She used cow's milk to create a natural alternative to plastic from non-renewable sources with the possibility of replacing polymers derived from fossil fuels with an organic waste material.
For her Protein project, she sourced waste milk from a dairy farm in Sussex, which throws away 3,000 litres of skimmed milk each week. "That's just one farm in the UK, so 3,000 litres a week is, potentially scaled up, a really big industry," Silva-Dawson told Dezeen.
The production process starts similarly to cheese-making, using heat to separate the curds from the liquid whey. The curds are then dried out in an industrial dehydrator and mixed with a natural plasticiser to turn them into pellets. To demonstrate the material's properties, Silva-Dawson created a series of vessels using compression moulding – a technique used to form many plastic products.
According to the designer, these can be used in the same way as synthetic plastics and moulded with existing machinery. "It's a crafted way showing how it could be commercialised and manufactured," Silva-Dawson said. She added pigments and dyes to the plastic substitute to create marbled and dappled effects, then finished the surfaces with wax.
"It's obviously an animal product," she added. "It's a keratin, a protein, and has similar properties to horn and bone – the way it's sanded and stuff." "You can also lathe it and machine it in the way you would with wood."
