Tag: Wood

Gin and whisky are saving trees from being felled. Apple leftovers or kombucha are also playing their part. In the USA alone, wood processing produces 100 tonnes of sawdust annually, which could be used as packaging material. A Massachusetts-based startup is manufacturing furniture, kitchen utensils and automobile parts from the valuable waste product. Their design pieces come from a...

Potatoes can flourish thanks to waste from banana plants. Now, a research team based at North Carolina State University has turned its attention to leftovers of a different kind. In recent pilot studies they have been experimenting with sawdust in order to substitute Styrofoam packaging material. Out of finely ground wood scrap and residues from agricultural products, they created...

Drawing on what’s already there. It’s an increasingly popular approach when it comes to material innovations. Take coconut husks, for example. Now a design student from Illinois has developed a material, the color and grain of which resembles tropical wood. The key ingredient is cellulose, which is produced when Kombucha is made. A waste product, it is created by...

A lightbulb moment. Transparent wood was first introduced as an alternative to glass or plastic in 2016. To create the see-through material, lignin - the component in wood that absorbs most light - is removed. The resulting pores need to be filled to reinforce the wood again. Until recently that was achieved with synthetic polymers from non-renewable raw materials....

We take on average 17 minutes to consume our meals. Which equates to something of a cameo appearance for chopsticks, given the distance they travel to reach our dining table – especially when their final destination is usually the trash. A Canadian startup is putting an end to this by providing recycled chopsticks with a thrill-seeking second life. Forget...

A bank card made of trees? If you didn't know better you'd say Pinocchio was doing some blue-sky thinking about the 21st century. But it's true: the first ever wooden credit card is here, supported by a sustainable search engine whose passion is global reforestation. The latter’s model, where trees are planted with the advertising income generated by search...

It seems that researchers at the Universities of Maryland and Colorado have the wood over their competitors – literally. Using a two-step eco-friendly bleaching method they have succeeded in making balsa wood transparent, a development made possible by the fast-growing mallow plant’s low density. The final product is not only more durable and lighter than glass but just as see-through....