Description:

Verbeta is a natural, versatile and timeless biomaterial made from rotten beetroot. By dabbing a wet brush on Verbeta’s sketchbook cover, artists can utilise the vibrant pigment of beetroot for unique painting experiences.

This project was part of a material-driven design course at Malmö University, Sweden which aimed to use resources from local waste streams to create new materials and apply them to a valuable context.

Beetroots are one of Sweden’s highest-produced foods with over two tonnes of beets harvested per year. However, due to beetroots’ weather sensitivities and Sweden’s extreme seasonal climates, thousands of beets go to waste while a further 30% of Sweden’s annual harvest is rejected for not meeting the stores’ aesthetic standards. This leaves the Swedish beetroot industry with a massive waste stream of rotten and undesirable-looking beets.

We saw this volume of wasted beets as an opportunity to create a sustainable, innovative and purposeful biomaterial. Over 10 weeks, we experimented with rotting beetroots to create a practical material with desirable physical and functional properties. We developed 76 samples, employing user interviews and workshops to discover what properties made the material most desirable. This included studying how users physically and emotionally interacted with the material while getting feedback on how the material could be applied. Words such as ‘luxurious,’ ‘natural’ and ‘handcrafted’ were often used to describe the material. Data from these user studies helped us refine our samples and inspired our material’s contextual direction.

Experimenting with beets was a messy process. The juices of the beets often stained our clothes and equipment. These “accidents” formed the basis for our final product as we realised that the beet’s bright pigment was a hidden strength of the material. We used excess liquids from our material processing to experiment with painting and sketching with beet juice. The result was a layerable, smooth and extremely pigmented “watercolour,” which inspired the product’s final form as a sketchbook and watercolour palette.

Verbeta demonstrates how using biomaterials can be an alternative to several manufactured materials such as leather, plastic and artificial dyes. Its flexible, smooth and patterned texture makes it a sensorially unique and technically versatile material. By embodying an artistic experience through an authentic resource, the Verbeta sketchbook is a stylish and practical visualisation of how biomaterials can be implemented in creative, meaningful and valuable ways.