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.
Is it possible to stage a trade fair without producing excessive waste? Dezeen editor-at-large Amy Frearson explores eight approaches that were all on show at this year’s Stockholm Furniture Fair.
The trade show format is increasingly under scrutiny, with environmental concerns prompting many to reconsider the material cost of building large exhibition stands that are only used for a few days.
Stockholm Furniture Fair has pointed a way towards how trade fairs might become more eco-friendly. The majority of exhibitions and stands at this year’s edition of the fair were designed to reduce waste and promote circularity.
“A new layout to promote less construction”
Hanna Nova Beatrice, director of Stockholm Furniture Fair, said that numerous strategies were set out to reduce the carbon footprint of the fair.
“First and foremost, we updated the halls with a new layout to promote less construction,” she said.
Nova Beatrice and her team also drew up “very strict guidelines” that were applied to all of the in-house exhibitions, and worked closely with exhibiting brands to help them find more sustainable solutions.
“We had many discussions about how fairs can be more sustainable, promoting less construction and less waste, both within the organisation and with our exhibitors,” she explained.
Here’s a look at eight approaches that featured:
Photo is by Erik Lefvander
Create island stands without walls
The new fair layout made it possible for some brands to create “island stands” formed simply of a floor surface that could be easily repurposed or recycled.
Brands adopting this approach included Hem, whose stand was defined by bold chequerboard flooring. The result was a space that became a de facto public plaza.
Photo is by Sanna Lindberg
Use products to frame space
Swedish outdoor furniture brand Nola put its own spin on the island stand by making clever use of one of its new products, the Moiré pavilion by designer Mattias Rubin de Lima.
By installing two of these pergola structures, Nola was able to create a simple frame for its stand. This was accompanied by a floor formed of recycled bricks, making the space feel like a garden patio.
Build an installation rather than a stand
The fair organisers encouraged some brands to find ways to exhibit using no construction at all. “Think Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, which used only tape to divide the different areas,” Nova Beatrice explained.
One of the most successful examples came from Pholc. The Swedish lighting brand worked with design agency Nineties to create a multilayered scenography out of stacked packing crates.
Photo is by Erik Lefvander
Creatively repurpose an old stand
Many Stockholm exhibitors chose to reuse a stand they had already used before, either for a previous edition of this fair or for one of the many others on the furniture design calendar.
One of the most simple and effective approaches came from Swedish furniture brand Lammhults, which reuses the same stand every year but simply paints it in a different colour. For this year, the cobalt blue of 2023 was replaced with a bold shade of red.
Other noteworthy examples included fellow Swedish brand Mitab, which opted for transparency. Its stand featured a counter that made clear how it had used the same stand for the last five years. “This is the same bar we used last year. And we will use next year,” read text printed on the front.
Photo is by Felix Odell
Work with waste materials
Minus Furniture made its fair debut with a stand built entirely from recycled materials, in line with the Norwegian brand’s ambitiously eco-friendly business model.
Interiors studio Omhu went to great lengths to source everything. Together with a rented scaffolding system, the design included items sourced from construction sites, second-hand stores and municipal waste.
“Not every company wants to put in the work to think in this manner. It takes time and research to demonstrate and source supplies of a circular nature,” said Poppy Lawman, designer at Omhu.
Photo is by Andy Liffner
Find a new home for everything
All of the fair’s own exhibitions were designed for circularity, which meant rehoming every component once the fair was over. The Reading Room installation by guest of honour Formafantasma was one of the best examples.
Both the fabric curtain that framed the space and the books displayed inside have been donated to design schools, while the Flos lighting has been gifted to a bookshop. The Artek furniture is meanwhile being sold by retailer Nordiska Galleriet as signed limited editions.
Photo is by Andy Liffner
Adapt an old design for a new purpose
The bar and stage installation by Stockholm-based Färg and Blanche was first created for Sweden’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which took place in the first six months of 2023.
The design duo adapted the components into a new configuration so that they could be reused here, along with flooring that manufacturer Tarkett plans to repurpose at its factory in Ronneby.
Photo is by Andy Liffner
Keep things simple
Young brands exhibiting for the first time were invited to make use of ready-made booths designed by designer Nick Ross, rather than building their own.
This “nude edition” was built from recycled materials – an aluminium truss system created freestanding wall modules in untreated MDF – that are now being recycled again.
“The entire area can be disassembled and reused for other events,” explained Ross.
Spotted: Data centres are a significant but often overlooked contributor to climate change, responsible – along with their accompanying data transmission networks – for around one per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Computer processes generate a lot of heat as a by-product, and cooling systems therefore account for a significant proportion of the energy consumption of a typical data centre.
Now, however, French startup Hestiia is looking at the heat generated by computing differently, using it to create a new kind of domestic radiator, called the myEko.
The startup collects and upgrades used ASIC chips from data centres and places them on a custom-made electronics board, which forms the core of the radiator. Conductive layers and piping then transfer the heat produced when the refurbished chips perform calculations to the space that needs heating.
Hestiia provides the compute capacity embodied in the radiators to companies that need it for heavy workloads such as scientific research, 3D modelling, crypto mining, and blockchain. The startup’s customers, meanwhile, install the radiators to heat their homes.
In addition to being highly efficient, the radiators use smart sensors to automatically regulate the temperature of a room, and users can tweak preferences on the app, such as setting day and night modes to automatically adjust temperatures for each space depending on the time of day. And, the system further detects temperature changes from actions such as opening a window and alerts owners, signalling them to turn the temperature down to avoid wasted energy. In ‘geolocation mode’, the system can detect when a user is coming home and turn on the heating accordingly.
Hestiia’s initial product was a water heater system called SATO that similarly reused the heat from computer chips to supplement a standard boiler. The startup is now pivoting to focus on myEko, which it believes is an even more accessible, mass-market solution.
Other innovations in Springwise’s library working to decarbonise computing include a new power distribution unit that maximises efficiency, and the use of AI to reduce the number of calculations required.
Spotted: The European Commission recently warned France that, as a nation, it lags “far behind on its targets for recycling household waste and (…) it will have to step up efforts considerably to achieve them.” Helping the country close the gap between its goals and reality is French waste management technology company Akanthas.
Akanthas calls waste a ‘resource’ and combines Internet of Things (IoT) hardware with artificial intelligence (AI) analysis to identify, categorise, and more efficiently manage it. The company’s intelligent, AI-powered digital waste production and management platform helps organisations reduce the volume of waste sent to landfill.
Co-founder and CEO Viviana Contreras told Springwise that the system helps companies reduce their waste transport needs by 15 per cent a year and improves the sorting of their waste by 20 per cent. Currently focused on businesses, including heavy industry, Akanthas creates custom KPIs for waste management companies, recycling centres, construction and demolition companies, asphalt plants, manufacturers, and retail brands.
For waste management companies, the platform identifies sorting errors, flags cross-contamination and tracks the effectiveness and efficiency of pickup locations, driving routes, and fill rates. One sensor can monitor up to four containers, and the AI-powered image analysis blurs human faces so the focus is on the waste. The data gathered by the system lets organisations better allocate their vehicles and pickup times and work more closely with customers to support them in taking the most sustainable actions.
For industrial spaces and construction sites, the system is customised for the materials being generated, including liquid and toxic waste, and monitors volumes to ensure that pickups are booked for the right times to keep a space safe. The system also generates automatically required reports and certifications.
Akanthas is already working with Veolia and Bouygues Travaux Publics, among other waste management companies in France. Now in the process of closing a €2.5 million funding round, Akanthas plans to use the capital to expand the availability of its system globally.
Other innovations in Springwise’s Library that are also working on cutting waste and improving waste management include AI food scanners and real-time communication between waste generators and disposal companies.
The world throws away a vast quantity of banana peels each year, and Discarded Spirits is putting some of this material to good use with its banana peel rum. In the final instalment of our special series of articles for Discarded Spirits, we look at a snapshot of the creative ways innovators around the world are using banana waste.
A useful ingredient and a tasty, nutrient-rich snack, the banana is among the world’s most traded and consumed fruits, with well over 100 million tonnes of bananas produced every year. This production causes a lot of waste, both during the harvest and at the consumer level, with the world generating around 3.5 million tonnes of banana peels annually.
Traditionally, this discarded material has mostly gone to landfill, where it contributes to emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. However, a new generation of innovators is looking at banana waste differently, seeing it as a valuable tool in the fight against climate change.
Sustainable, animal-free leather
In India, leather is big business, but the industry has a significant negative impact on the environment. Not only does it lead to toxic chemical pollution, but the production of just one leather bag requires 10,000 litres of water. Fossil-fuel-derived plastic alternatives, meanwhile, are not much better. For Kolkata-based material innovation firm, Atma Leather, banana waste holds the solution to this problem. The company’s leather alternative, called ‘Banofi’, is made up of 50 per cent banana stem waste and 30 per cent natural additives. The remaining 20 per cent is composed of primarily recycled polymers, with the firm continuing to invest in innovation to reduce this remaining reliance on plastic. The material has a significantly lower environmental impact than both animal and synthetic leather, offering a 100 per cent reduction in toxic wastewater and significant reductions in CO2 emissions. Find out more.
Handmade textiles
Beyond the fruit itself, the banana plant also has a ‘pseudo-stem’ – a trunk-like structure made up of a soft central core surrounded by tightly-packed leaf sheaths. With a high cellulose fibre content, it is well-suited to a range of applications. Ugandan organisation TEXFAD teaches people to use banana pseudo-stems and other waste materials to create sustainable, hand-made textile products. This non-formal, hands-on skills training is accredited by the country’s Directorate of Industrial Training and designed to encourage job and wealth creation. In addition, TEXFAD runs a business incubation programme that provides budding businesses with equipped production space, business plan development, and technical support services. There is also an ‘earn while you learn’ option for those in vocational training. The types of handicraft produced under TEXFAD’s banana programme include coasters, glasses cases, rugs, and lampshades, among many others. Find out more.
Biodegradable food packaging
Every year, the world produces 141 million tonnes of plastic packaging, and food packaging is one of the most visible uses of plastic in our daily lives. Now, Australian company Papyrus is converting banana plantation waste into a fine fibre that forms the basis of a range of moulded food packaging products that are commercially viable. The organisation, which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, takes rejected banana fruits as well as the stalks, leaves, and pseudo-stems of the banana plant and puts them through a chemical-free process that separates the biomass into organic liquids and raw fibres. The fibres are then refined and moulded into trays, plates, egg cartons, cup holders, and ‘clam shells’ (a type of takeaway box). The banana packaging replaces alternatives made from environmentally damaging materials like plastic and forest-sourced wood. Find out more.
Food, agricultural, and pharmaceutical growth enhancers
UK startup LyteGro highlights that around 30 per cent of the global banana crop is deemed unsuitable for sale in any given year. Seizing this opportunity, the company adds water to the otherwise unsellable bananas and then mixes, heats, and filters the resulting mash, producing Baclyte, a microbial growth enhancer. Highly potent, the mixture enables rapid microbial growth for a huge range of industrial applications. With everything from brewing and distilling to dairy and pharmaceutical production reliant on microbes, Baclyte has the potential to be a highly valuable addition to food and commercial manufacturing processes. This is because faster growth of microbes results in higher yields and accelerated production of the final product. Find out more.
Delicious liquids
Discarded Spirits’ banana peel rum is made using waste from the flavour industry. Discarded works with a flavour house in the Netherlands who would otherwise throw banana peels away once they’re finished with them. The peels are dehydrated and ground before being supplied to Discarded, who then take them and turn them into an extract. The extract is soaked in alcohol and then blended with the rum. The end result is something that tastes like liquid banana bread, in the best way possible! Find out more.
To learn more about how the other Discarded Spirits liquids are made, that also put organic waste to use, read our interview with Discarded Brand Ambassador Sam Trevethyen.
Spotted: The COVID pandemic shined a spotlight on the huge amount of plastic waste produced by disposable Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). While PPE such as medical masks, respirators, and surgical gowns are essential health equipment, most of it is highly unsustainable, made using petroleum-based, non-biodegradable polymers. These materials, along with other post-consumer plastic, are not biodegradable and often end up incinerated.
In 2021, as part of the Innovative Solutions Canada programme, which began as the Canadian government’s drive to find new solutions to COVID-19 challenges, Canadian startup GreenMantra was tasked with recycling this PPE waste.
The startup has developed an efficient and cost-effective system for recycling plastics – including bottles, food boxes, film, as well as PPE – into feedstock that can be used to produce speciality waxes and polymers. These, in turn, are used as additives in construction materials like asphalt, roofing shingles, and plastic piping.
GreenMantra’s process operates at relatively low temperature and pressure, making it energy efficient. The system involves depolymerising waste plastics and shortening the length of the polymer chains to produce the wax additive. The company claims that construction products made from its additives outperform fossil-based equivalents.
Creating circular processes that recycle plastic waste into new products is the goal of a huge number of recent innovations Springwise has spotted. These include converting used nappies into pet products and roof tiles made from post-consumer plastics.
In the UK, around 500,000 tonnes of fresh produce is wasted in hospitality and food service each year. Globally, some estimates put the total amount of food wasted at 1.3 billion tonnes, which according to data from the United Nations equates to around 8-10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
A more innovative approach to waste produce is good for the planet and, as UK brand Discarded has discovered, it’s also good for the palette. Discarded is part of the Scottish company William Grant & Sons, famous predominantly for its whiskeys, and was the brainchild of the company’s innovation team who were looking for credible and impactful ways to build on its sustainability strategy. The first product to launch in 2018 was a Cascara Vermouth, made from the fruit that is usually discarded as part of the coffee production process, and trailed in a limited number of bars in the UK.
The pandemic gave the team the opportunity to develop the brand further and double down on its mission to make waste extinct and to inspire progress around reusing produce that would otherwise be thrown away and potentially contribute to methane emissions from landfill. A key objective was to think creatively about waste in order to transform it into a superior product.
The team went back to the drawing board for the packaging: the bottle is now fully recyclable and made from mostly recycled materials. The glass in the bottle is 65-70 per cent recycled, while the lid is 100 per cent recycled tin, waste cork, and recycled plastic, and the label is made from sugar cane pulp.
The vermouth had been a hit with bartenders but to really go mainstream, the brand had to consider something more mainstream. Enter, Banana Peel Rum and Grape Skin Vodka. The rum is made with a spirit base already available in the William Grant supply chain and leftover banana skins. With the vodka, the team wanted to show that the Discarded methodology could be applied to waste produce in other areas of the drinks industry. The result is a trio of liquids that taste good while trying to do good at the same time.
Want to know more? How do you make rum with banana skins? What exactly is cascara anyway? Our next article will feature a conversation with Discarded brand ambassador Sam Trevethyen about how each of the liquids is made and the plans for a roll-out beyond the UK.
Spotted: Concrete is the second most-consumed substance in the world behind only water, and this popularity comes from its remarkable characteristics as a building material, which include strength, durability, versatility, and economy. However, it comes at a heavy environmental cost, with UK company Cemfree highlighting that the ubiquitous material currently accounts for around 25 per cent of the UK’s ‘embodied carbon’ from construction – the carbon emissions associated with building materials and construction processes.
To tackle the climate impact of concrete, Cemfree uses a proprietary Alkali-Activated Cementitious Material (AACM) to completely replace Portland cement (OPC) in concrete mixes. Typically, OPC is used to bind together the other concrete ingredients, including sand and aggregates, and is the main component that determines the overall properties of concrete infrastructure.
However, despite its usefulness, OPC is incredibly energy-intensive to produce. To make OPC, limestone is heated to temperatures as high as 1,450 degrees Celsius in huge kilns, which results in around one kilogramme of CO2 being emitted for every kilogramme of cement.
Cemfree’s AACM binder activates ‘pozzolanic’ materials – materials that acquire cement-like characteristics through chemical reactions – such as Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag (GGBS) and Pulverised Fly Ash (PFA). Both of these substances are waste products, the former from steelmaking and the latter from coal-burning. The company’s binder reacts with GGBS to form a solid mass that is comparable to, and can therefore replace, OPC.
This technology forms the basis of three products: the company’s original Portland cement alternative, Cemfree Optima, as well as two follow-on products Cemfree Rapid and Cemfree Ultra. The company’s materials have already been used in a wide range of projects from a railway station to the Thames Tideway, with Cemfree’s staff working in collaboration with project experts to deliver a process that meets the project’s particular demands.
Concrete is a classic ‘hard-to-abate’ industry and Springwise’s library contains a range of innovations tackling concrete’s climate impact. These include electrified cement production, the use of AI to design out excess concrete, and an AI platform for optimising concrete recipes.
Chinese car manufacturer Nio has launched Blue Sky Lab, its own sustainable fashion brand, which has been shortlisted for a 2023 Dezeen Award.
Blue Sky Lab creates garments and accessories using materials left over from the car manufacturing process including seat belts, airbags and other car-grade fabrics to demonstrate how waste can be “creatively repurposed”.
Nio has launched its own fashion brand
Nio claims the label is “the world’s first sustainable fashion brand launched by an automotive company and brought to mass production”.
Blue Sky Lab made its debut in 2021 at the Shanghai Auto Show and has since reused nearly 55,000 metres of waste fabric.
The pieces are made using leftover materials from car manufacturing
These car-grade surplus materials can help to create new high-performance products, according to the brand.
“Blue Sky Lab enjoys an innate advantage by adopting auto-grade materials in its fashion products as these materials outperform their consumer-grade counterparts to a large extent,” the brand said.
“We think more about improving our products rather than blindly catering to the external environment. For example, the recycled materials from the airbags are light and durable with high strength, a perfect fit for lightweight fashion items.”
Blue Sky Lab launched in 2021 at the Shanghai Auto Show
The materials are simply sterilised and repurposed into a variety of products in line with the brand’s minimal futuristic aesthetic.
“Regarding environmental protection, most visual communication tends to adopt nature and green elements,” the company said.
“However, rather than being confined by such a monotonous style, we have chosen to find inspirations from our DNA and business areas including innovative technologies, manufacturing and industrialization, and lifestyle in carrying out product design.”
“Blue Sky Lab has joined with global design talent including Nio’s designers, Japanese architect Shuhei Aoyama, French leather goods designer Vincent du SARTEL, Finnish designer Rolf Ekroth, NIO user designers and designers from Parsons School of Design, Li-Ning and Allbirds,” the brand added.
The brand told Dezeen it has mass-produced over a hundred different fashion items since its inception alongside tables, stools and lighting fixtures.
Blue Sky Lab has also created furniture and lighting
The brand also partnered with an independent product testing and certification agency to calculate the carbon footprint of its bestselling products.
“Compared with their counterparts made of traditional raw materials, their footprint per unit is 18 to 58 per cent less,” the brand said.
Blue Sky Lab has been shortlisted for a Dezeen Award
Blue Sky Lab has been shortlisted in the sustainable consumer design category of this year’s Dezeen Awards.
Here, the brand is competing against the world’s “first refillable” edge styler and soap-in-a-can brand Kankan.
Spotted: It is estimated that the world will consume 7.1 billion kilogrammes of tea in 2023, and a Macau-based startup is working to develop sustainable materials for use in the Far East, with a project to turn spent tea leaves and other local bio-waste streams into packaging and other industry items.
Zence Object hopes to take advantage of this abundant bio-waste by turning it into “eco-friendly” materials that can be “seamlessly integrated” into everyday life. In addition to tea waste, Zence’s ‘Chazence’ product range uses bamboo, bellflower, and discarded Chinese herbs. These are transformed into alternatives for conventional plastics, paper, and wood.
Some of the company’s initial products include biodegradable tea paper, formaldehyde-free tea board – which is three times as hard as cement – and tea plastic, which is waterproof, washable, and temperature-resistant. All three products are in the process of patent applications in Hong Kong, China, Japan, and the United States.
Zence Object has recently secured $2.5 million in Seed funding from the AEF Greater Bay Area Fund (AEF GBA) managed by Gobi Partners GBA (Gobi GBA). The funding will be used to establish a research and development centre and an immersive exhibition facility in Hengqin, and to set up a manufacturing line and processing hub.
We are seeing a growing number of products manufactured from bio-waste. These include recent innovations made from bio-waste, such as footwear, green hydrogen, and even construction materials.
