NEW MATERIAL
BEETLES TO MATERIAL

β οΈ Since some of these steps require a bit of knowledge and equipment or are even a little dangerous, we don't share all of it online. If you want to do it, write us and we can make sure together that you have all the right precautions in place: hello@plasticula.com β οΈ
#1: EXTRACTION
We use an extraction process of four steps:
First you dry the beetles and grind them into a powder. Then you start to slowly take away every little part of the beetle's shell, until you are only left with it's main polymer called 'chitin'.
Finally you have to turn the polymer into it's deacetylized form, which called 'chitosan'. π©βπ¬
#2: MAKING FOILS
#3: MAKING PRODUCTS

And since we do know that πΈ makes the π go around: Here are some products we already made from the material. 100% harmless and compostable.
The material works best for all kinds of dry-packaging, like pasta, lentils or dryed mealworms!
But I guess you get the point. There is so much more to explore. Let's get started! πͺ
RESOURCES
This is for all the nerdsπ€: An on-going list of resources I found useful during my research so far. Let me know if you think something is missing.
- super nice thesis partly on chitosan based bioplastics: https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0362998
- of course neri oxman's 'form follows flow': https://neri.media.mit.edu/assets/pdf/ACADIA_2015_MogasDuroOxman.pdf
- 'shrilk' by harvard's wyss institute: https://wyss.harvard.edu/technology/chitosan-bioplastic/
- material view's article about Javier Fernandez's and Donald Ingber's work: https://people.sutd.edu.sg/~javier_fernandez/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/advfunctmat-2013.pdf