Merdacotta: the new material that will surprise you

The cows of the Italian Gianantonio Locatelli’s produce about 30 thousand liters of milk per day. They also produced 100,000 kg of manure over the same period. He saw potential use in the manure stacks, and so Merdacotta was born.

While looking for ways to deal with this amount of waste, he saw a potential use in manure piles. And then, together with the architect Luca Cipelletti, he developed a reddish material similar to terracotta made from cow manure and clay, which is called Merdacotta, a name that alludes to its origin (merda = shit in Italian).

The sustainable concept is coupled with features such as lightness, resistance to temperature variations and good appearance of objects made with the material. With the merdacotta they created decorative vases, tiles and utensils, exhibited at Design Week in Milan.

It is important to say that the products do not have bad smell

The dung goes through an industrial digester that extracts urea and methane gas, producing energy and leaving only dry material with a neutral odor. It is then mixed with straw, other agricultural waste and clay, molded, enameled and burnt in a furnace suitable for this purpose.

In the same farm the duo maintains the “Museo della Merda” (Shit Museum, in English), in which visitors get to know the Merdacotta’s manufacture and can acquire objects made of the material.

Parts can come in contact with food and beverages due to their enamel coating and cooking. Its creator, however, acknowledges that in this case there is a psychological barrier to it.

It is easier to buy a pot for plants than a mug that once was bovine manure. Still, the ambition is one day to be able to build a whole house of merdacotta. A sustainable, attractive and low-cost innovation that has everything to be successful.

Article originally published in my column in i9 Magazine on 06/24/2016 and updated on 09/14/2018.