In New York, high fashion tastemaker Tom Ford and celebrity-backed environmental consultancy 52HZ are offering a $1.2 million prize for a degradable plastic. The Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize is meant to encourage designers and manufacturers to create an alternative for thin-film plastics that would break down in both soil and ocean conditions. According to […]
In Iceland, designer Valdís Steinarsdóttir has developed a gelatin-based material that can be made into seamless articles of clothing using molds. The garments can also be melted down and made into new clothes in a closed-loop. Traditional clothing production leads to 60 billion square meters of waste annually. Steinarsdóttir, who displayed a vest […]
In France, hosiery brand Gambettes Box has added two styles of tights that use fibers made from castor oil. The tights include a stylized pois pattern and a pair with diamond shapes. The material comes from Italy’s Fulgar and is trade-named EVO. Gambettes Box is a subscription box service and previously offered a green […]
In Maine, a leading 3D printing technology group has delivered flood barriers made from biobased materials to help support “transport resiliency” and protect coastal infrastructure from extreme weather. The modular barriers were built by Habib Dagher, executive director of the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center, and his team. Because they are modular, […]
In Scotland, a startup has developed a reusable bottle from wheat straw it hopes will help reduce single-use plastics waste. Cleverly named S’WHEAT, the bottle is the brainchild of friends Amee Ritchie and Jake Elliott-Hook, two recent university graduates. The bottled are made from the waste stalks from harvesting wheat, which can be used as […]
In Spain, a leading dairy company is helping cultured milk startups advance their technology by launching a startup incubator. Pascual Innoventures—the innovation arm of Calidad Pascual, a Spanish dairy company with $1 billion in annual sales—has introduced the Mylkubator to help nurture young cellular agriculture companies looking to completely revolutionize the dairy industry away from […]
In California, a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California has received additional funding from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts to evaluate the potential for building astronaut housing from fungi tissue. Lynn Rothschild, an astrobiologist and synthetic biologist, tells space.com she got the idea from a student team who used mycelium to make a […]
In Vietnam, AirXcoffee has developed a plastic using used coffee grounds that can be used in disposable tableware and other items currently made from plastic. Dubbed Coffee Bio-Composite, the material is designated food safe by TUV Rheinland and has biobased content between 60% and 80%. AirXcoffee uses coffee grounds sourced from Vietnamese coffee shops. The […]
In California, sustainable sneaker pioneer Allbirds has partnered with footwear giant Adidas to create Futurecraft.Footprint, a shoe with a 63% lower carbon footprint than the average sneaker. The partnership, begun last year, involved sharing information about materials and supply chains. Both companies say the sustainability profile of Futurecraft.Footprint is a “personal best” for their brands. […]
In Ireland, consultancy Farrelly and Mitchell has been contracted for a European Union project endeavoring to convert waste feathers from poultry industry into usable materials. Feathers contain significant amounts of keratin, which can be used to produce biodegradable materials, but about 75% of waste feathers end up in a landfill. Farrelly and Mitchell will evaluate […]
