POPTECH ECOMATERIALS INNOVATION LAB
Collaborating on the future of breakthrough green materials and material ecosystems
The PopTech Ecomaterials Innovation Lab convenes this summer with a goal of fostering breakthroughs in next-generation, ‘ultra-green’ ecological materials and industrial processes.
via poptech.org
“The Ecomaterials Innovation Lab brought together a network of eminent and emerging leaders in material science, sustainability, corporate leadership, design, academia, and policy circles. We began the program focused on getting to know one another and exploring the current landscape, system conditions and impediments surrounding the adoption of ecological materials.”
It was a pleasure to be a part of this three day gathering as a graphic facilitator and "creative guru". These are the scientists, designers and policy drivers who are influencing how we make stuff and what happens to it when it "dies".
Check out the article by Beth Cohen on the PopTech blog for more detail on the amazing people and progess we were exposed to.
“Collectively, we unearthed a number of deep insights into this emerging domain. We learned that while we’re spending all of our time thinking about sustainability and climate change in terms of energy sector, in many ways materials may represent a bigger and more impactful part of the problem. We learned about an entirely new, emerging paradigm within the field of lifecycle assessment, that is revealing how materials that look ‘green’ frequently aren’t; that the reverse is also frequently true. We saw firsthand that the biosciences are about to have as big an impact on the energy and materials sectors as they do in healthcare. We learned that industry is way ahead of government in thinking about these issues and that both are way ahead of the average citizen. And we saw firsthand demonstrations of technologies that turn everything from chicken feathers, spider silk, and even raw sewage (!) into useable biopolymers. Most importantly, we created a new and, for the field, unconventional network of thought leaders who are already beginning to collaborate.”
