoby application ideation
Storyboard
How people learn about scoby byproduct
How individual can contribute to environmental projection
Physical Prototype Round 1
Ingredients
Green tea 55 grams
Water 1 litre
Sugar 55 grams
Sodium Bicarbonate 1 unit
Step to step guidance please check out this webpage from Materiom
Brewing tea for making Kombucha
Three days after fermentation
Two weeks after fermentation: Scoby formed from Kombucha
Dehydrate Scoby
No treatment applied
Issues occured from first round of prototype
Because Kombucha is a fermented drink and scoby formed out of the fermentation process, the dehydrated scoby is very vinegary and you can smell the sour smell from the socby. This isn't a very pleasant smell.
Without and treatment, this dehydrated scoby is very "dry" and every fold will leave a track which will affect its appearance.
The scoby is not waterproof. Once it contact with water, the scoby will absorb the water and soften.
Physical Prototype Round 2
Using different container for different shapes.
Taking out dehydrated scoby
The scoby is able to contain pattern from the model
It's also translucent
Removing vinegary smell by adding Sodium Bicarbonate
Note: Theoretically, I should have added the Sodium when the scoby hadn't be dehydrated, but I didn't know I could apply Sodium on socby to remove the smell at the time I was drying my scoby. So I did it after the scoby is dehydrated and then hung it to dry again. After the scoby dried again, I felt it was to soft and didn't feel like a leather so I came up this idea of baking it in the oven.
Baking my scoby to strengthen it
However, it over-baked...
Even though this is a failure piece, it looks kind of cool.
After free baking trails, finally get the hardness that I want. Now the scoby feel a little bit stiff which behave more like a leather.
Beside making it more like leather, I'm also exploring the possibility of making it into paper. Surprising, the baked scoby can maintain the marker very well but also easy to remove the mark. This makes it has a huge potential to be a reusable paper.
I also tried to dye the scoby into different color.
Trimming the Scoby
Final result of prototype round 2
Final result of prototype round 2
Next Step
After 3 weeks of prototyping, I finally can bring this to do my user test. For my next step, I will bring this material around and ask people what do they think this material is and ask them how would they feel about this material as a food packaging material.
