{"id":82876,"date":"2020-06-10T07:22:10","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T05:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=82876"},"modified":"2020-12-12T13:07:06","modified_gmt":"2020-12-12T12:07:06","slug":"the-next-big-sustainable-material-might-come-from-your-local-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/the-next-big-sustainable-material-might-come-from-your-local-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"The Next Big Sustainable Material Might Come From Your Local Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Footwear brands that are looking for sustainable alternative materials have frequently been choosing recycled plastic, from Rothy to Adidas to Soludos. But a new material is beginning to gain traction in the industry, popular both for its sustainable characteristics and for being a solution to the growing environmental problem of algae blooms. At Algix, its Bloom Foam polymer<\/a> is made out of the algae itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe use micro-algae, which is the green water that you would see in a lake or a pond,\u201d said Ryan Hunt, co-founder and chief technology officer at Algix. \u201cWe clean the lake and turn the algae into something useful \u2014 polymer pellets \u2014 that allow us to displace a significant percentage of the fossil fuel-based EVA that\u2019s currently being used in these products.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunt didn\u2019t always conceive of algae polymers as footwear components. The company is a spin-off from his 2007 graduate research into algae as a biofuel, but he quickly predicted that biofuels wouldn\u2019t be able to compete with new fuel developments in fracking. So, he changed tack. The footwear industry appealed to Algix in particular because there was an early interest in alternative materials and a willingness to commit to corporate sustainability milestones.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a physicist and bioengineer \u2014 I\u2019m the farthest from a footwear designer you could possibly be,\u201d laughed Hunt. \u201cBut it\u2019s been really fun and frankly a lot more fun than what we were doing before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Algix takes a two-pronged approach, targeting existing algae blooms and also enforcing preventive measures in vulnerable locations. The algae is harvested through a wildlife-safe water filtration process and then dried, ground and compounded into plastic composite pellets. This is then sent to brands\u2019 manufacturers and factories, where it is expanded into a flexible foam for use in footwear.<\/p>\n

After entering the footwear business in 2015, Algix now supplies Bloom Foam to leading brands like Adidas, Toms, Clarks and Billabong. Its first partner, Vivobarefoot, found the company after the surfer Kelly Slater used the material for pads on his surfboard. The brand has since incorporated Bloom Foam into a number of products, most recently as part of its Primus Lite II Bio Shoe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like the biopolymers because they give an opportunity to ultimately be able to chemically recycle shoes,\u201d said Galahad Clark, managing director and owner of Vivobarefoot. \u201cAt the moment, a plastic bottle can be turned into fleece but a bottle can\u2019t be cycled back into a bottle, because the quality of the polymer degrades every time it gets recycled. The goal is to get the polymers back to their original state.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Algix is focused on growing its adoption rate by footwear brands, co-founder Hunt is also looking further afield at the different ways algae could become a core commodity. Currently, algae is still not thought of as a resource, which Hunt wants to change. However, despite the growing consumer interest in sustainability, he believes the real way to achieve that is through making corporations aware of the material\u2019s value.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople look at this green water and think, \u2018That\u2019s gross.\u2019 It\u2019s a problem. It\u2019s a liability,\u201d said Hunt. \u201cNo one is seeing it as basically a direct replacement for oil. But algae actually has a dollar sign attached to it, which it hasn\u2019t had in the past. These companies are going to see that this is an opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Footwear brands that are looking for sustainable alternative materials have frequently been choosing recycled plastic, from Rothy to Adidas to Soludos. But a new material is beginning to gain traction in the industry, popular both for its sustainable characteristics and for being a solution to the growing environmental problem of algae blooms. At Algix, its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[12705,10477],"supplier":[3748,13425],"class_list":["post-82876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-footwear","tag-microalgae","supplier-algix-llc","supplier-vivobarefoot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82876"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=82876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}