Biomaterial Recipes

Experiment at home with bio-based materials. These recipes are made with easy to source, kitchen-safe ingredients.

Potato Starch

Potato Starch

Powder
Starch

By extracting starch from old potatoes you can recover this useful biopolymer from what would otherwise be food waste.

Pine Rosin

Pine Rosin

Paste
Cellulose

I first encountered Pine Rosin through Studio Sarmite and have been experimenting with it non-stop since then. It is the closest to an epoxy resin-like biomaterial I have found.

Bio • Laminate

Bio • Laminate

Sheet
Protein

This recipe originally appeared in Green Plastics: An Introduction to the New Science of Biodegradable Plastics on page 170. I've adapted it slightly to get more consistent results from my experiments.

Bio • Foam

Bio • Foam

Foam
Hybrid

This recipe was originally adapted from Gal Yakobovitch's work with biofoam and modified to simplify the ingredients and lower the overall cost.

1% Glycerol Stock Solution

1% Glycerol Stock Solution

Liquid
Starch

While you don't need to keep a 1% glycerol solution on hand, I find it helpful for whipping up materials quickly and easily.

Bacterial Cellulose

Bacterial Cellulose

Liquid
Cellulose

Bacterial cellulose (BC) goes by a variety of names. It's also called microbial cellulose and SCOBY. This version of BC is produced during the fermentation of kombucha.

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Potato Starch

Potato Starch

By extracting starch from old potatoes you can recover this useful biopolymer from what would otherwise be food waste.

Starch
Pine Rosin

Pine Rosin

I first encountered Pine Rosin through Studio Sarmite and have been experimenting with it non-stop since then. It is the closest to an epoxy resin-like biomaterial I have found.

Cellulose
Bio • Laminate

Bio • Laminate

This recipe originally appeared in Green Plastics: An Introduction to the New Science of Biodegradable Plastics on page 170. I've adapted it slightly to get more consistent results from my experiments.

Protein
Bio • Foam

Bio • Foam

This recipe was originally adapted from Gal Yakobovitch's work with biofoam and modified to simplify the ingredients and lower the overall cost.

Hybrid
1% Glycerol Stock Solution

1% Glycerol Stock Solution

While you don't need to keep a 1% glycerol solution on hand, I find it helpful for whipping up materials quickly and easily.

Starch
Bacterial Cellulose

Bacterial Cellulose

Bacterial cellulose (BC) goes by a variety of names. It's also called microbial cellulose and SCOBY. This version of BC is produced during the fermentation of kombucha.

Cellulose