Everyday enviro with Elise: conscious crafting

Everyday enviro with Elise: conscious crafting

By Elise Catterall  June 29th, 2021

Embarking on a lockdown craft project? Elise looks at some reasons for avoiding a popular craft material and suggests some eco-friendly alternatives.

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Last week I looked at the environmental issues associated with glitter, and it got me thinking about another big craft medium with serious environmental issues: resin.

Epoxy resin has been having a bit of a craft moment because it is relatively easy to handle, inexpensive, accessible and creates aesthetically pleasing products. Resin is used in moulds to make things like vases, trinket bowls, jewellery holders, jewellery, decorative dishes and so on. It is also used as a coating medium for wood and for resin art. But, and it is a big but, it is a plastic, which begs the question: do we really need more plastic added to the environment, especially for something non-essential like a homemade trinket bowl?

When crafting with resin, you need a two-part resin, moulds, dyes (if you want colour) and some tools like stirrers, plastic cups, plastic gloves and sandpaper. To cast resin, two liquids are combined in a plastic cup, dye is added, then the combined liquids are poured into a mould or over an artwork. The left-over resin in the cup is waste — liquid plastic (which will set to hard plastic) in a plastic cup, which is thrown away along with the other tools, including the plastic gloves.

If you are using more than one colour for your product, you’ll need to repeat the process for every colour and will end up with even more plastic waste (though probably pretty plastic waste). There is also the issue of vapours, which can trigger asthma and are the reason face masks are recommended when mixing the liquids.

Once the resin hardens and is removed from the mould, it is then sandpapered smooth, which sees lots of fine plastic ‘dust’ flying around the atmosphere.   

All things going well, you’ll end up with yet another plastic product in your home, which is ultimately likely to end up in landfill at some point. I genuinely don’t see that it is worth it.

It is worth pointing out that this really relates to small scale/home-based manufacture of resin items. When large scale manufacturers make resin products, they have the capacity to recycle or reduce waste resin. Dinosaur Designs, for example, make products from waste resin including multi-coloured pieces that are made by mixing together leftover resins from the production of their regular range.

There are also ‘eco-resins’ that are plant based and potentially biodegradable, but they are not as widely available and are more expensive, which means most resin used for home crafting or by small scale makers is standard synthetic epoxy resin which isn’t biodegradable.

So what are the alternatives? Well, you could just go without. I’m not sure anyone can really argue that they need a new plastic knick-knack for their home. If you really must have a trinket bowl or bangle, you can hit the op-shops instead. If the need to make something yourself is really overwhelming — and please know that I am absolutely a fan of crafting — consider pottery, especially terracotta, which is far more environmentally-friendly despite the energy needed for firing, rope work/macrame/weaving, especially if using recycled materials, paper-mache or even concrete. 

There is no point making something beautiful for yourself or your home if it is making the environment ugly.

Positive Environment News has been compiled using publicly available information. Planet Ark does not take responsibility for the accuracy of the original information and encourages readers to check the references before using this information for their own purposes. 

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Elise Catterall

Elise is a writer, photographer, and naturopath with a passion for nature. She completed a Master of Public Health in 2017 through the University of Sydney. Her photographic work focuses on flowers and plants as a way of celebrating nature. She has been writing for Planet Ark since 2017, sharing positive environment stories, personal environmental experiences and perspectives.

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