Upfront
To Shell and Back
Andrew Edwards, Amir Afshar, Edward Jones and Insiya Jafferjee crossed paths while studying Innovation Design Engineering, a joint masters between the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. The quartet’s passion for sustainable materials led to their forming the Shellworks: a project that turns seafood waste into food-safe carrier bags, self-fertilising plant pots and antibacterial blister packaging (to date). “We found there is a significant amount of shellfish waste that contains a valuable biopolymer called chitin,” the Shellworks crew explains. “The process has two main stages, extraction and forming. We first extract chitin from the shell using a
