Three innovations for the future of transport
CategoriesSustainable News

Three innovations for the future of transport

The most obvious recent development in transport has been the ongoing shift in how we power our vehicles. And although the roll-out of electric vehicles (EVs) has been uneven – with China, the US, and Europe leading the way – significant progress has been made. In fact, in 2022, the world passed a key milestone, with EVs making up 10 per cent of all new cars sold. EVs are also one of the few areas where the International Energy Agency deems the world to be on track to meet its net zero 2050 scenario.

However, although there remains some way to go before all cars on the road are electric – if indeed that point is ever reached – EVs are in some ways old news. As Susan Cox-Smith, a partner and director at Changeist puts it: “The tipping point for electric vehicles has already been hit.”

For our Future 2043 Report, we took a much longer view when asking the world’s leading futurists how we will move around in the year 2043. Will the idea of the personal or family car still be around in 20 years’ time – even if we wean our vehicles off fossil fuels? Well, in Cox-Smith’s view: “full ownership will probably decline as micro-rentals and shared vehicles become the norm.”

So if the car owner is out, what about the driver? Will autonomous vehicles – long predicted by technologists – be accepted by the mainstream? And what will this mean for our legal and ethical systems?

“Ethically and psychologically, I see driverless cars as a major step towards redefining a shift in social responsibility, that will likely have repercussions for other industries from medicine to food,” explains creative technologist Jude Pullen.

How we will move around in the future is one of the big unanswered questions. But, in the meantime, discover three innovations that might provide us with a clue. Will we even do away with roads Back to the Future style?

Photo source Infinite Mobility

SOLAR-POWERED TUK-TUKS COULD BE COMING TO A CITY NEAR YOU

Increasingly, those interested in city planning and energy saving have been pointing out that it just doesn’t make sense to transport people or smaller amounts of goods around urban areas in traditional vehicles – even EVs. Cars are large, heavy, and energy-intensive. Startup Infinite Mobility has developed an alternative – a solar-powered tuk-tuk designed for last-mile deliveries, or to efficiently carry just one or two people. Read more

Photo source Urban-Air Port

STARTUP PLANS TO CREATE A WORLDWIDE NETWORK OF FLYING TAXI AND CARGO DRONE HUBS

The urban air mobility market is on the up, with forecasts predicting it could reach $1 trillion in the next 20 years. From flying taxis to delivery drones, emerging technologies have the potential to transform how people and goods move around cities, by-passing congested road transport systems by – literally – rising above them. To date, most of the investment has gone into the development of flying vehicles themselves. But a lack of ground infrastructure remains a limitation on the mass roll-out of these vehicles. To fill this infrastructure gap, UK-based Urban-Air Port intends to build 200 advanced air transport hubs – called ‘vertiports’ – around the world. Read more

Photo source XPENG

ELECTRIC FLYING CAR COMPLETES PUBLIC EXHIBITION FLIGHT

Flying cars are becoming a reality. China’s XPENG mobility technology experts recently completed a public flight of the electric flying car XPENG X2 at an event at the Dubai World Trade Centre. The zero-emission vehicle is a two-seater car that uses vertical lift-off and landing to transition from road travel to air. Designed specifically for the complexities of urban driving, the X2 flies at low altitude and can be driven manually or autonomously. Read more

Want to discover more about what the world will look like in 2043? Download our free Future 2043 report which draws on the insights of 20 of the world’s leading futurists. For more innovations, head to the Springwise Innovation Library.

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Sian Sutherland, co-founder of PlasticFree and A Plastic Planet, on stage
CategoriesSustainable News

Watch PlasticFree’s forum of talks on the climate crisis on Dezeen

Dezeen teamed up with PlasticFree to present its interdisciplinary forum of talks focussing on the climate crisis in New York City. Watch the talks here.

Called Our Incredible Future Now, the talk took place at Parsons School of Design in New York City on 2 February 2023 and was hosted by Sian Sutherland, co-founder of PlasticFree and A Plastic Planet.

Sian Sutherland, co-founder of PlasticFree and A Plastic Planet, on stage
PlasticFree co-founder Sian Sutherland

The event brought together creative professionals across various disciplines to explore why the issue of climate change continues to be discussed at length instead of being addressed practically with the many proposed solutions that currently exist.

Featured speakers included chief innovation officer of Pangaia Amanda Parkes, Slow Factory founder Celine Semaan, and Birsel + Seck co-founder Ayse Birsel, among other designers and climate specialists.

The event followed the launch of the PlasticFree database, an online platform created in a bid to help architects and designers source plastic-free materials for their projects and avoid misinformation around more sustainable alternatives.

The subscription-based service provides detailed reports on more than 100 plastic alternatives that have been vetted by scientific advisors, highlighting their properties, production and sourcing in order to offer reliable and trustworthy information.

Five speakers sitting on stage during a talk at the Our Incredible Future Now talk
Creative professionals from different disciplines discussed the climate crisis

The platform’s advisory council comprises scientists, business leaders and industry figureheads including Stirling Prize-winner David Chipperfield, designer Tom Dixon and curator Aric Chen.

Partnership content

This competition is a partnership between Dezeen and PlasticFree. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here. 

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Boards made from grass replace timber 
CategoriesSustainable News

Boards made from grass replace timber 

Spotted: Fast-growing grasses that are turned into construction panels use nine times less land than traditional timber products. With the global engineered wood market projected to be worth over $400 billion by 2027 (around €374 billion), the potential of new grass-based panels to help decrease the construction industry’s footprint is significant. A culmination of more than 20 years of research and development, biotechnology company Plantd’s panels are carbon negative and produced in all-electric manufacturing plants.  

Using a perennial plant called giant reed grass, Plantd’s process is designed for easy scalability and minimal resource use by farmers. Giant reed grass grows 20 to 30 feet tall, and a single acre of land can produce up to 20 million tonnes of grass, which would contain 25 to 30 million tonnes of atmospheric carbon. The boards made from these grasses are lighter, stronger, and more moisture-resistant than traditional wood boards. And because Plantd’s production process sequesters 80 per cent of the carbon contained in the grasses, the boards are also carbon negative.  

The manufacturing plants are modular and capable of producing multiple products, including panels and studs, from a single location. Modularity makes it easy for production to scale up or down depending on location and market size, and as all-electric plants, the process produces minimal carbon emissions. Because the grass can be farmed on arable land already in use, the switch from timber products to grass panels could also help reduce deforestation.  

Springwise has spotted other recent innovations focused on transforming the construction industry, including wood-based biocomposites, and the first-ever carbon negative portland cement.

Written By: Keely Khoury

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A device waters plants at their roots to save water 
CategoriesSustainable News

A device waters plants at their roots to save water 

Spotted: Smart water use is a necessity for almost all households. And for the green-thumbed among us, irrigation is a tricky aspect of gardening. Too much water is as dangerous to plants as too little, so working with the weather conditions presents a daily challenge. 

From a family desire to preserve plants passed down from previous generations, came the idea for a subsurface watering and irrigation system called the Root Quencher. Designed to minimise wasteful surface evaporation of water, while delivering water to the roots where it is needed most, the Root Quencher is available in two different sizes and can be used with existing sprinkler systems as well as a simple hose set-up. 

The devices are made from sturdy recycled plastic and last for years. They come in different sizes and can be inserted into the ground at a variety of depths, depending on the size of the plants. Fertiliser can also be added to the device for steady application as the water flows through, and a series of holes in the device can be plugged or uncovered as needed to direct the water.  

New products being released by the company in 2023 and 2024 include an in-ground device that connects to a drip line for hillside watering, and a lawn watering system designed to replace above-ground sprayheads.  

Being more efficient with natural resources is a key component of many innovations as communities strive to reach their SDGs and national carbon neutral goals. Springwise has spotted a system that harvests solar power while providing energy for growing plants, and a zero-emission boiler for home heating.

Written By: Keely Khoury

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Diagram of the colour-changing material showing, from top, a layer of PE film, a gold grid, graphene, a layer where copper is deposited or stripped away, an aqueous electrolyte layer and copper foil
CategoriesSustainable News

Colour-changing facade material could help to heat and cool buildings

Researchers from the University of Chicago have invented a cladding material that changes colour to help with heating or cooling and could be retrofitted to improve buildings’ energy efficiency.

The composite material consists of several different layers including copper foil, plastic and graphene, and based on the outside temperature can change its infrared colour – the colour it appears under thermal imaging.

At the same time, it also changes the amount of infrared heat it absorbs or emits from the building. On hot days, the material appears yellow under thermal imaging, indicating that it is emitting more heat, while on cold days it appears purple because it is retaining that heat.

Diagram of the colour-changing material showing, from top, a layer of PE film, a gold grid, graphene, a layer where copper is deposited or stripped away, an aqueous electrolyte layer and copper foil
Top: the material appears yellow under thermal imaging when in heating mode and purple when cooling. Above: a layer of copper is deposited on a film to trigger heating mode

When used on a facade – for example in the form of shingles – the material could potentially reduce the need for heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and lower a building’s overall energy consumption.

“We’ve essentially figured out a low-energy way to treat a building like a person; you add a layer when you’re cold and take off a layer when you’re hot,” said materials engineer Po-Chun Hsu from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, who led the research.

“This kind of smart material lets us maintain the temperature in a building without huge amounts of energy.”

Cladding responds to temperature like a chameleon

The University of Chicago describes the material as “chameleon-like” because it can change its colour in response to the outside temperature.

At a chosen trigger temperature, the material uses a tiny amount of electricity to either deposit copper onto a thin film or strip it away.

This chemical reaction effectively transforms the material’s central layer – a water-based electrolyte solution – into solid copper. The low-emitting copper helps to retain heat and warm the interior of a building, while the high-emitting aqueous layer keeps a building cool.

The layer of water-based electrolytes also helps to make the material non-flammable, and the researchers describe the switching process from metal to liquid and back again as “stable, non-volatile, efficient and mechanically flexible”.

“Once you switch between states, you don’t need to apply any more energy to stay in either state,” said Hsu. “So for buildings where you don’t need to switch between these states very frequently, it’s really using a very negligible amount of electricity.”

Material could reduce energy consumption by eight per cent

As part of their study, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, the researchers also created models to test the energy savings that could be achieved by applying their material to buildings in 15 US cities, representing 15 climate zones.

In areas that experienced a high variation in weather, they found the material could save 8.4 per cent of a building’s annual HVAC energy consumption on average. At the same time, the material relied on just 0.2 per cent of the building’s total electricity for its operation.

As it stands, building construction and operations account for nearly 37 per cent of global carbon emissions, most of which is attributed to building operations including lighting, heating and cooling.

To slash these emissions, the material could be used to retrofit poorly insulated or historic buildings and improve their energy efficiency, as the researchers suggest it would be more convenient to install than insulation.

However, several of its components – including the monolayer graphene and gold microgrid used as transparent conductive layers – are currently still expensive and complicated to manufacture.

The researchers have so far created only six-centimetre-wide patches of the material but imagine assembling them like shingles to form larger sheets.

With the watery layer active, the material is a dark white colour, which turns a coppery brown when the copper layer is active.

But the material could also be tweaked to show different colours by adding a layer of pigments behind the transparent watery layer.

Another approach to keeping buildings cool is to paint them white. For this purpose, researchers at Purdue University recently developed the “whitest paint on record”, which reflects 98 per cent of sunlight.

Images courtesy of Hsu Group.

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Tackling bubbles to make green hydrogen more efficient
CategoriesSustainable News

Tackling bubbles to make green hydrogen more efficient

Spotted: Hydrogen is growing in popularity as a clean alternative to methane. While methane is a fossil fuel, it is possible to generate hydrogen using renewable energy – what is called green hydrogen. This alternative fuel is produced through electrolysis, which uses electricity to split water molecules to generate pure hydrogen, with no harmful by-products. However, today, most hydrogen is produced using steam methane reformation, which requires fossil fuels and produces carbon monoxide as a by-product.

One reason why green hydrogen is not more common is that electrolysis is less efficient because it produces bubbles. But that may be about to change. Assistant Professor Pourya Forooghi from Aarhus University has begun a study that hopes to shed light on the physics behind the bubble formation.

The project, called Heat and Bubble Transport over Complex Solid Surfaces, will run for five years. The goal is to develop reliable modelling tools that can be used to reduce excessive bubble formation in electrolysis, as well as in other technical situations in which bubbles cause problems – such as chemical reactions and drag on ship’s hulls.

The use of hydrogen is ramping up, and Springwise has spotted frequent developments in the field. Recent innovations include the production of hydrogen fuel out of thin air, and a method for vastly increasing the storage capacity of hydrogen.

Written By: Lisa Magloff

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Photo of the Mill food waste bin in a kitchen
CategoriesSustainable News

Mill bin dries and shrinks food waste so it can be sent off for reuse

US start-up Mill aimed to create the ultimate solution to household food waste when designing this bin, which dries out any leftovers so they can be posted to the company and given a new purpose.

Developed by two former Nest employees, the Mill bin slowly heats and mixes any food waste on a low-power cycle to dehydrate and shrink the scraps, allowing the bin to be emptied less often.

Photo of the Mill food waste bin in a kitchen
The Mill bin offers a new way to deal with kitchen food scraps

After a few weeks, when the bin is full, the user tips the resulting “food grounds” into a prepaid box and schedules a pick-up to have it posted back to Mill as part of a membership-based service.

The process presents an alternative to sending food to landfill and composting, which can require specific conditions or combinations of waste to work effectively.

Photo of a woman tipping a tray of food grounds into a carboard box labelled Mill
The bin heats and dehydrates leftovers to become food grounds

The company is currently working through the scientific and regulatory processes to turn the grounds into a commercial chicken feed ingredient.

Mill’s goal is to keep leftovers in the food system and reuse them in the most valuable, resource-efficient way.

Mill box in front of a door
The dried food grounds can be placed into a prepaid box and sent to Mill for reuse

While the bin is in use, Mill promises that there should be no noticeable smell – even as the food scraps are heated.

The evaporating water and air from the bin are pushed through an odour management system that incorporates a charcoal filter before the air is expelled through an exhaust fan at the rear of the bin.

Rendering of three phone screens showing the Mill app showing how the app monitors the grinding of food scraps and schedules pickups of the boxes from members' front doors
Pickups can be scheduled via an accompanying app

Mill was founded by Matt Rogers and Harry Tannenbaum at the start of the pandemic, when the duo found themselves “stuck at home staring at and smelling our own trash”, and becoming increasingly obsessed with waste, according to Tannenbaum.

“We looked at what makes up landfills,” he told Dezeen. “The single largest inhabitant is food and our kitchens at home are the number one source.”

Photo of the Mill food waste bin in a kitchen
The design has a “friendly and approachable” pill shape

“And what’s worse is that, when food ends up in a landfill, not only do we waste all the nutrients and resources that went into growing it and getting it to your plate, it releases methane,” he continued.

Methane accounts for about 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions but because of its potency, it is estimated to trap approximately 86 times more heat in the atmosphere than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide on a 20-year timescale.

Rogers and Tannenbaum started by thinking about all the ways that the experience of dealing with home food waste could be improved – “no smell, no flies, less trips taking out the trash” – and tried to deliver all these solutions in one package.

“Some of these things are built into the hardware, where the bucket is transformed into a bottomless pit,” Tannenbaum said. “80 per cent of food is water, so it shrinks down significantly when dehydrated so you have to take out the trash less.”

Boy putting stickers on a white Mill bin
A wood veneer lid conceals its inner workings

“Some are more subtle, like the impact tracking so you can see how much you’re wasting and become a better buyer and start saving money at the grocery store,” he continued.

The duo designed the bin in-house, aiming for a minimalistic look and a “friendly and approachable” pill shape, with the LED display interface hidden underneath a wood veneer lid so as not to command attention.

Photo of a girl sliding food scraps into the Mill bin in her family kitchen
The product is currently only available in the US

Mill has recently launched and is currently only available in the US.

Other innovations in waste disposal in recent years include the Townew bin that automatically seals and changes bin bags and the prototype Taihi bin, which composts waste using a Japanese fermentation method.

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Natural food colourants made from fungi 
CategoriesSustainable News

Natural food colourants made from fungi 

Spotted: Food colourings have had a bad press in recent years. For example, following reports that artificial dyes in foods cause neurobehavioural issues in children, a petition was delivered to the United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking removal of the food colourant Red 3 from the country’s list of approved additives. And another issue is the fact that many artificial food colourants are petroleum-based, making their production environmentally unsustainable. 

Step forward the power of fungi. Biotechnology company Michroma is engineering fungi and utilising precision fermentation to create a new library of natural colourants and other ingredients crucial to the food and drug industries. The company’s first product is Red +, a temperature-resistant bright red shade that is pH stable across the entirety of the food ingredient spectrum. Made by bioengineering fungi that are then produced in batches via precision fermentation, the colourant is cost-effective to produce, unlike most other natural food colours that require significant agricultural resources to grow.

Video source Michroma

The company focused its launch on the warm colours of the spectrum because they are used in 90 per cent of food market products. Michroma’s ingredients are vegan, non-GMO, halal, and kosher, making them ideal for a diversity of uses. The combination of general stability and temperature resistance makes the colours ideal for use in baked goods, confectionary, dairy products, extruded foods, and more.  

The company recently raised $6.4 million (around €5 million) of seed funding that will be used for making other colours, scaling up general manufacturing, and beginning development of additional products to be used as direct replacements for petroleum-based items such as perfumes and flavours.  

Springwise has spotted fungi being used in other ways and the versatility of mycelium is reflected in the broad range of products that use it, including luxury hats and bioleathers.

Written By: Keely Khoury

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Upcycling microfibres from laundry - Springwise
CategoriesSustainable News

Upcycling microfibres from laundry – Springwise

Spotted: Microfibres, or microplastics, have been receiving a lot of bad press lately. And for good reason. These tiny threads break off from textiles in the normal course of washing, drying, and wear and tear, and end up everywhere. Now, startup Xeros Technology is hoping to prevent this situation from getting worse by devising ways to upcycle captured fibres.

Xeros already manufactures a filter that captures 99 per cent of microplastics shed during washing and can be used with any washing machine. Now, the company has teamed up with the University of Surrey to develop a method for upcycling the micro and nanofibres that are shed during the washing of textiles. These fibres are made from plastics, and the researchers have devised a way to release the carbon contained in the fibres, which can then be reused.

The method takes microfibre waste collected from commercially available filters and produces clean hydrogen and solid carbon nanomaterials as by-products. These can then be used in various essential products including batteries, solar cells, and medical devices. The partnership with Xeros will allow the researchers to develop ways to scale up their process and develop a commercial-scale solution.

Although the exact environmental and health effects of microplastics are unclear, there is a growing consensus that we need to get on top of this problem. Springwise has spotted a growing number of innovations aimed at tackling this issue, including processes that use magnets, silk capsules, and apples to remove microplastics from water.

Written By: Lisa Magloff

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A climate-positive chocolate brand - Springwise
CategoriesSustainable News

A climate-positive chocolate brand – Springwise

Spotted: The mainstream chocolate industry is affecting rainforests, damaging the environment, and contributing to global warming – and the problem begins when sourcing the cocoa bean. In normal chocolate production, cocoa farmers clear tropical forests to plant new cocoa trees rather than reusing the same land. This has resulted in massive deforestation in West Africa, particularly in The Ivory Coast.  

But British chocolate company Love Cocoa has created a brand that makes chocolate consumption and manufacturing more sustainable. As the great-great-great-grandson of John Cadbury, creator of Cadbury chocolate, James Cadbury aims to follow in his footsteps by building his company on ethical grounds. For every product sold, the company is planting one tree in their Plant A Tree Project to create a fairer, more sustainable chocolate industry.  

Love Cocoa is working in partnership with Eden Reforestation Projects, a non-profit NGO that works with local communities in developing countries to restore natural landscapes destroyed by deforestation, thereby creating jobs, protecting ecosystems, and helping to combat climate change. The company has already planted one million trees in West Africa. Planting more trees isn’t only ecologically beneficial, it also benefits local communities and cocoa farmers who can transition to more stable and sustainable practices. 

Increasingly, the chocolate industry is looking to minimise its carbon footprint. Springwise has also spotted a 3D-printed dress made from waste cocoa bean husks, and a blockchain programme that supports local cocoa farmers.

Written By: Anam Alam

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