PennToday features DumoLab's work on "Turning Peels into Pavers"

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design are transforming unavoidable food waste into durable, biodegradable building materials, offering a promising alternative to conventional construction products. Assistant professor Laia Mogas‑Soldevila, director of Penn’s DumoLab, and research associate Yasaman Amirzehni collaborate with Penn Dining and Bon Appétit to repurpose pre‑consumer restaurant scraps such as fruit peels and eggshells—materials that typically contribute to the 14.8% of restaurant food waste destined for landfills.

In the lab, these organic leftovers are dried, ground, and combined with water‑based binders to create “smart biocomposites” designed for architectural applications. The resulting materials can be used for insulation blocks, cladding, shingles, and tiles that sense environmental conditions, grow moss, or change color to indicate soil toxicity. Beyond sustainability, the biocomposites offer sensory benefits such as natural scents and tactile surfaces that positively influence well‑being and architectural experience.

A key challenge to large‑scale adoption is variability in organic waste, prompting the team to rigorously test and categorize materials into predictable families. By building an open‑source data library of material performance, the researchers aim to train AI models that can reliably predict how different organic blends behave, helping biomaterials become a standardized, mainstream alternative to concrete and plastic.

READ FULLL ARTCLE HERE including short VIDEO: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/turning-peels-pavers-how-penn-designer… by Writer Nathi Magubane, Photographer Eric Sucar, and Videographer David Lowe-Bianco.

This work has been possible by a partnership with Mouhamed Mboup (Executive Chef at Penn Dining within Hill College House) and Elise Dudley (Regional Sustainability & Food Education at Bon Apetit). and features  bio-composite proposals developed by the 18 students of "ARCH-7325 Inquiry into Biomaterial Architectures" during Fall 2025.