What if you could buy a sink made out of wood chips? One that didn’t need to be protected with a special waterproof coat. But could sit in water for months and have no issues with it functioning well. Even if it was chipped or broken.
A group of grad students in Finland had a Christmas party and were mixing up some different mixtures from their lab for fun. They came back the next day and noticed one that had hardened. It gave them an idea. What if we mixed this with wood chips and put it in a mold and created fixtures like sinks, bathtubs and toilets? They tried it, and after some tweaking, they started an offshoot business (Woodio) which makes sinks, toilets, and bathtubs out of wood chips.
Using a mixture of 80% wood chips (which can be obtained from wood residue or by chipping up wood) and 20% bio-based resin, they came up with a way to produce bathroom fixtures.
These fixtures have distinct advantages over conventional ceramic and other types of fixtures. They are:
- Lighter in weight
- Shock resistant
- Made of renewable materials
- Manufactured with less energy
- A carbon sink
- Produced in a large range of colors and patterns
- Recyclable
The material can be prepared at room temperature and poured into molds to create sinks, toilets and bath tubs. These fixtures can then dry at room temperature and the molds removed after 4 hours. The fixtures are then cured at low heat (around 120 degrees) for a few hours. And then finished off.
This gives you lighter, shock-resistant, environmentally-friendly fixtures to use in your bathroom and kitchen. As opposed to the other materials like ceramics, aluminum, acrylic or stone, which require as much as 80% more energy to make and most of which are heavier and thus more expensive to ship around.
Right now, these fixtures are high-end products, but hopefully other companies will join in and create more affordable fixtures made of wood and bio-based resin.
It is amazing to me what people with a vision and willingness to work hard can come up with, given a need and knowledge. What else will wood replace in the future and give us more environmentally-friendly products?
Want to check out Woodio products? https://woodio.fi/en/where-to-shop-woodio/
This blog is based on an article in a Finnish forest newsletter.
