Spotted: It’s estimated that up to 50 per cent of all plastic produced every year is single-use, meaning it’s only needed for a few moments before being thrown away. In a bid to cut that figure, in 2021 the EU implemented a ban on various single-use plastics, including cutlery. This ban has since created a big gap in the market for sustainable, disposable cutlery. French startup Koovee is working to fill that gap.
Koovee has developed edible cutlery designed to replace all types of single-use plastic utensils. The edible forks and spoons are made from a mix of flour, rapeseed oil, salt, and natural flavours, and have the taste and texture of crackers. Customers can purchase various flavours of the cutlery: natural, almond, and Herbs de Provence. To improve the sustainability of the cutlery further, Marseille-based Koovee also sources its flour from French wheat.
The edible utensils can last more than five minutes when completely submerged in 70 degrees Celsius water, so can be used for soup and other hot foods. Koovee was developed by ecologist and Sciences Po graduate Tiphaine Guerout, who told Springwise that the utensils are “organic, yummy, and sturdy enough for any type of meal.”
The cutlery was developed with the help of financing provided by the French Bank of Public Investment (Bpifrance) and the company also raised €500,000 in an angel round of funding in 2022. Koovee currently produces more than 7,000 pieces of cutlery a day and has a number of commercial customers. Guerout told Springwise that the company hopes to scale in Europe to provide Koovee to “every restaurant and supermarket.”
A number of other recent innovations spotted by Springwise are also working to eliminate single-use plastic, including packaging made from milk proteins and sustainable straws made from sedge grass.
Spotted: Fashion design, like many other areas of design, is increasingly digital. Large fashion manufacturers now often digitise their fabrics and then use tools to design products digitally using these fabrics, making sure all measurements and seams are accurate, before manufacturing the physical garments.
However, 3D imaging technology can be very expensive, so smaller designers often have no choice but to produce many physical samples first, each with a different fabric and measurements, wasting time, money, and resources. Bandicoot Imaging Sciences is working to change this with a solution that can quickly and cheaply capture fabrics and materials digitally, without any special equipment, and create digital twins that can be used with other digital design tools.
Bandicoot’s Shimmer View system allows designers to scan their physical fabrics with just 10 minutes of training. The photos are then uploaded to the web app where the cloud service automatically generates physically based texture maps and fabric renders. These can be used with other 3D design tools or digitally shared with customers.
Fashion is big business, and this is reflected in Bandicoot’s recent pre-seed funding round. The company raised AU$1 million (around €605,000) to boost innovation and grow the technology, including the addition of new capabilities to the cloud-based platform. Bandicoot CGO Jørgen Sevild told Springwise that “Bandicoot is the fastest growing material digitisation technology on the market, and we are constantly looking to improve the user experience and impact of our pioneering technological developments.”
From upcycling textiles into new products to delivering integrated analysis of the complete fashion supply chain, there is a wide range of innovations aimed at reducing waste in fashion.
Spotted: The UN Convention to Combat Desertification’s latest report calls global drought resilience “a necessity.” Given that in the three years between 2016 and 2018, 70 per cent of cereal crops in the Mediterranean were damaged, and droughts continue to grow in severity and length, the outlook is challenging for the world’s agriculture systems.
Rising sea levels are affecting the quality of the water that is available to farmers, which, when combined with the stress of high heat, severely impacts crop yields. Heat and salty soil are two of the main stressors for a variety of plants, many of which are crucial parts of the global diet. Seeking ways to increase growing resilience without using toxins and chemical treatments, agritech startup SaliCrop has created a method that uses a seed’s natural response to stressors to make it possible to grow crops in arid, salty soil.
The company uses a combination of organic and physiological compounds to mimic environmental stressors. That then boosts a seed’s natural biochemical reactions and strengthens the plant’s ability to survive in more arid conditions. The treatments also increase the size of the fruits and vegetables grown and improve the plants’ resilience to pests.
SaliCrop is working with commercial growers of alfalfa, onion, and tomatoes, and their crop yields have increased between 16 and 40 per cent. In Europe, Africa, and India, the company is completing field trials with crops that include rice, wheat, corn, peppers, and broccoli and is seeing yields increase by between 7 and 15 per cent. Those results are particularly important in light of various climate projections that predict decreases in wheat yields of up to six per cent due to increased severity of weather events and overall conditions.
Improving the health of degraded soil is an essential aspect of reducing the carbon emissions from agriculture. Innovations in Springwise’s library helping make that change include using sound to enhance soil microbe growth and using microalgae to make desert soil arable.
Spotted: The volatility of weather is increasing as climate change affects all regions around the world. The International Energy Agency reports that “the temperature today is around 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre‑industrial levels, and global emissions have not yet peaked.” More changes are likely, making it even more challenging for businesses to plan for and predict future scenarios.
A new AI-powered forecasting engine has a solution to the volatility of weather and its impact on business cycles. Designed explicitly for the commonly used quarterly reporting format of businesses across many industries, Planette AI’s climate intelligence provides mid-range forecasts up to five years in the future. Reports are available seasonally, quarterly, annually, and by the decade.
The precision of the forecasts is made possible by Earth system models that incorporate ice, oceans, and land surfaces, as well as the traditional review of the atmosphere. The Planette team then adds artificial intelligence to the process to produce rapid, timely forecasts. Without the use of the AI, forecasts based on such detailed physics data would take hundreds of hours to create.
The workflow is patent-pending, and each forecast includes an analysis of 14 variables, including flood, fire, and hurricane risk, along with the potential for hail and tornadoes and the strength of the electromagnetic radiation from the sun (solar irradiance). Each forecast covers 25 square kilometres, and companies can request analysis for as many areas as needed.
Planette AI integrates its forecasts into each company’s own API and automatically updates forecasts quarterly. Each forecast also comes with a hindcast, where Planette AI reviews its predictions against actual events and measurements. Doing this helps strengthen the AI and provides businesses with insight into the system’s accuracy. So far, hindcasts for one-year forecasts have proven to be more than 80 per cent accurate worldwide, with up to 90 per cent accuracy in some locations.
As global weather patterns change, innovators are creating new methods of making what feels like constant change somewhat predictable. Examples in Springwise’s library include micro-climate forecasting for the energy sector and hyperlocal rain predictions for the tropics.
London-based practice Studio Bark has unveiled plans for Breach House, a water-powered family home located in Leicestershire, UK.
Designed to enable the owners to “live off the land”, the proposal by Studio Bark will be powered by photovoltaic (PV) panels and micro-hydro energy, creating a home capable of running off-grid.
Breach House will be powered by photovoltaic (PV) panels and micro-hydro energy
The 430-metre-square proposal will comprise the new home, along with the restoration of an existing agricultural barn and extensive landscaping.
Making use of the site’s location among a network of small brooks, streams and ponds, run-off water from the surrounding fields will be used to provide a portion of the home’s energy needs. It will also be harvested on-site and filtered for use within the house.
The ‘water tower’ connects the home’s two wings
“The concept is a rural home which establishes a reciprocity between ecology and human needs through water,” studio director Tom Bennett told Dezeen.
“The massing echoes the typology of a traditional farmstead, blending contextual influences to create a contemporary building which resonates subtly with its setting.”
The design references the typology of traditional farm buildings
Drawing on the local typologies, the home will be arranged in clusters complemented by courtyards and sheltered outdoor spaces formed by deep overhanging eaves.
A ‘water tower’, which will sit centrally on the site, will house ventilation and circulation functions as well as water filtration.
It will also hold a staircase and corridor to connect the home’s two wings and was designed to be a visual reference to the use of water throughout the scheme.
Low carbon and natural materials suggested for the proposal include reclaimed brick, UK-sourced timber and reclaimed tiles, which were chosen in response to the character and heritage of the surrounding landscape.
Renders of the proposal reveal a largely timber structure, with exposed beams interspersed with skylights featuring on the home’s interior.
On the exterior, trapezoidal-shaped roofs will be clad with decorative tiles and provide shelter for a balcony adjacent to the bedroom on the upper floor.
Exposed timber beams and skylights will feature on the home’s interior
According to the studio, the residual carbon impact of the building is expected to be countered by landscaping proposals – including the planting of around 200 trees – that will accelerate carbon drawdown on the site.
Calculations undertaken by the studio suggest that these landscaping proposals will sequester roughly three times the amount of carbon that will be released over the building’s lifetime.
Run-off water will be harvested and filtered for use within the home
“Proposed works include a new woodland area, wet meadow, enriched wildflower meadow, reinstated historical copse, successional tree planting, new ponds and reinstated field boundaries,” Bennett said.
“These measures will sequester carbon, greatly enhance the ecological value of the currently agricultural site, in addition to assisting with natural flood management in the locality.”
Breach House is expected to result in a 65 per cent biodiversity net gain
The proposal is anticipated to result in a 65 per cent biodiversity net gain, with additional habitat measures incorporated into the home set to include a bat attic.
Other architectural projects with a heavy focus on sustainability include the UK’s “most sustainable” and largest neighbourhood made from timber and a neighbourhood in Paris made up of limestone buildings.
The renders are courtesy of Studio Bark.
Project credits:
Architect: Studio Bark Planning consultant/agent: Studio Bark Client: Private Domestic Structural engineer: Structure Workshop Landscape architect: Studio 31 Energy consultant: Max Fordham Hydrologist: Amber Planning Ecologist: Elton Ecology Arboriculturalist: RJ Tree Services Highways: Create Consulting Engineers
Spotted: Leather is one of the most energy-inefficient and destructive textiles. In addition to animal wealfare concerns, leather production involves large amounts of energy, land, and water, alongside the use of harmful chemicals – leading to deforestation and pollution. One way to reduce the environmental impact of the textile industry is to introduce more circularity into the production process. And this is exactly what startup ALT.Leather has done.
Unlike some other alternative leathers, bio-based ALT.Leather is not made from fossil fuel-based materials like PVC. Instead, the company used agricultural waste to develop a unique fibre with a structure that mimics the 3D webbing of animal leather, which helps to make the final product durable and strong.
The company’s founder, Tina Funder, told Springwise: “Our product contains zero petroleum plastic, zero animal products and is ethically made.” The Australian company also uses 100 per cent Australian ingredients, reducing emissions from transportation.
ALT.Leather recently closed an oversubscribed seed funding round, raising AU$1.1 million (around €667,000), exceeding the initial target of AU$750,000 (around €455,000). The round was led by investment firm Wollemi Capital Group.
Springwise is spotting more and more innovators making use of bio-based materials and textiles. These include a bio-based approach to leather recycling and textiles made from pineapple waste.
Spotted: According to a McKinsey survey, the availability of chargers is the most significant consideration of sceptical EV buyers. Hoping to tackle that is Kolbev, a Swiss-based company, which envisions a future where renewable energy seamlessly integrates into urban landscapes. The company’s innovation: an on-demand, wireless EV charging system equipped with energy storage, designed to be swiftly deployed to city locations.
Subscribing customers can use Kolbev’s app to request e-charging in specific car parks and city hotspots. The robotic charger will then autonomously locate the e-car and manoeuvre beneath the vehicle to initiate charging, offering a space-saving solution in compact city areas.
Importantly, Kolbev’s innovation removes the barrier of costly upfront investments by operating without the need for infrastructure. This approach not only ensures easy implementation but opens up the possibility for rapid scalability. Additionally, Kolbev’s solution delivers renewable energy, aiming to catalyse the widespread adoption of EVs in a more sustainable manner.
Springwise has previously spotted other innovations aimed at improving the way EVs are charged, from a new charging system that improves reliability, scalability, and cost-effectiveness to an AI-powered smart charging technology.
Swiss furniture brand Vitra will prioritise reducing the environmental impact of its existing lines through material innovation, CEO Nora Fehlbaum tells Dezeen in this interview.
One of the industry’s best known and most influential manufacturers, Vitra‘s collections include iconic pieces such as Eames plastic shell chairs and Panton chairs.
Like its peers, the brand is under increasing pressure to reduce the ecological footprint of its operations in the face of worsening climate change.
Nora Fehlbaum spoke to Dezeen at the Vitra Campus in Weil Am Rhein
Speaking to Dezeen at the Vitra Campus in Weil Am Rhein, Germany, Fehlbaum suggested that the company’s heritage as a high-end, design-focused furniture brand is inherently aligned with sustainability.
“Vitra’s greatest contribution to sustainability is its products with an above-average service life, which omit everything superfluous,” she told Dezeen.
“Our roots in modern design would allow nothing else.”
However, she claimed Vitra is “doing everything we can with all the means we have” to become more sustainable.
The Álvaro Siza-designed Factory at the Vitra Campus has been partially converted to accommodate a new Vitra Circle store (also top)
“Everybody at Vitra has understood our environmental mission,” she said. “We don’t have a sustainability officer – everybody has taken it as their own.”
Vitra’s stated goal is to be “a net-positive company based on all the indicators of its ecological footprint by 2030”.
It has a long way to go, with the company’s most recent sustainability report published in 2022 stating that its total emissions for the year were equivalent to nearly 141,000 tonnes of CO2.
Eames shell chairs now made from recycled plastic
The brand’s sustainability strategy is chiefly focused on its popular existing products, Fehlbaum said.
“We have the biggest impact if we change the products that we sell the most of already, rather than inventing one single sustainable product,” she argued.
“At Vitra, a product is never final, but continues to evolve.”
The Vitra Circle store refurbishes and sells second hand Vitra products
As of January this year, the shells of the Eames plastic chairs manufactured by Vitra are now made exclusively from recycled post-consumer plastic.
“[The Eames shell chair] is probably the most iconic, most copied chair out there – and it won’t be available in virgin material,” said Fehlbaum.
The switch means the shells have a speckled finish that differs from the originals, but Fehlbaum is satisfied with this “recycled aesthetic”.
“It’s a different aesthetic, and of course we hope the consumer gets used to – and maybe even comes to love – this new aesthetic,” she said.
“That’s a risk that we’re taking and that we’re willing to take.”
The RE plastic shells are noticeably more speckled (on the right) than the original plastic shell (on the left)
It follows earlier switches of products and parts from virgin to recycled plastic, starting with Barber Osgerby’s Tip Ton chair in 2020.
A number of accessories like Arik Levy’s Toolbox and Konstantin Grcic’s Locker Box have since followed. The entire HAL chair family, designed by Jasper Morrison, now also have their shells manufactured using recycled plastic.
The recycled plastic is taken from household recycling obtained through the German garbage collection programme Gelber Sack (Yellow Bag).
“Utilising this raw material instead of petroleum-based primary plastics generates fewer climate-damaging emissions and less primary energy consumption,” Fehlbaum claimed.
The role of recycling in solving the world’s plastic pollution crisis is contested among designers.
Some, including designer Richard Hutten and Belgian curator Jan Boelen, argue that big brands are using recycling to create an illusion of change while continuing to use virgin plastics.
Others, among them the CEO of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Andrew Morlet, argue that durable, recyclable plastics can form part of a circular economy.
Many recycled plastic products involve the use of some virgin plastic or additive substances that then complicate or inhibit their own recyclability.
Vitra said its RE product, used for the Eames shells, does not contain any virgin plastic and can be fully recycled at the end of the product’s life thanks to the use of technical fillers, like glass fibres, rather than any additives that prevent onwards recycling.
Vitra products are available to purchase at discounted rates at the new Circle Store
Another sustainability initiative is Vitra’s Circle Stores, which sell used furniture and accessories by Vitra and Artek, such as sample products and exhibition pieces, with prices depending on the condition of the products.
All products are tested for functionality and repaired if necessary so that a renewed product warranty can be granted.
The first Circle Store opened in Amsterdam in 2017 in response to questions from customers about second-hand Vitra products, with a second in Brussels.
A third recently “moved” from Frankfurt and opened in an adapted space at the Álvaro Siza-designed Vitra Campus factory building, with a service and repair area where customers can bring their products to receive a new lease of life.
“With the Circle Store, we can offer our environmentally conscious clients an even more environmentally conscious choice: namely that of a second-hand product,” said Fehlbaum.
Absence in Milan “really wasn’t such a huge deal”
The brand has also taken steps to rewild parts of the Vitra Campus. The Piet Oudolf garden was completed in 2020 and Vitra is working with Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets on a masterplan plan for fewer roads and more native trees on the site.
Fehlbaum acknowledges that some may be sceptical about the sustainability work it is doing within the context of widespread greenwashing.
“It’s impossible to get through this jungle of messaging,” she said.
“How do we talk about it to make sure that it is clear how thoroughly and authentically we’re really tackling this?”
Some other furniture brands have also reduced their presence at design fairs amid concerns about the significant emissions associated with shipping products around the world for temporary showstands.
Vitra has historically had a significant presence in Milan during the Italian city’s annual design week in April, but was noticeably absent in 2023.
However, Fehlbaum said that although she was asked about this a lot “it really wasn’t such a huge deal”.
“For us, it makes a lot of sense to use what we already have,” she said.
“We have the Vitra Campus and it’s not so far from Milan. We prefer to use and invest in something that can be around for five or 10 years rather than spending a lot of energy and resources on something that after five days we’re going to have to break down.”
It is yet to be seen if the brand will return to Milan design week this year.
“The way we think about it [showing at design fairs like Milan] is never black or white,” Fehlbaum explained.
“There might be a moment where we say Milan is exactly the right place at the right moment to talk about something, and then maybe we’ll be there.”
The Eames Plastic Chair RE was photographed at the Eames house, Pacific Palisades, California. Photo by the Eames Foundation
Vitra was founded in 1950 by Nora Fehlbaum’s grandparents Willi and Erika Fehlbaum and has since grown to become one of the industry’s leading names.
Nora Fehlbaum succeeded her uncle, Rolf Fehlbaum, as CEO in 2016 and identifies improving the brand’s sustainability as her key mission.
“There is still a long way to go before reaching our environmental goals,” she acknowledged. “Things need to be tested, mistakes must be made, and in the process the company might sometimes overlook an important aspect or underestimate the impact of an activity.”
This is now a central part of the brand’s function as an industry leader, Fehlbaum suggests.
“The designer landscape has changed. In the past, it was a lot about iconic design and breaking the mould, building your own brand and your studio – new things – and now, the students that are graduating come with their own environmental mission,” she said.
“I see our role, together with these people and with the right suppliers and innovative companies, to find solutions that are, for lack of a better term, sustainable in the longer term.”
Other interviews recently published on Dezeen include the Kvadrat CEO saying sustainability is “not making our lives easier” and Iittala creative director Janni Vepsäläinen sharing her goal to help the brand “remain culturally relevant for another 100 years”.
The photography is courtesy of Vitra unless otherwise stated.
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Spotted: While we like to think that any waste placed in a recycling bin is recycled into new products, the reality is that in some places, the refuse is either incinerated or exported to landfills elsewhere. This was the situation faced by Singaporean Oh Chu Xian. In response, Oh and her sister founded Magorium, a deep tech firm that develops sustainable solutions for plastic waste.
Oh’s family had been in the road construction and asphalt manufacturing business for almost five decades, so this was a logical place for Magorium to start. The company’s product, NEWBitumen, is a replacement for bitumen, the liquid binder used to hold asphalt together. Where traditional bitumen is produced using crude oil, NEWBitumen is made from plastic waste that would have otherwise been considered non-recyclable and destined for the landfill.
Contaminated plastic waste is put through a multi-step process, which breaks down the long chains of polymers in the plastic, and then reformulates the materials to create a substance with similar characteristics to bitumen. By-products, such as synthetic gas, are captured, cleaned, and used as a heating source to power the process. Organic contaminants are converted to biochar and used as filler.
At the 2023 CapitaLand Sustainability X Challenge, Magorium won the Emerging Startup Award and received S$150,000 (around €103,000) as a result. In future, the startup hopes to take NEWBitumen beyond Singapore and help stimulate circular economies in other countries around the world.
Coping with plastic waste is the goal of a growing number of innovations spotted by Springwise. These include the recycling of plastic waste into chemicals and rentable packaging made from recycled plastic.
Dr Carmen Hijosa, the Founder and Chief Creative & Innovation Officer of Ananas Anam was inspired to create a natural, sustainable leather alternative after witnessing first-hand the environmental impact of mass leather production and chemical tanning while working as a consultant for the leathergoods industry. Realising that PVC would not be a viable alternative, she embarked on a journey involving years of research and development, including a PhD at the Royal College of Art in London, where Ananas Anam was developed.
Her company creates natural textiles using the fibres from discarded pineapple leaves. The phenomenal growth in popularity of pineapples means that 25 million tonnes of waste a year is created from the plant’s leaves. For the full story, watch the film above.
In Australia, fashion brand Aciae works to the Circle to Zero principle, striving to eliminate waste from every step of its production processes and contributing to the overall reduction of global plastic pollution.
The company’s name is Latin for thread and refers to its practice of turning single-use plastic waste into the thread that’s used to create its machine-washable, waterproof, recyclable shoes. Gathered plastics are cleaned, shredded, and then melted down for extrusion. The extruded fibres are then spun into thread, completing the transformation of trash into fabric.
Founder Tina Li says: “The brand embodies the spirit of women shaping the sustainable development narrative, ensuring we all play a part in the story.”
3. A marketplace that connects fashion brands to deadstock
‘Deadstock’ is a term that refers to the surplus fabric that is generated by fashion houses and normally destined for landfill or the incinerator.
Circular startup Recovo, led by CEO and co-founder Monica Rodriguez, matches buyers of deadstock fabric with those who have it to sell via an easy-to-use online platform. The company has created a curated catalogue of unused natural and synthetic fabrics, yarns, and other production materials, and does all the heavy lifting for sellers. Buyers can browse this catalogue and request samples at the touch of a button.
Since the company was founded in 2021, it has grown rapidly and now operates in 16 countries in the European Union. To date, it has saved the equivalent of 98,000 kilogrammes of CO2 and 22 million litres of water.
Re-Fresh Global, a Berlin based startup co founded in 2021 by Viktoria Kanar and Revital Nadiv, is turning discarded clothing into new raw materials. These materials can be used to create products like cosmetics, cars, packaging, pharmaceuticals, fibres, and furniture.
First, the company uses its automated technology to sort and separate textile waste, depending on its material composition and colour. Then, Re-fresh’s patented biotechnology transforms shredded textile fibres into industrial quantities of new and highly versatile resources.
This process creates three new, raw material types: nanocellulose, ethanol, and sanitised textile pulp. The nanocellulose is strong and highly versatile, meaning it can be used in items including packaging, paper, and pharmaceuticals. The pure bioethanol (alcohol) has various useful applications across the beauty, sanitation, and biofuel industries. And finally, the textile pulp, made from recycled natural and synthetic fibres, can be used in the production of new fibres, whether that be for car upholstery or sound-absorbing workplace interiors.
