What to Make of Waste : Material Driven Design for Better Palm Oil Practices

Abstract: Palm oil production create a number of solid biomass waste products, in particular empty fruit bunches and mesocarp fiber; two cellulosic plant materials that are under-utilized and a source of environmental pollution today. Their fibred structure are interesting from an industrial design perspective as similar waste products from industrialized crops are used to create composite materials. This bachelor thesis is based on an initial research phase of the palm oil industry in Thailand, where literary studies, case-studies and interviews were used to gain understanding of how the palm oil industry in Thailand operates. This laid the foundation to a material driven design process; an exploratory phase where samples of waste products collected during the research phase were tinkered with, to create composite materials of natural fibers and starch-based plastics. The materials created were characterized by their technical properties, and evaluated through a focus group of Thai students to define their experiential characteristics. The insights learned from the evaluation were used to create a demonstrative concept of how the material can be put to future use. The experiential characterization showed that the material have valuable sensorial, performative, emotional and interpretive properties, such as strength, flexibility and translucency, while being perceived as elegant, amusing, strange and natural. This leads to the conclusion that there is possible added value in the waste products that are seen as a nuisance today. Parallel to the material driven design process, samples of empty fruit bunches and mesocarp fiber were used to develop a 3D-printing filament. While only simple test prints have been tried at the time of writing, it provides proof of concept.