Biomaterials

As the search for an alternative recyclable leather continues, scientists in Germany have developed a synthetic leather in which both the fibre material and the coating polymer are bio-based and recyclable.

NextGen material Celium — Premium Cultivated Cellulose — will now be available globally for consumer product applications, empowering more brands to adopt low carbon materials into their product categories.

Creating an eco-friendly alternative to petroleum-based plastics is only one part of the long road to viability and it is with this goal that researchers have developed algae-based “completely biodegradable” polymers.

Well, you now have a leather alternative that dyes itself! Researchers at the Imperial College London have created the sustainable, self-dyeing leather alternative by modifying the genes of a bacteria species that produces a strong, flexible and malleable material.

On a mission to use sustainable algae technologies to replace petroleum-derived products to launch carbon negative products, Living Ink is a biomaterials company that has developed Algae Black, a sustainable alternative to the black pigment used to make materials such as ink, plastics, leathers and rubber. texfash.com in conversation with the Co-Founders Scott Fulbright and Stevan Albers.

Japanese biotechnology startup Spiber’s Brewed Protein materials has found four more collaborators to help catalyse the industry's transition from a linear “take-make-use-dispose” model to a circular “take-make-use-reuse” model.

The recent methodological proposal on lifecycle assessments (LCAs) by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the scientific body of the European Commission, has come in for flak as the policy landscape in which the methodology is implemented creates systemic disadvantages for innovative industries using alternative feedstocks.

Biotech company MycoWorks has successfully harvested and shipped over a thousand sheets of its luxury leather-alternative biomaterial Fine Mycelium.

A cleantech biochemical start-up Nature Coatings has given the world perhaps its first carbon-negative black pigment — the BioBlack TX — sourced from FSC certified wood waste. texfash.com talks to the Founder-CEO Jane Palmer on her journey this far.

A raincoat made out of algae is what a researcher at the Arizona State University has experimented on and given the right partners it could be pushed further for commercial readiness.