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Upcycling oyster shells into bio-alternative to concrete

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Reuters

Could the humble oyster help the construction industry reduce its carbon footprint by replacing the limestone in concrete with crushed shells?&quot;Oyster[Crete] is a bio-alternative material to traditional concrete using discarded oyster shells that are collected from partner restaurants and turned into this composite bio-material,&quot; architect and interior designer Mooka Srisurayotin told Reuters.She was inspired to use the shells after coming across a busy oyster restaurant in London that throws thousands of shells into the bin every day.&quot;They went through like 5000 shells a day,&quot; she said.&quot;So we took the shells and saw the potential in the shell and it has the same chemical composition as limestone. So that&#x27;s how Oyster[Crete] began,&quot; she said.The founder of her own interdisciplinary design studio, called Matter Forms, Srisurayotin set about developing a new sustainable building material replacing limestone with crushed oyster shells.&quot;We would separate these shells into varying sizes, and then we would combine them into an Oyster[Crete] mix and all the composition within this material is all natural and the key ingredient is 80% oyster shells. We also use sand and clay, but it&#x27;s very small quantity,&quot; she said.Srisurayotin describes her early products as small interior design objects but says she wants to eventually scale up production to create practical, large scale Oyster[Crete] building materials.Her first project could be the designer clothes shop, UJNG, where Matter Forms exhibited during the London Design Festival, which is considering an Oyster[Crete] facade.&quot;These are sort of our beginning point but the main goal, we want to test it in a larger scale application like for architectural wall cladding, interior design,&quot; she said.At &#x27;The Whistling Oyster&#x27; fishmonger and oyster bar in west London, fishmonger Will Boden said they get through thousands of oyster shells a month, all of which currently go straight in the trash. He added his support to upcycling of the shells.&quot;It&#x27;s a great idea. Anything&#x27;s better than going into a bin, so yeah, great idea,&quot; Boden said.Cement, concrete’s crucial binding agent, is responsible for at least 6 percent of global CO2 emissions and is considered by many a &quot;hard to abate&quot; sector, generating huge volumes of carbon dioxide not only from the coal used to heat kilns, but also during the conversion of limestone into clinker, a key part of the production process.An infrastructure boom in developing countries could drive that figure as high as 17% by 2050, according to a U.S.-based think tank the Rhodium Group. - Report from Reuters

Mooka Srisurayotin, founder of interdisciplinary design studio called Matter Forms, set about developing a new sustainable building material replacing limestone with crushed oyster shells.

Mooka Srisurayotin, founder of interdisciplinary design studio called Matter Forms, set about developing a new sustainable building material replacing limestone with crushed oyster shells.