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Vaccine printers expanding access to immunisation

Spotted: During the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of children missed out on regularly scheduled immunisations, which resulted in local outbreaks of diseases such as measles, polio, and yellow fever that have, for the most part, been kept under control worldwide for many years.

As communities adjust to life post-pandemic and make plans for the ongoing management of infectious diseases, innovators are seeking solutions to some of the complex challenges presented by the COVID-19 outbreak. One of the most difficult aspects of distributing vaccines during the pandemic was keeping them at the appropriate temperature while shipping and storing them in locations with irregular access to electricity and cold storage.

A team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers decided to try making vaccines that could be stored at room temperature as a way of mitigating that hazard. What they created is a mobile printer that produces thumbprint-sized vaccine patches that can be stored at room temperature. The printer easily fits on a tabletop, and the patches can be self-applied. Eliminating the need for syringes and application by healthcare professionals immediately increases the accessibility of the medicine.

Each patch contains hundreds of microneedles filled with the vaccine. When the patch is applied to the skin, the microneedles dissolve underneath, releasing the vaccine into the body. Lipid nanoparticles hold the vaccine, which is what makes it possible to store the medicine for many months at room temperature.

The prototype printer produces around 100 patches every 48 hours, and the scientists are already working on improving that speed and capacity, as well as adapting and developing the process for use with various vaccines.

Other innovations that Springwise has spotted that focus on vaccine accessibility include a new storage method that makes it possible to keep vaccines at room temperature and a solar-powered portable refrigerator that healthcare workers can carry on a bicycle.

Written By: Keely Khoury

Reference

Sustainable News

Restoring the strength of soils using natural elements

By Zarkon Group,08/05/2023

Spotted: After decades of the intensification of farming, and the ensuing harm it has caused to environments, growers and policy makers are beginning to more seriously consider regenerative farming as the means of achieving a carbon-neutral future. Regenerative agriculture focuses on soil health and a circular agricultural economy, where resources are used in harmony with the natural environment. And, the World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that farming regeneratively on 40 per cent of the world’s cropland would save around 600 million tonnes of emissions.

The challenge is the slow pace of change. Regenerative agriculture must scale more quickly in order to cover 40 per cent of global cropland by 2030. Changing soil health can take years, so French agrobiotechnology company Gaïago has created a suite of products designed to help growers make faster improvements to their land.

Using organic elements that plants already use, such as hydrogen, proteins, and fungi, Gaïago’s products encourage the fertility of the soil and therefore the growing environment of crops. Nutrigeo is a soil prebiotic that stimulates the growth of humidifying fungi. Two different probiotics provide additional nitrogen to the roots, and a foliar prebiotic, Stimulus, supports plants in resisting environmental stressors.

And for the plants themselves, Gaïago created Vitam’in, a prebiotic for seeds that boosts general vigour at germination to help maximise full genetic growth. Improvements in the fertility of soil can be seen in as little as six months, and when integrated into a regenerative style of farming, will have long term environmental health and biodiversity benefits.

Other ways in which Springwise is spotting agriculture creating more healthful growing environments include plant patches that monitor stress and eco-friendly insect treatments that do not harm pollinators.

Written By: Keely Khoury

Reference

Sustainable News

Yuma Kano creates ForestBank material out of unusable wood

By Zarkon Group,08/05/2023

Japanese designer Yuma Kano has created a decorative material that resembles terrazzo from wood, foliage, bark, soil and seeds that was shown at Milan design week.

Kano, who showed his work together with fellow designer Sho Ota as part of the Touch Wood exhibition at the Alcova venue, says the idea behind the project was to find value in not just lumber, but all of the forest.

Interior of Touch Wood exhibition — ForestBank was shown at Alcova in Milan

After gathering unusable wood and other forest materials, he mixes them with a water-based acrylic resin that does not use any reactive mineral bases or volatile organic solvents.

“In the Japanese forest industry, these small pieces of wood are a waste material,” Kano told Dezeen. “I wanted to reuse the waste.”

Seat by Yuma Kano — The material is made from waste wood

The technique invented by Kano creates a material with patterns that vary depending on the angle and depth of the cut into it, as well as on what ingredients – such as foliage, wood, bark, soil and seeds – were combined.

It means that the furniture made from the trademarked ForestBank material might also change how it looks as it grows older.

“The green leaves mixed in change to orange and brown as the seasons change,” Kano said.

“In addition, earth from the forest floor can be mixed in, adding browns and blacks, you can see the complex patterns of the cross sections of roots and seeds ordinarily hidden in the earth, and take notice of the different coloring that different species of trees have.”

ForestBank table by Yuma Kano — The finished material resembles terrazzo

Kano has made a collection of furniture from the material that includes a table, seats and a clothes hanger, and said the pieces can eventually be recycled to create more ForestBank material.

“I’m actually reusing the dust from the original pieces for future pieces,” he explained.

Hanger at Touch Wood exhibition — A sculptural hanger was on show at Touch Wood

The focus of the Touch Wood exhibition in Milan was to showcase ways of using wood that would have otherwise gone to waste.

Here, Kano’s furniture pieces were juxtaposed with Ota’s furniture collection, called Surfaced, which is made using wood that was scheduled to be discarded from workshops and factories.

The designers hoped that the exhibition would showcase designs that mass-production cannot achieve.

“The material can show the uniqueness of each little piece of wood,” Kano said.

ForestBank seat — A chair has a back made from ForestBank

This year’s Milan design week featured a number of projects by emerging designers. We looked at five emerging designers showing in Salone del Mobile’s Salone Satellite section and rounded up ten standout installations in Milan as part of our coverage.

Touch Wood was on show from 17 to 23 April 2023 as part of Milan design week. See Dezeen Events Guide for more architecture and design events around the world.

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Sustainable News

A jellyfish-like robot could clean the oceans

By Zarkon Group,07/05/2023

Spotted: Ocean waste has become a serious problem. The ocean is filled with an estimated 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris, equating to 46,000 pieces per square mile. To hopefully rid the waters of this problem, roboticists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart (MPI-IS) have developed an underwater robot inspired by jellyfish to collect waste from the bottom of the ocean.

Other scientists have thought to combat ocean waste using robots, but existing underwater devices tend to be inconveniently bulky and rigid, which means they cannot explore complex environments. Often, they are also noisy because of their electrical motors or hydraulic pumps.

Instead, the MPI-IS team took inspiration from the ocean and created the ‘Jellyfish-Bot’ – a versatile, energy-efficient, virtually noise-free robot that is just the size of a hand. It can also operate alone or with several others in combination. In the Jellyfish-Bot, the team decided to mimic a jellyfish’s ability to swim upwards and trap objects along its path. This function helps the robot collect waste particles that can then be transported to the surface, where they can be recycled. The robot is even able to collect fragile biological samples like fish eggs.

Video source MPI for Intelligent Systems

Compared to similar inventions, the Jellyfish-Bot works faster – up to 6.1 centimetres per second, and only requires a low power input of around 100 megawatts. Crucially, if the robot breaks or is torn apart in the water, the polymer material is safe for both humans and fish.

The team is currently working on making the Jellyfish-Bot completely wireless, and has already incorporated the necessary parts to enable wireless manipulation.

The Jellyfish-Bot is not the only robot tackling ocean waste. Springwise has also spotted the SeaClear system, which uses a combination of robotics and machine learning to locate and remove marine debris.

Written By: Anam Alam

Reference

Sustainable News

Dezeen In Depth explores the sustainability of mass-timber buildings

By Zarkon Group,07/05/2023

The third edition of our monthly Dezeen In Depth newsletter features a dive into why the sustainability of mass-timber buildings can’t be taken for granted. Subscribe to Dezeen In Depth now.

Architects are increasingly using mass timber in the hopes of creating net-zero buildings but carbon assessments are missing key sources of potential emissions, researchers tell Dezeen in this feature from our Timber Revolution series which ran throughout March.

The standard method for determining a building’s overall carbon footprint is a whole-building life-cycle assessment (LCA) that breaks down emissions at every stage – from the sourcing of raw materials to their ultimate disposal.

These calculations tend to indicate significantly lower emissions for timber structures compared to those made entirely out of concrete and steel. But experts warned that LCAs only tell part of the story. Read the feature ›

Aerial render of W350 Plan by Nikken Sekkei — Building tall with timber “does not make sense” say experts

This month’s newsletter also features an opinion piece from architecture critic Aaron Betsky which argues David Chipperfield did not deserve to win the 2023 Pritzker Architecture Prize and an exclusive interview with urbanist Carlos Moreno who responds to the “shocking” conspiracy theories surrounding his 15-minute city concept.

The lead image is by Maksim Safaniuk via Shutterstock.

Dezeen In Depth

Dezeen In Depth is sent on the last Friday of every month and delves deeper into the major stories shaping architecture and design. Each edition includes an original feature article on a key topic or trend, an interview with a prominent industry figure and an opinion piece from a leading critic. Read the latest edition of Dezeen In Depth or subscribe here.

You can also subscribe to our other newsletters; Dezeen Agenda is sent every Tuesday containing a selection of the most important news highlights from the week, Dezeen Debate is sent every Thursday featuring a selection of the best reader comments and most talked-about stories and Dezeen Daily is our daily bulletin that contains every story published in the preceding 24 hours on Dezeen.

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Sustainable News

Using biotech for sustainable chemical manufacturing

By Zarkon Group,06/05/2023

Spotted: The global chemical industry emits more than two gigatons of carbon dioxide each year, according to Deloitte. And many of the catalysts used to accelerate reactions today contain heavy metals which can contaminate the environment if not disposed of properly. This has sparked the interest of new generation of innovators who are looking to make the chemicals industry more sustainable.

One way to do this is to replace metallic catalysts with something healthier that can underpin less energy-intensive processes. To this end, Oxford biotechnology company HydRegen has created a bio-based manufacturing material that replaces heavy metal catalysts. Using a bio-based catalyst allows the production process to work on lower temperatures and lower pressure. That decrease then reduces the amount of energy needed to run the process, which contributes to a significantly lower carbon footprint.

Video source HydRegen

HydRegen’s compounds are designed to slot into existing infrastructure as direct replacements for the toxins used by the pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing industries. One of HydRegen’s investors estimates that if Paracetamol production switched over to biocatalysts, the industry would save hundreds of thousands of tonnes of CO2 emissions every year.

The company works with organisations at all stages of production and can supply a range of biocatalysts from very simple to complex new materials that work with a business’s proprietary enzymes. HydRegen recently raised £2.6 million (around €3 million) in investment to use for licensing its technology and expanding the team in order to support commercial deployment of the innovation.

Industrial manufacturing contributes so many toxins to the environment that Springwise has spotted a range of innovations – such as artificial intelligence (AI) used in net-zero metal casting and a copper replacement that stores carbon – that are helping to clean up the industry.

Written By: Keely Khoury

Reference

Sustainable News

Dezeen In Depth features exclusive interview with Yasmeen Lari

By Zarkon Group,06/05/2023

This month’s Dezeen In Depth newsletter features an exclusive interview with the 2023 RIBA Royal Gold Medal winner and reflections from Max Fraser on Milan design week. Subscribe to Dezeen In Depth now.

Architects must stop waiting for commissions from wealthy clients and prioritise designing for the planet, says RIBA Royal Gold Medal winner Yasmeen Lari in this exclusive interview.

Speaking to Dezeen from her home in Pakistan, Lari said she hopes her Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Royal Gold Medal win can encourage other architects to use their skills to alleviate crises such as climate change.

“I feel that an architect’s role should be more of an activist now,” Lari told Dezeen.

“If you want to change the world, then you’ve got to fight it out. Otherwise, you are just driven by what other people want,” she continued.

Read the full interview ›

Aerial view of a bamboo pavilion in Makli by Lari, who specialises in creating low-cost and low-carbon buildings for disadvantaged communities

April’s Dezeen in Depth also features an opinion piece from Fraser, Dezeen’s new editorial director, reflecting on Milan design week 2023 and an exploration of how different architecture and design studios with famous founders are handling the sensitive issue of succession.

The photography is courtesy of Yasmeen Lari.

Dezeen In Depth

Reference

Sustainable News

Creating a future-proofed cotton supply chain

By Zarkon Group,05/05/2023

Spotted: According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), cotton is the most widespread non-food crop in the world. Its production employs almost seven per cent of all labour in developing countries, with around half of all textiles being made from cotton. Yet, while the global reach of cotton is wide, current cotton production methods are environmentally unsustainable — involving high water use and contamination, soil degradation, and pesticide pollution.

To solve these issues, Materra has developed a pioneering method for growing cotton in climate-controlled greenhouse environments. Its method can produce up to four times more yield per surface area compared to conventional outdoor cotton farming. It also uses around 80 per cent less water, no pesticides, and produces around 30 per cent less carbon dioxide than chemically intensive cotton farming.

Materra’s approach is designed to ‘future-proof’ the cotton industry – which around 250 million people rely on for income. By using resources more efficiently, Materra’s system also acts as a form of climate change mitigation – transforming brownfield land into productive agricultural land. By using land more effectively, the company will be able to join forces with other impactful schemes that support biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Materra also highlights that one big advantage of their system as its flexibility, and ability to adjust the different parameters to produce the best outcome.

The fashion industry is one of the most wasteful on the planet. Every aspect of the fashion supply and consumption chain produces huge amounts of waste — 87 per cent of the materials and fibres used to make clothing will end up in either incinerators or landfills. Luckily, innovators the world over and now working to change this. Springwise has recently spotted improvements that range from creating clothing from a mycelium-based material to non-toxic, low-energy dyeing processes.

Written By: Lisa Magloff

Reference

Sustainable News

Spotlight on microbes, our bacterial buddies

By Zarkon Group,04/05/2023

Microbes often get a bad rep. Yes, some viruses, bacteria, and fungi do cause illness, but only one per cent of all microbial species are pathogenic to humans. In fact, life as we know it would be impossible without them – from the fungi that decompose animal and plant debris to the bacteria that fix nitrogen in the soil. Even viruses do us good as a key part of our microbiome. The Finding Nemo dictum ‘fish are friends not food’ could therefore be adapted to ‘bacteria are buddies not baddies.’

Given this appreciation of our microbial neighbours, it’s saddening to read in a recent New Scientist article (paywall) that there is mounting evidence of a collapse in microbial biodiversity. Until the turn of the last decade, scientists assumed that microscopic creatures were largely immune to the human-induced carnage being wreaked upon large animals and plants. But this, it seems, is not the case. Worrying portents of a collapse in the earth’s microbiome are cropping up around the world. For example, as ancient natural forests are replaced by manicured forestry plantations, fungi that previously thrived on dead wood and leaf litter are declining.

Given that microbes power our planet’s most important natural recycling systems (think of the carbon and nitrogen cycles in GCSE textbooks), this decline is deeply worrying. But all is not lost.

The New Scientist piece highlighted social benefit corporation Funga, who we featured on Springwise back in February. Funga is helping to refresh microbial diversity by restoring forest fungal networks. The organisation plans to use DNA sequencing and artificial intelligence (AI) to generate profiles for a healthy fungal microbiome in around 1,000 different forests. These ideal fungal recipes can then be transplanted to new forestry projects, improving the health of the soil while also bolstering carbon sequestration. Find out more

There is some good news on the microbial horizon. Brazilian company Symbiomics, is collecting microbes from different environments around the world. Its goal is to isolate stretches of microbial DNA that can be used to promote growth and tolerance to environmental stresses in plants, including crops. Find out more

PunaBio is focused on how the most hardcore bacteria can improve agricultural yields. The company has scoured locations including Utah’s Great Salt Lake and South America’s high desert for organisms that thrive in harsh environments like active volcanoes, saline wetlands, and desert soils. These extremophiles have evolved to live with very little access to nutrients, which has made them very efficient at absorbing those that are available. Studying the genetic characteristics of these extremophiles has allowed scientists to understand the specific processes that allow plants to overcome stress conditions. And these learnings can then be applied to crops. Find out more

Given that microbes have so much to offer, it is vital that scientists and innovators like Funga are given the backing they need to help keep our planet’s microbiome healthy.

Written by: Matthew Hempstead

For more innovations, head to the Springwise Innovation Library.

Reference

Sustainable News

Using biotech to purify water and recover valuable waterborne materials

By Zarkon Group,03/05/2023

Spotted: Access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene are essential for health and well-being. Yet billions of people still lack access to these basic needs. On top of this, demand for water is rising due to population growth, urbanisation, and increasing water demands from sources such as agriculture, industry, and energy. But water purification and recovery can be expensive, requiring a great deal of energy, which can, in turn, lead to carbon emissions.

Now, Swedish company Retein has developed a new technology for energy-efficient and high-purity water separation. This has the potential to reduce the cost of recovering clean water while having a lower impact on the environment than traditional methods. The method was initially developed as a PhD project at Chalmers University of Technology.

The technology utilises a channel protein called aquaporin. Channel proteins provide gateways across the cell membrane, allowing water, nutrients, and other resources to move in and out. Retein has developed a new class of aquaporin capsules that are purified and stabilised by silica. These capsules are then incorporated into conventional polymer membranes to allow water to move rapidly across the separation membrane, with very little input of energy.

Not only could Retein’s aquaporins be used to filter water, but also to filter out other materials, potentially allowing the recovery of substances such as lithium from water. Because the aquaporins have been stabilised, they could easily be used as an additive to various kinds of filters on a wide range of scales.

Climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme weather events – including drought and flooding. This is making the need for sustainable water purification more urgent than ever. Luckily, Springwise is spotting a number of innovations in this space. These include a membrane coating that could make filtration cheaper and greener, and a modular wastewater treatment system driven by sunlight and water movement.

Written By: Lisa Magloff

Reference

News

Vaccine printers expanding access to immunisation

Restoring the strength of soils using natural elements

Yuma Kano creates ForestBank material out of unusable wood

A jellyfish-like robot could clean the oceans

Dezeen In Depth explores the sustainability of mass-timber buildings

Using biotech for sustainable chemical manufacturing

Dezeen In Depth features exclusive interview with Yasmeen Lari

Creating a future-proofed cotton supply chain

Spotlight on microbes, our bacterial buddies

Using biotech to purify water and recover valuable waterborne materials

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