Excess materials for creative industries

I have just returned from a great day of talks on materials and design processes at London Metropolitan University, where Clare Qualmann introduced the Materials and Products Library, which includes information and samples of sustainably produced and recyclyed materials. Anyone can make use of this valuable resource by joining Metropolitan Works, located at 41 Commercial Road, London.

In my own work I use offcuts of formica, but have been finding it hard to source this stuff. It seems to have been superceded by other materials in kitchen design, and so it just doesn't appear in skips anymore. The sheets I do have, have been begged from product and furniture design departments in local colleges, but obviously this can't be repeated.

Clare suggested searching using the term 'excess materials', and also mentioned two initiatives that might be able to help with this kind of approach: WRAP is the Waste Resource Action Programme at http://www.wrap.org.uk/, and UK First is starting an initiative to help the furniture industry manage waste reduction: see http://www.ukfirst.org.uk/index2.htm.


Further, Helen O'Neill of the PMC Studio gave a talk and deomnstration, and cited Mitsubishi, the manufacturer of PMC, as being pro-active in using organic compounds in this product - that is, the micron scale particles of metal are suspended in a water and cellulose solution.