PopTech Network and new Low-Impact Materials

Author: Beth Cohen
Posted: 07/27/10 18:07 UTC
Info: Bio
Tags: ecomaterials, lab, event, materials, poptech, Ecology, Sustainability, Green

Last week, PopTech convened a PopTech Lab at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center in the New Research Building of Harvard Medical School in Boston. The three day PopTech Ecomaterials Innovation Lab kicked off our long-term commitment to fostering breakthroughs in next-generation, ‘ultra-green’ ecological materials and industrial processes, and discerning new pathways to accelerating their widespread adoption.

PopTech Concierge Keryn Gottshalk greets Lab participant Anil Netravali, Professor of Fiber Science, Cornell College of Human Ecology. Photography by John Santerre.

PopTech Labs are a yearlong, open, collaborative investigation of a critical area of disruptive innovation in a domain of vital importance to business, society and the planet, such as water, energy, materials and health. Each PopTech Lab harnesses our ability to bring together a network of innovators and decision-makers, brilliant and unconventional, to explore new ideas and identify areas for collaboration in a crucial field and to find new ways to accelerate change. We rigorously map the issues, challenges and opportunities around a specific area of future change, and identify new incentives to unlock further innovation. The resulting recommendations are used to guide further development and are shared with the larger PopTech community and the world at the following year’s conference.

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Lab participants going through an introductory exercise led by creative guru Peter Durand. Photography by John Santerre.

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.

Photography by John Santerre.

(From top to bottom: Pam Greene, Senior Design Innovator, Considered Design, Nike; Sriram Kosuri Post Doctorate Fellow, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering; Reid Lifset, Associate Director of the Industrial Environmental Management Program and Resident Fellow in Industrial Ecology, The School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University; John Bissell, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Micromidas, Inc; Michael Brown, Co-Founder, Brown and Wilmanns Environmental, LLC).

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.

Photography by John Santerre.

The summit was just a first step in our long-term commitment to fostering breakthroughs in ecological materials and accelerating their adoption. In the weeks and months to come, we’ll be reporting more of our findings and next steps on our website and at our annual Conference.

In the meantime, check out the the work of the Lab participants. The success of the PopTech Ecomaterials Innovation Lab is a direct outcome of the commitment and expertise of its participants, a group of renowned thought leaders who are giving their time and energy toward the development of new materials and related incentives.

Additionally, be sure to visit GreenXchange, a Creative Commons site that provides a unique platform for the sharing of green research, innovation and design among partnering corporations, and that makes patents available to the public. As part of PopTech’s commitment to openness, insights generated by the Lab will be released to the public through this special open-source repository.

A particular note of thanks is due to our partners at Nike, without whose deep commitment and support this gathering would not have been possible. We would like to additionally thank our supporters at the University of Oregon, the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute and SC Johnson.