Ottans: The Smart New Way to Turn Waste Into Beautiful Design

Ottans takes things most people throw away and turns them into things people want to keep. The name points to OTTAN Studio, a design enterprise from Istanbul, Turkey, that makes furniture, lamps, tiles and home pieces from green waste such as orange peels, carrot pulp, fallen leaves, cut grass and nut shells.

It sounds like a small craft idea. It is much bigger than that. The studio works with food producers, shops and greenhouses, collects waste that would be dumped or burned, and turns it into solid, colourful materials for homes and buildings. This article explains how ottans work, what they are made from, and why designers around the world have taken notice.

How the Ottans Story Began

The founder of OTTAN Studio is Ayse Yilmaz, an industrial product designer who studied at Istanbul Technical University. In the studio’s own telling, shared by design magazines, her idea began in a simple moment. She was sitting under a tree in a city park, watching colourful autumn leaves fall to the ground, and she began to wonder why such rich natural material was treated as rubbish.

From leaves, her tests grew. She tried tangerine peels first, according to her account to Anadolu Agency, and when that early test worked, she moved on to waste food, leaves and grass. Years of research and development followed. Reports place the founding of the studio in 2017, while some company databases list 2018, a small difference that likely reflects the gap between early work and formal company records. Either way, by the end of the decade OTTAN was showing real products made from waste.

The studio calls itself an impact enterprise, which means the business goal and the environmental goal are the same goal. It does not start with a mine, a forest or an oil well. It starts with waste streams that already exist in every city, peels from juice making, pulp from food production, shells from nut processing, and grass and leaves from parks and gardens.

That starting point shapes the studio’s best known line. We do not dig the mountains, destroy the forests and spend excessive energy to process raw materials, Yilmaz has said, in summary. By using fallen leaves or pruned branches, she argues, a maker can leave a living tree standing instead of cutting one down for a new product.

What Ottans Are Made From

The list of materials reads like the back door of a busy kitchen and a garden at the end of autumn. Fruit peels include orange and tangerine. Vegetable waste includes carrot pulp and artichoke leaves. Food waste includes expired lentils, rice, kidney beans and coffee pulp. Garden waste includes fallen leaves, pruned branches and cut grass. Nut waste includes hazelnut, pistachio and peanut shells, and even egg shells appear in company reporting.

Each waste gives the finished material its own natural colour and pattern, which is why ottans pieces look so alive. Orange peel brings warm orange tones. Carrot pulp brings a deep rusty shade. Lentils and grass bring soft greens and earth colours. No paint needs to invent these colours. Nature already made them, and the design keeps them visible instead of hiding them under a fake wood print.

The mix is mostly waste. Yilmaz has explained that about 80 percent of a product can be waste material, such as hazelnut shells in a wood alternative material, with the rest a recyclable green binder that holds it together. That high waste share is the heart of the idea. The thrown away part is not a small green garnish on a normal product. It is the product.

Some examples make the scale easy to picture. The studio has shared that the pulp from about five glasses of carrot juice, or the peels from about four glasses of orange juice, can become a whole lampshade. A coffee table in its collection was made from expired lentils and cut grass. Small containers, coasters, tiles and lamps have been made from carrot pulp, orange peels and artichoke leaves.

How Waste Becomes a Solid Design Piece

The process has clear steps, described by the studio and by design reporters who covered it. First, waste is collected from local sources, including food producers, retailer companies, greenhouses and municipalities across Turkey. Some waste is donated and some is bought, such as expired grains from stores and shells from nut producers.

Next, the waste is cleaned, dried and ground down. This turns soft, wet, fast rotting material into a stable raw material that can be stored and shaped. Then the ground waste is mixed with green resins or binders and placed or injected into moulds. The mould gives the piece its final form, a lampshade, a tile, a table part or a wall panel, and the natural colour and grain of the waste stay visible in the surface.

Quality is the hard part of any such process, and the studio has spent years on research to make materials that are strong, lasting and fit for real interiors, not just display shelves. Its later work has moved beyond small home pieces into building materials, including cladding and acoustic wall panels, where the texture of grass and leaves can help soften sound in a room. The founder holds two patents in sustainable material innovation, according to the studio, and its materials have been shown to designers and makers in global markets.

The same material thinking may reach further. Yilmaz has said the upcycled materials could also serve construction, automotive and home appliance sectors in time. Those wider uses are goals and trials rather than everyday facts today, but they show the size of the ambition behind a lampshade made of orange peel.

Why Designers and Home Owners Like Ottans

The first reason is beauty. Ottans pieces do not look like recycled products in the dull sense. They look like design objects, with rich colour, fine texture and a story you can see. A wall panel made from grass or a lamp glowing through carrot pulp starts a conversation in a room in a way a plain plastic piece never will.

The second reason is the forest argument. Wood is often treated as automatically green, yet global demand for wood still drives forest loss. OTTAN’s position, stated on its own channels, is that building a material from yearly waste, leaves that fall and peels that are thrown away each season, takes pressure off trees that took decades to grow. The studio has also pledged to plant one tree for every product sold, according to reporting on its early collections.

The third reason is fit with the circular economy, the idea that materials should loop back into use instead of ending in landfill. Food waste is a huge global problem, linked in company and industry reporting to a large share of greenhouse gas emissions when it rots or is burned. Turning even a small part of that stream into long lasting furniture and building panels keeps value in the loop for years.

Recognition has followed. The studio’s work has been featured by design platforms such as Designboom and Inhabitat, covered by BBC and other media according to the studio, and its founder has received honours including an EMAAR innovation challenge win in Dubai and women in sustainability awards in London and Cannes, as listed by the company. Such lists come from the studio itself, so they are best read as company reported recognition, but the wide design press coverage of its products is easy to verify.

What to Keep in Mind About Ottans

Honest excitement needs honest limits. Ottans are real, and the studio, its founder and its products are well documented by design media since 2020. Still, waste based materials are a young field. Prices, full product ranges and stock change over time and by country, and this article does not list them because no single current catalogue was confirmed during research. Buyers should check the studio’s own current channels for what is on sale, where it ships and how each piece should be cared for.

Care is a fair question for any natural material. A piece made largely from plant waste and green binder is not the same as solid oak or steel, and its best use is the use the maker states for it. Ask about water, heat and cleaning before placing such a piece in a kitchen, bathroom or busy public space.

Scale is the other open question. One studio, however smart, cannot consume the world’s food waste. The real power of ottans may be as a proof and a pattern, showing larger makers that yearly waste can replace newly extracted material in more products. If big furniture, building and car companies adopt such materials at volume, the park leaf moment of one designer in Istanbul will have changed far more than home decor.

For now, ottans stand as one of the clearest examples of upcycling done with taste. Waste in, beauty out, and a tree left standing. It is hard to argue with a design idea that leaves a room better looking and a city a little cleaner at the same time.

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FAQs

What are ottans?

Ottans refers to the work of OTTAN Studio of Istanbul, which makes furniture, lighting, tiles, wall panels and home pieces from upcycled green waste such as fruit peels, vegetable pulp, leaves, grass and nut shells.

Who founded OTTAN Studio?

It was founded by Ayse Yilmaz, an industrial product designer from Istanbul Technical University. She began with fallen leaves and early tests with tangerine peels, then built the studio in the late 2010s.

How are ottans products made?

Waste is collected from food producers, shops, greenhouses and local sources, then cleaned, dried and ground. It is mixed with green binders or resins and shaped in moulds, keeping the natural colour and texture of the waste.

Why use waste instead of wood?

Leaves, peels and shells renew every year and are usually thrown away, while cutting wood uses trees that took decades to grow. Using waste saves those trees and keeps useful material out of landfill.

Final Thoughts

Ottans turns a daily problem into a daily pleasure. Every city throws away peels, pulp, shells, leaves and grass, and OTTAN Studio in Istanbul has shown that those humble leftovers can become tables, lamps, tiles and panels full of colour and character. Led by founder Ayse Yilmaz, the studio proves that smart design does not need new mines or felled forests. It needs fresh eyes on what we already throw away. That simple shift, from waste to beauty, is why the ottans idea keeps winning attention around the world.