Using the raincoat as a “charismatic tool for talking”, a professor of industrial design has used algae to produce the rainwear in a material that is both strong and consistent, and could be pushed further for commercial readiness with the right partners.
Why algae: Algae, that group of predominantly aquatic, photosynthetic, and nucleus-bearing organisms that lack true roots, stems, leaves, and the specialised multicellular reproductive structures of plants, is efficient at converting solar energy to stored chemical potential energy, thus sequestering carbon.
- Algae is therefore carbon negative and not carbon neutral. That’s opposed to making plastics biodegradable, which release their carbon into the atmosphere.
- Algae is a naturally occurring biopolymer.
The Researcher: The research is by Charlotte McCurdy, Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at the Arizona State University who works at the intersection of research, design and sustainability.
- It was in graduate school that she explored and investigated whether it was possible to use algae feedstock to make a petrochemical-free plastic substitute.
- After years of experimentation, looking into a wide variety of techniques exploring if a film plastic substance could be made out of algae, Charlotte developed a process for coaxing the algae to perform the way she wanted it to, finally producing something that was strong enough and consistent enough.
Why raincoat? Charlotte zeroed in on a wear like the raincoat as she felt that the climate-change future is already here in some way and it gestures at extreme weather and hurricanes. Hurricanes are how the present manifestation of climate change is felt and day to day in impacted communities.
What they said:
We increasingly have the technology to make new and old materials out of biomass and present-tense sunlight. We have a guilt about consumption. We’ve tried telling each other that the moral thing to do is to reduce consumption. We’ve tried telling each other that the moral thing to do is to reduce our consumption. How’s that going? Making things out of present-tense sunlight could reduce the guilt over consumption. Consumption could be carbon-negative behaviour.
— Charlotte McCurdy
Assistant Professor, Industrial Design
Arizona State University
