Orjola Creates Wool from Pine Needles
- December 6, 2016
- 0 comments
- Bob Krell
- Posted in EnvironmentalSustainability
True sustainability and environmental awareness doesn’t only come from restricting what we can use, but rather, to use what we have to its fullest capacity. Looking back to how older generations used their resources Tamara Orjola was inspired to take another look at our forest’s potential.
“I knew that [the] pine tree has much more to offer and in old days it used to be used as food, remedies, to build homes, furniture, and other purposes,” she says. “There is a lot of knowledge and awareness we used to pass from generation to generation which [was] forgotten due to development of mass production.”
The project she completed over a year’s time, for the Design Academy Eindhoven, was to create a method to extract and refine the pine needle fibers, allowing them to be transformed into textiles, paper, and a composite building or insulation material.
Orjola has developed a technique to make wool from pine needles; allowing her to utilize the 20%-30% of a tree’s mass that would have otherwise been wasted during harvesting. To achieve this Orjola looked and industrial processes such as “retting” and has altered them to meet her needs. Both essential oils and natural dyes from the needles are extracted as a byproduct of this technique: allowing those who utilize this to have more resources to work with.
The resulting wool can be made soft or hard. The product may has lost the notably pine sent but has retained a forest scent. The pieces she created at the time of this article include stools and carpets. The intent would be to reduce the need for materials such as coir, jute, and cotton; and maybe even wood itself.
In a world of mass production and, often, waste, this technique pays homage to the priorities of generations past. Those generations did not have the resources to waste so they would make the most of what they did have. With this technique, and those like it, we are coming full circle and re-learning what sustainability is.