It’s time to help the helpers.
This initiative converts unwanted materials into biomaterials recognizable to nature. The Biomimicry Institute set out to apply nature’s principles to a very unnatural set of circumstances—turning mixed textile waste that was destined for landfill or incineration into something valuable and usable by Earth’s “helpers”.
There are millions of species of bacteria, archaea, and algae, the most ancient and widespread engines of material flows and life support for the planet. When they don’t recognize what we humans make, it becomes pollution. Instead, we can learn from them and support them and in turn, they will continue to support us.
This collective action initiative began as a two year experiment: evaluate the landscape of decomposition technologies available today, in regions in the Global North and South, and work with teams on the ground to pilot the transformation process from mixed, composite textile waste into biocompatible new materials. With support from the Laudes Foundation and several others including VF Foundation, Decathlon, DOEN, and private donors we applied the principles of decomposition and food web theory to legacy textile waste.
Every year, 182 million tons of diatomaceous dust leaves the Saharan Desert and makes its way across the Atlantic. Some 27 million tons, rich in phosphorus, lands in the Amazon basin, replacing vital nutrients that were washed away by heavy rains.
The foundation of a biomimetic materials economy is the trifecta of biodegradability, low toxicity, and biogenic or sequestered carbon. These safe and circular materials rely on structure to create performance functions like water repellency or color. Learn more about how nature designs at AskNature.org.
Ultimately, a healthy materials metabolism means that waste is converted into building blocks for future material production, toxic chemicals are not used as inputs or outputs, and potential energy is unlocked.
Significant GHG savings are expected from increasing our reliance on biogenic (i.e., living) sources of carbon. An evolved materials economy will still need platform chemicals, even with more intelligent design based on biological structures. Those chemicals can now come from biomass feedstocks that are abundant, renewable, sequester carbon and can be economically cycled back into the bioeconomy. Historically, industry has relied on petrochemicals. The refineries of the future will be biorefineries making chemicals from biomass.
Note: we have to be careful with biomass—this isn’t about exploiting sources like forests or mono-cropping—but it can include any organic waste (think poop). You can break it down into something usable either with heat or bacteria/enzymes, which is precisely what our pilots are demonstrating. The question is, can we “spike” biomass sources with less savory textile waste (like that raincoat), and still get a biocompatible result? That’s what we are testing now.
In Northern Europe, the pilot tackles waste from a major regional collector/sorter: using a biological pathway to produce glucose and a thermochemical pathway to process the plastic fraction that would otherwise be destined for burning or burying.
In Accra, Ghana, the pilot focuses on remediating the harm done to Korle Lagoon: seeing if applied biomimicry can break down years of accumulated textiles (and other things) that ended up in the wrong place.
Mountain of discarded clothes in Atacama desert, northern Chile is visible from space (satellite photo). Image Courtesy: SkyFi
Generating a new source of feedstock from waste can help reduce our reliance on feedstocks from agriculture (e.g. corn) that faces its own set of sustainability challenges: conversion of natural habitats into cropland, competition with food production, over-consumption of water, and pesticide pollution, among others.
To successfully grow a biomimetic materials economy, materials need to be familiar to nature and capable of cycling, ideally, through biological processes. The D4T initiative supported research to examine biodegradability within the context of chemicals, materials and ecosystems.
Our ability to test for biodegradability is tempered by the complexity of natural systems that ultimately determine the environmental fate of materials that are released into the environment. Standardized testing methods for biodegradation are not a realistic proxy for measuring the fate of materials in dynamic natural systems. We need more sophisticated testing methods and computational tools to better predict the biodegradability of chemicals and materials. To that end, D4T collaborated with the Yale Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering to build a model that incorporates experimental and estimated data along with the molecular properties of chemicals to better predict their potential biodegradability. Estimating the biodegradability of complex materials which can be combinations of multiple chemicals or substrates is even more difficult. D4T collaborated with Leeds University in the U.K. to conduct a literature review of existing research examining the biodegradability of textile fabrics including their colorants and finishing chemistries, and their toxicity as they decompose. The D4T team created a summary of this research and its key findings to share with industry ahead of a peer-reviewed publication in a series of three info-sheets:
The five-button miner’s work pants recovered from the S.S. Central America. These “biodegradable” cotton pants were recovered intact from an 1857 shipwreck, demonstrating that real-world degradation is highly dependent upon specific environmental conditions. Image Courtesy: Holabird Western Americana Collections
The Laudes Foundation has provided catalytic funding for this ambitious project.
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