This is a story about a yogurt container.
A woman in Littleton, Colorado has yogurt for breakfast. The yogurt is packaged in a thin polypropylene plastic container. Once finished, she disposes it into her recycling bin. This is then picked up by a recycling truck a few days later, and brought here to the local recycling company’s material recovery facility.
Plastic comes in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and types, and different shapes, sizes, or types of plastic are recycled in different ways. There’s high-value plastic that’s recovered immediately, negative-value plastic that is either incinerated or sent to a landfill, but then there’s a third category in between those two, and that’s where things get interesting. Anything that isn’t small and unrecoverable or large and valuable is typically mixed and formed into big bales of unsorted, medium-size, medium-value plastic that effectively have a neutral value on the free market.
After it takes its trip through the Material Recovery Facility, that yogurt container from Littleton, Colorado would if properly sorted, end up in one of these MRF Residuals Bales. These are then loaded into the back of a semi-truck driven 1,000 miles to the Port of Long Beach, California. There, the bales are officially exported from the US, loaded into a shipping container, and placed on an enormous, yet empty, Hong Kong-bound cargo ship.
Upon arrival in Hong Kong, the plastic yogurt container disposed of in Littleton, along with everything else in these bales, is immediately transferred onto a smaller barge and reexported out of Hong Kong for a short journey across the Pearl River Delta to the Guangdong Province, in mainland China. Then, after an 8,000 mile, 13,000-kilometre journey to the other side of the world, it ends up at its final destination: the Wellpine Plastic Industrial Company just outside Guangzhou. There, the bales are unloaded, spread out, and low-wage workers manually sift through the contents, eventually finding that yogurt container, and putting it in a pile along with the rest of the polypropylene plastics. From there, the polypropylenes are melted down, purified, and reformed into pellets which then, eventually, are sold in bulk to another manufacturer, somewhere else in China, for a very, very slight profit.
That’s how the western world’s recycling system worked for decades, before 2018.
Why recycling doesn’t work domestically?
It’s not profitable. Oil is cheap, and when oil is cheap, making new plastic is cheap. Meanwhile, sorting, transporting, and melting down existing plastic is expensive. In 2017, virgin PET plastic cost about 54 cents per pound, while recycled PET cost about 63 cents per pound, and was lower quality than the alternative. Therefore, demand for recycled PET was low, so waste management companies couldn’t turn a profit turning used PET into raw, recycled PET at scale.
Recycling only works when it is profitable. Similarly, when we talk about sustainability, it is also important for us to think about how can we make sustainable business more profitable. For a short while, enterprises would advocate sustainable development to set an example in society or for a better reputation. However, if we wish them to take sustainability as a long-term goal for their business, we have to convince them by showing them that there are ways to integrate sustainability with business. Thus, turning sustainability into a business that can protect the environment while making profits.
As I am quite interested in study the relationship between design and business, how sustainability could become a business that helps companies to profit has become an interesting topic to discover.
In the following paragraph, I will analyse several successful case studies on turning sustainability into a profitable business.
Circular Economy
“ A circular economy is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems.” — Ellen Macarthur Foundation
Since the industrial revolution, goods were mass-produced. We take resources from the ground to make products, which we use, and, when we no longer want them, throw them away. We need to transform the take-make-waste system into a circular system where the economy can thrive and that it can benefit everyone within the limits of our planet.
In this new circular system, three principles are acting as the foundations, which are:
- Design out waste and pollution
- Keep products and materials in use
- Regenerate natural systems
Using biodegradable innovative material is a new trend in the market and many companies are taking their effort on creating the technologies. The following are some of the leading companies that specialise in developing eco-friendly materials.
Ecovative Design
Ecovative Design is a company using mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms, throughout technology platforms to grow advanced materials. The platform includes Atlast™, MycoFlex™, and MycoComposite™, each specialising in developing different categories of biodegradable products.
Application:
Lush — Packaging Design
Made in collaboration with the Magical Mushroom Company harnessing technology pioneered by Ecovative Design, this box for the Snow Showers gift set was created using organically grown hemp from non-GM seed combined with mushroom mycelium.
Hermès — mushroom-based ‘leather’ bag made from fine mycelium
In 2013, philip ross and sophia wang co-founded MycoWorks, a biomaterials company dedicated to bringing new mycelium materials to the world. Exclusive to MycoWorks is fine mycelium, a patented process of interlocking cellular structures to amplify mycelium’s natural capacity to bind to itself and other materials — a breakthrough that creates a strong, three dimensional network. This revolutionary method is behind the development of reishi — not a vegan leather or mushroom leather (compressed mycelium), but rather a new class of sustainable material that is neither animal, nor plastic. In November 2020, MycoWorks announced that it had raised $45 million in series B financing in tandem with the opening of a major new reishi production plant in California. The collaboration between Hermès and MycoWorks marks the first object made with fine mycelium, and the development of a new material called ‘sylvania’ — produced in the MycoWorks facility. the interpretation of the ‘Victoria’ bag has been tanned and finished in France by the Hermès tanners to further refine its strength and durability, before being shaped in the workshops by Hermès craftspeople.
karuun® — rattan
“ Driven by globalisation, the steady growth of the global economy poses major challenges, especially to our ecosystem. Future-oriented companies are already responding to these challenges and reacting to changing consumer behaviour. ” — out for space
karuun® is a new material made from rattan. Thanks to highly energy-efficient technology and its’ natural structure, this non-timber material is both versatile and innovative, and with a cross-section looking like a bundle of tubes, they are in fact capillaries that allow rattan to transport water up to 200 metres.
Depending on the direction in which it is cut, three different karuun® products with various possibilities can be created. With a variety of applications in different fields and industries, karuun® is at the forefront of natural alternatives to materials like plastics.
karuun® stripe — Superior Aesthetic Standard
It is perfect for use as on flat surfaces such as boards or panels, its applications in interior design are boundless, while its sustainability as a material captures the current zeitgeist.
karuun® shine — Translucent Wooden Board
A lightweight material which is simultaneously permeable to both air and light while also being strong and pleasant to the touch. Suitable for tailor-made, high-tech acoustic protection on one end of the spectrum, to futuristic lighting design and innovative flooring on the other.
karuun® 3D — Three-Dimensional Shaping
The combination of capillary treatment and a special nonwoven viscose fabric means that the innovative surface boasts unprecedented three-dimensional formability. Spherical objects from as small as a button to as large as a deep-drawn formed component can be manufactured without having to worry about splintering.
Rattan is a climbing palm that grows quicker than trees and whose cultivation provides significant advantages over other types of wood and non-timber products. It relies on biodiversity and cannot flourish in a monoculture, so supporting its cultivation actively helps preserve our planet’s rainforests and gives the local community a sustainable income.
Application:
Interior
Heimat Spa in Kisslegg — world’s first wellness area featuring karuun®
Automotive
karuun® is part of NIO’s futuristic mobility design — the concept car ‘EVE’
Conclusion
We are happy to see that many leading companies have realised the importance of sustainability and transforming their business into a sustainable business — the circular economy. Due to the limitation of the article, I’m not able to introduce each of the successful business examples here one by one. There’s still a lot to talk about circular economy. I hope I could have an opportunity to talk more and deeper in the next article.
Reference:
Ecovative Design
Hermès + MycoWorks unveil mushroom-based ‘leather’ bag made from fine mycelium
karuun
Magical Mushroom Company
What is the circular economy?
