Royal College of Art upcycles waste into pencils for its students

Down in London, the Royal College of Art absorbs students and brings out the ‘Artist’ in them. An artist who at least, if not ahead of his time, takes a step further to bring out the change when others are just ranting about the injustice done to our Mother Earth. Ariane Prin and her gang of students are ‘Artists’ in true sense. Amassing the scrap scattered all over the college premises, she has been able to manufacture that one thing which is a medium for all the artists to divulge their work on the canvas: Pencils!

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Ariane Prin, now a graduate, was smitten by the very thought of utilizing the piles of sawdust which lay wasted on the school’s woodshop floor, unclaimed. Interestingly, these scraps that flew off the machines used to get mixed up on the floor looking like a post-industrial mixture of wood, plastic, fiberboard, and resin. Picking up the idea, Prin decided to take advantage and utilize this waste to manufacture pencils. The idea if well executed would not only provide the school with a business of art supplies but also encourage an eco-friendly closed-loop manufacturing process, employing the renewable waste.

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The biggest challenge was to formulate these renewable raw materials into a usable by-product. For the pencil case she needed something chunky textured which could provide a nice grip. She found her answer when she mixed the throwaways with flour (obtained from school’s cafe) and water.

Once the case was ready she began working on the lead. She picked up materials from various departments of her school hoping to strike the gold. Picking up things, Prin started combining them together, like wax (from jewelry department) with ink from printing department) and dried-out clay (from ceramics department) with liquid graphite (from the glass department). The result was fascinating color combination.

All raw materials collected, now came the tough work of solidifying it into a pencil. Initially, she manually crafted the pencils using molds followed by a series of machine-like syringes. However, the dawdling process enforced her to solve it out with a team of school engineers. As a result, they devised a "co-extruder" machine that could push out the casing and the lead together, professionally. Prin, along with her team, ultimately produced 160 pencils and sold many of them.

Although not obsessed with what she has achieved, she aims to carry on this sustainable process until each of the 1,044 students possesses one. Since one bag of sawdust can produce 90 pencils and every year 170 bags of sawdust (which makes 15,300 pencils) gets accumulated in the school, she is planning to expand the business to raise money for school.

Optimistically she says:

One way or another, there is always bins full of materials everywhere at school. These are treasures for me.

Via: FastCoDesign