Materia Madura

We’re currently busy fitting out our first retail space, so we’ve been delving into research on suitable alternative materials. That’s when we luckily stumbled across Materia Madura, a woman-led sustainable materials and design company.

Plantain and coffee are cultural staple foods of Puerto Rico, and are produced and consumed in abundance therefore their organic waste is also abundant. Analysing food waste as a critical societal issue and a resource particular to Puerto Rico, a new material was invented from waste matter, mainly plantain and coffee, to open innovative possibilities for design applications.

Inspired by the indigenous Taíno culture from Puerto Rico and their prehistoric artefacts, Materia Madura offers an alternative to agricultural waste and recycling with a non-toxic, sustainable, locally sourced, and biodegradable material, which are then used to create a variety of products. 

The production model is transferable geographically, across the plantain and coffee belts and methodologically offers future potential for alternative food wastes. 

Taking advantage of this local waste and transforming it through a design approach, Materia Madura aims to highlight how many everyday objects are designed with toxic, unsustainable materials when they can instead be produced with locally sourced, non-toxic, sustainable and potentially biodegradable materials.

To learn more about Materia Madura, check out their website here.