I recently gave my mum a bag of clay for Mothers day and told her not to throw anything away as it can be recycled. She asked me how it was done. So below is a step by step guide of how to recycle clay by hand:
What you Need:
- Bowl
- Water
- Plaster Bat (or something that will absorb water like a clean towel)
1. Put the clay in a bowl and fill it with water 3/4 full. After an hour or so you can push any bulky items down so they all get submerged in the water.
When it has all turned to smush it should look something like this:
2. Next you need to remove the surface water. You can carefully just poor the bowl down an outside drain, or use sponges to take the surface water off.
3. Next the remaining water needs to be taken out and water removed. A plaster bat is best as it will asborb the water and just leave the clay behind. Mine has broken in half and could do with replacing but it still does the job: (I am wondering if anyone has used something else like newspaper or sponge, comment below if you have)
4. Then leave to dry for a few hours, check back occasionally. With plaster its not long before the clay closest to the plaster will have dried. The picture below shows where its dried enough for me to turn it over, so the soggy clay on top can touch the plaster which will absorb it.
5. Once the clay has dried on both sides of the bat you can wedge it back into blocks of clay:
6. Bagged up and ready to return to my mum!
The whole process took about 6 hours. The warmer the environment the quicker the process will be.
But the beauty of clay is that it can be recycled so there is little waste.
Comments (2)
Hi
I got a great idea from a friend of mine. You put the clay in a pillow case and submerge that in a bucket of water. Once the clay has been in there long enough I drain out the water that is in the bucket and I put a few bricks in the bottom of the bucket and set the pillowcase on them which gives space for water to seep out of the pillow case and down into the bucket. I leave overnight and most of the excess water has drained into the bucket and you just dump the clay out to dry further.
Great thanks for sharing, great idea.