At the beginning of this semester, I explored ways to get bioplastic. I took a simple recipe to make Galalith from milk. And I also took the Bioplastics co-making workshops arranged by Alex and the Architecture Dept in order to tried some more different methods to get bioplastics.

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In this project, an alternative way of bioplastic is introduced and see if there is any potential value in our daily life. The initial idea is to share that there are many ways to reduce plastic pollution and making plastic out of milk is one of them. The plastic made out of milk was developed on an industrial scale in the late 19th century and it was known as Galalith. In this project, our idea is I can also make this plastic with expired milk instead of throwing it in the garbage.

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“Plastic made from milk” — that certainly sounds like something made-up. I was surprised to learn that in the early 20th century, milk was used to make many different plastic ornaments — including jewellery for Queen Mary of England. In 1897 Galalith was introduced by German chemists, the plastic that is made out of milk and named as Galalith, which is derived from the Greek words gala (milk) and lithos (stone). It’s a biodegradable plastic made from milk.  The new plastic was presented at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1900. One can make the use of expired milk by converting it to other useful things.

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With an ever-growing demand and consumption of fossil plastics in modern “throw-away” society, environmentally friendly alternatives for making plastics are more important than ever, to minimize the negative impacts associated with conventional plastics. With a viable alternative, the average consumer can make at home, it can have the potential to help reduce the global plastic waste. There are different ways of focusing on reducing plastic pollution, my motivation is to bring back the popular idea from the 19th century describing the plastic that is made out of milk. This plastic was very popular in that era, which is not harmful to the environment and human life. I decided to point out this old idea by adding some new measurements so that the process of making it is easy and possible to do it at home. Based on that, I did experiments and made some tiny things from the materials.

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During the research, I found that how the impact from the animal agriculture and how the demands from dairy product could affect our world. Regarding to the carbon footprint, cow milk is a harmful product. They use so many lands, water and generate huge amounts of greenhouse gases. This is because cows require a hell of a lot of land space and water. Then, there is the fact that cows are the major producers of methane, which is more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide.