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Diana Salvador & Javier Mera

Yess Innovation, Patricio Cevallos, Juan Subía

Diana Salvador and daughters, Ema and Olivia

Juan Alberto Andrade Guillen

The cabin could be used as a residence or as a tourist accommodation. It was conceived to satisfy housing needs with economically and environmentally sustainable premises.
The spatial organization generates a loft with two storeys and three general areas: bathroom and living area located in the floor plan and the sleeping area at the top floor. In addition; the furniture design allows the living area to accommodate an extra resting space. Interior areas offer a main service, while simultaneously connecting with the exterior areas. Every design decision responds to the challenge of transforming the mere functionality of the space to the experimentation with common experiences, while achieving maximum efficiency. For instance, taking a shower allows the user to gain knowledge about cocoa, one can count stars before falling asleep, and cooking could transform into meditation exercises.
The efficiency of the unit is also reflected in the construction system; six materials: plywood, solid wood, stone, metal, glass and tetrapack intervene to consolidate an environmentally balanced element. Plywood is the main material of the unit, with Tetra Pak acting as the "umbrella material" that waterproofs the cabin. Along with these characteristics, prefabrication techniques are validated through a predefined number of pieces conforming the unit, which can be transported in a simple truck, assembled in 15 days by 5 people.
Plywood board measurements defined the module and its characteristics determined a production line, which finally allowed a considerable optimization of social, economic and environmental resources within the construction and operation process.

In this case, the client and one of the designers are the same person. Huaira was created as a refuge outside the city. Both designers cannot conceive architecture that is not responsible for the environment, so it was crucial to develop an alternative to the traditional constructive systems, in order to become guardians for future generations, and the quality of the environment left for them.
Huaira is also economically sustainable, allowing the owners to obtain an extra income when they are not occupying the unit, in order to finance the process. Huaira can be rented, offered as a touristic getaway and communicating an important message: ".. people tend to protect and restore the natural world when they feel connected with nature...". Huaira intends to create a halo effect that connects people to nature. Such connection invokes responsibility and it can potentially lead to action.
Bioclimatic construction strategies based on dynamic thermal simulations were proposed, in order to combine functionality with interior comfort. The structure is elevated due to the resilience needed because of the river flooding, taking advantage of the inertia and the cold air chamber generated under the unit. Walls and roofs are designed as double layers containing the structural beams, generating an extra air chamber that guarantees the adequate interior ventilation, in cooperation with floor and wall perforations that enable cross ventilation and air supply. The removable double layer solution of the roof allows the control of direct sunlight and allows the connection with the sky and the environment.

Compared to a conventional construction system, Huaira obtains an encouraging result with a negative carbon footprint, sequestering 3360 kg and emitting 1679 kg of carbon dioxide. Huaira's carbon footprint was evaluated through a cradle-to-cradle approach. Construction materials used for implementing the unit were quantified and the respective impact, using a life-cycle inventory database (Ecoinvent V.3), was evaluated.
As the assessment of the project was focused on the carbon footprint, the climate change impact indicator (as defined in IPCC 100y) for each type of material was directly used. This evaluation for the embodied carbon in materials was then completed by the potential GHG emissions to be generated during operation.
The building is located in a warm area, hence does not require heating; additionally, the development of specific ventilation strategies made it possible to avoid the need of air conditioning, leading to a reduced energy consumption. Wood is the main material used, allowing a large sequestration of carbon through the building construction. This quantity exceeds the amount of "positive emissions" generated by the building life-cycle, allowing it to achieve a negative carbon footprint.
While the carbon used in construction and operation is compensated by the sequestered carbon in the wood, design guidelines were established in order to achieve a highly efficient process. Simple strategies that create a low cost, replicable, adaptable to weather conditions, scalable, modular, expandable and removable local technology. A strategy based on the radical decision to use Plywood as the basis of this technology.

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Diana Salvador & Javier Mera Yess Innovation, Patricio Cevallos, Juan Subía Diana Salvador and daughters, Ema and Olivia Juan Alberto Andrade Guillen The cabin could be used as a residence or as a tourist accommodation.

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Local materials, local work for a bamboo house in the Galapagos Islands

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Local materials, local work for a bamboo house in the Galapagos Islands

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PRIMARY AUTHOR

José de la Torre, Pablo Silva, Santiago Granda, María Belén Argudo

CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

​

CLIENT

Daniel Fraga Blanco

PHOTOGRAPHER

José de la Torre

OBJECTIVE

Since its colonization around 1950, the urbanization process of the Galapagos Islands has been accelerated and improvised, mainly due to rapid population growth and the absence of a local construction tradition that corresponds to its exceptional biodiverse context. The urban areas of the archipelago continue to grow under dynamics typical of cities on the continent, where the common denominator are constructions in concrete, steel, and other industrial materials.
In this context, The Endemic House is a project that seeks to promote and validate the use of local materials, workforce, and technologies as an alternative to the current situation. Although it is a small-scale project, a new housing proposal built with bamboo (the second known project of this type in San Cristobal Island) could be a reference to be replicated at the private level and, at a later stage, to be considered as a suitable technology for the future urban planning in the Islands.

CONTEXT

In 2015, Dany and Jenny founded the first artisanal brewery on San Cristóbal Island, in Galapagos: La Cervecería Endémica. The proposal sought to be sustainable, natural, and local; as much as possible, considering the limitations of an Island (resources and energy supply, transportation, etc.). After four years of work and with the arrival of their first child, the couple decides to build the first house of their own on a plot of land located on the urban edge of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, one kilometer away from the coast. In the same way as in the brewery, they seek to build their home sustainable, local, and as sensitive as possible to the natural context of the Islands. The Endemic House, therefore, aims to be a simple, efficient house and prioritizes the use of local workforce and materials. The limited budget represents an important challenge in terms of management and logistics. Consequently, the work monitoring is carried out remotely, establishing a closer unusual relation between the clients, the local builder, and the architects in the continent.

PERFORMANCE

The Endemic House is resolved through a bamboo (caña guadua) structure, which have been collected and treated in the Islands by a local builder. The project is divided in three levels, where the spaces are distributed around a wide core of stairs that function as a path leading to the view of the sea at the highest level, and as the axis of the bioclimatic performance of the project, through the chimney effect that allows the circulation of hot air. Towards the interior, most of the furniture, walls and divisions are resolved with bamboo or cedrela, a type of timber tree typical of the Galapagos Islands. In the same way, the external details of balconies, terraces and latticeworks are solved with cedrela and bamboo in different ways. Due to restrictions on imports of materials, the roofing and their corresponding insulation are resolved with industrial elements. Despite the availability of local materials and the fragile conditions of the Galapagos ecosystem, the Endemic House is the second project built with bamboo technology in San Cristóbal. In the urban areas of the Islands, most of the constructions are made of metal and concrete.

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Thames Glass

Seeking an alternative more sustainable future for glass making, whilst taking influence from ancient techniques and recipes.

Working with local & waste materials sourced in and around the River Thames.

Exploring how we can naturally colour and texture the glass.

Making unique batch recipes.

Find out more about our current projects here.

Thames Glass

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'Thames Glass' Tiles made out of Quagga mussel shells usually going to landfill in the UK

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'Thames Glass' Tiles made out of Quagga mussel shells usually going to landfill in the UK

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Science, purpose and design are three things we like to keep in mind at PANGAIA where material sciences is in our DNA.

Click the icons below to discover more about our materials.

When it comes to materials science, we're committed to doing as nature does.

S cience, purpose and design are three things we like to keep in mind at PANGAIA where material sciences is in our DNA.

Click the icons below to discover more about our materials.

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This is just the start. We're working on more material innovations, impact initiatives and expanding our product range. Check back for our latest updates.

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Innovative Materials When it comes to materials science, we're committed to doing as nature does. Science, purpose and design are three things we like to keep in mind at PANGAIA where material sciences is in our DNA. Click the icons below to discover more about our materials.

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Could Mushroom Packaging Replace Styrofoam? | World Wide Waste

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Helpful documentary on issues of Plastic pollution /Recycling looking at individual, business, policy solutions (US centric) 

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Helpful documentary on issues of Plastic pollution /Recycling looking at individual, business, policy solutions (US centric) 

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The Plastic Problem - A PBS NewsHour Documentary

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Young Inventor Makes Bricks From Plastic Trash | World Wide Waste

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Based on a volume of existing material research by Studio Plastique, Common Sands - Forite evolved as a collaborative research project between Studio Plastique and Snøhetta, with the aim of exploring the potential applications of recycled E-waste glass. Through several prototypes and variations, a process for recycling E-waste glass components was developed, leading to the development of an application integrating and celebrating its variable material quality: glass tiles.

Italian ceramic tile manufacturer Fornace Brioni later joined the team, bringing their experience, industrial know-how, production facilities and potential for scalability to the project.

Made from recycled glass from microwave ovens, the tiles have been developed in two different sizes. The tiles are both opaque and transparent, each with a unique pattern and expression. With a deeply complex, terrazzo-like material quality, they are suitable for a wide range of architectural applications, including both surface coverage and as semi-transparent partition elements.

Common Sands - Forite positively leverages the unique properties of composition, color and structure inherent in the waste material into a series of architectural glass tiles. In an industry which demands transparency and consistency as a standard, the tiles embrace the variance and complexity already embedded in the recycled material. Focus has been put on waste glass from ovens and microwaves as a starting point to demonstrate the aesthetic depth, function and potential of the recycled material, but the project is not limited to this material stream alone.

This collaboration between Snøhetta, Studio Plastique and Fornace Brioni meets contemporary challenges with ambitious, pragmatic and scalable solutions. Working across disciplines, organizations and specializations, the project is an example of how collaboration and curiosity can contribute to creating significant changes within circular and sustainable design.

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Based on a volume of existing material research by Studio Plastique, Common Sands - Forite evolved as a collaborative research project between Studio Plastique and Snøhetta, with the aim of exploring the potential applications of recycled E-waste glass.

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Inside Oshadi: India's Regenerative Fashion Collective | Eco-Age

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Oshadi Collective is home to is a seed-to-stitch supply chain, based around a regenerative cotton farm. Read our interview with founder Nishanth Chopra.

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The Sustainable Fashion Glossary is our long-standing commitment to drive change in the world of fashion, design, and style, bringing together academic rigour and Condé Nast's diverse point of view.

It has been created by Condé Nast, in partnership with the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion, University of Arts London.

Accountability

Accountability is an aspect of governance which requires that public and private organizations as well as individuals assume the responsibility for their actions and impact. In the context of the fashion industry, accountability means that companies must identify, assess, and measure the impact of all their activities on people and the environment worldwide. The principles of accountability extend well beyond compliance with minimum legal requirements. Accountability relies on companies' voluntary commitment to deliver on high social and environmental standards in their operations, especially with regards to human rights and sustainable development. The relatability of fashion makes it particularly well placed to lead by example in its accountability.⁽¹⁻⁴⁾

See also: Externalized costs, Stakeholders, Respect, Traceability, Transparency, Supply chain, Corporate social responsibility (CSR), Trust.

Air pollution

Air pollution refers to the release of particles and gases into the atmosphere that are harmful to humans and the environment. The most critical air pollutants include Carbon dioxide (CO2), Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), Methane, Sulphur dioxide (SO2), Carbon monoxide, particulate matter (dust) and ground-level ozone. Their release is linked with human activities such as burning of fossil fuels in households; industry (with a significant contribution from all stages of fashion value chain); transport and agricultural operations; incineration of waste and its decomposition in landfill; or burning used for fast deforestation. Additionally, in some geographical areas, sand and desert dust and other environmental factors such as gases and ash produced by volcanic activity also significantly affect the air quality. The World Health Organization estimates that outdoor and indoor air pollution causes around 7 million deaths annually, with those from poor and marginalized communities in low-income and middle-income countries of Asia and Africa being among the most vulnerable.⁽¹⁾ Many urban areas, and especially the global megacities, significantly exceed the WHO's recommended air quality levels, often by as much as 5 times.⁽¹⁾ Breathing polluted air increases the risk of stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, as well as chronic and acute respiratory diseases, including asthma and pneumonia. In addition, poor air quality, especially pollution linked to ground-level ozone, negatively affects plants and decreases crop yields, with a knock-on effect on global food security. During the Covid-19 pandemic, NASA observations indicated a striking difference in key pollutant levels before and during the spring 2020 lockdown periods in major industrial and residential areas of China, India and the United States, offering evidence that reduced transportation and industrial activities can significantly improve the global ambient air quality. Radical cuts in pollutants emitted to the atmosphere are critical for tackling the climate emergency.⁽⁴⁻⁸⁾⁽¹⁻⁸⁾

See also: CO2 emissions, Greenhouse gases (GHGs), Greenhouse effect, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Paris Agreement, Global inequality, Urbanization, Decarbonization.

Animal welfare

Animal welfare, one of the key ethical concerns of the industry, refers to the treatment of animals involved in the fashion supply chain. For many years, activists have been calling public attention to the unlawful killing and widespread mistreatment of animals across the fur, leather, exotic leather, down feather, mohair, angora, silk and wool industries. The animals whose skin, fur or feathers are used to make fashion products frequently suffer severe mistreatment and cruel handling practices such as kicking or being dragged by their body parts, tails, horns or ears. While animal welfare is a critical concern in countries with insufficient animal welfare legislation, including India and China who provide the majority of the supplies, cruel practices are also reported in countries where legislation with regards to humane treatment of animals is much more advanced.

The demands and profitability of the trade are reflected in the existence of large-scale factory farming, where animals are kept in crowded areas or battery cages without enough air circulation or daylight, and are slaughtered by methods such as gassing or electrocution. In some instances, animals are reported to be skinned alive. Live plucking is a widespread practice because feathers can regrow, and so keeping animals alive increases profit. Wild animals required for the leather and fur trades are often caught in painful traps that break their body parts and leave them suffering for hours before they are finally killed. Animal injuries during shearing for the mohair and wool trade are common, as laborers tend to be paid by volume rather than by the hour. Quick work results in cuts and careless handling of sheep. The controversial practice of mulesing, a painful removal of flesh around the buttocks to protect sheep against the parasite flystrike, is still widely performed in Australia and is often carried out without the use of anesthetics.(1,2)

See also: Endangered species, Biodiversity, Respect, Well-being, Natural materials, Cashmere, Faux fur, Fish skin.

Anthropocene

The Anthropocene is a concept of a new geological era, proposed in 2000 by the Nobel prize- winning atmospheric scientist Paul J. Crutzen⁽¹⁾ to mark an epoch that corresponds with significant human impact on the environment. Over the last twenty years, the term has gained considerable traction in the discussions on human-induced climate change, especially for highlighting the gravity and scope of irreversible changes in the global ecosystems caused by human activity. However, the Anthropocene debate has also attracted criticism from those who argue that the concept homogenizes the human race by blaming all for the damage caused by the behavior and lifestyles of a relative minority. Critics also point out that the current environmental crisis has cultural, economic and political roots. This means that while the views on dating the beginning of the Anthropocene era range from the 15th-century European expansion to the escalating speed, scale and degree of changes since the mid-20th century, in all cases, the human impact on the environment is a question of choice rather than an inevitable result of human "nature".⁽²⁻⁵⁾ Others also believe that the concept has been gradually reappropriated into a vision of the "good Anthropocene", with the promise that the current climate crisis can be turned into a business opportunity through innovation, engineering and eco-modernization.(6,7)

See also: Global inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Planetary boundaries, Climate emergency, Global heating, Growth, Endangered species, Extinction, Decolonization, Interdependence.

+ References

1. Crutzen, P. J. & Stoermer, E.F. (2000). The Anthropocene. IGBP Global Change Newsletter, pp. 17-18.

2. Steffen, W. et al. (2011). The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 369, pp. 842-867.

3. Scientific American (2018, December 1). The Term "Anthropocene" Is Popular - and Problematic.

4. Harraway, D. (2015). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin. Environmental Humanities, 6, pp. 159-165.

5. Media Theory (2018, February 16). Review - Finn Daniels-Yeomans on Against the Anthropocene by T.J. Demos.

6. Brooks, A. et al. (2018). Fashion, sustainability and the Anthropocene. In Burcikova, M. (Ed.), Utopia and Fashion (Special Issue) Utopian Studies. The Journal of the Society for Utopian Studies, 28 (3), pp. 528-546.

7. Bennett, E. M. et al. (2016). Bright Spots: Seeds of a Good Anthropocene. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 14 (8), pp. 441-448.

Further resources:

Hamilton, C. et al. (Eds.) (2015). The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking modernity in a new epoch. London: Routledge. Demos, T. J. (2017). Against the Anthropocene: Visual culture and environment today. Berlin: Sternberg Press. Klein, N. (2014). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. London: Allen Lane.

Anti-waste and Circular Economy Bill

The Anti-waste and Circular Economy Bill (La loi contre le gaspillage et à l'économie circulaire) is a newly adopted French law that extends the existing ban on food waste (introduced in France in 2016), to all non-food products. The Anti-waste and Circular Economy Bill will come into force in 2021 and will prohibit disposal, i.e. depositing in landfills and incineration, of all products. Instead, all companies, including producers, distributors, retailers, and on-line trading platforms will be required to donate or recycle all their unsold stock. France is the first country in the world to introduce such legislation, with the implementation schedule planned for 2021-2023. The bill will apply to all products with existing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) collection and recycling channels (e.g. packaging, batteries, medicines, tyres, paper and newspapers, textiles and shoes, furniture, household appliances) from the end of 2021. The remaining sectors (e.g. professional packaging, building products or materials, toys, sports and leisure articles, DIY and garden articles, drain oils, cigarette butts, chewing gums, sanitary textiles (wipes, paper towels, cottons, etc.), and fishing gear) will be required to comply by the end of 2023 at the latest. In addition to reducing waste, the bill is based around other key areas of concern such as eliminating disposable plastic, improving information for consumers through environmental, durability and repairability labelling; better production methods that incorporate end of life solutions and fight against planned obsolescence; and developing networks and infrastructure for re-use.⁽¹⁻⁶⁾

See also: Waste, CO2 emissions, Energy use, Externalized costs, Overconsumption, Packaging, Closed-loop recycling.

Artisan

An artisan is a skilled maker who makes products by hand with an exceptional manual dexterity and tacit knowledge. Artisanal labor has always been inseparable from the culture of fashion and it still plays a key role in the making of fashion products, from the hand embroidery and weaving communities in India and Thailand to the luxury master craftsmen and craftswomen in the heritage fashion houses of Europe. Despite the high level of skill required, artisanal labor is notoriously exploited because the long hours needed for hand production make it impossible for artisanal products to compete on price point with mass-manufactured alternatives. Globalization has further devalued artisanal labor by increasing global competition and enabling the art and craft dealers and fashion brands from advanced economies to profit from low labor costs and insufficient labor rights legislation in developing countries with rich artisan traditions.⁽¹⁻⁸⁾

See also: Heritage crafts, Traditional knowledge, Care, Off-shore manufacture, Transparency, Supply chain, Human rights, Modern slavery, Living wage, In-work poverty, Diversity, Decolonization, Global inequality, Equality, Localism, Reshoring.

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Condé Nast is a global media company that produces some of the world's leading print, digital, video and social brands. These include Vogue, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired and Architectural Digest (AD), Condé Nast Traveler and La Cucina Italiana, among others.

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The Power of Big Oil, Part Three: Delay (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

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Carbon capture: the hopes, challenges and controversies | FT Film

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11 Green Building Materials That Are Way Better Than Concrete

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11 Green Building Materials That Are Way Better Than Concrete

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11 Green Building Materials That Are Way Better Than Concrete

Posted. 12th July 2016

Concrete is a material that quite literally holds our cities together. From homes and apartment buildings to bridges, viaducts, and sidewalks, this ubiquitous gray material's importance to modern urban life is undeniable.

But you might have heard that it also has a dirty secret: the production of commercial concrete materials releases tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere each year, contributing to the calamity that is climate change. But it doesn't have to be that way. We have collated 11 green building materials that offer alternatives to concrete, and a lower environmental impact.

1. Straw Bales
Rather than relying on new research and technology, straw bale building hearkens back to the days when homes were built from natural, locally-occurring materials. Straw bales are used to create a home's walls inside of a frame, replacing other building materials such as concrete, wood, gypsum, plaster, fiberglass, or stone. When properly sealed, straw bales naturally provide very high levels of insulation for a hot or cold climate, and are not only affordable but sustainable as straw is a rapidly renewable resource.

2. Grasscrete
As its name might indicate, grasscrete is a method of laying concrete flooring, walkways, sidewalks, and driveways in such a manner that there are open patterns allowing grass or other flora to grow. While this provides the benefit of reducing concrete usage overall, there's also another important perk - improved stormwater absorption and drainage.

3. Rammed Earth
What's more natural than the dirt under your feet? In fact, walls that have a similar feel to concrete can actually be created with nothing more than dirt tamped down very tightly in wooden forms. Rammed earth is a technology that has been used by human civilization for thousands of years, and can last a very long time. Modern rammed earth buildings can be made safer by use of rebar or bamboo, and mechanical tampers reduce the amount of labor required to create sturdy walls.

4. HempCrete
HempCrete is just what it sounds like - a concrete like material created from the woody inner fibers of the hemp plant. The hemp fibers are bound with lime to create concrete-like shapes that are strong and light. HempCrete blocks are super-lightweight, which can also dramatically reduce the energy used to transport the blocks, and hemp itself is a fast-growing, renewable resource.

®Flickr/Carolina Zuluaga

5. Bamboo
Bamboo might seem trendy, but it has actually been a locally-sourced building material in some regions of the world for millennia. What makes bamboo such a promising building material for modern buildings is its combination of tensile strength, light weight, and fast-growing renewable nature. Used for framing buildings and shelters, bamboo can replace expensive and heavy imported materials and provide an alternative to concrete and rebar construction, especially in difficult-to reach areas, post-disaster rebuilding, and low-income areas with access to natural locally-sourced bamboo.

6. Recycled Plastic
Instead of mining, extracting, and milling new components, researchers are creating concrete that includes ground up recycled plastics and trash, which not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions, but reduces weight and provides a new use for landfill-clogging plastic waste.

7. Wood
Plain old wood still retains many advantages over more industrial building materials like concrete or steel. Not only do trees absorb CO2 as they grow, they require much less energy-intensive methods to process into construction products. Properly managed forests are also renewable and can ensure a biodiverse habitat.

8. Mycelium
Mycelium is a crazy futuristic building material that's actually totally natural - it comprises the root structure of fungi and mushrooms. Mycelium can be encouraged to grow around a composite of other natural materials, like ground up straw, in molds or forms, then air-dried to create lightweight and strong bricks or other shapes.

9. Ferrock
Ferrock is a new material being researched that uses recycled materials including steel dust from the steel industry to create a concrete-like building material that is even stronger than concrete. What's more, this unique material actually absorbs and traps carbon dioxide as part of its drying and hardening process - making it not only less CO2 intensive than traditional concrete, but actually carbon neutral.

10. AshCrete
AshCrete is a concrete alternative that uses fly ash instead of traditional cement. By using fly ash, a by-product of burning coal, 97 percent of traditional components in concrete can be replaced with recycled material.

®Public Domain Pictures

11. Timbercrete
Timbercrete is an interesting building material made of sawdust and concrete mixed together. Since it is lighter than concrete, it reduces transportation emissions, and the sawdust both reuses a waste product and replaces some of the energy-intensive components of traditional concrete. Timbercrete can be formed into traditional shapes such as blocks, bricks, and pavers.

source: inhabitat.com

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Enviromate | Free Leftover Building Materials Marketplace

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Posted. 12th July 2016 Concrete is a material that quite literally holds our cities together. From homes and apartment buildings to bridges, viaducts, and sidewalks, this ubiquitous gray material's importance to modern urban life is undeniable.

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The Materiom community includes material scientists,
designers, engineers, data scientists, and sustainability
experts. Over the past five years we've built a 5,000 member-
strong community and we are growing faster than ever.
Join us!

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The Materiom community includes material scientists,designers, engineers, data scientists, and sustainability experts. Over the past five years we've built a 5,000 member-strong community and we are growing faster than ever.Join us!

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Eliasson and Minik Rosing installed 'Ice Watch' in City Hall Square, Copenhagen, from 26 to 29 October 2014 to mark the publication of the UN IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Change. Twelve large blocks of ice that had calved from the Greenlandic ice sheet were harvested from a fjord outside Nuuk and brought to the centre of Copenhagen. Video by Anders Drug Jordan / Underground Channel.
Watch on soe.tv ⤶

In 2015 choreographer Steen Koerner, an expert in street dance and slow-motion movement, performed a quiet intervention in the circle of twelve blocks of glacial ice that Eliasson brought to the Place du Panthéon, in Paris, to draw attention to the melting of Arctic ice.
Watch on soe.tv ⤶

Olafur and Studio Wayne McGregor at Ice Watch London, 2018

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Ice Watch * Artwork * Studio Olafur Eliasson

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Official website of Olafur Eliasson and his studio: Ice Watch * Artwork * Studio Olafur Eliasson

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Why renewable energy is NOT as CLEAN as you think?

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Why renewable energy is NOT as CLEAN as you think?

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OK, so the fight against climate change isn't going flawlessly. But there is some cause for optimism, right? Money is plowing into cheap solar energy, China is leading the world in green investment and Tesla has released a nice new electric car. Already, over a fifth of the world's electricity comes from renewables, set to rise to 29 percent by 2040, according to current trends. We're starting to head in a good direction, one that maybe might hopefully possibly save all the world just in time? RIGHT?!

Well, hate to break it to you, but those stats of rising renewable energy production aren't all that they seem. In fact:

That's according to International Energy Agency numbers for 2015, the latest figures available. Hydro isn't the only surprising energy source dominating renewable energy stats: In the U.S., Canada, the EU and China, as well as the global average, more power is generated from biofuels (such as the combustion of wood pellets in power plants or burning off landfill gas) than from solar panels.

So when talking about renewable power, the media might need to change their stock images from turbines and panels to hydroelectric dams and burning logs. So what? Renewable is renewable, right?

These trade-offs may be improvements relative to burning coal, but investment in hydro or biomass might be happening at the expense of solar and wind.

Well, maybe not. Both in the case of hydropower and bioelectricity, the scientific community is far from settled that these power sources are always completely clean. Thanks to the anaerobic decomposition of algae and other plant materials in reservoirs, hydroelectric dams can be major emitters of methane, a greenhouse gas several times more potent than CO2, says Amy Townsend-Small, director of the Environmental Studies Program at McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, who studies methane emissions from lakes. There's a surprising lack of knowledge about just how much greenhouse gases reservoirs might emit: "We don't have any long-term monitoring," Townsend-Small says, and scientists instead rely on global models extrapolated from a small number of reservoirs. Still, hydroelectric dams "are better on a greenhouse-gas level than using fossil fuels," she says, though environmental campaigner Gary Wockner, who describes hydro as "dirty energy," asserts that some dams, including the Hoover Dam, emit more greenhouse gases than coal-fired plants.

And in the case of burning biomass, with the huge variability between types of fuels and how they are sourced, it's impossible to make blanket statements about its efficacy, says Kevin Fingerman, a professor in energy and climate at Humboldt State University who studies the impact of biofuels. Burning gas from agricultural waste could generate power while also transforming methane into less-potent CO2, creating a net negative carbon footprint (even better than wind or solar); however, chopping down a forest without regrowing it to fuel a power plant could be even more polluting than burning coal.

Crucially, these trade-offs depend on what we're actually trading off - they may be improvements relative to burning coal, but in locations with strict renewables quotas, investment in hydro or biomass might happen at the expense of sources such as solar and wind, which are more assuredly as close to carbon-neutral as possible. That said, unlike other renewable sources, we can control when hydro and biomass plants generate power, so perhaps the better comparison is against a baseload source such as natural gas or nuclear. These different comparisons mean that "anybody who has a bone to pick on either side of this [debate] can tell whatever story they want to tell" while still using valid scientific analysis, Fingerman says.

The key takeaway: "Renewable" is not necessarily synonymous with "carbon-neutral." (Carrie Annand, executive director of the trade body Biomass Power Association, asserts that biomass is both - so long as forests are consistently growing, as they are in the U.S. The National Hydropower Association did not respond to OZY's requests for comment.) So let's get our facts straight before celebrating the impending renewables revolution.

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Why Renewable Energy Is Not as Clean as You Think

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OK, so the fight against climate change isn't going flawlessly. But there is some cause for optimism, right? Money is plowing into cheap solar energy, China is leading the world in green investment and Tesla has released a nice new electric car.

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Really concise explanation of common regenerative farming practices

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Regeneration of Our Lands: A Producer’s Perspective | Gabe Brown | TEDx

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Regeneration of Our Lands: A Producer’s Perspective | Gabe Brown | TEDx

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Regeneration of Our Lands: A Producer’s Perspective | Gabe Brown | TEDxGrandForks

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How do we harness this material to facilitate regenerative design?

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Recycling glass does not degrade it, and manufacturing it can be carbon-free. So why are many countries still burying glass in the ground?

Glass can be recycled infinitely without losing any of its properties. Why, then, are most countries - with the exception of those in Europe - still burying most of their glass as landfill by the tonne? In 2018, the United States alone offloaded almost 7 million tonnes of glass into landfill sites, accounting for 5.2% of all solid municipal waste, according to the US Environ-mental Protection Agency.

The push to cut plastics use is accelerating the search for new materials, especially for containers that can hold liquids. But glass is an existing material that could be the star of a net-zero carbon economy.

Worldwide, glass manufacturing produces at least 86 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. But most of this can be eliminated when glass is recycled, and existing technologies could turn glass manufacturing into a mostly carbon-free process. What needs to happen is for countries to stop sending glass to landfill sites, and to make glass recycling mandatory.

Glass is made by heating limestone, sand and soda ash to 1,500 °C. This heat comes from natural gas, and it accounts for between 75% and 85% of the carbon emissions from glass manufacturing. The remaining emissions are a by-product of the chemical reactions between the raw materials. But some of these materials can be replaced with crushed recycled glass, known as cullet. When cullet is melted, no CO ₂ is released. And furnaces don't have to burn so fiercely to melt glass as to melt the raw materials, offering further carbon savings. According to the European Container Glass Federation (FEVE), an industry group based in Brussels, 10% more cullet in a furnace lowers CO ₂ emissions by 5% compared with making glass entirely from raw materials.

As with most forms of recycling, some caveats apply. The type of glass used to make windows - known as flat glass - cannot contain impurities, unlike glass used in many other applications. So it's not possible to melt down jam jars to get a window pane. But flat-glass cullet can be used to make more flat glass.

Some questions will need further research. For example, governments will need to know the monetary cost of boosting systems for glass collection and recycling, so that they can allocate appropriate resources. Furthermore, glass is heavier than plastic, so using it as a replacement will probably add to transport costs and emissions, and that, too, needs to be understood.

When it comes to glass recycling, Europe is the world's most advanced region by some margin, and has ambitions to be even better. Researchers could study how Europe's recycling scheme came about, its strengths and weaknesses and whether there are lessons for other countries. Three-quarters of glass used for containers such as bottles is collected for recycling across all 27 member states and the United Kingdom. As a result, new glass made in the European Union already contains some 52% recycled material. The glass-container industry has set itself a target of collecting 90% of all waste container glass in the EU by 2030.

But other countries are not where they need to be. Moreover, data on glass recycling are difficult to find, partly because most countries are not reporting what they are doing. There seems to be no international body that collects glass-recycling data. That needs to change.

That said, national efforts are under way to improve collection and recycling rates. The United States recycles, on average, just 31% of its glass containers, but the Glass Packaging Institute, a trade association based in Arlington, Virginia, is pushing to increase that to 50% by 2030 (to achieve that, 56% of all waste glass must be collected). Similarly, a project run by the Glass Recycling Company in Johannesburg increased the recycling rate across South Africa from 18% in 2005-06 to 42% in 2018-19, including boosting the use of returnable bottles. But elsewhere - in Brazil, China and India, for example - authorities are silent, or, at the very least, are not reporting their plans and ambitions.

More countries need to pass laws to reduce waste and eventually stop sending glass to landfill. That will automatically create greater incentives for glass to be recycled. Europe already mandates that 70% of waste building and construction materials are recycled. The remainder currently ends up being used as aggregate for road filling or other basic building processes; this is a huge waste of a valuable resource.

Carbon can also be saved by decarbonizing the process of melting the chemical mix during manufacturing. A demonstration project called Furnace for the Future, run by FEVE, makes glass using electricity instead of natural gas to heat recycled glass cullet. If the electricity source were fully decarbonized, it would mean that the entire process of glass-making would effectively be carbon-free.

Glass is an essential material. And it is possible for its manufacture to become almost carbon-free in a relatively short time. But legislation is required to ensure that it is properly collected and recycled, and that it doesn't end up in landfill. Communities and companies should be helped to create infrastructure to collect glass and recycle it. The answers are there, and they are relatively simple. They need to be put into practice - and we can all raise a glass to that.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02992-8

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Glass is the hidden gem in a carbon-neutral future

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Recycling glass does not degrade it, and manufacturing it can be carbon-free. So why are many countries still burying glass in the ground? Recycling glass does not degrade it, and manufacturing it can be carbon-free. So why are many countries still burying glass in the ground?

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BBC Radio 5 Live - The Big Green Money Show

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Deborah Meaden talks to some of the world’s biggest business names about climate change.

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Ugandan designer returning the West's Cast-offs

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Ugandan designer returning the West's Cast-offs

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hen Bobby Kolade moved back to Uganda in 2018 after 13 years in the European fashion world, he was intent on joining the movement to ban secondhand clothes. The designer remembered buying used clothing at Uganda's biggest market, Owino in Kampala, as a child, but had since learned about the damage this trade is doing to the environment and to African textile industries.

"I see these clothes, and they offend me. I see white shirts with sweat stains and torn colours, and I feel oppressed," says Kolade. "What does it say about whoever's donating those clothes to us? And what does it say about our position in the world? It's rude, you know? It's really rude."

And yet today Kolade is launching a fashion brand made up entirely of repurposed secondhand clothing sourced in Uganda. Buzigahill is all about "redesigning secondhand clothes and redistributing them to the global north, where they were originally discarded before being shipped to Africa".

Kolade describes Return to Sender, Buzigahill's first collection, as genderless, playful and raw. Each of the 250 pieces is unique, made from garments that have been cut up and artfully stitched back together. Prices range from $195 (£150) for four-panel T-shirts to $530 for extended coats. Each garment has a "passport" label identifying its country of origin and source.

"The thing I enjoy most is the workmanship you can see. You can tell somebody sat down with scissors, cut something up, then put it back together somehow," says Kolade, who has sourced the materials himself over the past year. Initially, this meant jumping on boda bodas (motorbike taxis) to visit the huge warehouses next to the maze of stalls at Owino, where he would buy clothing bales imported from countries such as the UK, Germany and Canada.

Later, he built relationships with clothes importers who would deliver bales - from silk scarves made in South Korea to T-shirts from Canada and the US - directly to Buzigahill's studio. Here, Kolade designs and produces the clothes along with his small team of tailors.

Kolade describes the project as "reactionary design" to the overconsumption of the global north, and the role Africa plays as "a very effective waste disposal system for people's clothes". When clothes in the west are discarded at charity shops or donation bins, most are sold by export companies. According to Oxfam, more than 70% of clothes donated globally end up in Africa. Unable to compete with the price of used clothing, local textile industries across the continent suffer.

In 2015, members of the East African Community (EAC) - Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda - announced plans to ban secondhand clothing imports from their markets. But the US threatened to remove these countries from the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which gives African countries duty-free access to export certain products to the US. Only Rwanda went ahead with a ban in 2018, and, despite severe sanctions, the country's textile and garment sector is showing promise, growing 83% in value from 2018 to 2020.

We've reacted to an economic and political situation to come up with something fun and accessible

Bobby Kolade

But used clothes continue to flow into Uganda, and that's what led Kolade to change his original vision of designing and producing clothes made in Uganda from Ugandan cotton, and for Ugandans.

Initially grown using forced labour under British colonialism, Uganda has been producing cotton for more than 100 years. In the post-independence era, it had a thriving homegrown textiles industry. This deteriorated following Uganda's tumultuous politics in the 70s, combined with economic liberalisation in the 90s which enabled secondhand clothing to become the lucrative industry it is today. With just two textile mills remaining, only 5% of Ugandan cotton is consumed locally, with the rest exported in its raw form.

These topics are interrogated in Vintage or Violence, a podcast hosted by Kolade and film-maker Nikissi Serumaga, who is also making a documentary featuring Kolade. The podcast explores why secondhand clothes dominate African textile markets, and what impact this has on local economies and cultures.

"International trade was designed such that, in a country like Uganda, our companies are not supposed to succeed," argues Kolade. He and his team have faced multiple hurdles over the past year, including working on garments for weeks only for the fabric to disintegrate or stretch after being washed, and struggling to set up payment systems on their website. He says: "I am trying to set up a positive story here, to show that we've reacted to an economic and political situation to come up with something fun and accessible, but it is menacing."

He eventually managed to set up a PayPal account for Buzigahill, but services such as Instagram shopping are not available for Ugandan products. "If I ever read the phrase 'not available in your country', again, I will die!"

But he adds: "When I've been completely frustrated at these processes, I've had to have some compassion, and to understand that what we're doing is actually quite absurd [sending secondhand clothes back to the global north]. For me as well, this isn't what I always intended to do."

Kolade is half-German, and could have dodged some of these challenges by setting up his company in Europe and distributing the clothes from there. "But that's not the point. If we are dedicated to value addition in Uganda, then I want the funds to come directly to Uganda, and I want us to set up the systems."

He is passionate about Ugandan-made products, and has set up a non-profit called Aiduke, which promotes Ugandan fashion products to the local market, with the aim of expanding into global markets.

Buzigahill has a 10-year plan to build small, specialised factories across Uganda, not only for repurposing used clothing but also for hand-woven textiles and artisanal production, and Kolade hopes to expand to neighbouring countries too.

"We have an opportunity here to start really thinking about the whole recycling, upcycling, repurposing industry, as opposed to only focusing on raw materials," he explains.

"Waste has already become a commodity, but it's going to become an even more important one. So the sooner we're able to create industries using this waste as a commodity, the more progress we're going to make as a region."
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Right back at you: the Ugandan designer returning the west's cast-offs

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hen Bobby Kolade moved back to Uganda in 2018 after 13 years in the European fashion world, he was intent on joining the movement to ban secondhand clothes. The designer remembered buying used clothing at Uganda's biggest market, Owino in Kampala, as a child, but had since learned about the damage this trade is doing to the environment and to African textile industries.

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By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent

Human activities are damaging and degrading the lands of the Earth in an unsustainable fashion according to a new UN report.

Up to 40% of the global terrain has already been devalued, mainly through modern agriculture.

If nothing changes, then an additional area of land the size of South America will be damaged by 2050.

But if lands are restored and protected, they could help contain climate change and species loss.

This second edition of the Global Land Outlook has been five years in the making, and it examines how the world is managing land resources such as soil, water and biodiversity.

A major focus is the degradation of the lands of the Earth. This means the actions that are causing the land's overall health to decline, become less fertile, store less carbon and be able to support fewer species.

The report outlines the damage that's already been done but also offers hope that improvements in how we manage the land environment can offer a better future.

Right now, around half the world's population is affected by the degradation of our lands.

Just 1% of farms control 70% of the world's agricultural land, while 80% of all farms are under 2 hectares.

Around $700bn is paid in agricultural subsidies each year but only around 15% has a positive impact on natural capital or biodiversity.

At least 70% of the clearing of forested areas for agriculture between 2013 and 2019 was done in violation of national laws.

Food systems have been the single biggest cause of damage - being responsible for 80% of the deforestation and 70% of freshwater use.

If things continue as they are then an extra 16 million square kilometres will be degraded by 2050. That's an area the size of South America.

Business as usual would also see a long-term decline in yield for 12-14% of agricultural, pasture and grazing land and natural areas - with sub-Saharan Africa worst affected.

"We cannot continue to just take land for granted," said Ibrahim Thiaw, who is the executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

"We cannot just continue to think that there is enough land out there, that there's enough water and forest and wetlands to destroy, to respond to our insatiable greed, so to speak, for food and fibre and animal feed."

While the Global Land Outlook report paints a challenging future if nothing changes, the picture is far more positive if governments take steps to restore and protect land.

Restoration involves planting more trees, managing grazing more effectively and assisting the natural regeneration of some areas.

If governments go beyond restoration and actively protect lands as well, this would see crop yields increase in most developing countries, limiting food price rises.

It would also bolster the ability of the soil to store carbon and water. Biodiversity losses would continue but about a third of the projected losses would be prevented.

To achieve this will take political will, but cash will also be needed.

The UNCCD point out that around $700bn are given in what they term "perverse subsidies" to the fossil fuel and agriculture industries each year.

Repurposing about a third of this money would allow governments to restore 1 billion degraded hectares by 2030, an area the size of the US.

The UN says that many regenerative agriculture practices can boost crop yields while also drawing down more carbon from the atmosphere.

Small steps

The report is filled with examples of changes that can help farmers restore and protect their lands such as:

Rewilding - allowing natural ecological processes to re-establish

Forest landscape restoration with high value crops

Terrace and contour farming to prevent soil loss

Conserving and restoring watersheds and rainwater harvesting

Some $19bn has been committed to support regenerative agriculture from both public and private sources.

And it's also a good investment - for every dollar invested in land restoration, the UN says the return can be up to $30 in benefits.

But to really make a difference will require action from citizens as well as governments.

The UN says that consumers all over the world can have a major impact on the ways that land is managed.

"We all have to be, as consumers, conscious of the fact that yes, we can do something," said Mr Thiaw.

"It's not only about buying, but also about what we eat. When you are conscious of the fact that people in richer countries waste more than 100 kilos of food per capita, then you can change your habits."

"It's also about what we wear. And our daily decisions all have a bearing on land."

Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathbbc.

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Nature loss: 'Insatiable greed' degrading land around the world

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By Matt McGrath Environment correspondent Human activities are damaging and degrading the lands of the Earth in an unsustainable fashion according to a new UN report. Up to 40% of the global terrain has already been devalued, mainly through modern agriculture.

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New way to create diamonds from collecting CO2 in the atmosphere

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New way to create diamonds from collecting CO2 in the atmosphere

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Putting back more than we take. Where else can we harvest raw materials which are harming the planet to create something new. Interested to find out more about in the output of this new process. What's the trade off?

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Skydiamonds are sustainable, ethical, environmentally friendly diamonds made conflict-free using renewable energy

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Diamonds made from harvesting CO2 from the atmosphere

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Nicole Rycroft, Founder and Executive Director of award winning environmental not-for-profit, Canopy

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Nicole Rycroft, Founder and Executive Director of award winning environmental not-for-profit, Canopy

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CV Conversations: Nicole Rycroft from Canopy

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Carole Collet, Director of Maison/0 - Podcast

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Carole Collet, Director of Maison/0 - Podcast

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Regenerative Design: Repairing the World with Carole Collet | WGSN

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Open your mind to multi-species thinking, says the professor in design for sustainable futures at Central Saint Martins, and designers might just be able to save the planet. Carole Collet, who is also the director of Maison/0 – the Central Saint Martins and LVMH platform for regenerative luxury – an…

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Alexandre Capelli, LVMH Group Environment Deputy Director

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Alexandre Capelli, LVMH Group Environment Deputy Director

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In the context of LVMH's environmental roadmap, LIFE 360, the Group is pledging that 100% of its products will be eco-designed by 2030. How will you get there?

First off, we are deploying life cycle analysis tools for our products and our packaging in each of the Group's activities. Some of these are in-house developments, like the tool that is now operational in the perfume and cosmetics segment called EDIBox, which tracks our pack's environmental footprint and which is being redeveloped to be in line with our new objectives. We may also implement tools developed outside of the Group - it's all about what is most pertinent.

Beyond these environmental indicators, we've established four criteria to help us reach our goals. The first is to encourage recycled content, be it for packaging or for the product itself, with ambitious targets for glass and plastic in particular. Another objective concerns the certification of raw materials, and in packaging this will mainly be around FSC carton and paperboard. A third criterion is linked to a product's end-of-life, with 100% of our packs being recyclable or compostable by 2030. This is particularly ambitious in fragrance and cosmetics, as those packs are often complex and not particularly easy to recycle.

Does this mean that to boost recycling, multi-material packs will be phased out?

If we are looking to make our products more recyclable, it will mean working to cut down on the number of materials, ensuring that they can be separated as easily as possible, and guiding the consumer when it comes to recycling, especially in the bathroom, where the practice isn't really up to speed, as compared to recycling in the kitchen, for example.

We have a very ambitious roadmap when it comes to recycled content for our packaging - all materials combined - with a target of 70-80% by 2030.

Lightweighting is your fourth pillar for packaging.

Indeed. In fragrance and cosmetics, our target is reduce the weight of our packaging by 20% as compared to levels in 2019. This will entail lightening the amount of materials, and substituting some materials with others. Some of our Maisons have already taken steps in this direction with revamped packs that have resulted in significant weight reductions.

While weight remains a marker for quality in the luxury realm, mindsets are evolving in-house, even among our marketing teams, but also in the market as our clients are beginning to see that beautiful packaging can also be lightweight. Ruinart's Seconde Peau is one example, as is Guerlain's Orchidée Impériale skincare jar.

The Group is also pushing for packs to have a "second life", notably through refills and reloadable formats.

Yes, this is a major focus for many of our Houses. In fragrance, we're seeing a big push for refills, a model that allows us to develop luxurious primary packs, while greatly reducing our environmental footprint. In wine and spirits, our brands are looking at new second-life functions for secondary packs, such as coffrets that double as wine buckets. We're seeing a lot of interest across the board for these types of solutions - both internally and from the end-consumer, which encourages us to push ahead with these formats.

What are your ambitions specifically for plastics?

In a nutshell, by 2026 we'll no longer use virgin plastic in our packs. Instead, we'll choose from three replacement options: recycled plastics, bio-sourced plastics or simply other materials, such as cardboard or glass. We haven't set out precise targets for each of these alternatives as it will depend on the products themselves.

What does this mean for your suppliers?

It means that innovation needs to move into high gear. Recycling streams need to be developed for plastics if the industry wants sufficient supply. However, there are certain more technical plastics that are used in the make-up segment, for example, that will be tough to replace with bio-sourced options. But there is a lot of innovation happening in this area so perhaps in a few years we'll have suitable solutions.

How does glass fit into your environmental goals?

Lightweighting is a major focus. We've already seen solutions from our wine and spirits brands and it is increasingly becoming a priority in the fragrance segment. Regarding recycled glass, there is still the constraint of obtaining perfectly clear glass, especially in the beauty sector (but which is less of a constraint in champagne as the bottles are generally colored). Yet some glassmakers are making significant progress in this area, and are able to provide transparent glass.

Will you ban certain materials altogether from your packaging portfolio?

For the moment only virgin plastic will be phased out. But we are also banning the sourcing of raw materials from any region at risk of deforestation, which will mostly concern paper and cardboard.

How is your partnership with recycling company CEDRE progressing?

CEDRE* remains an important component of our environmental strategy. Historically it is strong in the fragrance and cosmetics space, and we're currently increasing its implication in the fashion sector, with the ability to recycle certain leather goods and textiles. The idea is to continually grow the breadth of products that it can collect and valorize.

We're also looking to start up operations in other markets. CEDRE is based in France, but we wouldn't ship products or materials from abroad, as it would make no sense from an ecological standpoint. LVMH is working on setting up a similar project in Italy and potentially in other regions of the world. But the idea of course, is that as few products end up there as possible!

How are you implementing LIFE 360 across your different brands?

First off, the program was validated by the executive board, and presented this year at the shareholders' meeting. It is deployed in all of our Maisons, which each have a contributing objective; the bigger brands, naturally, weighing in more than their smaller counterparts. Each House defines its own roadmap in the context of LIFE 360, which gives the Board an overview of the progress on a Group scale.

On a more operational level, we have work groups that tackle each of the issues; one that addresses packaging eco-design for fragrance and cosmetics, another for fashion and leather goods... There is an exchange of best practices and information sharing on the various tools available. Although a number of our brands are competitors, this is one issue where we see very fruitful cooperation.

How do you approach the investments side of your CSR strategy?

Being able to responsibly source innovative raw materials, for example, means being able to offer our clients the very best. It all comes down to added value. Yes, of course, a certified ingredient or material will cost more, but we need to look way beyond that. Rather than seeing it as an expenditure, we see it a source of growth.

How will you communicate your sustainable initiatives to the consumer?

That's also part of our LIFE 360 platform; by 2026 we're aiming to bring information to the consumer for each and every product, be it concerning sustainability, social or health-related issues. The product needs to be the signature of our environmental commitments. The tools we're putting into place will allow us generate figures on our progress in these areas (CO2, water consumption...). Of course each brand will choose how they deploy this information depending on their strategy and identity.

Are you calculating the environmental impact of LVMH's digital activities?

We've established the group's environmental footprint with a focus on climate, water, and biodiversity throughout the entire supply chain, but when it comes to digital, it's tricky to gather data on impact as there are so many parameters to take into account: e-commerce, communication via social networks, websites, the broadcasting of our fashion shows online... The scope is extremely vast, but we've broken it down into three major areas: our in-house tools, where we look to develop the "lightest" solutions possible; the cloud ; and e-commerce, which is set to increase both business-wise and in terms of environmental impact.

While digital's impact may not be among our top-three areas of focus, our work here is underway.

How does your environmental strategy compare to your competitors?

It's quite difficult to compare ourselves to the competition given the number of sectors in which LVMH operates. What I can say is that our strategy has four pillars and we believe that we are particularly innovative and ahead of the game on two of these: circular creativity and biodiversity.

Luxury players have often been seen as slow movers. Is the market behind other sectors when it comes to sustainability?

Not necessarily. I think that these issues were always at the heart of luxury: we are very attached to terroir, to raw materials, to preserving areas of expertise and of course to coming out with products that are made to last... Sustainability has long been in our roots!

*CEDRE: Centre Environnemental de Déconditionnement et Recyclage Écologique

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LVMH's Alexandre Capelli: "We see CSR as a source of growth, rather than an expenditure"

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First off, we are deploying life cycle analysis tools for our products and our packaging in each of the Group's activities. Some of these are in-house developments, like the tool that is now operational in the perfume and cosmetics segment called EDIBox, which tracks our pack's environmental footprint and which is being redeveloped to be in line with our new objectives.

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Cécile Lochard, Chief Sustainability Officer at Guerlain

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Cécile Lochard, Chief Sustainability Officer at Guerlain

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#ModicInterview - Guerlain

#BackstageConversations: Cécile LOCHARD - Guerlain Chief Sustainability Officer

The respect for the environment and sustainability is fortunately not a new concept for Guerlain. A french house adored by personalities and celebrities, one among the oldest in the world being founded in 1828.
For our #BackstageConversation we talk with Cécile Lochard, Guerlain Chief Sustainability Officer about the brand's shift towards the natural, its level of involvement with sustainability as well as its future ambitions.

Guerlain is one of the pioneers in research to apply the properties of nature in its new range of cosmetics. Tell us about it and the inspiration level of nature.

Since founding, raw materials have been a major source of inspiration and innovation for our House. Our pledge to protect biodiversity is a natural step towards ensuring the quality and longevity of our creations and savoir- faire. Committing to this key issue also allows us, in our own way, to help preserve the Beauty of the world. Our local biodiversity conservation strategy has focused on forging sustainable production channel partnerships as is seen with our Honey and Orchid supplies. Within this context, Guerlain has partnered with organizations and local stakeholders across France, Europe and the rest of the world to implement programmes and the sustainable production channels for these essential supplies. At home and abroad Guerlain supports cultural, environmental and socio-economic approaches to safeguarding the natural materials that make up our products. We strive to provide long-term support for our sustainable production channels, usually over a period of ten years. Concretely, this is seen in the form of financial assistance, technical and scientific support, skills-based sponsorship and even ad hoc sharing of expertise between our teams of volunteers. Blending "fair business" with philanthropy, these result in many in-person exchanges and meetings in the field.
We have so many destinations and particular know-hows to share. And that's one of the objectives of our traceability digital "Bee respect" platform: It offers transparency on more than 500 ingredients and highlight 40 suppliers and partners across the world. Moreover, our clients can find on it all the information related to the design of our products, such as formula ingredients, packaging elements, suppliers, places of manufacture or their carbon footprint.

What is driving this shift towards the natural and what do you hope to achieve in the future of the brand?

Guerlain has many ambitions in terms of sustainability for the future. To continue preserving biodiversity, Guerlain's ambitions are to source 100% of its iconic raw materials from sustainable production channels (certified UEBT by 2026) and to become the benchmark company in terms of protecting bees more than 2500 beehives in biosphere reserves of UNESCO and repopulating these reserves with more than 125 million of bees by 2025.
We have also set the goal to keep innovating through eco-design and clean beauty without compromising on the quality or intrinsic beauty of our products: by 2021 100% of our new skincare products will be composed at least of 90% ingredients of natural origin.
Concerning transparency, by 2022 we will ensure 100% traceability for all our products thanks to Bee Respect, our digital traceability platform and transparency.
In addition, Guerlain aims for carbon neutrality by 2030 scopes 1 2 3 in order to address climate change and to have 100% of its subsidiaries worldwide be ISO 14001 certified by 2023. Lastly, by 2021, our positive social impact goal is to have 100% of Guerlain employees participating in our Bee School volunteering day and train 50 women beekeepers in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves by 2025.

What do you hope to see in the future of the beauty industry?

I really believe that we are at a critical moment. We can see how deep changes are accelerating. With a thirst for meaning, purpose, empathy, care, respect, naturality. I enjoy working for a House mixing so perfectly crafts and Nature deeply enrooted in its DNA as I really do believe that my green vision for luxury (I wrote a book 10 years ago on the subject, the first on the topics of SD and luxury) is the alliance between creativity and sustainability.
Because no product can be desirable without a sustainable society. We are committed to ensuring that our products and the manner in which they are produced have a positive impact on our entire ecosystem and the regions in which we operate, and that our House actively contributes to a better future.
I won't dare to say as Dostoyevsky that beauty will save the world, with all due respect to him, and Beauty won't save the world on its own, nevertheless the sector and its players are doing their part, Guerlain in the lead.

What is Guerlain's level of involvement with sustainability?

Over the last few years, the House has progressed significantly in structuring our sustainability approach and the singularity of our house: a nature driven brand with bee at heart.
As a result of our 14-years track record, we have proudly managed to work sustainability from the formula of our products to their end-of-life, from sustainable sourcing to eco-design and transparency following LVMH standards and external ones as robust methodology to always improve ourselves.
Our sustainability strategy is shaped around four key pillars, each of them associated with KPIs:
First, sustainable innovation with full transparency and traceability. We focus on clean beauty, naturality and circular economy.
Secondly, taking actions for climate to help fight global warming by reducing CO2 emissions.
Thirdly, by preserving & regenerating biodiversity, leading Bee protection.
And lastly, creating positive social contribution, with again the BEE at heart.
For several years Guerlain has been committed to eco-formulation and eco- packaging design as a means for sustainable innovation. To meet this goal, our development priorities have been clearly oriented towards researching more natural formulas and offering packaging with a reduced environmental impact. Of course, without sacrificing perceived value & product performance.
Our ambitions and standards regarding Naturality are extremely stringent: each new GUERLAIN formula must meet a minimum of 90% naturally derived ingredients whenever possible. To cite a few recent examples, the new Abeille Royale Lotion features over 98% naturally derived ingredients. On Makeup, which has traditionally been extremely challenging for brands to propose natural products, Guerlain has been pre-cursor, and in 2019, we launched L'Essentiel foundation formulated with 97% of natural origin ingredients. We also just launched a new version of our iconic Terracotta, made of 96% naturally derived ingredients.
Regarding ECODESIGN, we follow the credo of 3 Rs: REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE.
Each innovation must achieve at least one R. We endeavor to develop products which integrate all three Rs..) and we note each of our new products related to an internal LVMH eco-design standard IPE( indicator of eco performance) : each of our product must reach a minimum of 12/20.
Our eco design battles are not the same for all our portfolio, it depends on the categories and products concerned. For skincare and perfume, we prioritize lighter packaging, often made of glass - the most effective eco- design action we have identified. In 2017, Guerlain reduced its Orchidée Impériale jars' weight by 60% than the previous generations. Going forward,100% of our new glass bottles and jars have to be made with partly recycled materials and/or reducing their weight.
Regarding client's communication on Sustainability, we led the way in the term of transparency and traceability in the luxury sector with Bee Respect. We launched the BEE RESPECT platform in 2019, which is a digital tool to help consumers better understand and be informed about the whole lifecycle of Guerlain products: formula ingredients, packaging elements, suppliers, places of manufacture or their carbon footprint.
For us, exceptional quality of our products, requires full transparency with no fear.
Regarding climate: we are taking concrete actions for climate to reduce our footprint and to protect the living who depend on the climate. We aim to reach carbon neutrality, by 2030. The LVMH group has an objective of Carbon Neutrality by 2050 - Guerlain is trying to go above & beyond. Reaching carbon neutrality requires full commitment of the organization, and this is not an easy job as it transforms the way we should work...we have for example completely reviewed our innovation process to be able to deliver the product and the POS advertising material in time by sea and optimize our air/sea ratio... At a more local level, since 2013, Guerlain has used "Bumblebee" ("Bourdon"), a 100% electric, noise free, CO2-free nighttime delivery truck in order to restock its Parisian boutiques
Pledging to preserve biodiversity is a fundamental step for our Maison. committing to this key issue allows us to give back to nature, again with bee protection and bee welfare at heart. Our duty is to make sure that 100% of our iconic raw materials will come from certified sustainable chains. As sourcing standard, Guerlain is primed to sign its official membership with UEBT (Union for Ethical Biotrade) UEBT is a non-profit association internationally recognized for its work with companies on ethical sourcing of ingredients from biodiversity working to regenerate nature and secure a better future for local people through ethical sourcing.
This is for us a strong demonstration that Guerlain continues its journey to ethically source natural ingredients as we planned a series of on-site assessments of our strategic and iconic raw materials from 2021 to 2022 in order to be UEBT certified.
And I am excited to conclude on Societal Contribution by sharing a very special program we have been working on with UNESCO Indeed We signed a partnership with UNESCO MAB agency to kick-off the WOMEN FOR BEES program, designed to train women beekeepers in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves across the world closed to our sustainable plants and honey chains In a nutshell We will empower through beekeeping training a community of 50 WOMEN within 5 years in 25 reserves while restocking the world with millions of bees. Through our research and advisement from UNESCO, we have found alarming results that women are more vulnerable to climate change and biodiversity erosion and have been particularly affected by job cuts and unemployment in the time of COVID.

Based on this new focus on eco-sustainability, what products from your range would you recommend to readers?

At Guerlain, we have stayed loyal to our core values whilst constantly evolving in terms of sustainability requirements and actions. As a result of our 14-year track record, we have proudly managed to work sustainability from the formula of our products to their end-of-life, from sustainable sourcing to eco-design and transparency.
Guerlain continues to evolve regarding sustainability actions and requirements to this day and this is key to turn out our sustainability plan into concrete goals to achieve, run by the whole teams.
One of our major goal is to reinforce Guerlain's position as a key player in the natural and clean beauty domain and become the benchmark luxury house in terms of naturalness our target is that each new Guerlain formula must meet a minimum of 90% naturally derived ingredients whenever possible. After the performance of our skincare ranges regarding naturalness (by 2021 100% of our new skincare products will be composed at least of 90% ingredients of natural origin), challenge is fully accepted in makeup category. And perfectly illustrated though our 2021 launches. We have to point out that it represents a real challenge, especially when it comes to makeup category and the ability to maintain the levels of performance that meet our high standards, but it enables us to open a new chapter of its quest towards natural beauty by launching 3 essential products of a makeup routine formulated with more than 95% of natural origin ingredients: TERRACOTTA, the new natural bronzing powder with 96% naturally-derived ingredients, l'ESSENTIEL HIGH PERFECTION, the new high perfection foundation with 96% naturally-derived ingredients and KISSKISS SHINE BLOOM, the new 95% naturally-derived shine lipstick.

Some other achievements connected to our climate and certification ambitions: 100% of our French sites including our production sites and 56% of our affiliates are iso 14001 certified (including Guerlain Portugal) and 100% of the electricity at our French production sites comes from renewable sources.
We've been able at Guerlain to go further with eco-design, even with our most prestigious products! Our torch bearers eco-designed packaging are the following ones:
2 examples of "lighter / more compact packaging the same capacity:
"DOING BETTER WITH LESS" - In 2017, Guerlain reduced its Orchidée Impériale (our most prestigious skincare line) jars' weight by 60% than the previous generations - I'm telling you; it was an audacious bet on our ultra- premium line, but it has paid off. Our clients not only love the jars, and share our commitment, but also now happily travel with them. This success story is illustrated by the number of customers who not only love the jars, but also now happily travel with them. This satisfied response continues to spur us on.
In 2019, following the commitment we had made to reduce our carbon footprint with our Orchidée Impériale jars two years previous, Guerlain had proved itself a pioneer yet again with its choice of 90% recycled glass Abeille Royale cream jars. Increased quantities of recycled calcin, lighter- weight glass and identical product capacity feature in the new Abeille Royale cream jars. This nectar can now be found in Infinite Glass® NEO jars, an eco-innovation from partner Verescence and the first premium jar to be made from 90% recycled glass of which 25% is post-consumer (PCR). These features make for a jar with an annual carbon footprint reduction of 44% and a water consumption reduction of 42%.
3 KEY EXAMPLES:
Our iconic and highly symbolic bee bottles are refillable & customizable. Our iconic Bee Bottle is still manufactured by the Pochet & du Courval ateliers since its creation in 1853. It can be refilled with our full portfolio of fragrances, of which there are over 130 in the catalogue, in most of our Boutiques or to order. The Bee Bottle has become part of the House's approach to reduce the environmental impact of its packaging and containers. All while staying true to the values of high-quality and exceptional savoir-faire that are so important to Guerlain. A Bee Bottle personalization atelier can be found at the center of most of our Boutiques, where size, color, engraving, cord and ribbon are used to make each bottle unique.
Our refillable lipstick: Rouge G: In 1870 Guerlain created the very first lipstick "Ne m'oubliez pas", then, the first refillable lipstick in 1930 - Rouge Automatique. Rouge G is a contemporary interpretation of this visionary creation and remains one of very few refillable lipsticks on the market.
And finally, our collaboration with Bernardaud House to propose our Orchidée Impériale Black in refillable formats: the quintessence of luxury and sustainability.With this collaboration Guerlain and the Bernardaud House have partnered to create an artistic object which has been designed to last. In making the Orchidée Impériale ultra-premium skincare jar, Guerlain wanted to create an artisanal object made from sustainable materials which was respectful of the environment and could be repeatedly refilled. Made from Limoges porcelain, an inert material which once fired can be recycled within the construction sector (for example), this jar generates zero waste during manufacture (un-fired rejects can be reintegrated into the production cycle).

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BackstageConversations: Cécile LOCHARD - Guerlain Chief Sustainability Officer The respect for the environment and sustainability is fortunately not a new concept for Guerlain. A french house adored by personalities and celebrities, one among the oldest in the world being founded in 1828.

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Bastien Sachet, CEO at the Earthworm Foundation 

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Bastien Sachet, CEO at the Earthworm Foundation 

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TFT is pleased to announce that Bastien Sachet is TFT's new CEO. Bastien has been with TFT for 10 years, starting as a member manager before becoming a director in 2011. His background and experience in business and agriculture are well linked to TFT's work between the two worlds of business and nature.

He has already demonstrated his leadership qualities by helping to coordinate TFT's palm oil strategy, heading up teams in France, Switzerland and Africa, and launching new TFT initiative Rurality, which aims to empower smallholder farmers.

"It's an honour to be chosen for this role," said Bastien. "I deeply love TFT as an organisation and am very enthusiastic about continuing the journey Scott started 17 years ago. It's a real privilege to be working with all the TFT teams around the world and I look forward to achieving great things together with them."

Bastien takes over from Scott Poynton, who founded TFT in 1999, when the initial goal was to get illegal wood out of the garden furniture trade. Since then Scott was also the focal point for many key achievements in the history of TFT, including negotiating industry transforming No Deforestation, No Exploitation and No Peatland policies across the palm oil and pulp and paper sectors. He is very excited about this new development.

"Bastien has grown hugely as a person as well as professionally during his time with TFT, and he has that strong connection to the field that I believe to be absolutely critical for TFT's CEO," said Scott, adding that, "TFT's Board has always stressed the need to have a strong succession plan and this change to Bastien represents the culmination of a process started in 2004."

Scott will continue to be heavily involved with TFT. He looks forward to writing and speaking more about TFT's philosophy and approach to change and to continuing to challenge traditional business thinking. Asked on why he made the move now Scott said: "The time is right - the organisation is on the up. There are still many challenges to address in the world and doing so on a wider front is important. With my evolution into my new role focusing on communication and outreach I can bring our voice to the debate and discussion about the real big picture issues without having to worry about TFT's operations, which are in the safe hands of Bastien and our directors and senior managers."

TFT's directors will continue with their previous responsibilities, with Hilary Thompson driving TFT's No Exploitation Program, while also leading work in Indonesia and India, and sharing her broad operational experience and knowledge with Bastien.

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TFT is pleased to announce that Bastien Sachet is TFT's new CEO. Bastien has been with TFT for 10 years, starting as a member manager before becoming a director in 2011. His background and experience in business and agriculture are well linked to TFT's work between the two worlds of business and nature.

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Climate Podcast: Does the earth have to be a fashion victim? Juliet Russell & Max Bitner

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Climate Podcast: Does the earth have to be a fashion victim? Juliet Russell & Max Bitner

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Transcript

UCL Minds 0:01

We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.

Juliet Russell 0:09

brands can honestly almost get away with anything they want to do. There's no consistency in government regulation around the world.

Max Bittner 0:18

platforms like Instagram, which created a culture of, you know, obsessive sharing what you do, and what you wear and what you eat.

Juliet Russell 0:28

Consumers actually choosing to buy less and buy better. You've probably heard it all before.

Matt Winning 0:34

The only people that can be asked that question our actresses on the red carpet, and Hannibal Lecter.

Mark Maslin 0:41

This is generation one from UCL, University College London, turning climate science and ideas into action. Hello, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening form wherever and whenever you are. I am Mark Maslin. And in this episode, we're talking about fashion, fast fashion, greenwashing, sustainable fabrics, renting clothes, these have all become hot topics over the last few years. And the fashion industry is having to deal with increasing challenges to the way they operate. Our question today is, does the Earth have to be a fashion victim? Stay tuned as we discuss the impacts of fashion on the earth, what we can do to reduce it. We'll also be hearing from some incredible exciting guests. But firstly, we're joined by my friend and colleague, Matt winning.

Matt Winning 1:35

Hi, how are you Mark,

Mark Maslin 1:38

I am still exhausted from cop 26.

Matt Winning 1:41

So I'm still not really quite quite back to normal after that. And I also have had a book come out as well. So it's been a busy time.

Mark Maslin 1:48

Oh, I have to say that your book is amazing. For anybody who doesn't know about this. It's called hot mess. And it talks about both these crisis of the climate, but also Matt's own crisis of having a young child and it beautifully interplays the small scale personal and the huge crisis we're facing for the planet. I'm plugging Matt's book, go out buy hot mess, as soon as possible. There you are Matt, I've done it for you.

Matt Winning 2:15

Thank you very much. I can't do that myself. So we're talking fashion today, I wanted to start by asking you who you were wearing,

Mark Maslin 2:24

you're absolutely right to ask what I'm wearing. So I am wearing a carbon negative merino wool jumper. So this is produced by sheep Inc. I have a tag on it, which means I can even track the actual sheep that it came from in New Zealand. And because I'm a UCL boffin, I went through all of their sustainability and their carbon stuff to make sure that really is carbon negative.

Matt Winning 2:51

That's pretty incredible. It's a weird question that I was fine. When people say, you know, who are you wearing? The only people that can be asked that question are actresses on the red carpet, and Hannibal Lecter.

Mark Maslin 3:03

I think the pandemic though, has really changed people's views. Because I think before that we're all so busy about trying to get as many T shirts as many cars as many shoes, you know, suddenly this was all really important, then cause the pandemic happened, we suddenly realised that the things we really missed was family, friends, hugging, touching. And suddenly, I think there was a mind shift that people realise that all this stuff doesn't necessarily make you happy.

Matt Winning 3:33

Yes, yes, indeed. But yeah, that's that fashion is I think it's something that people like to talk about, because cause sort of represent who we are. And, you know, part of our as part of our personality almost. So it's, it's, it's part of us and if we're being judged on you know, how sustainable our cause that kind of feels like How sustainable are we and it's quite a personal choice as well. So I think it's a really interesting topic to dive into. And I'm glad that you're doing it, as you know, the most trendy professor I know.

Mark Maslin 4:04

Oh, thanks, man. I'm gonna go and dine out on that for years. Thanks, man, great.

UCL Minds 4:12

You're listening to UCL generation one, turning science and ideas into climate action.

Mark Maslin 4:22

Every year, the fashion industry generates 10% of the world's total global carbon emissions produced from materials needed to make our clothes and shoes we wear materials like propylene, a common ingredient in fabrics and plastic is created using harmful fossil fuels. It is why UCL scientists have pioneered a new method using chemical catalysts to create propylene in a much cleaner, greener way and help cut the carbon footprint of the clothes we manufacture. Today we are asking ourselves Does the earth need to be a fashion victim? I'm assuming we're all aligned on this answer. But let's discuss. I'm joined today by two brilliant people, Max Bittner a UCL luminary and CEO of Vestiaire Collective. And Juliet Russell, who is the head of sustainability at Stella McCartney. I'm going to start with Juliet. Juliet, what I think I'm excited about, and what I think listeners will be interested in is, why corporate sustainability, what was your journey? And how did you get to where you are now?

Juliet Russell 5:34

Hi, Mark, thanks for having me on the podcast. So it was when I was back at UCL actually, that I started to learn all about the climate crisis and environmental degradation and the effects that we as people and society were having on the planet, and how intrinsically linked that was, and therefore we of course, have the power to be turning that back around and reversing the problems that were causing today, actually a conversation I'd had with you Mark, where you had told me at the time that I needed to do a master's degree. So I then went to Imperial and did a degree in environmental technology, but specialising in business in the environment. And that was the first time that I was actually exposed to the problems that exist in the fashion industry. That was where I realised that it was something that I love in my day to day life. And actually, I could marry up the passion that I have in trying to reverse some of these issues with something that I love, kind of engaging in daily, but never thought I'd be able to, because, you know, I never thought I'd be a creative or a designer or anything like that. So then I did my master's thesis, looking at innovative materials and worked with bolt threads on their Milo mycelium leather, and really found that actually, there were these disruptive ways that the fashion industry can be doing better when it becomes more aware. And when these kinds of materials can be scaled.

Mark Maslin 6:50

I have to say, I'm so glad that my lectures never put you off. Now you're out Stella McCartney, I'm really interested. What do you see as the biggest problems facing the fashion industry?

Juliet Russell 7:02

Gosh, okay, so there are many, as we know, but we're working to try and combat them. So for me, things that I see in this space are that there's a massive lack of transparency right now in supply chains for consumers. So I mean, a lot of brands themselves will not know where the raw materials they're sourcing are actually coming from the journey they're taking from that sourcing location through to their finished product. If you don't know the journey that's taking place, and maybe potentially even what some of these raw materials are, there's no way that you can understand the impact that those raw materials are having or that production process is having. So that's one of the biggest things, that's the baseline kind of understanding what the impact is. And then of course, brands can work to mitigate that footprint and reduce it as much as they can. Another thing that stellar always really likes to talk about as well, actually is the lack of regulation in this space. So brands can honestly almost get away with anything they want to do. There's no consistency in government regulation around the world with how you know how brands have to produce, how brands can talk about environmental credentials, what the definition of sustainability should be, and whether they can put green or more sustainable labels on clothing, which then means that consumers are left really confused. And a lot of the time, you know, thinking that they're buying into something, which is incredible, but actually, maybe there's only one small portion of that supply chain that's, well, you know, all that product material that's actually done responsibly.

Mark Maslin 8:28

So I'm gonna bring in max here, a max, welcome. Can I ask you why his best year tackling this issue? And how do you see your mission?

Max Bittner 8:41

Yeah, very happy to be part of the podcast. Thanks for inviting me, you know, overall, vestia collective has been around for more than 10 years. And the vision has from the beginning really been about how we can transform the fashion industry for a more sustainable future by empowering our community to drive this change. And the concept is really been built by the founders originally, around the idea that all their friends, they themselves had just endless amount of clothes lying in their closets, unused, unworn, some of them even, you know, still with tags. And they questioned themselves and said, shouldn't someone's trash be someone else's treasure and they've started building this community of people who try to start a trading these products with each other. So so we really see ourselves as a massive marketplace, where people trade the products that they might not love as much as they used to do it with someone else who does and have really built a global community around it. You know, we really see our mission to educate consumers around the fact that especially these more luxury products are assets, not consumables, we educate them about the fact that they have a residual value. So when they think about purchasing products, firsthand, they just think about the fact that it will also have a second hand value at which they can sell it, and educate them thus to shift their consumer behaviour to quality, not quantity.

Mark Maslin 10:14

I mean, I think it's amazing that you are driving the circular economy within the fashion industry, I noticed that you've recently announced your B Corp certification. Do you want to explain to the listeners what that means and how you think that's going to pave the way for other reselling platforms?

Max Bittner 10:32

Yeah, we felt that in the fashion industry as a whole, the extent of greenwashing that was being done to alleviate in some sort of way consumers bad conscious of pretty significant impact their times absurd consumer habits would have by putting quite a green spin on it. But as we started to become more vocal about some of these topics, we realised that as Julian said, a lot of our consumers are just incredibly unaware of the impact that their own behaviour has. And instead of kind of piling on to this kind of green spin on everything we do, we said, hey, let's make sure that we hold ourselves accountable to the highest external standard out there. And that is B Corp, you know, both on environmental, social and governance topics. So we embarked on this journey to become a B Corp. And we achieve that, you know, three, four months ago, and are incredibly proud of it, you know, that we put pedal to the metal and got the certification to now hold ourselves accountable and continue improving our own B Corp score, but also become vocal to the industry as a whole, to adopt themselves to this very high standard.

Mark Maslin 11:48

I think that's absolutely amazing that you are pushing the boundary of fashion, and you're actually trying to make sure that people understand and see the transparency. And I think this is Juliet, this is one of the things that I constantly hear you saying, How is Stella McCartney being transparent, but also how is the company influencing other companies to be more transparent,

Juliet Russell 12:12

we have something called an environmental profit and loss that we use to actually calculate the environmental impact of our material sourcing in monetary terms. So I think one of the ways that we really tried to influence and inspire other fashion brands actually is through our engagement with innovation. And what we're doing there is I mean, there are so many of these innovators out there who are doing these things incredibly, but on a very small scale right now and need the funding and need the exposure. And so we try to work with these innovators and test them and basically just test that it works in the market prove to the company themselves and to brands like ourselves and to consumers that these things exist. And these things actually work to enable them to then be elevated, scaled, and allow other brands then to take part as well and more broadly than just our own company.

Mark Maslin 13:06

We have a brilliant question from one of our postgraduate students shell Lee,

UCL Minds 13:13

I wanted to hear your opinions on how we can keep the ball rolling with encouraging sustainable fashion. Obviously, in the past years, we've had quite a lot of progress, and increased awareness about sustainable fashion. But I was wondering what you think that big businesses could do to contribute to promoting sustainable fashion, and not just use it as a trend or a strategy to encourage more customers to buy from their brand?

Mark Maslin 13:39

Max, do you want to kick off with that one.

Max Bittner 13:41

But what we're seeing right now is a series of business led initiatives, both ourselves and I think also Stella McCartney has been petitions of a recent smi initiatives led by Prince Charles and one of the key topics that the group committed to was assigning themselves to implementing digital IDs of some sort or another, to the products that they sell. This digital ID should give much bigger transparency about the materials that had been used for production and the impact that it had from the source and location where these materials has come from. And these informations not only provide transparency to consumers, but they also then make sustainability and circular actions like secondhand much more easy if every product that we would have on a platform has some sort of a digital ID, it would make the actual listing process much much faster. And we would have a guarantee that this product is authentic. So I think this is one of the ways that we see businesses right now trying to push the sustainability agenda. So do I think it's enough and should big businesses do more? Yes, if not, you know, governments and consumers will need to vote with their feet

Mark Maslin 14:59

perhaps Say I think that's a really important point. I mean, coming out at COP 26 was the fact that we need to reduce our carbon emissions in the next nine years by 45%. And so again, how is the fashion industry going to be able to do that? So I'm going to pass the question over to Juliet as well. What do you think big business can do to help promote sustainable fashion, or just become sustainable?

Juliet Russell 15:26

So one of the things for me that I always like to think about, actually, is that there are three main actors around pushing ourselves towards sustainability as a society, there's business big and small. There's the government system, and then there's also society, I don't think we can expect to put so much onus on society and on the consumer themselves to as we do today, you know, to make those right decisions. As Max and I've both mentioned, government regulation is going to be a key thing here to both help, I mean, help bring the industry I think, to to an equal and level playing field. There are a lot of companies like both Stella McCartney and of course, vestia collective who wants to do the right things for the right reasons. And compared to many others, were pretty much ahead of the game. However, without government regulation, a lot of the laggards aren't going to bring themselves up anywhere near to our level to ensure that, you know, the whole industry is heading towards this common place.

Mark Maslin 16:25

One of the other questions that comes up time and time again, when we're talking about sustainable fashion. And this is also when you do question airs with the public is around cost. And the issue is that, of course, fast fashion is also cheap fashion. Where as sustainability, and sustainable fashion is always seen as more expensive. So Max, you're really pushing the circular economy. Do you feel that that's going to help us get out of this cost issue?

Max Bittner 16:56

Partly, yes, partly, you know, I think I'm, you know, as we speak, Black Friday, there's an app called Shein, coming out of China these days, I think they're now doing 10 billion of revenue, and they're only four or five years old. And as I look at the app, you know, the items are priced somewhere between five and 10, or 15, euros, resale, and circularity can fix certain problems, but it cannot fix this problem, you know, these items, which are low quality, and really not made to be worn multiple times. And definitely probably from an from an economics perspective. And also, from an carbon footprint perspective, it is really hard to justify sending a one or two year item in the mail or post between, you know, different locations, and thus creating a new, you know, footprint itself. So, you know, to address some of these clearly, highly polluting, low quality materials sourced items. I mean, a massive amount of regulation needs to come in, whether it's taxation, whether it's consumer warning, like you have on sacred packages, where you you know, put a big sticker on the impact that this current action has on yourself and the planet is absolutely required. And apart from that, I think I'm very much in the camp Juliet, less is more quality over quantity. And this is where I believe in secondhand and circular fashion, much, much more is, the higher quality. The item is in here, we really like highlighting the craftsmanship that goes into a product like a product from from Stella McCartney is just a completely different one in this kind of throwaway fast fashion. And this makes these items assets, not consumables, and really educating consumers on the fact that it makes sense to pay more because you know, you can resell this item once you're done wearing it, but at least someone else can take on that product. And so there's both regulation education that needs to happen to really make people understand how significant how terrible the impact is on some of their very short term thinking consumer decisions.

Juliet Russell 19:06

I think one of the big things here is actually around, consumers actually choosing to buy less and buy better, you've probably heard it all before, but honestly, that's a huge thing. So one of the biggest things you can do to increase the life of a single garment that you have is to make sure that you know if it becomes a little bit damaged, then you repair it, you're not going to want to pay 20 pounds to repair a five pounds jumper that you might have bought on one of these fast fashion retailers naturally in a way that our higher price points as a luxury brand kind of lean in more that customers are more likely to pay that then small price in comparison to the original price of the garment to make sure that they can continue to love that garment for years and years and years. Because you're not engaging in this take make dispose linear system over and over and over again, but just in that one kind of extended lifespan

Mark Maslin 20:00

I have to say that beautifully segues into my last question. Thank you, Juliet. It's almost like we practiced this. So I'm going to ask you the final question, which is, if you had a magic wand, which piece of government regulation would you most want to have in place as soon as possible to actually help lift the fashion industry into a more sustainable role? Max, let's go with you.

Max Bittner 20:26

Know, I think one of the key government transactions, I would hope would have been enacted backward looking, is quite a spiritual point of view, which is the incredibly negative impact that has been caused by social media, you know, Instagram, specifically, on just promoting absurd amount of overconsumption, because everything you do, everything you wear, is seen immediately by, you know, not just two or three people you meet on that day, but the hundreds and 1000s of people that follow you on these social medias, some sort of a spiritual reminder, and you know, almost shaming into overconsumption on social media would be really what I would hope for, in hindsight,

Mark Maslin 21:13

I love that answer, Juliet?

Juliet Russell 21:16

I've got an entirely different approach and a little bit more scientific. So you're going to love it Mark, what I would love to see happen actually is a government or governments across the world coming together to agree that actually, there would be perhaps a tax on imports, and or exports of materials based on their environmental footprint. So this would require a tonne of back work, of course, around lifecycle assessments of materials and things like that. But a lot of brands today are not going to pick those lower impact materials, one, because they just don't even understand at this point, what those you know which materials have what kind of impact associated, but also they're not motivated to financially at all. So if you pull in this kind of tax or incentive system, the cheaper materials would be the ones that are, of course, verified being better for the planet. However, the more expensive materials would then be the ones that are the most polluting, so that, you know, you get that economic incentive, and you're driving those brands who might not be motivated by sustainability, or by trying to do the right thing, but actually your cut capturing those who are economically motivated, that, for me, would be a really big thing, I think we've seen significant changes there.

Mark Maslin 22:29

So that's changing our relationship to fashion. So we can actually wear things multiple times, even on Instagram, and also making the fabrics and what we actually were much more sustainable, and to use the financial tools like taxation, to change the materials that actually companies have to use both brilliant answers, we have a bit of a fun section on our podcast called The Climate time capsule, where we ask our guests, what would you put into a time capsule now, this could be something that you want to disappear and have never existed? This is something you may want to have invented to actually help us, all of which has to do with dealing with climate change. And I'm going to start with Juliet, what do you want to put in your time capsule.

Juliet Russell 23:21

So mine is going to be a bit of a strange one, probably. regenerative agriculture is something that I believe is going to be key for the fashion industry, but also any industry that sources natural raw materials really so really wide spread and wide reach here, it's a way of basically growing crops in ways that reduce the amount of soil erosion and actually increase the amount of carbon that gets sequestered into the soil. And these schemes also have been proven to actually improve local biodiversity and local land cover. And it involves intercropping, which normally actually means food crops are woven in as well. So there are many ways that actually that can have a positive impact on the planet and help to fight through numbers, their climate crisis and improve their biodiversity situation that we have on the planet today. So that for me is something that I would love to take forward with me.

Mark Maslin 24:16

That's an amazing answer. And, hey, I'm so glad you listened to some of my lectures. So Max, what would you like to put in your time capsule?

Max Bittner 24:27

I think what I would put in a time capsule is social media full stop, you know, especially platforms like Instagram, which created a culture of, you know, obsessive, sharing what you do, and what you wear and what you eat. And I think you know, in the past, wearing a piece of clothing could go a long way because you would only see a limited amount of people. On any given day today. Wearing a piece of clothing is seen by 1000s of people or however big you think your friendship group needs to be. I think social media has driven so Many bad behaviours across society, that they're toxic in their own right. So I would definitely put that in there.

Mark Maslin 25:06

I can see Juliet waving at me, she's desperate to get into that time capsule. Go for it, Juliet,

Juliet Russell 25:11

I just wanted to add in that I completely agree with everything that Max has been saying. But it's a tricky one in that, I think there is actually a lot of good that can come out of social media too, particularly around the point of education. We can't take for granted that you know, the education we have, and have had, not everyone on this planet can read your experience, or maybe they didn't even want to follow a similar path that we've followed to get to the point we're at now. And so social media, for me, is used as an important tool to get these messages that are really important out to consumers or the public who might not have otherwise engaged in this kind of conversation. So I mean, it's tricky. There's there's definitely pros and cons. And maybe there are other ways we can do that engagement. But

Mark Maslin 25:54

I'd love to say incredible, thank you to both I guess, who are amazing, obviously, because they come from UCL originally. But again, I think what gives me hope is we've got people like Max, and we've got people like Juliet who are out there who are trying to change the world for the better. And they are tackling one of the hardest areas, which is fashion. So I'd like to say a big thank you, for myself and from the listeners.

UCL Minds 26:23

You're listening to UCL generation one, turning science and ideas into climate action.

Mark Maslin 26:33

Welcome to the Climate news, my eclectic collection of different climate change news stories from around the world. Let's start with some good news. The three parties in Germany have agreed to quit coal by 2030. That's eight years earlier than previously agreed. If we look elsewhere around the world, Nigeria has committed to annual carbon budgets. And this is because they announced at COP 26 that they were going to go net zero by 2016. In India, which announced that they were going to go net zero by 2070. The Indian Council for Environment, Energy and Water with the centre of energy and finance, have done a report looking at the cost of the transition from fossil fuels to renewable and suggests over that period of time, they will need investments of over $10 trillion partly to replace fossil fuels, but also because of the huge increase in the energy demand of India over the next 50 years. But it's not all good news, a proposal for the shipping industry to adopt a target of net zero emissions by 2050. Looks to have been rejected by the member states of the IMO Marine Environmental Protection Committee. That means the official target is still only 50% by 2050 raises the question, who is going to be mopping up all that pollution by 2050 If the marine industry isn't going to clean itself up, so this is Mark Manson signing off from the climate change new section of generation one.

That's it for this episode or generation one from UCL turning climate science and ideas into action. If you'd like to ask a question or suggest a guest that you'd like to hear on generation one, you can contact us at hashtag UCL generation one. Otherwise, for more information about UCL work in the climate space, and for what our staff and students as well as our researchers are doing to make sure that we don't just talk the talk, but we walk the walk to a more sustainable future, head to UCL generation one website or follow us on social media hashtag UCL January generation one

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Climate Podcast: Does the earth have to be a fashion victim?

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Does the earth have to be a fashion victim? This week host Mark Maslin chats with Juliet Russell, Head of Sustainability at Stella McCartney and Max Bittner, CEO of Vestiaire Collective about all things fashion. We're discussing the fashion industry, from to greenwashing to fast fashion and how you can shop more consciously.

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This week's special Earth Day edition of the Current Climate newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week. To get Current Climate in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here.
To celebrate my birthday last year, I hired one of those self-driving boats you can sail down a city's canal. What was meant to be a one-hour pleasant voyage down a mile-long stretch between London's Paddington Station and Regent's Park was interrupted twice by the boat's electric engine failing, both times for the same reason: A plastic bag had gotten stuck in the helix. Untangling the bag was a small inconvenience, but it brought home just how much plastic pollution exists in our waterways and other natural environments, whether lurking beneath the surface or in plain sight.

Most of human history has been plastic free, but it's now become hard to imagine a world without it. Luckily, several entrepreneurs are working on it, and this Earth Day issue of Current Climate highlights innovations that aim to make plastic disappear. A few key words dominating those conversations: scale, pricing and integration into existing value chains.

As always, I'm also bringing you news from the past few weeks showing progress and challenges in the fight against climate change. Finally, hats off to the Financial Times for devising this "Climate Game" on how to reach net zero by 2050. Some of the choices presented in each scenario are debatable, and that's part of the point- it's a thought-provoking exercise. I admit I just missed the game's 1.5-degree goal, mostly because I didn't force everyone to drive electric vehicles. (My preferred option, to encourage cycling and public transport use, wasn't available.) What does your path to net zero looks like?

How To Make Plastic Disappear

Plastic bags were reportedly invented to avoid the environmental damage created by alternatives like paper and textiles, yet they have come to symbolize all that is wrong with plastic and its life cycle.

A lightweight, resistant and adaptable material, plastic production has ballooned since the turn of the millennium. According to the OECD, global plastic waste production doubled to 353 million metric tons (778 million pounds) between 2000 and 2019. Of this, nearly two thirds is made up of plastics with lifetimes of under five years, with 40% coming from packaging, 12% from consumer goods and 11% from clothing and textiles. Some of this waste takes the form of microplastics, whose impact on the environment, human and other animal species has yet to be fully understood, but which initial studies have linked to infertility and other health issues. There's no silver bullet to tackle plastic pollution-it takes a holistic approach involving alternative materials, technological innovation, and a reassessment of a product's life cycle.

Seaweed Solutions

The humble seaweed has become an increasingly popular candidate to replace petroleum-based plastic. It doesn't need freshwater, fertilizer or even land. Its malleable structure makes it suitable for replacing plastic films used for packaging, which are common pollutants.

The Mumbai startup Zerocircle uses dried seaweed as the basis of its packaging materials, which are designed to dissolve after use. It was through researching waste management and recycling processes that cofounder Neha Jain realized the need for a material that "takes care of itself if the system falters," as she put it. "If you're looking at the footprint of plastics, you're looking at microplastics, you're looking at carbon efficiency and you're looking at its permanence," she says. Her company has been awarded several recognitions for its work, most recently becoming a finalist for the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize.

Across the globe, Hawaiian native and California-based entrepreneur Sea Briganti initially envisioned Loliware as a maker of edible cups made of seaweed, but eventually realized that it wasn't one product line that was going to make a difference-the production process had to change. "Food technology is not well suited for mass production at a competitive price point. We need to design for scale," she tells Forbes.

Over half a decade of development work later, defying skeptics who didn't believe seaweed could offer a scalable solution, Loliware now produces seaweed pellets that can replace plastic at scale. The brand puts the spotlight on straws, but that's just the beginning. "I can literally walk into a plastic manufacturer tomorrow anywhere on the planet, and they can replace any single-use plastic with our pellet. There's no startup capital required, no cap-ex-I'm not creating a technology that requires custom machinery. All the technology has to be built into the materials science, not into the processing," Briganti says.

From bags to straws, single-use plastics are the primary target of government bans. India's takes effect in July, the European Union imposed one last year, and France has gone further, banning plastic packaging of fresh produce at the start of this year. In California, the first U.S. state to ban plastic bags, a proposed ban on single-use plastics will appear on the November ballot.

Such regulations are helping to advance research on alternatives, says Jain. But there remains the issue of pricing: plastics remain cheap while other materials struggle to compete, especially in countries where widespread poverty means any increase in the price of food has serious repercussions for many people. "There are developing countries that cannot afford to have a pricing that can change the cost of a five-cent biscuit," Jain says. Carbon taxes could help make plastic less competitive, but ultimately it's seaweed production that needs to reach economies of scale, she adds, noting the plastic production process has been optimized for scale and price competitiveness over the course of seven decades.

To reach that scale, more capital is required. While interest is growing, VC funding toward startups dedicated to tackling the climate emergency is largely focused on mobility and transport, but areas that have larger potential for emission reduction-such as energy, food and agriculture and the built environment-received a fraction of those investments, according to a 2021 PwC report. "[Climatetech] needs more funding," Briganti says, "There's a huge transformation happening that [investors] can be a part of. Put your money into this transformation."

Change The Structure

Whatever the success of efforts to replace plastic packaging with other materials, some form of plastic will likely continue to be needed for the decades to come. That's where Polymateria aims to make a difference. Rather than use alternative materials to replace petroleum-based plastic, Polymateria's technology fundamentally alters the composition of the plastic polymer so it becomes compostable in nature, whether or not it's recycled.

The real challenge the seven-year-old company had to tackle, CEO Niall Dunne tells Forbes, was that existing technologies were either not credible-as in, they end up breaking the plastic but creating microplastics-or not scalable. "The reason plastic is so persistent in nature is because of the hard crystal structure. Our breakthrough moment was when we first realized how to destroy the crystal structure-that's the key to avoiding creating microplastics-and transform it into something that behaves like a grease or a wax," Dunne says.

The next step was to replicate microbial activity so that the grease- or wax-like residue would disappear into nature. Polymateria's team of polymer scientists, biologists and chemists tested the product in real-life conditions and published their findings in peer-reviewed journals. It takes Polymateria-altered polyethylene-commonly used to produce single-use plastic utensils such as straws, cutlery or cups-226 days to return fully back to nature, while more rigid polypropylene containers-such as those for cleaning products-decompose in 326. Petroleum-based plastic can take between 20 to 500 years to decompose, depending on the product.

Polymateria is also tackling the challenge of nonwoven materials-the type of plastic used for face masks and other personal hygiene products such as pads and diapers-in collaboration with the billionaire-owned Thai plastics giant Indorama Ventures. But Dunne says not every plastic producer has been as supportive. "There is a small cult of industry associations who have been pushing composting as a silver bullet for over 20 years and have invested in lobbying over science and innovation and don't really care about solving the problem," he says. But he's confident. "Both governments and consumers, in particular young people, demand better innovation. These twin forces are the key to the technology becoming mainstream."

What About Recycling?

It's become somewhat of a mantra among sustainability-minded people: " We cannot recycle our way out of plastic pollution." Indeed, earlier this year, a WWF report made this very statement, noting that only 9% of all the plastic ever made has been recycled and criticizing current chemical recycling processes as energy-intensive, posing risks to human health and unlikely to make a difference compared to mechanical recycling.

Whatever the merits of the recycling process itself, keep in mind that 26% of all plastics produced are for packaging, and a third of that leaks outside the collection system-meaning that instead of ending up in a landfill or a recycling plant, it simply spills into the natural environment. According to Umutcan Duman, CEO and cofounder of Turkish waste management software Evreka, that's one element that makes plastic waste management so tricky- it requires everyone to play their part. "When you deal with industry, you can consolidate waste and collect it. On the commercial side, this can also be done. But [when it comes to] individual collection, training, awareness and behavioral change are the biggest challenges."

We can't recycle our way out of the plastic pollution crisis not just because of the inefficiencies of the waste management system, but also because efforts to reduce pollution should be start from the point of conception of the product, not just the moment it's discarded. "When I talk to product designers I ask them, 'Are you thinking about the end of the life or life period of the products that you are designing?' And almost none of them are aware of it," Duman says. "Recycling can help, but it's the last resort."

In a circular economy, recycling and waste management have an important role to play. Duman is insistent that there cannot be a 100% recycled product or packaging in the absence of a functioning secondary raw-materials supply chain. "More brands are now getting into waste management businesses, acquiring waste collection and recycling companies," he says, citing German supermarket chain Lidl. "It is not waste management anymore; it is actually a cornerstone of the new supply chain. And if they cannot hold the cornerstone, then they will have to buy the secondary materials from competitors."

The plastic pollution problem, and solutions to it, exemplify the challenges posed by climate change. We've created the issue, we know how to tackle it, we just need to find the will and the capital to act -and in the process, exciting new businesses and business models will come to life.

The Progress

A new study indicated that nations might just be able to keep global heating below 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century if they follow through on all their commitments.

Fuel cell maker Plug Power signed a deal to supply Walmart with 20 tons of green hydrogen a day, enough to supply power to 25,000 forklifts, reducing the retail giant's carbon emissions and dependence on fossil fuels.

A group of tech companies led by payment giant Stripe launched an initiative to invest in carbon- removal technology powered by nearly $1 billion in funding.

The Challenges

A new study finds greenhouse gases produced by human activity resulted in heavier rainfall during the record-breaking 2020 hurricane season, when storms inflicted around $37 billion in damage across the U.S.

Recent figures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show a record annual increase in atmospheric levels of methane for the second year in a row.

A surge in the price of lithium and other minerals used in electric vehicle batteries is a concern for the speed of the transition away from internal-combustion engine vehicles. But it's not a situation the market hasn't faced before.

On The Horizon

The ​​900-mile-long East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) is due for completion in 2024. Climate activists and researchers warn that it is not only incompatible with climate goals, but will ruin the lives of thousands of people while further endangering rare animal species.

To get Current Climate in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here.

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This week's special Earth Day edition of the Current Climate newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week. To get Current Climate in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here. To celebrate my birthday last year, I hired one of those self-driving boats you can sail down a city's canal.

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7 telltale signs that a fashion brand is greenwashing you

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Despite incinerating unsold products and overproducing millions of garments a year, it seems as though every label is now calling itself sustainable – here’s how to separate fact from fiction

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Circular economy examples

GreenWave's polyculture ocean farming method produces a mixture of shellfish and seaweeds in a way that benefits nature.

Circular economy examples

Our mission is to accelerate the transition to a circular economy

We develop and promote the idea of a circular economy. We inspire and work with business, academia, policymakers, and institutions across the globe. Our vision is an economic system that's better for people and the environment.

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How to Build a Circular Economy | Ellen MacArthur Foundation

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Help build a circular economy: a better system that can help fight climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Explore the solutions for businesses today.

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Materials & Products Collection - located in the library 

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Materials & Products Collection - located in the library 

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Research materials in person and online
https://arts.ac.libguides.com/Materials/Resources

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Plastics: What is out there and what impact does it have?

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Plastics: What is out there and what impact does it have?

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A guide to using comtemporary

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Thinking of using plastic in your project? Our latest Dezeen guide includes more than 11 types of plastic commonly used in architecture, design and interiors, with links to hundreds of projects for inspiration.

Plastics are among the most versatile materials in existence. Defined by their plasticity, they have long carbon chains called polymers at their backbone and can be moulded, extruded or cast into any desired shape from films to textile fibres.

They can be divided into thermosetting plastics, which never soften once moulded, and thermoplastics, which can be melted and reshaped, making them more suited to recycling.
Plastics "are a co-product of fossil fuels"
Although certain plastics - such as rubber, which is derived from the rubber plant - occur naturally, most modern plastics are synthetic and more than 99 per cent are derived from fossil fuels.

This helps to make plastics more affordable than most other materials and sees them used to create millions of tonnes of single-use items every year.

"Part of why plastics are so cheap is that they are a co-product of fossil fuels," explained designer Charlotte McCurdy, who has created a bioplastic made from algae.

"Petroleum or natural gas is pumped out of the ground and at the refinery, it is broken up into different lengths of molecule and catalytically cracked into useful monomers."
79 per cent of all plastic is dumped in landfills
This refining process yields not just fuels such as gasoline and kerosene but also chemical byproducts such as ethylene and propylene, which are the most important feedstocks used to create plastics.

Once discarded, 79 per cent of all plastic is dumped in landfills or in the environment, where it will remain for thousands of years. Although this contributes to pollution, it also helps to sequester the carbon contained in the materials and prevents it from entering the atmosphere.

The Dezeen guide to carbon

But when incinerated, as 12 per cent of all plastic waste is, this carbon is emitted as carbon dioxide.

Taken together, plastic production and incineration were responsible for more than 850 million metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions in 2019.

However, with growing efforts to decarbonise the economy, non-fossil alternatives are being developed in a bid to meet the ever-increasing demand for plastics in a more sustainable way.

Read on to find out more about the most popular types of plastic and their possible substitutes.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)
PET is a strong yet lightweight thermoplastic, originally developed in the 1940s by combining fossil fuel-derived ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid.

The resulting polymer can be blow-moulded to form single-use bottles, stretched into a film for food packaging or spun into fibres to create polyester fabric, which accounts for more than half the world's synthetic fibres.

Designers often make use of PET for its translucent finish, with Marjan van Aubel turning it into solar panels that resemble stained glass windows while Beyond Space created a cavernous interior in an Amsterdam office using a kilometre's worth of semi-sheer polyester.

PET is also the most widely recycled plastic, at which point it is called rPET and can be used to create everything from backpacks (above) to Emeco's Navy chair.
See projects featuring PET ›

High-density polyethylene (HDPE)
HDPE is a variation of polyethylene, the most common type of plastic in use today. While its low-density equivalent LDPE is used to make plastic bags, HDPE is sturdier and more rigid, lending itself to everything from milk jugs to packaging for cleaning products and toiletries.

The material is also used to create plastic bottle caps and even when brands such as Evian claim they've created bottles from "100 per cent recycled plastic", their lid is generally made from virgin HDPE to guarantee durability.

However, the material can ultimately be recycled after use, with architecture firm Bulot+Collins using the waste plastic to form 1,400 thermochromic tiles for a floating diving platform while Space Available and techno DJ Peggy Gou turned 20 kilograms of HDPE collected from Bali's beaches into a chair.
See projects featuring HDPE ›

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC)
Derived from chlorine and ethylene, PVC makes up about 20 per cent of all plastic produced. Due to its strength and durability, the material is commonly used to create pipes, gutters and window frames, which designers have variously recycled into flower vases and cladding (above).

With the addition of a phthalate plasticiser, PVC can be turned into flexible vinyl and used to form flooring, shower curtains and imitation leather. Swiss studio Bureau A made use of the material's pliability to create an inflatable nightclub while Formafantasma played with its translucency in a "deconstructed" stage design for fashion label Sportmax.

Due to additives like phthalate, vinyl is among the least recyclable plastics and has been linked to a number of health concerns. But latex made from the sap of the rubber tree can offer a renewable, plant-based alternative.
See projects featuring PVC ›

Polypropylene (PP)
Polypropylene is derived from propylene gas, a byproduct of the gasoline refining process, and is commonly used to form more rigid, hardwearing items such as Tupperware, kid's toys and outdoor furniture.

Designers began experimenting with the material in the 1950s to create monobloc chairs, injection moulded and formed from a single piece of material. Among the most notable designs are Verner Panton's Panton chair, the Air-Chair by Jasper Morrison and more recently the recycled polypropylene Bell Chair by Konstantin Grcic for Magis, which is manufactured in less than a minute.

The thermoplastic can also be spun into fibres to create surgical masks, which South Korean designer Haneul Kim has recycled to create a series of stackable stools, or used as a 3D-printing filament as in the performance sports tiles on Yinka Ilori's Bank Street Park basketball court.
See projects featuring PP ›

Polycarbonate
Polycarbonate is a thermoplastic with carbonate groups in its chemical structure, making the material exceptionally resistant to impacts and temperature changes.

Often used to create bulletproof windows, it can be engineered to be almost as clear as glass while being lighter and up to 250 times stronger.

Polycarbonate sheets are popular among architects and interiors designers for their ability to maximise natural light while maintaining privacy, as well as improving a building's thermal insulation.

Francesc Rifé Studio used the sheeting to divide an old textile factory into offices for the team behind Michelin-starred restaurant El Bulli while La Shed Architecture clad an entire barn (above) in the translucent material to give cows "a better quality of life".
See projects featuring polycarbonate ›

Polyurethane (PU)
Polyurethanes are a diverse class of plastic polymers derived from isocyanic acid. Most commonly, PU takes the form of a flexible foam used for mattresses and upholstery while a more rigid variety is turned into trainer soles for brands from Adidas to Allbirds.

As a coating, lacquer or varnish, it can waterproof fabrics and protect wooden furniture as well as helping leather alternatives such as Piñatex withstand wear and tear.

Design studio Layer made use of PU's adhesive qualities to create a heat-sealing tape that bonds textiles without the need for stitches. And spun into fibres, it forms the main ingredient in spandex, which is used to make sportswear as well as more boundary-pushing items such as fabric-cast concrete moulds and wearables that can be stuck to the body like plasters (above).

Polyurethanes are not easily recycled and can contain potentially carcinogenic compounds that irritate the skin and respiratory system.
See projects featuring PU ›

Fibreglass
Also known as glass-reinforced plastic or GRP, fibreglass is made by taking thin glass filaments, either loose or woven into cloth, and encasing them within a petrochemical resin.

The composite material is lighter and stronger than steel while being cheaper and more flexible than carbon fibre. As a result, fibreglass is used to create products where performance is key, including skis as well as the rotor blades of helicopters and wind turbines.

Architects have made use of the material to create tall, lightweight structures such as BIG's 2016 Serpentine Pavilion (above), which was formed from 1,900 translucent blocks, and a tubular installation designed by Neri Oxman and erected by a swarm of autonomous robots.
See projects featuring fibreglass ›

Polystyrene
In its original form, polystyrene is a hard, solid resin used to make disposable cutlery. But when solid beads of the plastic are exposed to hot steam, they puff up like popcorn to create expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam, mostly known by its brand name Styrofoam.

The rigid, closed-cell foam is 98 per cent air and has a low thermal conductivity, making EPS a widely used packaging for fragile items as well as for hot foods and drinks.

Once discarded, designers have been able to repurpose this packaging into sculptural chairs and beckoning cats, as well as melting it to create moulds. In architecture, it can be used for insulation or more experimental applications as in ADX's Soil House (above), which features walls of loose soil fixed in place with a foam spray.
See projects featuring polystyrene ›

Acrylic
Acrylic is a catchall term used to describe a range of different resins derived from acrylic acid. These can be suspended in water to create paint or spun into fibres that can be used to make clothing or as precursors for carbon fibre.

When cast into sheets, the thermoplastic is known as plexiglass and used as a low-cost, shatter-resistant alternative for glass due to its exceptional optical clarity. This application was pioneered during the second world war when it was used to form fighter jet windows and submarine periscopes.

More recently, English architecture firm HAL used giant plexiglass panels to form a 35-metre-high swimming pool bridge connecting two buildings in London (above) while designer Christophe Gernigon turned the material into suspended hoods for socially distanced dining.

Furniture made from acrylic can reflect light or disappear into its surroundings, as demonstrated by the see-through counter that Yota Kakuda created for Bake Kitasenju brasserie and Say Architects' ghostly interior for the Lika Lab boutique in Hangzhou.
See projects featuring acrylic ›

Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS)
Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, much like polystyrene, is a hard thermoplastic derived from a clear, liquid petrochemical called styrene. In ABS, this is combined with butadiene rubber to create a stronger, more durable material that can withstand compression better than concrete and has been injection moulded to form billions of hardwearing Lego bricks since 1963.

Due to its low melting point and the fact that it can be easily painted and glued, the plastic is also one of the most common additive manufacturing filaments and was used to form the world's first 3D-printed gun.

Extruded ABS pipes are more resilient than their PVC counterparts, making them suitable for constructing sewer systems and being repurposed into a corrugated seating collection by designer Phan Thao Dang (above).
See projects featuring ABS ›

Nylon
As the first fully man-made fibre, created in a US lab in the 1930s, nylon spawned an era of innovation in synthetic fabrics.

Although initially synonymous with stockings, the term nylon has since expanded to include a whole family of plastics composed of polyamides. These can be found in toothbrush bristles, films for food packaging and moulded components in cars and electronics.

However, the material's primary application remains in fibres, with SO-IL using nylon webbing to form a colourful hammock around 130 trees and Studio Drift crafting it into a kinetic sculpture for the Dutch National Touring Opera (above).

In recent years, a number of fashion brands including Prada have moved from virgin to regenerated nylon, also known under the brand name Econyl, in a bid to mitigate the material's environmental impact. Rayon can offer an alternative that is based on plant-based cellulose fibres rather than fossil fuels.
See projects featuring nylon ›
With growing concerns around pollution and efforts to create a circular economy not reliant on fossil fuels, architects and designers are increasingly looking to substitute virgin and petroleum-based plastics for more sustainable alternatives.

This includes recycled plastic, which presents a huge source of untapped potential as only nine per cent of the 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste produced across the world have so far been turned into new products.

The material can be sourced from recycling plants or companies such as The Ocean Cleanup and Parley for the Oceans, which are fishing marine plastic from our oceans and waterways before teaming up with brands to turn it into sunglasses, trainers and more.

Bioplastics that use natural materials rather than crude oil as feedstocks present another possible alternative. Polylactic acid (PLA), the most common type of bioplastic, is generally made from corn starch or sugar cane while others are derived from algae or chitin.

Many are designed to be compostable or biodegradable under specific conditions to reduce the amount of plastic waste in the environment, although some experts have raised concerns that this could ultimately lead to soil and water acidification.

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The Dezeen guide to plastic in architecture, design and interiors

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Thinking of using plastic in your project? Our latest Dezeen guide includes more than 11 types of plastic commonly used in architecture, design and interiors, with links to hundreds of projects for inspiration. Plastics are among the most versatile materials in existence.

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Can direct carbon capture help to combat the climate emergency?

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Can direct carbon capture help to combat the climate emergency?

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The year is 2050. Walk out of the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas, and drive north across the sun-baked scrub where a few remaining oil pumpjacks nod lazily in the heat, and then you'll see it: a glittering palace rising out of the pancake-flat ground. The land here is mirrored: the choppy silver-blue waves of an immense solar array stretch out in all directions. In the distance, they lap at a colossal grey wall five storeys high and almost a kilometre long. Behind the wall, you glimpse the snaking pipes and gantries of a chemical plant.

As you get closer you see the wall is moving, shimmering - it is entirely made up of huge fans whirring in steel boxes. You think to yourself that it looks like a gigantic air conditioning unit, blown up to incredible proportions. In a sense, that's exactly what this is. You're looking at a direct air capture (DAC) plant, one of tens of thousands like it across the globe. Together, they're trying to cool the planet by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. This Texan landscape was made famous for the billions of barrels of oil pulled out of its depths during the 20th Century. Now the legacy of those fossil fuels - the CO2 in our air - is being pumped back into the emptied reservoirs.

If the world is to meet Paris Agreement goals of limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100, sights like this may be necessary by mid-century.

But step back for a moment to 2021, to Squamish, British Columbia where, against a bucolic skyline of snowy mountains, the finishing touches are being put to a barn-sized device covered in blue tarpaulin. When it becomes operational in September, Carbon Engineering's prototype direct air capture plant will begin scrubbing a tonne of CO2 from the air every year. It is a small start, and a somewhat larger plant in Texas is in the works, but this is the typical scale of a DAC plant today.

"We have a climate change problem and it's caused by an excess of CO2," says Carbon Engineering chief executive Steve Oldham. "With DAC, you can remove any emission, anywhere, from any moment in time. It's very powerful tool to have."

Most carbon capture focuses on cleaning emissions at the source: scrubbers and filters on smokestacks that prevent harmful gases reaching the atmosphere. But this is impractical for small, numerous point sources like the planet's billion or so automobiles. Nor can it address the CO2 that is already in the air. That's where direct air capture comes in.

If the world wants to avoid catastrophic climate change, switching to a carbon neutral society is not enough. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100 will require technologies such as DAC for "large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal measures" - large-scale meaning many billions of tonnes, or gigatonnes, each year. Elon Musk recently pledged $100m (£72m) to develop carbon capture technologies, while companies such as Microsoft, United Airlines and ExxonMobil are making billion-dollar investments in the field.

"Current models suggest we're going to need to remove 10 gigatonnes of CO2 per year by 2050, and by the end of the century that number needs to double to 20 gigatonnes per year," says Jane Zelikova, a climate scientist at the University of Wyoming. Right now, "we're removing virtually none. We're having to scale from zero."

Carbon Engineering's plant in Squamish is designed as a testbed for different technologies. But the firm is drawing up blueprints for a much larger plant in the oil fields of west Texas, which would fix 1 million tonnes of CO2 annually. "Once one is done, it's a cookie cutter model, you simply build replicas of that plant," says Oldham. Yet he admits the scale of the task ahead is dizzying. "We need to pull 800 gigatonnes out of the atmosphere. It's not going to happen overnight."
Blue-sky thinking
The science of direct air capture is straightforward. There are several ways to do it, but the one that Carbon Engineering's system uses fans to draw air containing 0.04% CO2 (today's atmospheric levels) across a filter drenched in potassium hydroxide solution - a caustic chemical commonly known as potash, used in soapmaking and various other applications. The potash absorbs CO2 from the air, after which the liquid is piped to a second chamber and mixed with calcium hydroxide (builder's lime). The lime seizes hold of the dissolved CO2, producing small flakes of limestone. These limestone flakes are sieved off and heated in a third chamber, called a calciner, until they decompose, giving off pure CO2, which is captured and stored. At each stage, the leftover chemical residues are recycled back in the process, forming a closed reaction that repeats endlessly with no waste materials.

With global carbon emissions continuing to rise, the climate target of 1.5C is looking less and less likely without interventions like this.

"The number of things that would have to happen without direct air capture are so stretching and multiple it's highly unlikely we can meet the Paris Agreements without it," says Ajay Gambhir, senior researcher at the Imperial College Grantham Institute for Climate Change and an author of a 2019 paper on the role of DAC in climate mitigation.

The IPCC does present some climate-stabilising models that don't rely on direct air capture, but Gambhir says these are "extremely ambitious" in their assumptions about advances in energy efficiency and people's willingness to change their behaviour.

"We're past the point where reducing emissions needed to take place," says Zelikova. "We're locking in our reliance on DAC more and more."

DAC is far from the only way carbon can be taken out of the atmosphere. Carbon can be removed naturally through land use changes such as restoring peatland, or most popularly, planting forests. But this is slow and would require huge tracts of valuable land - foresting an area the size of the United States, by some estimates, and driving up food prices five-fold in the process. And in the case of trees, the carbon removal effect is limited, as they will eventually die and release their stored carbon, unless they can be felled and burned in a closed system. (Read more about why planting trees doesn't always help with climate change)

The scale of the challenge for carbon removal using technologies like DAC, rather than plants, is no less gargantuan. Gambhir's paper calculates that simply keeping pace with global CO2 emissions - currently 36 gigatonnes per year - would mean building in the region of 30,000 large-scale DAC plants, more than three for every coal-fired power station operating in the world today. Each plant would cost up to $500m (£362m) to build - coming in at a cost of up to $15 trillion (£11tn).

Every one of those facilities would need to be stocked with solvent to absorb CO2. Supplying a fleet of DAC plants big enough to capture 10 gigatonnes of CO2 every year will require around four million tonnes of potassium hydroxide, the entire annual global supply of this chemical one and a half times over.

And once those thousands of DAC plants are built, they also need power to run. "If this was a global industry absorbing 10 gigatonnes of CO2 a year, you would be expending 100 exajoules, about a sixth of total global energy," says Gambhir. Most of this energy is needed to heat the calciner to around 800C - too intense for electrical power alone, so each DAC plant would need a gas furnace, and a ready supply of gas.
Costing the planet
Estimates of how much it costs to capture a tonne of CO2 from the air vary widely, ranging from $100 to $1,000 (£72 to £720) per tonne. Oldham says that most figures are unduly pessimistic - he is confident that Climate Engineering can fix a tonne of carbon for as little as $94 (£68), especially once it becomes a widespread industrial process.

A bigger issue is figuring out where to send the bill. Incredibly, saving the world turns out to be a pretty hard sell, commercially speaking. Direct air capture does result in one valuable commodity, though: thousands of tonnes of compressed CO2. This can be combined with hydrogen to make synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel. That could then be sold or burned in the gas furnaces of the calciner (where the emissions would be captured and the cycle continue once again).

Surprisingly, one of the biggest customers for compressed CO2 is the fossil fuel industry.

As wells run dry, it's not uncommon to squeeze the remaining oil out of the ground by pressuring the reservoir using steam or gas in a process called enhanced oil recovery. Carbon dioxide is a popular choice for this, and comes with additional benefit of locking that carbon underground, completing the final stage of carbon capture and storage. Occidental Petroleum, which has partnered with Carbon Engineering to build a full-scale DAC plant in Texas, uses 50 million tonnes of CO2 every year in enhanced oil recovery. Each tonne of CO2 used in this way is worth about $225 (£163) in tax credits alone.

It's perhaps fitting that the CO2 in our air is eventually being returned underground to the oil fields from whence it came, although maybe ironic that the only way to finance this is in the pursuit of yet more oil. Occidental and others hope that by pumping CO2 into the ground, they can drastically reduce the carbon impact of that oil: a typical enhanced-recovery operation sequesters one tonne of CO2 for every 1.5 tonnes it ultimately releases in fresh oil. So while the process reduces the emissions associated with oil, it doesn't balance the books.

Though there are other uses that may become more commercially viable. Another direct air capture company, Climeworks, has 14 smaller scale units in operation sequestering 900 tonnes of CO2 a year, which it sells to a greenhouse to enhance the growth of pickles. It's now working on a longer-term solution: a plant under construction in Iceland will mix captured CO2 with water and pump it 500-600m (1,600-2,000ft) underground, where the gas will react with the surrounding basalt and turn to stone. To finance this, it offers businesses and citizens the ability to buy carbon offsets, starting at a mere €7 (£6) per month. Can the rest of the world be convinced to buy in?

"DAC is always going to cost money, and unless you're paid to do it, there is no financial incentive," says Chris Goodall, author of What We Need To Do Now: For A Zero Carbon Future. "Climeworks can sell credits to virtuous people, write contracts with Microsoft and Stripe to take a few hundred tonnes a year out of the atmosphere, but this needs to be scaled up a millionfold, and that requires someone to pay for it.

"There are subsidies for electric cars, cheap financing for solar plants, but you don't see these for DAC," says Oldham. "There is so much focus on emission reduction, but there isn't the same degree of focus on the rest of the problem, the volume of CO2 in the atmosphere. The big impediment for DAC is that thinking isn't in policy."

Zelikova believes that DAC will follow a similar path to other climate technologies, and become more affordable. "We have well-developed cost curves showing how technology can go down in cost really quickly," says Zelikova. "We surmounted similar hurdles with wind and solar. The biggest thing is to deploy them as much as possible. It's important for government to support commercialisation - it has a role as a first customer, and a customer with very deep pockets."

Goodall advocates for a global carbon tax, which would make it expensive to emit carbon unless offsets were purchased. But he recognises this is still a politically unpalatable option. Nobody wants to pay higher taxes, especially if the externalities of our high-energy lifestyles - increasing wildfires, droughts, floods, sea level rise - are seen as being shouldered by somebody else.

Zelikova adds we also need broader conversation in society about how much these efforts should cost. "There is an enormous cost in climate change, in induced or exacerbated natural disasters. We need to do away with idea that DAC should be cheap."
Risk and reward
Even if we agree to build 30,000 industrial scale DAC plants, find the chemical materials to run them, and the money to pay for it all, we won't be out of the woods yet. In fact, we might end up in a worse position than before, thanks to a phenomenon known as mitigation deterrence.

"If you think DAC is going to be there in the medium- to long-term, you will not do as much near-term emissions reduction," explains Gambhir. "If the scale-up goes wrong - if it turns out to be difficult to produce the sorbent, or that it degrades more quickly, if it's trickier technologically, if turns out to be more expensive than expected, then in a sense by not acting quickly in the near-term, you've effectively locked yourself into a higher temperature pathway."

Critics of DAC point out that much of its appeal lies in the promise of a hypothetical technology that allows us to continue living our carbon-rich lifestyles. Yet Oldham argues that for some hard-to-decarbonise industries, such as aviation, offsets that fund DAC might be the most viable option. "If it's cheaper and easier to pull carbon out of air than to stop going up in the air, maybe that is what DAC plays in emission control."

Gambhir argues that it's not an "either-or" situation. "We need to rapidly reduce emissions in the near-term, but at same time, determinedly develop DAC to work out for sure if it's going to be there for us in the future." Zelikova agrees: "It's a 'yes, and' situation," she says. "DAC is a critical tool to balance out the carbon budget, so what we can't eliminate today can be removed later."

As Oldham seeks to scale up Carbon Engineering, the biggest fundamental factor is proving large scale DAC is "feasible, affordable and available". If he's successful, the future of our planet's climate may once again be decided in the oil fields of Texas.

--
The emissions from travel it took to report this story were 0kg CO2. The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. Find out more about how we calculated this figure here.
--

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The multi-trillion-dollar plan to capture CO2

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The year is 2050. Walk out of the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas, and drive north across the sun-baked scrub where a few remaining oil pumpjacks nod lazily in the heat, and then you'll see it: a glittering palace rising out of the pancake-flat ground.

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Laser technology for the internet....

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But it has been improved by adjusting the level of laser power being transmitted, which works a bit like a telescope, relying on mirrors, lights, software and hardware to move the beam to exactly where it needs to be. The team have also found ways to reduce errors due to interruptions such as birds flying through the link.

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High-speed internet via airborne beams of light

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But it has been improved by adjusting the level of laser power being transmitted, which works a bit like a telescope, relying on mirrors, lights, software and hardware to move the beam to exactly where it needs to be. The team have also found ways to reduce errors due to interruptions such as birds flying through the link.

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Direct carbon dioxide capture: Solution or Red Herring?

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Direct carbon dioxide capture: Solution or Red Herring?

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Can factories like this one 'scrub' enough carbon dioxide from the air to prevent global warming beyond 1.5C?

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The year is 2050. Walk out of the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas, and drive north across the sun-baked scrub where a few remaining oil pumpjacks nod lazily in the heat, and then you'll see it: a glittering palace rising out of the pancake-flat ground. The land here is mirrored: the choppy silver-blue waves of an immense solar array stretch out in all directions. In the distance, they lap at a colossal grey wall five storeys high and almost a kilometre long. Behind the wall, you glimpse the snaking pipes and gantries of a chemical plant.

As you get closer you see the wall is moving, shimmering - it is entirely made up of huge fans whirring in steel boxes. You think to yourself that it looks like a gigantic air conditioning unit, blown up to incredible proportions. In a sense, that's exactly what this is. You're looking at a direct air capture (DAC) plant, one of tens of thousands like it across the globe. Together, they're trying to cool the planet by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. This Texan landscape was made famous for the billions of barrels of oil pulled out of its depths during the 20th Century. Now the legacy of those fossil fuels - the CO2 in our air - is being pumped back into the emptied reservoirs.

If the world is to meet Paris Agreement goals of limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100, sights like this may be necessary by mid-century.

But step back for a moment to 2021, to Squamish, British Columbia where, against a bucolic skyline of snowy mountains, the finishing touches are being put to a barn-sized device covered in blue tarpaulin. When it becomes operational in September, Carbon Engineering's prototype direct air capture plant will begin scrubbing a tonne of CO2 from the air every year. It is a small start, and a somewhat larger plant in Texas is in the works, but this is the typical scale of a DAC plant today.

"We have a climate change problem and it's caused by an excess of CO2," says Carbon Engineering chief executive Steve Oldham. "With DAC, you can remove any emission, anywhere, from any moment in time. It's very powerful tool to have."

Most carbon capture focuses on cleaning emissions at the source: scrubbers and filters on smokestacks that prevent harmful gases reaching the atmosphere. But this is impractical for small, numerous point sources like the planet's billion or so automobiles. Nor can it address the CO2 that is already in the air. That's where direct air capture comes in.

If the world wants to avoid catastrophic climate change, switching to a carbon neutral society is not enough. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100 will require technologies such as DAC for "large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal measures" - large-scale meaning many billions of tonnes, or gigatonnes, each year. Elon Musk recently pledged $100m (£72m) to develop carbon capture technologies, while companies such as Microsoft, United Airlines and ExxonMobil are making billion-dollar investments in the field.

"Current models suggest we're going to need to remove 10 gigatonnes of CO2 per year by 2050, and by the end of the century that number needs to double to 20 gigatonnes per year," says Jane Zelikova, a climate scientist at the University of Wyoming. Right now, "we're removing virtually none. We're having to scale from zero."

Carbon Engineering's plant in Squamish is designed as a testbed for different technologies. But the firm is drawing up blueprints for a much larger plant in the oil fields of west Texas, which would fix 1 million tonnes of CO2 annually. "Once one is done, it's a cookie cutter model, you simply build replicas of that plant," says Oldham. Yet he admits the scale of the task ahead is dizzying. "We need to pull 800 gigatonnes out of the atmosphere. It's not going to happen overnight."
Blue-sky thinking
The science of direct air capture is straightforward. There are several ways to do it, but the one that Carbon Engineering's system uses fans to draw air containing 0.04% CO2 (today's atmospheric levels) across a filter drenched in potassium hydroxide solution - a caustic chemical commonly known as potash, used in soapmaking and various other applications. The potash absorbs CO2 from the air, after which the liquid is piped to a second chamber and mixed with calcium hydroxide (builder's lime). The lime seizes hold of the dissolved CO2, producing small flakes of limestone. These limestone flakes are sieved off and heated in a third chamber, called a calciner, until they decompose, giving off pure CO2, which is captured and stored. At each stage, the leftover chemical residues are recycled back in the process, forming a closed reaction that repeats endlessly with no waste materials.

With global carbon emissions continuing to rise, the climate target of 1.5C is looking less and less likely without interventions like this.

"The number of things that would have to happen without direct air capture are so stretching and multiple it's highly unlikely we can meet the Paris Agreements without it," says Ajay Gambhir, senior researcher at the Imperial College Grantham Institute for Climate Change and an author of a 2019 paper on the role of DAC in climate mitigation.

The IPCC does present some climate-stabilising models that don't rely on direct air capture, but Gambhir says these are "extremely ambitious" in their assumptions about advances in energy efficiency and people's willingness to change their behaviour.

"We're past the point where reducing emissions needed to take place," says Zelikova. "We're locking in our reliance on DAC more and more."

DAC is far from the only way carbon can be taken out of the atmosphere. Carbon can be removed naturally through land use changes such as restoring peatland, or most popularly, planting forests. But this is slow and would require huge tracts of valuable land - foresting an area the size of the United States, by some estimates, and driving up food prices five-fold in the process. And in the case of trees, the carbon removal effect is limited, as they will eventually die and release their stored carbon, unless they can be felled and burned in a closed system. (Read more about why planting trees doesn't always help with climate change)

The scale of the challenge for carbon removal using technologies like DAC, rather than plants, is no less gargantuan. Gambhir's paper calculates that simply keeping pace with global CO2 emissions - currently 36 gigatonnes per year - would mean building in the region of 30,000 large-scale DAC plants, more than three for every coal-fired power station operating in the world today. Each plant would cost up to $500m (£362m) to build - coming in at a cost of up to $15 trillion (£11tn).

Every one of those facilities would need to be stocked with solvent to absorb CO2. Supplying a fleet of DAC plants big enough to capture 10 gigatonnes of CO2 every year will require around four million tonnes of potassium hydroxide, the entire annual global supply of this chemical one and a half times over.

And once those thousands of DAC plants are built, they also need power to run. "If this was a global industry absorbing 10 gigatonnes of CO2 a year, you would be expending 100 exajoules, about a sixth of total global energy," says Gambhir. Most of this energy is needed to heat the calciner to around 800C - too intense for electrical power alone, so each DAC plant would need a gas furnace, and a ready supply of gas.
Costing the planet
Estimates of how much it costs to capture a tonne of CO2 from the air vary widely, ranging from $100 to $1,000 (£72 to £720) per tonne. Oldham says that most figures are unduly pessimistic - he is confident that Climate Engineering can fix a tonne of carbon for as little as $94 (£68), especially once it becomes a widespread industrial process.

A bigger issue is figuring out where to send the bill. Incredibly, saving the world turns out to be a pretty hard sell, commercially speaking. Direct air capture does result in one valuable commodity, though: thousands of tonnes of compressed CO2. This can be combined with hydrogen to make synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel. That could then be sold or burned in the gas furnaces of the calciner (where the emissions would be captured and the cycle continue once again).

Surprisingly, one of the biggest customers for compressed CO2 is the fossil fuel industry.

As wells run dry, it's not uncommon to squeeze the remaining oil out of the ground by pressuring the reservoir using steam or gas in a process called enhanced oil recovery. Carbon dioxide is a popular choice for this, and comes with additional benefit of locking that carbon underground, completing the final stage of carbon capture and storage. Occidental Petroleum, which has partnered with Carbon Engineering to build a full-scale DAC plant in Texas, uses 50 million tonnes of CO2 every year in enhanced oil recovery. Each tonne of CO2 used in this way is worth about $225 (£163) in tax credits alone.

It's perhaps fitting that the CO2 in our air is eventually being returned underground to the oil fields from whence it came, although maybe ironic that the only way to finance this is in the pursuit of yet more oil. Occidental and others hope that by pumping CO2 into the ground, they can drastically reduce the carbon impact of that oil: a typical enhanced-recovery operation sequesters one tonne of CO2 for every 1.5 tonnes it ultimately releases in fresh oil. So while the process reduces the emissions associated with oil, it doesn't balance the books.

Though there are other uses that may become more commercially viable. Another direct air capture company, Climeworks, has 14 smaller scale units in operation sequestering 900 tonnes of CO2 a year, which it sells to a greenhouse to enhance the growth of pickles. It's now working on a longer-term solution: a plant under construction in Iceland will mix captured CO2 with water and pump it 500-600m (1,600-2,000ft) underground, where the gas will react with the surrounding basalt and turn to stone. To finance this, it offers businesses and citizens the ability to buy carbon offsets, starting at a mere €7 (£6) per month. Can the rest of the world be convinced to buy in?

"DAC is always going to cost money, and unless you're paid to do it, there is no financial incentive," says Chris Goodall, author of What We Need To Do Now: For A Zero Carbon Future. "Climeworks can sell credits to virtuous people, write contracts with Microsoft and Stripe to take a few hundred tonnes a year out of the atmosphere, but this needs to be scaled up a millionfold, and that requires someone to pay for it.

"There are subsidies for electric cars, cheap financing for solar plants, but you don't see these for DAC," says Oldham. "There is so much focus on emission reduction, but there isn't the same degree of focus on the rest of the problem, the volume of CO2 in the atmosphere. The big impediment for DAC is that thinking isn't in policy."

Zelikova believes that DAC will follow a similar path to other climate technologies, and become more affordable. "We have well-developed cost curves showing how technology can go down in cost really quickly," says Zelikova. "We surmounted similar hurdles with wind and solar. The biggest thing is to deploy them as much as possible. It's important for government to support commercialisation - it has a role as a first customer, and a customer with very deep pockets."

Goodall advocates for a global carbon tax, which would make it expensive to emit carbon unless offsets were purchased. But he recognises this is still a politically unpalatable option. Nobody wants to pay higher taxes, especially if the externalities of our high-energy lifestyles - increasing wildfires, droughts, floods, sea level rise - are seen as being shouldered by somebody else.

Zelikova adds we also need broader conversation in society about how much these efforts should cost. "There is an enormous cost in climate change, in induced or exacerbated natural disasters. We need to do away with idea that DAC should be cheap."
Risk and reward
Even if we agree to build 30,000 industrial scale DAC plants, find the chemical materials to run them, and the money to pay for it all, we won't be out of the woods yet. In fact, we might end up in a worse position than before, thanks to a phenomenon known as mitigation deterrence.

"If you think DAC is going to be there in the medium- to long-term, you will not do as much near-term emissions reduction," explains Gambhir. "If the scale-up goes wrong - if it turns out to be difficult to produce the sorbent, or that it degrades more quickly, if it's trickier technologically, if turns out to be more expensive than expected, then in a sense by not acting quickly in the near-term, you've effectively locked yourself into a higher temperature pathway."

Critics of DAC point out that much of its appeal lies in the promise of a hypothetical technology that allows us to continue living our carbon-rich lifestyles. Yet Oldham argues that for some hard-to-decarbonise industries, such as aviation, offsets that fund DAC might be the most viable option. "If it's cheaper and easier to pull carbon out of air than to stop going up in the air, maybe that is what DAC plays in emission control."

Gambhir argues that it's not an "either-or" situation. "We need to rapidly reduce emissions in the near-term, but at same time, determinedly develop DAC to work out for sure if it's going to be there for us in the future." Zelikova agrees: "It's a 'yes, and' situation," she says. "DAC is a critical tool to balance out the carbon budget, so what we can't eliminate today can be removed later."

As Oldham seeks to scale up Carbon Engineering, the biggest fundamental factor is proving large scale DAC is "feasible, affordable and available". If he's successful, the future of our planet's climate may once again be decided in the oil fields of Texas.

--
The emissions from travel it took to report this story were 0kg CO2. The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. Find out more about how we calculated this figure here.
--

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The multi-trillion-dollar plan to capture CO2

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The year is 2050. Walk out of the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas, and drive north across the sun-baked scrub where a few remaining oil pumpjacks nod lazily in the heat, and then you'll see it: a glittering palace rising out of the pancake-flat ground.

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Do you know your digital carbon foot print?

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Do you know your digital carbon foot print?

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It's probable you've already replied to a couple of emails today, sent some chat messages and maybe performed a quick internet search. As the day wears on you will doubtless spend even more time browsing online, uploading images, playing music and streaming video.

Each of these activities you perform online comes with a small cost - a few grams of carbon dioxide are emitted due to the energy needed to run your devices and power the wireless networks you access. Less obvious, but perhaps even more energy intensive, are the data centres and vast servers needed to support the internet and store the content we access over it.

Although the energy needed for a single internet search or email is small, approximately 4.1 billion people, or 53.6% of the global population, now use the internet. Those scraps of energy, and the associated greenhouse gases emitted with each online activity, can add up.

The carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet and the systems supporting them account for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, according to some estimates. It is similar to the amount produced by the airline industry globally, explains Mike Hazas, a researcher at Lancaster University. And these emissions are predicted to double by 2025.
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If we were to rather crudely divide the 1.7 billion tonnes (1.6 billion tons) of greenhouse gas emissions estimated to be produced in the manufacture and running of digital technologies between all internet users around the world, it means each of us is responsible for 414kg (912lbs) of carbon dioxide a year.

But things are not that simple - this figure can vary depending where in the world you are. Internet users in some parts of the globe will have a disproportionately large footprint. One study estimated that 10 years ago, the average Australian internet user was responsible for the equivalent of 81kg (179lbs) of carbon dioxide (CO2e) being emitted into the atmosphere. Improvements in energy efficiency, economies of scale and use of renewable energy will doubtless have reduced this, but it is clear that people in developed nations still account for the majority of the internet's carbon footprint. (CO2e is a unit used to express the carbon footprint of all greenhouse gases together as if they were all emitted as carbon dioxide)

For some, the realisation that their online activity is harming the planet has spurred them into taking action.

"Anything we can do to reduce carbon emissions is important, no matter how small, and that includes how we behave on the internet," says Philippa Gaut, a teacher from Surrey, UK. She is one of a growing number of eco-conscious consumers trying to reduce their environmental impact online and on their phones. "If everybody made changes, it would have more impact," she adds

One of the difficulties in working out the carbon footprint of our internet habits is that few people can agree on what they should and should not include. Should it include the emissions that come from manufacturing the computing hardware? And what about those from the staff and buildings of technology companies? Even the figures around the running of data centres are disputed - many run on renewable energy, while some companies buy " carbon off-sets " to clean up their energy use.

In the US, data centres are responsible for 2% of the country's electricity use, while globally they account for just under 200 terawatt Hours (TWh). According to the United Nation's International Telecommunications Union, however, this figure has flatlined in recent years despite rising internet traffic and workloads. This is largely because of improved energy efficiency and the move to centralise data centres into giant facilities.

But while many companies claim to power their data centre's using renewable energy, in some parts of the world they are still largely powered from the burning of fossil fuels. And it can be difficult for consumers to choose which data centres they want to use. Many of the major cloud providers, however, have pledged to cut their carbon emissions, so storing photos, documents and running services off their servers where possible is one approach to take.

As an individual, simply upgrading our equipment less often is one way of cutting the carbon footprint of our digital technology. The greenhouse gases emitted while manufacturing and transporting these devices can make up a considerable portion of the lifetime emissions from a piece of electronics. One study at the University of Edinburgh found that extending the time you use a single computer and monitors from four to six years could avoid the equivalent of 190kg of carbon emissions.
Eco-messaging
We can also alter the way we use our gadgets to cut our digital carbon footprints. One of the easiest ways is to switch they way we send messages.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the footprint of an email also varies dramatically, from 0.3g CO2e for a spam email to 4g (0.14oz) CO2e for a regular email and 50g (1.7oz) CO2e for one with a photo or hefty attachment, according to Mike Berners-Lee, a fellow at Lancaster University who researches carbon footprints. These figures, however, were crunched by Berners-Lee 10 years ago. Charlotte Freitag, a carbon footprint expert at Small World Consulting, the company founded by Berners-Lee, says the impact of emailing may have gone up.

"We think the footprint per message might be higher today because of the bigger phones people are using," she says.

Based on the older figures, some people have estimated that their own emails will generate 1.6kg (3.5lb) CO2e in a single day. Berners-Lee himself also calculated that a typical business user creates 135kg (298lbs) CO2e from sending emails every year, which is the equivalent of driving 200 miles in a family car.

But it should also be easy to cut this down. By simply stopping unnecessary niceties such as "thank you" emails we could collectively save a lot of carbon emissions. If every adult in the UK sent one less "thank you" email, it could save 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year - the equivalent to taking 3,334 diesel cars off the road, according to energy company, OVO.

"While the carbon footprint of an email isn't huge, it's a great illustration of the broader principle that cutting the waste out of our lives is good for our wellbeing and good for the environment," Berners-Lee says.

Swapping email attachments for links to documents and not sending messages to multiple recipients are another easy way to reduce our digital carbon footprints, as well as unsubscribing from mailing lists we no longer read.

"I unsubscribed from automatically generated newsletters, as when I learned about the carbon footprint from emails, I was horrified," says Gaut. "Now, I'm careful not to send out my email to new websites... it's made me consider the impact more."

According to estimates by antispam service Cleanfox, the average user receives 2,850 unwanted emails every year from subscriptions, which are responsible for 28.5kg (63lbs) CO2e.

Choosing to send an SMS text message is the perhaps the most environmentally-friendly alternative as a way of staying in touch because each text generates just 0.014g of CO2e. A tweet is estimated to have a footprint of 0.2g CO2e (although Twitter did not respond to requests to confirm this figure) while sending a message via a private messaging app such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger is estimated by Freitag to be only slightly less carbon intensive than sending an email. Again this can depend on what you are sending - gifs, emojis and images have a greater footprint than plain text.

The carbon footprint of making a one-minute mobile phone call is a little higher than sending a text, according to Freitag, but making video calls over the internet is much higher. One study from 2012 estimated that a five-hour meeting held over a video conferencing call between participants in different countries would produce between 4kg (8.8lbs) CO2e and 215kg (474lbs) CO2e.

But it is important to remember where it replaces travel to reach meetings, it can be far better for the environment. The same study found the video conferencing produced just 7% of the emissions of meeting in person. Another study found "the impact of a car ride exceeds the impact of a video conference at less than 20km ".
Clean searching
Internet searching is another tricky area. A decade ago, each internet search had a footprint of 0.2g CO2e, according to figures released by Google. Today, Google uses a mixture of renewable energy and carbon offsetting to reduce the carbon footprint of its operations, while Microsoft, which owns the Bing search engine, has promised to become carbon negative by 2030, and efforts are underway to investigate whether this footprint is now higher or lower.

According to Google's own figures, however, an average user of its services - someone who performs 25 searches each day, watches 60 minutes of YouTube, has a Gmail account and accesses some of its other services - produces less than 8g (0.28oz) CO2e a day.

Newer search engines, however, are attempting to set themselves apart as greener options from the outset. Ecosia, for example, says it will plant a tree for every 45 searches it performs. This sort of carbon offsetting can help to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but the success of these projects often depends on how long the trees grow for and what happens to them when they are chopped down.

Regardless of the search engine you choose, using the web to find information is more sustainable than browsing in books. In fact, a paperback's carbon footprint is around 1kg (2.2lbs) CO2e, while a weekend newspaper accounts for between 0.3kg (10oz) and 4.1kg (9lbs) CO2e making reading the news online more environmentally friendly than poring over a paper.

But you could still read a lifetime of paperbacks - 2,300 to be precise - for the same carbon footprint as a flight from London to Hong Kong, so don't feel too guilty for reading the next best seller. ( Read more about how to reduce the impact your flights have on the environment.)

Those who have been tempted by cryptocurrencies might also want to think carefully about the environmental impact of the transactions they conduct. Vast amounts of computing power are needed for the so-called " proof of work" algorithm that is used to validate transactions on Blockchain's distributed ledger system. One recent study estimated that BitCoin alone is responsible for around 22m tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year - greater than all the carbon footprint of the whole of Jordan.
Beating boredom
Watching online videos accounts for the biggest chunk of the world's internet traffic - 60% - and generates 300m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, which is roughly 1% of global emissions, according to French think tank, The Shift Project. This is because, as well as the power used by devices, energy is consumed by the servers and networks that distribute the content.

"If you flip on your television to watch Netflix, around half the power goes into powering the TV and half the energy goes into powering Netflix," says Lancaster University's Mike Hazas. Some experts, however, insist that the energy needed to store and stream videos is less than more intensive computational activities performed by data centres.

Some of the climate pollution that comes from internet use also comes from some rather dirty browsing. Pornography accounts for a third of video streaming traffic, generating as much carbon dioxide as Belgium in a year.

On-demand video services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix account for another third while the final third of the video streaming carbon footprint includes watching YouTube and clips on social media. Netflix says its total global energy consumption reached 451,000 megawatt hours per year, which is enough to power 37,000 homes, but insists it purchases renewable energy certificates and carbon offsets to compensate for any energy that comes from fossil fuel sources.

Streaming and downloading music also has an impact. Rabih Bashroush, a researcher at the University of East London and lead scientist at the European Commission-funded Eureca project, calculated that five billion plays clocked up by just one music video - the hit 2017 song Despacito - consumed as much electricity as Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Somalia, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic put together in a single year. "The total emissions for streaming that song could be over 250,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide," he says.

However, Hazas points out that some YouTube views are unintentional. A study led by his colleague Kelly Widdicks analysed streaming habits and found that some viewers use YouTube as background noise, and sometimes even fall asleep, generating carbon for no gain. Cutting back on these uses or stopping video from playing unintentionally on an open browser when you are not watching, could help keep your carbon footprint down.

Fiddling with autoplay settings and switching from high definition to a lower resolution when it's not necessary can also make a difference. Hazas says the most efficient way to see your favourite programme is by waiting for it to be on terrestrial TV, or choosing to stream it over wi-fi rather than on a mobile network can also make a difference.

"Using a phone over a mobile network is at least twice as energy intensive than using it over wi-fi, so if you can wait until you get home to watch YouTube that's best," he adds. And, one of the most enjoyable ways to be more environmentally friendly is to watch films and TV together.

"On the whole, audio is less problematic," says Hazas, as streaming audio is less energy and carbon intensive than streaming images. But researchers at the University of Oslo found that environmental impact of listening to music has never been higher, with a footprint of 200,000-350,000 tonnes of CO2e in the US alone for downloading tracks onto MP3 players. It's thought emissions for streaming services may be even higher.

However, the number of times you listen to a piece of music can make a difference. Buying a physical CD or record can be better if you listen to the same album repeatedly, but if you only listen to a piece of music less than 27 times over your lifetime, then streaming can be better. ( Read more about the carbon footprint of streaming music.)

Similarly, the environmental cost of downloading video games is thought to be higher than producing and distributing Blu-Ray disks from shops. The first attempt to map the energy use of gaming in the US found it produces 24 megatonnes of carbon dioxide a year. Researchers behind the study at the University of California found US gamers use 2.4% of their household electricity - 32 terawatt hours of energy every year - which is more than freezers or washing machines. They also showed that streaming games uses more energy, so gaming carbon emissions may worsen as more people adopt games where the computational work is being done remotely rather than on individual consoles, such as with devices like Google's Stadia.

But Hazas is more optimistic. "The carbon footprint of playing multiplayer games like Fortnite isn't too bad," he says. "They are designed to be responsive so they don't require too much data traffic. For example, you get a position of a character on a map, or the fact someone's shooting, but it doesn't take too much data to communicate that."

However, updating games is more carbon intensive. "Flagship games like Fortnite or Call of Duty require lots of updates so you're looking at gigabytes every couple of weeks for downloads, which add new features."

For those who enjoy flicking through their social media, there is some good news. It is arguably the least carbon intensive form of digital entertainment. According to Facebook's sustainability report, a user's annual carbon footprint is 299g CO2e, which is less than boiling the water for a pot of tea. But if you consider the platform has more than one billion users, that's a lot of pots of tea.

It's possible to save carbon by disabling some features for social media and other apps.

"We've found that app updates and automatic cloud backups are about 10% of traffic from mobile phones," says Hazas. "So, switching off unnecessary cloud backups and switching off automatic downloads for app updates are good things to do."

But while changes in our personal online behaviour will only take us so far, there also needs to be change within the industry to ensure that carbon emissions can be reduced, says Elizabeth Jardim, a senior corporate campaigner at environmental campaign group Greenpeace. The IT industry's greenhouse gas emissions are predicted to reach 14% of global emissions by 2040 but at the same time the UN's International Telecommunication's Union has set the industry the target of reducing its emissions by 45% over the next decade.

"It's more important to make sure the companies building the internet are switching to renewable and phasing out fossil fuels," says Jardim. "That's when searching will be more guilt free."
* An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that each internet user was responsible for 400g of carbon dioxide annually. The figure should have been 414kg of CO2 and the article has been updated.
--
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Why your internet habits are not as clean as you think

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The internet allows us to send messages, share pictures, download music and stream videos at a touch of a button, but our online habits have a surprising impact on the environment.

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Excellent source of information on carbon foot prints

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We all want to do the right thing for the planet, but what's the real impact of each of the things we do and buy?
We hear a lot about driving and flying, but what about sending a text message, buying a latte or keeping a pet? How do apples compare to oranges or bananas, buying a newspaper with surfing the internet, or cut flowers with house plants? How much does a Zoom call save on a meeting or conference? And what about the big things? How much CO2 is generated by a wildfire, a volcano, or a war? What's our carbon budget, and can any of it be genuinely offset?

Packed full of information yet always entertaining, How Bad Are Bananas? comes up with the answers we need and provides plenty of revelations. But be warned: everything you thought you knew about green living is about to be turned on its head.

This new edition of How Bad Are Bananas? has been fully updated throughout, and includes new entries on pets, cryptocurrencies, E-bikes, supermarket deliveries, negative emissions, and a 20-page guide to what we can do about our climate.

How Bad are Bananas? was first published in 2010. The 2021 revised edition is published by Profile Books Ltd. An audio version of the book will be released in 2024.

ISBN: 9781788163811
eISBN: 978-1782837114

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We all want to do the right thing for the planet, but what's the real impact of each of the things we do and buy? We hear a lot about driving and flying, but what about sending a text message, buying a latte or keeping a pet?

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Can advertising change attitudes towards transgender people?

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Can advertising change attitudes towards transgender people?

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A surprising hit on social media, the ad campaign by Bhima, an established south-Indian jewellery company focuses on the journey of a trans-gender bride.

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An advertisement for traditional Indian jewellery starring a transgender model is winning hearts in India.

The one-minute-40-second video charts the story of transition of a trans woman - an awkward teenager with facial hair and self-doubt who transforms into a beautiful confident bride.

With 22-year-old Meera Singhania Rehani in the lead, the video by Kerala-based jewellery house Bhima depicts the love and acceptance that the protagonist receives from her family - each milestone in her life is celebrated through the gold jewellery they gift her.

Titled Pure as Love, the ad has been viewed more than 900,000 times on YouTube and 1.4 million times on Instagram since its release in April and has received rave reviews.

Meera, a student of sociology at Delhi University and part-time model who came out to her family two years back, says when she first heard about the ad, she "was very sceptical".

"I didn't want someone to appropriate my trans identity for commercial use. I was also nervous since the film involved transition and as a pre-transition person I'm shown as a man with a beard.

"But when I read the story and researched about the director, I said yes. And I'm glad I did. Doing this has also helped me become more comfortable with myself," she told the BBC.

India has an estimated two million transgender people, and in 2014 the Supreme Court ruled that they have equal rights under the law as people of other genders.

But abuse and stigma remain. Many transgender people are thrown out of their homes by their families, and most still make a living by singing and dancing at weddings or child births, or through begging and prostitution.

Kerala is India's most trans-friendly state - in 2015, it became the first to unveil a Transgender Policy to end stigma and discrimination towards the sexual minority group. But transphobia remains as real in Kerala as anywhere else in India.

Navya Rao, online marketing head at Bhima and the brain behind the ad, told the BBC that her proposal for the campaign was met with "fears and apprehensions" from her colleagues.

"All our previous ads had happy heterosexual brides. So we were worried about how people would perceive it and react to it.

"Most of our stores are in rural parts of the state. We were not sure how much exposure people there would have had to these issues."

But the 96-year-old jewellery house, with dozens of stores in southern India and a branch in the United Arab Emirates, decided to go ahead with the ad to "give a social message" and "start a conversation".

Ms Rao says she was well aware that the campaign could backfire. Memory of last year's controversy over an advertisement by popular jewellery brand Tanishq also instilled fear - that campaign with an interfaith couple was withdrawn after a right-wing backlash on social media.

Meera says she "was expecting a lot of conflict, especially since the ad shows a Hindu wedding which directly challenges the Hindu hetero-patriarchal system".

But Pure as Love has received little hate and the response, Ms Rao says, has been "overwhelming".

"There was some criticism of the ad and we were accused of lending a voice to a cause that's unnatural and not supposed to exist in society. But our inboxes have been filled with positive messages. Many from the LGBTQI community reached out to us saying the ad had touched their heart," she said.

Sudha Pillai, a writer and brand strategist at Firework, a video platform, described the ad as "revolutionary".

"I watched it on a Malayalam news channel and I thought they might not sell any jewellery, but if the idea was to grab eyeballs, they did it," she said.

"I've never seen any traditional brand do something so drastic. To take that kind of a risk for a traditional jeweller was revolutionary," she added.

On Instagram, many described it as "brilliant" and "beautiful" and confessed that they were "moved to tears" watching it.

"Thank you for giving me someone I can aspire to be on screen," read one comment on YouTube. "I am moved to tears to know that you've used a trans person for this film... For the first time it feels like my story matters TOO... and our lives deserve to be happy TOO. This is remarkable! ❤️ Bhima."

In India, where films and popular culture still mostly portray transgender people as caricatures, Ms Pillai says ad campaigns like this can be a game-changer.

"Advertisements and TV series are much more impactful than movies. They are played repeatedly in homes and have the power to change opinions. There can be a bit of resistance to them initially, but they can be a game-changer."

Ms Pillai says when she praised the ad on social media, she mostly expected responses from conservative Indians and angry trolls.

"There were some differences in opinion, but the number of those who felt threatened was tiny. More than 95% responses were positive and that in itself was very heartening," she said.

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India jewellery ad starring trans model wins hearts

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An advertisement for traditional Indian jewellery starring a transgender model is winning hearts in India. The one-minute-40-second video charts the story of transition of a trans woman - an awkward teenager with facial hair and self-doubt who transforms into a beautiful confident bride.

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Thinking of atmospheric CO2 as a resource rather than a problem...

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Berlin startup Made of Air has developed a bioplastic made of forest and farm waste that sequesters carbon and can be used for everything from furniture to building facades.

The recyclable material is 90 per cent carbon and stores around two tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) for every tonne of plastic.

By 2050, Made of Air hopes to be storing up to a gigatonne of CO2e a year in the material, which is also called Made of Air.
Company aims to "help reverse climate change"
"While we are a materials company, really in our heart we are a climate company and that's the reason for our existence," the company's chief commercial officer Neema Shams told Dezeen. "We're aiming to help reverse climate change."

Since the material stores more CO2 from the atmosphere than it emits throughout its lifecycle, Made of Air is a carbon-negative material, Shams said.

"We see carbon-negative as what biodegradable was 10 years ago," he explained. "Back then, no one knew what it was, no one knew why it mattered. And now it's pretty ubiquitous."

Made of Air was founded in 2016 by architects Allison ​Dring and Daniel ​Schwaag, who previously collaborated to create a pollutant-absorbing cladding called Prosolve370e.

The new company has identified five sectors where its bioplastic can be used. These are building facades, furniture, interiors, transport and urban infrastructure.

The material has recently been used to create a pair of limited-edition sunglasses in collaboration with H&M.

The company is also in talks with a US furniture maker about creating a "carbon-negative chair" and with automotive manufacturers about creating car parts.

In April, the thermoplastic was installed on a building for the first time. An Audi dealership in Munich was clad in seven tonnes of hexagonal panels the company calls HexChar.
The material is made of biochar
According to Shams, a lifecycle analysis has shown that the dealership's cladding stores 14 tonnes of carbon.

Over the next year, the company is ramping up its production capacity by 100 times to sequester 2,000 tonnes of CO2e each year.

Made of Air is a non-toxic bioplastic made from biochar. This charcoal-like material is almost pure carbon and is made by burning biomass such as forestry offcuts and secondary agricultural materials without oxygen.

Biochar has been produced for centuries and is increasingly being used as a fertiliser as well as a way of sequestering carbon in the soil.

Made of Air mixes biochar with a binder made from sugar cane to create a material that can be melted and moulded like a regular thermoplastic.

"We have a proprietary process that takes the biochar, puts it through a series of steps and combines it with bioplastics to create granules," Shams said.

The granules can then be used in traditional plastic-forming processes such as injection moulding and can be processed using the same machinery as regular plastic.

To make its biochar, Made of Air sources waste from forestry and agriculture businesses based in the countryside around Berlin.

The biomass is then placed in a special furnace, where it is baked in a controlled, oxygen-free environment as part of a process called pyrolysis.

"We're mining the sky because there's too much carbon in it" says Climeworks

Without the presence of oxygen, the carbon in the biomass cannot form carbon dioxide during combustion, meaning there are no greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, the carbon remains and forms biochar.

The porous, carbon-rich material is highly effective at storing carbon. Unlike decaying biomass, which quickly releases its carbon back into the atmosphere, biochar remains stable for hundreds or even thousands of years.

"With biochar, if you just left it on the ground and came back a thousand years later, it would look exactly the same," Shams said. "Only if you were to burn it would that carbon be re-released."

Made of Air is one of a number of companies that view atmospheric carbon as an untapped resource.

Swiss company Climeworks, for example, is building direct air capture machines to create carbon it can sell, while Seattle start-up Nori is building an online marketplace that incentivises people to capture and trade atmospheric carbon. The process by which this captured carbon is then turned into useful products is called carbon capture and utilisation (CCU).

"What if everything we're surrounded with was removing emissions instead of releasing them?" said Shams. "Climate change is really a material problem in that there's too much carbon in the atmosphere. So how come we can't turn that into our biggest resource?"

Made of Air's biochar plastic is cheaper than regular bioplastics but still more expensive than petroleum-based materials.
Material prices don't reflect "cost to the planet"
Ultimately, Shams believes that government intervention in the form of a carbon tax is needed in order to help products made from captured CO2 replace fossil plastics.

"In the wider capitalist system that we live in, everything needs to be cheap and widely available," he said. "The price of materials doesn't take into account their cost to the planet or to people."

"I think putting a value on the emissions associated with their production and their damage to the environment will be the most useful catalysts not only for us but for the wider sustainable materials space."

Carbon revolution
This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.
The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

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Atmospheric CO2 is "our biggest resource" says carbon-capturing plastic brand Made of Air

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Berlin startup Made of Air has developed a bioplastic made of forest and farm waste that sequesters carbon and can be used for everything from furniture to building facades. The recyclable material is 90 per cent carbon and stores around two tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) for every tonne of plastic.

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Zaha Hadid Architects and ETH Zurich have built a 3D-printed concrete footbridge named Striatus in Venice that is freestanding and assembled without mortar.

Named Striatus, the 16-metre-long bridge was built by the computation and design team at Zaha Hadid Architects, known as ZHACODE, in collaboration with the Block Research Group (BRG) at Swiss university ETH Zurich, incremental3D and Holcim. It was constructed from 53 hollow blocks each printed from 500 layers of printed concrete.

The structure is an unreinforced arched bridge that uses compression and gravity to hold its form. The studios arranged the 3D-printed wedge-shaped elements, known as voussoirs, to form arches and vaults.

The bridge has a double-curved deck with swooping stepped entry points placed at either end of the bridge, leading up the structure from its footings.

"The intention was to meet the challenges facing the architecture, engineering and construction industry by demonstrating a responsible way to design with one of its most widely-used and enduring materials - concrete," ZHACODE co-founder Shajay Bhooshan and BRG co-director Philippe Block told Dezeen.

"To do so, we draw from and computationally enhance one of its most ancient wisdoms - masonry construction."

The studio looked to historic masonry vaulting to inform its design, placing the printed pieces in a way that allows the load of the structure to be distributed its foundations without the need for internal ancillary support such as post-tension cables.

No glue or adhesives were used during the construction, instead, neoprene pads were placed between each of the printed blocks during assembly to control the levels of friction and stress concentration. External ties were added to the bridge to absorb the thrust tension.

"The discrete blocks of the funicular structure are held together only by gravity in compression, so, all blocks remain compressed together along with the individual print layers, using the same principles as Gothic cathedrals or structures like Armadillo Vault," said Bhooshan and Block.

"Striatus could literally stand happily for centuries as historic masonry construction has done, because forces are transferred in a way that is very natural for concrete, through compression only, and with very low stresses, i.e. not demanding much from the material."

Joris Laarman's 3D-printed stainless steel bridge finally opens in Amsterdam

Contrasting to typical 3D-printing methods, which use horizontally layered extrusion techniques, the bridge used a single six-axis robotic arm to print non-uniform and non-parallel layers across its 53 blocks.

The 53 blocks took 84 hours each to print while its construction, including foundation casting, assembly and stair and deck installation, took 35 days.

By creating hollow 3D-printed blocks, the structure aims to reduce typical material use and consumption. While its voussoir-style construction and lack of internal structural reinforcement means that the bridge to be easily disassembled and reused.

The bridge was installed at the Giardini della Marinaressa at the European Cultural Center during the Venice Architecture Biennale as an opportunity to exhibit the capabilities of unreinforced concrete and computational design.

"We wanted to demonstrate that 3D-printed concrete elements can be used directly as structural components when designed as an unreinforced masonry system," said Bhooshan and Block.

"Not only for a straightforward vertical, like a wall or moderately corbelling structure but for the more challenging structures that span space."

Although the structure was produced using concrete, Bhooshan and Block explained that they hope materials such as low-embodied-carbon concrete or earthen concrete can be developed for such printing techniques.

"The challenge now is for material scientists to make [low-embodied-carbon concrete] 3D printable," explained Bhooshan and Block.

"These materials and manufacturing improvements are being actively developed and point to positive prospects of improving on the benefits of 3D concrete printed masonry demonstrated in Striatus."

Recently, a stainless steel 3D-printed bridge designed by Joris Laarman and built by Dutch robotics company MX3D was opened in Amsterdam six years after it was announced.

The bridge's material use came under fire with architect Philip Oldfield calculating that the stainless steel used in the structure has an estimated 27.7 tonnes of embodied carbon.

Also in The Netherlands, construction company BAM Infra built what was claimed to be the world's first 3D-printed concrete bridge in 2017.
Photography is by Naaro.

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Zaha Hadid Architects creates unreinforced 3D-printed concrete bridge at Venice

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Zaha Hadid Architects and ETH Zurich have built a 3D-printed concrete footbridge named Striatus in Venice that is freestanding and assembled without mortar. Named Striatus, the 16-metre-long bridge was built by the computation and design team at Zaha Hadid Architects, known as ZHACODE, in collaboration with the Block Research Group (BRG) at Swiss university ETH Zurich, incremental3D and Holcim.

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Long-awaited 3D-printed stainless steel bridge opens in Amsterdam

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A 12-metre 3D-printed pedestrian bridge designed by Joris Laarman and built by Dutch robotics company MX3D has opened in Amsterdam six years after the project was launched. The bridge, which was fabricated from stainless steel rods by six-axis robotic arms equipped with welding gear, spans the Oudezijds Achterburgwal in Amsterdam's Red Light District.

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What is the impact of WHF on the Climate Crisis?

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What is the impact of WHF on the Climate Crisis?

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What happens when people work from home affects the global climate... but not necessarily in the way you might expect...

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The shift to remote working from suburbs and the countryside due to the Covid-19 pandemic could lead to a huge rise in carbon emissions, according to Taylor Francis of decarbonisation platform Watershed.

The trend could increase migration from cities and lead to less sustainable lifestyles, he told Dezeen.

"One of the best tools we have in decarbonisation is urbanism," said Francis, who is co-founder of Watershed, which helps large companies eliminate their emissions.

"Everyone who lives in a city is way lower carbon than people who live in suburbs."
Remote working could be "quite negative" for climate change
Many companies claim their work-from-home policies have led to lower emissions but that is not necessarily the case, Francis said.

"One thing we're really concerned about is whether this kind of shift to remote work is actually incentivising people to move from San Francisco and London out into more suburban areas where they get a bigger home and buy an SUV," he continued.

"That's the way in which remote work could actually be quite negative from a climate impact perspective."

Remote working could also lead to more work-related travel if companies arrange regular offsite gatherings, he added, pointing to a free calculator on Watershed's website that helps calculate the climate impact of their remote-working policies.

"If we're all going to be doing this sort of thing over Zoom that used to require a flight to London, then the new world is good," he said.

"But if work from home means that people are going to travel more often for quarterly offsites, that actually means work from home is bad."
Watershed aims to "help companies get to zero carbon"
Watershed was founded in 2019 to help companies understand and eliminate their carbon emissions. Its clients include home-rental platform Airbnb, food delivery company DoorDash, restaurant chain Sweetgreen and fintech brands Revolut and Monzo.

It helped e-commerce platform Shopify develop its $5 million carbon-removal fund and worked with payments platform Stripe on its carbon removal project.

"It is not acceptable for designers to be unaware of the carbon impact of their creations"

"Watershed is a software platform to help companies get to zero carbon," Francis said. "At a super high level, we think that every business in the world above a certain size over the next 10 years is going to have to integrate climate into how they run their company."

Francis said there is a surge of large companies taking climate seriously and scrambling to develop strategies to achieve net-zero emissions.

"There's a huge wave of companies at the board and exec level thinking about climate in a pretty serious way," he said, following pressure from legislation as well as investors such as BlackRock, the world's biggest financial asset manager, which has c ommitted to make its investment portfolio net-zero by 2050.

"That pressure comes from public market investors like BlackRock and it comes from regulators," he added. "The UK is actually leading the way there. The US is a step or two behind it."
"True net-zero requires carbon removal"
Watershed takes its clients through a four-step process. First, it helps them measure their emissions by uploading data to an online dashboard. Next, it advises them on how to reduce emissions. Thirdly, it assists with atmospheric carbon removal, which involves helping companies "fund permanent, durable, high-impact carbon removal".

Finally, it facilitates reporting so investors, regulators, employees and supply chains can see how they're progressing.

Francis, along with other leading figures in the nascent carbontech industry, uses the phrase "carbon removal" instead of "offsetting" since the latter term is widely used to describe schemes that reduce emissions rather than negating them.

"We strongly believe that true net-zero requires carbon removal, which is taking carbon out of the atmosphere, rather than traditional offsets, which involve paying someone else not to emit carbon into the atmosphere," he said.
Tackling climate change "planet's number one objective"
Carbon removal involves actively removing carbon that has already entered the atmosphere via carbon capture techniques including soil sequestration, biomass and direct air capture.

"Every solution for us getting to zero carbon by 2050 includes five to 10 gigatonnes of durable carbon removal per year by the middle of the century," he explained.

"Right now we're in the thousands of tonnes, tens of thousands of tonnes of credible carbon removal when you strip away all the low-quality, low-impact carbon offsets. So that space needs to scale up enormously."

"We're mining the sky because there's too much carbon in it" says Climeworks

"I think it will," he added, given that tackling climate change has become "the planet's number one objective". "But that's the pinch point. Where are those five to 10 gigatonnes per year of carbon removal gonna come from?"

He urged companies to set up carbon removal portfolios to help fund the sector so it can develop more efficient sequestration methods and achieve scale. "Funding carbon removal to get around the pinch point is really important," he said.
"Your carbon footprint is primarily the carbon footprint of the companies you work with"
Companies are beginning to realise that their carbon footprints are inextricably entwined with those of their supply chains. This is leading them to demand transparency from suppliers so they can work with them to eliminate the tricky Scope 3 emissions.

These are emissions generated by a company's value chain but over which it does not have direct control. Companies need to eliminate these emissions - or negate them via carbon removal - in order to achieve net-zero.

"The big emerging center of gravity is around engagement between suppliers and their customers because your carbon footprint is primarily the carbon footprint of the companies you work with," he said.

"And that's true for most companies that are not heavy emitters themselves. That whole space is completely nascent. There needs to be a more interoperable standard for how companies share data about their carbon footprints and their carbon plans with their customers. That's part of the Watershed mission."

Overall, the built environment accounts for around 40 per cent of global emissions and the real-estate portfolios of large companies account for a huge proportion of their carbon footprints.
"The built environment is a very, very carbon-intensive space"
Reducing this has become a key focus for Watershed's clients. "When we do carbon footprint assessments for tech companies, their investment in new buildings, fit-outs and leasehold improvements ends up being near the top of the list almost all the time," Francis explained.

"The built environment is a very, very carbon-intensive space," he added, describing the situation as a "huge opportunity" for architects.

UK industry group calls for new rules to force architects to calculate embodied carbon emissions

These companies "desperately want to fit out buildings in a low-carbon way or build new buildings in a low-carbon way," he added. "The thing that's exciting is that it's a dirty supply chain. But it's also a supply chain where there are low carbon options. There's a lot of possibilities out there."

However, companies tend to "get a blank response" from architects and construction firms.

"The common journey that I see is that customers who would be architects' clients say: 'Whoa, this is a wake-up call. We desperately want to fit out our building in a low-carbon way or build a new building in a low-carbon way'. And then they go to their contractors or architects and kind of get a blank response."

"So I think there's a huge opportunity for architecture firms, builders and contractors to have a low-carbon offering. Because companies are in the market for that."
Pressure building from investors and customers
Large architecture firms have been slow to join the net-zero movement. The profession is one of the least well-represented sectors in the UN's Race to Zero campaign while less than six per cent of UK practices have signed up to the RIBA's net-zero challenge.

Architects tend to respond by saying they can't force their clients to commission net-zero buildings, which are buildings that make no contribution to atmospheric carbon across their whole lifecycle including both construction and use.

Does Francis buy that argument? "No I don't," he replied.

Watershed is not yet working with any of the heavy-emitting companies such as oil-and-gas firms or cement manufacturers. But he believes that pressure from investors, legislators and customers will force them to clean up their acts.

"Our strategy is to work with companies that are at least one step downstream of the heavy emitters," he said. "Because I think there's this really interesting pressure that is building from investors and customers to companies."

"It ends up manifesting in demand for low-carbon solutions from the commodity providers. And so that's where we really spend our time."

Carbon revolution
This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.
The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

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Urbanism "is one of the best tools we have" in the fight against climate change

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The shift to remote working from suburbs and the countryside due to the Covid-19 pandemic could lead to a huge rise in carbon emissions, according to Taylor Francis of decarbonisation platform Watershed. The trend could increase migration from cities and lead to less sustainable lifestyles, he told Dezeen.

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Why felling trees can be good for carbon capture... in the right circumstances.

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A massive tree felling operation has been going on in the vast Kielder Forest of Northumberland for the last few weeks.

Thousands of trees have been cut down as part of a project that claims to be improving the environment and tackling climate change.

The BBC's chief environment correspondent Justin Rowlatt reports on work to restore an ancient ecosystem which can store far more carbon than trees can.

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Why cutting down trees can be good for the climate

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A massive tree felling operation has been going on in the vast Kielder Forest of Northumberland for the last few weeks. Thousands of trees have been cut down as part of a project that claims to be improving the environment and tackling climate change.

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Amazon region now emits carbon instead of absorbing it...

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"In the eastern part of the Amazon, which is around 30% deforested, this region emitted 10 times more carbon then in the west, which is around 11% deforested," said lead author Luciana Gatti, with Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

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Climate change: Amazon regions emit more carbon than they absorb

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"In the eastern part of the Amazon, which is around 30% deforested, this region emitted 10 times more carbon then in the west, which is around 11% deforested," said lead author Luciana Gatti, with Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

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Castor beans seem to be the newest material for 3D printing...

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Japanese architect Kengo Kuma and eyewear brand Vava have launched a capsule collection of 3D-printed sunglasses made from Indian castor beans.

The two pairs of sunglasses, which combine traditional Japanese design with modern technology, were designed as a continuation of Kuma's architectural ideals.

"The collection manifests many of Kuma's architectural imaginings, especially the architect's tendency of recovering and reinterpreting the traditions of Japanese architecture to fit seamlessly into the 21st-century world," Vava told Dezeen.

Both pairs of glasses are made out of castor beans sourced from farmers working in India.

Castor oil from the beans was used to produce Polyamide 11 - a thermoplastic polymer that was used as the material to 3D-print the glasses.

According to the brand the material can be used to create complex forms that are strong and do not fade when exposed to long periods of direct sunlight.

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), a technique that melts and fuses the polyamide particles together, was implemented to build the frames.

Each layer of the frame was built one at a time. Afterwards, any leftover material was removed to give the frames a clean finish.

Both pairs of sunglasses were designed to "reflect Kengo Kuma's holistic architecture."

The CL0015 model is a rounded pair of sunglasses with a woven bridge and frame that was informed by the process of weaving.

Kite offers eyewear that is 3D-printed to fit exact measurements of any face

"Many of Kuma's design projects can be understood as a pursuit of different types of weaving of diverse materials," said Vava.

"CL0015 was inspired by the notion that the production of architecture is fundamentally a process of weaving."

The second pair in the collection - CL0013 - was informed by the Japanese wooden architecture that Kuma is known for.

"These approaches have been explored by Kuma for his wooden structures, which arise from a simple pattern of assembly, building on different intersections and angles to generate a complex whole."

"The design process began with Kengo Kuma's sketches and during the development of the technical draws, each part brought their own perspectives, giving everyone a voice," added the brand.

"The aim was to come up with something that captured the essence of both Kengo Kuma and Vava souls."

Japanese architect Kuma is one of the world's most recognised architects who founded Kengo Kuma Associates in 1990.

Some of his most significant buildings include the national stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the V&A Dundee museum. He recently designed a curved library in Skien, Norway.

Austrian eyewear manufacturer Rolf also used castor castor beans to make sunglasses in 2010.

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Kengo Kuma creates 3D-printed sunglasses from castor beans

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Japanese architect Kengo Kuma and eyewear brand Vava have launched a capsule collection of 3D-printed sunglasses made from Indian castor beans. The two pairs of sunglasses, which combine traditional Japanese design with modern technology, were designed as a continuation of Kuma's architectural ideals.

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Unique map of the arctic with innovative graphics....

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Unique map of the arctic with innovative graphics....

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....in this article on the devastating effects of climate change on the Arctic sea ice and how in turn the loss of Arctic sea ice is accelerating climate change.

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By Mark Kinver
Environment reporter

In our monthly feature, Then and Now, we reveal some of the ways that planet Earth has been changing against the backdrop of a warming world. The shrinking sea-ice in the Arctic is not only a sign of climate change, it is causing the planet to warm more quickly. This is because more sunlight is being absorbed by the darker ocean, rather than being reflected back into space.

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Arctic sea-ice plays an important role in controlling the planet's temperature, and any problem with this natural thermostat is a cause for concern.

Figures from the US space agency (Nasa) suggest the loss of the minimum Arctic sea-ice extent is in the region of 13.1% per decade, based on the 1981 to 2010 average.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 concluded that the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as a result of human activity was primarily responsible for the decline in sea-ice extent in the region.

The disappearance of the sea-ice in a warming world also contributes to rising average surface temperatures. The sea-ice is estimated to reflect 80% of sunlight back into space, meaning it does not warm the surface.

But when the sea-ice has melted, the darker ocean surface is exposed, which absorbs about 90% of the sunlight hitting it. This results in warming of the region.

This phenomenon is known as the Albedo effect, and it occurs because light surfaces reflect more heat then dark surfaces.

Vanishing point

The freezing and thawing of the ocean in the Arctic is a seasonal occurrence, with the freezing peaking in March and the melting reaching its maximum in September.

However, data from on-the-ground observations and from satellites tell us that the extent of sea-ice in the Arctic polar region is declining as the planet warms.

As this occurs, the albedo (or reflectivity) is reduced, because the dark ocean waters absorb more heat than the lighter sea-ice. This in turn causes the land and oceans to warm even more.

Ultimately, scientists fear, the increasing amount of ground being exposed in regions traditionally covered with snow will trigger a "tipping point". This is where the warming of the atmosphere reaches a point where human interventions will no longer be able to halt it.

Smaller and warmer world

Another impact of the decreasing density of ice in the northern polar region is the opening of the Northwest Passage. This trading route links the North Atlantic Ocean with the North Pacific Ocean.

Since the 19th Century, there has been clamour to find a navigable route through frozen Arctic waters between Greenland and Canada's Arctic islands.

It has long been a deadly pursuit for mariners who braved the frozen seascape. However, some experts estimate that the route will become commercially viable in the near future as the sea-ice retreats in the summer months.

For some, it is going to revolutionise the global shipping sector. For others, it is a disaster waiting to happen.

Environmental groups fear a growing volume of shipping traffic through the pristine Arctic waters will damage slow-growing, long-lived marine ecosystems.

They particularly fear a ship encountering a mishap in the remote polar waters, resulting in a potentially devastating pollution incident.

Lack of food

Evidence suggests that the thinning sea-ice is affecting wildlife, including top-of-the-food-chain predators such as polar bears. The ice is not strong enough to support the animals' weight, forcing them to embark on energy-sapping swims and making it more difficult to catch prey.

As well as causing starvation, it is also reportedly resulting in bears coming into human settlements looking for food.

Another concern among scientists is that melting sea-ice is affecting a major ocean current in the Arctic - the Beaufort Gyre.

Freshwater is less dense than salty seawater. The researchers said a sudden influx of freshwater from the Arctic Ocean into the northern Atlantic Ocean could alter the strength of the current.

This is because the force pushing water down the eastern coast of continental North America will be reduced, resulting in a smaller volume of warmer tropic waters from equatorial regions being displaced towards western Europe.

Models suggest the reduction in warmer waters heading towards western Europe will result in lower temperatures in the region. This, in turn, would also affect weather patterns in the global climate system.

Our Planet Then and Now will continue each month up to the UN climate summit in Glasgow, which is scheduled to start in November 2021

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Then and now: Arctic sea-ice feeling the heat

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By Mark Kinver Environment reporter In our monthly feature, Then and Now, we reveal some of the ways that planet Earth has been changing against the backdrop of a warming world. The shrinking sea-ice in the Arctic is not only a sign of climate change, it is causing the planet to warm more quickly.

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This article illustrates how systemic issues in the recycling industries have a very real impact here and now.... and why 'Avoiding' and Re-using' are better than 'Re-cycling'.

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The boy was probably only a teenager. Rummaging through bags of plastic dumped by the side of the road, he was looking for bottles to sell.

In amongst the rubbish, were plastic bags from some of the UK's biggest supermarkets, packaging for cheese, ham and beef burgers.

Our investigation in March 2020 in the southern Turkish City of Adana found that although plastic that had been carefully sorted and separated by households in the UK was being sent to Turkey for recycling, it was, instead, being fly tipped and burned.

Now Ankara has had enough - from today, 2 July, almost all imports of plastic waste are expected to be banned.

This leaves the UK with a real problem.

Last year the UK sent more plastic packaging waste to Turkey than to any other country. More than 200,000 tonnes, or 30% of all such exports, according to the Environment Agency's national waste packaging database.

This means 30 shipping containers a day full of plastic waste now need a new home. The UK, however, doesn't have enough recycling capacity to handle it itself.

"The alternatives are not obvious," says Phil Conran from consultancy 360 Environmental.

China, which used to be the world's biggest importer of plastic, closed its doors in 2017. And Malaysia, traditionally another major recipient, is now more heavily regulated.

Phil Conran points out that the "UK has an unfortunate history of poor quality plastic waste exports".

Simon Ellin from the Recycling Association says most exports are compliant but admits, "Our industry is blighted by a small minority of illegal operators who take advantage of an under-resourced UK regulatory system and the lack of transparent export systems."

Eastern Europe options

In the first three months of this year Turkey took 49% of all exports - Poland was second and Holland third. But those two countries would have to more than double their imports to make up the difference.

And some UK waste sent to the Netherlands is actually incinerated and an import tax on waste for burning now makes that less appealing.

Other countries in Eastern Europe might also be preparing to receive UK material, but domestic recycling rates there remain low.

"The UK government may try to keep pushing our plastic problem onto other countries in the short-term, but the writing is on the wall for waste exports," says Megan Randles, political campaigner for Greenpeace UK.

The government believes plastic waste can legally and safely be sent abroad for recycling. But a spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said: "The UK must handle more of its waste at home, and that's why we are committed to banning the export of plastic waste to non-OECD countries and clamping down on illegal waste exports."

The Environment Agency says in the past 18 months it's stopped 160 containers of illegal plastic waste leaving the country.

Plastics backlog

So if more of our plastic stays in the UK, what's going to happen to it?

The UK's recycling capacity is still only 75% of what was being sent to Turkey. So in the short term, a build-up of waste is likely.

Phil Conran says that's not without its problems.

"Excessive stocks can lead ultimately to material being landfilled or abandoned if the expected markets don't materialise."

But there is a third possibility and that's incineration - including in energy-from-waste plants. In this process, energy is recovered in the form of heat or electricity.

More than 40% of household waste in England is currently burned - of that about 8% is made up of plastic.

Simon Ellin from the Recycling Association says its a short-term solution. "Some materials will need to move down the waste hierarchy and be burnt with the energy recovered for electricity generation."

Greenpeace's Megan Randles doesn't agree. "We can't dump or burn our way out of our plastics crisis. We need a legally binding reduction in the production of single use plastic"

The Turkey ban could lead to more recycling in the UK. Currently, Defra estimates that 46% of plastic waste is recovered or recycled.

The government is planning a new recycling levy on plastic producers and wants all packaging to be made of at least 30% recycled material by 2022.

The recycling industry is expanding capacity. Construction of what the developer describes as the UK's first plastic-to-hydrogen plant is expected to begin this year in Cheshire, and plans have been unveiled for similar plants across the nation.

Also later this year, one of the biggest waste facilities in the country will become fully operational in Avonmouth near Bristol.

It will burn non-recyclable household waste to fuel a plastics recycling plant, and in its first year it's expected to take 1.6 billion bottles, pots, tubs and trays.

But in the short term there is a fear that what the BBC found in Turkey may simply be duplicated somewhere else. That could be in Eastern Europe, or Africa - or it could be in our own back yards.

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Turkey's plastics ban: Where does the UK send its waste now?

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The boy was probably only a teenager. Rummaging through bags of plastic dumped by the side of the road, he was looking for bottles to sell. In amongst the rubbish, were plastic bags from some of the UK's biggest supermarkets, packaging for cheese, ham and beef burgers.

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Here is how the Heath was saved...

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" A sprawling north London parkland, composed of oaks, willows and chestnuts, yews and sycamores, the beech and the birch; that encompasses the city's highest point and spreads far beyond it; that is so well planted it feels unplanned... with tickling bush grass to hide teenage lovers and joint smokers, broad oaks for brave men to kiss against, mown meadows for summer ball games, hills for kites, ponds for hippies, an icy lido for old men with strong constitutions".

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Hampstead Heath: How the 'lungs of the metropolis' remained unblackened

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" A sprawling north London parkland, composed of oaks, willows and chestnuts, yews and sycamores, the beech and the birch; that encompasses the city's highest point and spreads far beyond it; that is so well planted it feels unplanned...

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The NFT of the first code for the world wide web sold for $5.4m....

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Tim Berners-Lee sells web source code NFT for $5.4m

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The sale came with a bundle of assets, including an animated video and a letter from Sir Tim.

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... and scientific at the same time

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The shortlisted photographers captured sights from across our Solar System, galaxy and the wider Universe.

The competition has received more than 4,500 entries from 75 countries.

The judges include Art Editor of BBC Sky at Night Magazine Steve Marsh, and comedian and keen amateur astronomer Jon Culshaw, alongside other experts from the worlds of art and astronomy.

The winning images will be displayed in an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum from 18 September.

Here is a selection of shortlisted images.

This is one of the photographer's favourite images and it remarkably depicts how interstellar winds and forces have created this perfect cosmic bubble in outer space.

The star responsible for creating the bubble is the bright star near the centre of the nebula and is categorised as a Wolf-Rayet star.

The image depicts a mesmerising panorama of the Milky Way over lavender fields in Valensole, France.

The colour tones and the lines of the fields are truly amazing, even though the light pollution is clearly visible over the whole area.

This is a panorama of the aurora borealis in Iceland and is made up of 20 images.

The photographer came across an estuary that reflected the sky perfectly on a freezing winter's night.

He captured the panorama first, and then took a shot of himself out on the ice.

This immense face forms the entrance to Luna Park, Sydney's harbourside theme park that closed in 1979.

It has leered in the shadow of the Harbour Bridge since 1935 and many generations of children have skipped through its mouth for days of fun, as the world and the city have changed and grown around it.

The photographer took thousands of frames, with the stars passing by, and blended them together to show the patterns of time.

It was the photographer's long-held ambition to capture the Moon and the famous Lovell Telescope.

Finding a spot with a clear view, far enough away from the subject, and the Moon being in the sky at the correct time of day was all part of the puzzle.

The setting Sun lit up the clouds producing some lovely colours.

The Flame Nebula, designated as NGC 2024 and Sh2-277, is an emission nebula in the constellation Orion, lying some 900 to 1,500 light years away from Earth.

The bright star Alnitak (just outside the field of view at the top of this image), the easternmost star in the Belt of Orion, shines energetic ultraviolet light into the Flame and this knocks electrons away from the great clouds of hydrogen gas that reside there.

Much of the glow results when the electrons and ionised hydrogen recombine.

NGC 3981 is a spiral galaxy about 65 million light years away in the constellation Crater.

Its windswept look is due to its outer arms being stripped away by an interaction with another galaxy.

The photographer's aim for this image was to focus on the Moon's trajectory at the centre of the photograph, dividing the human world from the sky.

The woman standing on the roof appears to be the link between Paris and the sky.

This is an outstanding image of shining stars over the photographer's region in winter.

The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, is an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus.

In this image, Saturn displays a wealth of details across the globe and ring system.

The famous polar hexagon can be seen around the pole at the bottom, while many other belts and zones are seen across the planet.

This image shows star trails over Lujiazui city in Pudong District, China, and you can even distinguish the Belt of Orion.

The photographer captured this photo on a very clear autumn night.

As the photographer was driving on the mountain road late at night and turned the corner, he saw a mound on the right side of the road.

He stopped and climbed up the side of the road, set the camera to shoot automatically, and then drove back and forth in this curve.

Then he climbed up the hillside and integrated himself into the picture.

The photo is taken 16km (10 miles) away from Lujiazui financial district in Shanghai.

Every year there are only a few weeks when photographers can capture the scene of the Sun rising in the Central Business District.

The photo is composed of four different exposures from the same perspective, recording the process of the Sun rising.

In this photo the very gas-rich comet shows numerous structures in its ion tail.

The difficulty with comet imaging is not only to compensate for the movement of the comet in front of the stars, but also to consider the rapid changes in the structures during the exposure time.

The Soul Nebula is one of those incredible targets that no matter where you point your telescope, there are always some incredible structures and details to be uncovered.

With 14 hours of exposure, faint details and structures deep within the nebula began to emerge.

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Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2021: Shortlist revealed

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The shortlisted photographers captured sights from across our Solar System, galaxy and the wider Universe. The competition has received more than 4,500 entries from 75 countries. The judges include Art Editor of BBC Sky at Night Magazine Steve Marsh, and comedian and keen amateur astronomer Jon Culshaw, alongside other experts from the worlds of art and astronomy.

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Open Source vs NFTs,
environmental concerns about block chain technologies, ...Tim Berners-Lee auctioning the first world-wide web code as a NFT via Sotheby's touches on a lot of current controversies...

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Sir Tim Berners-Lee, one of the architects of the World Wide Web, is selling the source code to the original web browser as an NFT (). The auction, being run by Sotheby's, will not only include the code for the WorldWideWeb browser, but also a letter from Berners-Lee himself, a vector file that could be printed as a poster, and a 30-minute silent video that depicts the code being typed out. According to a press release from Sotheby's, the proceeds will benefit causes supported by Berners-Lee and his wife.

The code up for auction contains elements of the web that many of us are familiar with today, including functions to parse and display HTML documents, rudimentary styling support, the HTTP protocol, and even the ability to print a webpage.

Berners-Lee seems to think NFTs are a natural fit for code - in the press release, he says that NFTs are "the latest playful creations " on the internet and "the ideal way to package the origins behind the web." In an interview with Financial Times, he compares the NFT to an autographed book, which just makes me imagine how much cooler this project would be if he had instead auctioned off the code on a signed box of magneto-optical disks that would've been used by the NeXT Computer he used to write it.

The NFT's buyer may have trouble actually running the very first version of WorldWideWeb. As Ars Technica points out, there's a very early copy of the source code available on the web today (which Sotheby's says is similar to the code being sold in the NFT, but not the original), and it seems difficult to compile according to CERN's WorldWideWeb site. Even if the buyer got the original browser running, there are likely precious few websites still around that would work well with it.

Arguably, the web as we know it was made possible by the fact that Berners-Lee decided not to patent or charge for use of his idea, letting anyone with the technical know-how (and computer resources) design their own website. It's easy to see, then, why some would find creating an exclusive NFT out of it as a bit of an odd choice for Tim Berners-Lee, on top of the environmental concerns around the tech. According to Financial Times, it will be the first time he's directly profited off his creation - although he says he won't be keeping that money himself.

If you'd like to see an approximation of Berners-Lee's original browser, CERN has a replica that you can run right in your modern web browser (though accessing websites from it appears to be broken at the moment). If you're really looking to grab the NFT, the Sotheby's auction is running from June 23rd to the 30th, with bidding starting at $1,000.

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Sir Tim Berners-Lee is selling the first web browser's code as an NFT

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The inventor of the World Wide Web is taking advantage of the latest of the internet's creations by auctioning off his original code and donating the proceeds to charity. The NFT will include the original browser, a letter, and more.

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New Materials Library - check this!

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Dutch designer Teresa van Dongen has launched Aireal, an online library showcasing materials that can capture atmospheric carbon.

The fledgling library contains images and descriptions of materials developed by companies and institutes around the world.

Materials featured include olivine, an abundant mineral that can absorb its own mass of carbon dioxide when crushed and scattered on the ground.

The library also features materials ranging from paper to fibre and food that neutralise atmospheric carbon dioxide by absorbing the carbon and releasing the oxygen.

"Aireal is a growing material library showing materials that capture CO2 in their production process," said van Dongen, describing the project as a" library of possibilities".

"The materials were developed in the spirit of the circular economy, where waste does not exist and carbon dioxide is seen as a resource for the creation of the products that we will use tomorrow," she said.

"I hope to encourage a connection between the institutes that create these materials and designers and architects that can make use of these existing and new materials," she added.

Olivine, a green-coloured magnesium-iron silicate, is one of the most common minerals on earth, making up between 60 and 80 per cent of the earth's mantle.

As part of its natural weathering process, the surface of the mineral reacts with CO2 contained in rainwater, absorbing the carbon to create a new carbonate mineral.
Olivine overlooked in favour of more complex carbon-capture methods
Yet olivine has been overlooked in the rush to explore ways of tackling climate change, van Dongen said.

"It absorbs CO2 very easily," van Dongen told Dezeen. "One tonne of olivine sand can take in up to one tonne of CO2, depending on the conditions. You just have to spread it out and nature will do its job."

European climate initiative Climate-KIC estimates that olivine could capture 850,000 tonnes of CO2 if it was used in small-scale projects in Rotterdam alone. Potential uses include fertiliser and a replacement for sand and gravel in landscaping projects.

The Dezeen guide to carbon

Van Dongen said that the potential of natural materials such as olivine is being ignored as researchers and startups rush to develop more complex ways of reducing atmospheric carbon.

"One problem is the fact that research institutes that have or receive funding for CO2 absorption can't patent the spreading of a mineral," she said.

"We are so stuck in thought patterns of industrialisation and capitalism that naturally occurring reactions can't win against the tech solutions."

"During my research, I wondered many times why aren't governments implementing this on a large scale yet," she added.

"One factor is that olivine is quite unknown compared to other means of CO2 absorption such as trees or seaweed. Also, the speed of the absorption is often slow compared with these natural absorption methods."

"But I think we shouldn't compare and choose any more. There are places where you can't grow trees and seaweed but you can spread olivine."

Once it has absorbed carbon from the atmosphere, olivine can be used in a variety of materials including cement, paper and 3D-printing filament.

The Aireal library showcases a range of olivine products made by Green Minerals, who will produce the first 1,000 sheets of paper made from the carbonated mineral later this year.

"It is an unknown fact that a range of materials can be made with the reacted olivine mineral," van Dongen said.
"One day we will eat food that is produced from carbon dioxide"
Aerial also includes potential food sources made from CO2 including spirulina, a carbon-guzzling algae, and methane-consuming microbial proteins.

"I absolutely do think that one day we will eat food that is produced from carbon dioxide," said van Dongen. "It's only a matter of time and government legislation. It starts with the realization that all plant-based foods that we eat have absorbed CO2 in order for the plant to grow."

Microbial proteins are produced by microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi, which can be bred on a large scale in reactors. However, they can currently only be used as animal food due to strict regulations.

"This rule is based on a ridiculous fear of microbes," said van Dongen. "But microbially produced food is being seriously researched by NASA for space travel."

"They even take it to a whole next level where the excrement of astronauts can be transformed by microbes into a nutritious sandwich spread," she added.

"It's another taboo but not at all far-fetched when you consider that, on a daily basis, we eat plants that have been fed with animal manure."

"Carbon can be an ally in a regenerative future"

Van Dongen has explored the potential of microorganisms in her previous work. Her bioluminescent lamp, produced for her graduation show in 2014, uses bacteria to generate light.

Her more recent Mud Well project is powered by electricity generated by bacteria.

Van Dongen sees Aerial as a way of helping people see carbon as a useful resource rather than a problem material.

"CO2 currently suffers from the connotation of pollution, but CO2 is an irreplaceable part of the cycle of life," she said.

Photography is by Hans Boddeke.

Carbon revolution
This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.
The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

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"One tonne of olivine sand can take in up to one tonne of CO2" says Teresa van Dongen

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Dutch designer Teresa van Dongen has launched Aireal, an online library showcasing materials that can capture atmospheric carbon. The fledgling library contains images and descriptions of materials developed by companies and institutes around the world. Materials featured include olivine, an abundant mineral that can absorb its own mass of carbon dioxide when crushed and scattered on the ground.

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Gawking Kills - application of QR codes in Germany

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Gawking Kills - application of QR codes in Germany

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By Laura French

GERMANY - A German ambulance service is using QR technology to deter bystanders from illegally photographing or taking videos at emergency scenes.

Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe launched its "Gaffen Tötet," or "Gawking Kills," campaign last month, which brings awareness to a recent law making it illegal for bystanders to take photos or videos of accident scenes, according to a statement from the ambulance service. The German law, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2021, imposes a penalty of up to two years in prison for violations.

Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe in Germany outfitted ambulances and equipment with QR codes that trigger a warning to "gawkers" who point their smartphone cameras at emergency scenes. (Photo/Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe)

To bring awareness to the dangers of "gawking" and filming at emergency scenes, which can interfere with rescue operations, Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe placed QR codes on some of its ambulances and EMS equipment that will send an automatic warning to someone who points a smartphone camera where the code is visible. Phone cameras that automatically scan QR codes will activate a webpage that reads, "Stop! Gawking kills!" in German.

The campaign is being piloted with eight ambulances and one intensive care vehicle in Berlin, according to Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe. If the campaign is found to be effective in deterring "gawkers," officials said it may be expanded to more ambulances across the country.

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German EMS uses QR technology to discourage illegal photography at emergency scenes

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By Laura French GERMANY - A German ambulance service is using QR technology to deter bystanders from illegally photographing or taking videos at emergency scenes. Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe launched its "Gaffen Tötet," or "Gawking Kills," campaign last month, which brings awareness to a recent law making it illegal for bystanders to take photos or videos of accident scenes, according to a statement from the ambulance service.

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Spider-goat chimera created for spider silk research 

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Spider-goat chimera created for spider silk research 

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Freckles looks like a perfectly normal kid. She has bright eyes, a healthy white pelt and gambols happily with Pudding, Sweetie and her five other siblings, exactly as you might imagine young goats do. Until I fend her off, she's very keen on chewing my trousers. To the casual observer, and to goatherds, she shows no signs that she is not a perfectly normal farmyard goat.

But Freckles is a long way from normal. She is an extraordinary creation, an animal that could not have existed at any point in history before the 21st century. She is all goat, but she has something extra in every one of her cells: Freckles is also part spider.

That is what we can now do with genetics: extreme crossbreeding. If 20th-century biology was about taking living things apart to find out how they work, the current era is defined by putting them back together, but not necessarily as evolution decreed, and certainly without the clumsy constraints of mating. Freckles is the result of genetic engineering. But our mastery of manipulating DNA has evolved into an even more extreme form of tinkering, broadly called "synthetic biology". I've been tracking this emerging field since finishing my PhD in genetics 10 years ago, but intensely in the last year as a presenter for the BBC's flagship science strand, Horizon.

Freckles is the creation of Randy Lewis, a professor of genetics at Utah State University. The farm is a university outpost where they research modern farming techniques, teach animal husbandry and raise what are inevitably referred to as "spider-goats".Randy, like many of the other scientists here in Logan, Utah, has farming in his blood. So although a creature that is part goat, part spider might seem like an idea born of science fiction, as far as Randy is concerned it's simply advanced farming: breeding animals to produce things that we want.

"We're interested in dragline silk - the silk that spiders catch themselves with when they fall," he tells me in his midwest lilt. "It's stronger than Kevlar. It really has some amazing properties for any kind of a fibre."

In a sense, spider-goats are an extension of the farming we've been doing for 10,000 years. All livestock and arable has been carefully bred, each cross being a genetic experiment of its own. "The trouble is, you can't farm spiders," Randy says with an almost comic deadpan face. "They're very cannibalistic." He and his team took the gene that encodes dragline silk from an orb-weaver spider and placed it among the DNA that prompts milk production in the udders. This genetic circuit was then inserted in an egg and implanted into a mother goat. Now, when Freckles lactates, her milk is full of spider-silk protein.

We milk Freckles together and process it in the lab to leave only the silk proteins. With a glass rod, we delicately lift out a single fibre of what is very obviously spider silk and spool it on to a reel. It has amazing, and desirable, properties, which is why Randy's seemingly bizarre research is so robustly funded. "In the medical field, we already know that we can produce spider silk that's good enough to be used in ligament repair," he tells me. "We already know we can make it strong enough as an elastic. We've done some studies that show that you can put it in the body and you don't get inflammation and get ill. We hope within a couple of years that we're going to be testing to see exactly the best designs and the best materials we can make from it."

The instructions for all creatures that have ever lived (as far as we know) are written in the code of DNA tucked away in the heart of living cells. Given the bewildering diversity of life on Earth, this system is incredibly conservative. All life is based on an alphabet of just four letters, which, when arranged in the right order, spell out proteins. And all life is made of, or by, proteins. So what this means is that the code for making silk in a spider is written in exactly the same language as the code for making goats' milk.

Since the advent of genetic engineering, we have been able to exploit the universality of this code and cut and paste bits of DNA from any one species into any other. Identifying the genetic basis of all cancers and inherited diseases came from this technology: human or mouse genes have been spliced into bacteria so we could study and experiment on those damaged bits of code. Now, this editing technology has progressed to the extent that all bits of DNA code are effectively interchangeable between all species. In fact, Freckles and the other spider-goats are not even on the cutting edge. The loosely defined field of synthetic biology has come to incorporate even more extreme forms of genetic tinkering.

The most striking headlines so far came when American biologist Craig Venter announced in 2010 that he had created the world's first synthetic life form. Synthia, aka Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn 1.0, was a cell whose genetic code, copied and modified from an existing bacterium, had been assembled not by its parent, but by a computer. That code, including literary quotations and website addresses, was then jammed into the eviscerated chassis of another similar cell and the whole thing booted up. It did live and it hadn't lived before.

But to say that he had "created life" is a stretch that Venter - a master of PR as well as an accomplished scientist - allowed to foment and the press lapped up. It's more accurate to say that he rebooted life, his aim being to create a living template on to which new genetic functions could be built. Nevertheless, it remains an astonishing technical achievement, showing our dominance over DNA; not only can we modify one or two genes, we can make enough to power up a living thing.

The scientists who work in synthetic biology often take a perfunctory, reductionist view of what they do. Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Ron Weiss is a founding father of this field, a purist who started fiddling with the code of life while coding computers. "I decided to take what we understand in computing and apply that to programming biology. To me, that's really the essence of synthetic biology."

This may sound glib. Life forms are complex at every level. If there is one concrete thing we have learned from the billions spent on reading our own genetic code, it's that biology is messy. Scientists are often confounded by baffling "noise" in the molecules that make up living organisms, unpredictable variation set among unfathomable sophistication. Weiss and his comrades at the BioBricks Foundation want to strip out all the noise in biology and turn it into pure engineering, where organisms can be treated like machines and their inner workings are component parts.

Genes have evolved over millions of years to bestow survival on their hosts by having very specific functions. By standardising these genetic elements in an online registry, anyone can piece them together in any order to create biological circuits with entirely designed purpose. Even the language used is more the stuff of electrical engineering than traditional biology.

"Imagine a program, a piece of DNA that goes into a cell and says, 'If cancer, then make a protein that kills the cancer cell; if not, just go away.' That's a kind of program that we're able to write and implement and test in living cells right now." What Ron Weiss is describing is a study his team published last autumn showing that, by using the logic of computer circuits combined with BioBricks parts, they had built a cancer assassin cell. The logic of the genetic circuit initially distinguishes a cancer cell from a healthy cell using a set of five criteria. It then destroys the tumour cell if it satisfied those conditions. This sniper targeting is the opposite of the blunderbuss approach of chemotherapy, which can destroy both tumour and healthy cells with reckless abandon.

Over the last few years, BioBricks has grown into a global phenomenon. The Registry of Standard Biological Parts currently contains thousands of bits of DNA, all freely available, and this democratisation of science is built into the BioBricks ethos. Every year, undergraduate students compete in an international competition to think of a problem and design and build its solution, using only the parts available in the registry. 2011's European champions, from Imperial College London, designed a system for preventing soil erosion and the conversion of land into desert. There is a remix culture within these teams; it's serious play (the grand prize is a silver Lego brick) and they come from diverse backgrounds - maths, engineering, even astrophysics - unfettered by the narrowly defined science disciplines under which I did my DNA research.

The ease of access to this bleeding-edge technology is breathtaking. Last summer, in suburban Sunnyvale, California, I hung out at a gathering of synthetic biology weekend hobbyists, self-styled as "bio-hackers" with the excellent name BioCurious. There, high-school students were learning about biology by introducing fluorescent proteins from deep-sea jellyfish into bacteria to make them glow in the dark. In 2009, three scientists won Nobel prizes for this work. Already, it is literally child's play.

As with any great revolutions, there are those who stand to make a killing after the doors are kicked open. At the other end of the scale from the open-source, open-access utopia of BioBricks, synthetic biology commercial enterprises are emerging. The tech may be new, but the fields are not. With synthetic biology only a few years old, the most intense areas of commercialised synthetic biology are in fuel and drug production. California biotech companies such as LS9 and Amyris have ploughed millions of dollars into developing synthetic organisms that will produce diesel. In its futuristic labs in Emeryville, Amyris has modified brewer's yeast so that instead of fermenting sugar to produce alcohol, diesel seeps out of every cell. This synthetic biodiesel is already used to power trucks in Brazil. Amyris's ambition is to scale up from pilot plants to industrial-scale production. When I ask chief science officer Jack Newman if they envisage their biofuel replacing natural oil, he is suspiciously coy: "I'll be excited about a billion litres."

One significant fear has less to do with the science and more to do with the shifting balance of economic power. Technology watchdogs and campaign groups such as Friends of the Earth and ETC Group initially called unrealistically for a total ban on synthetic biology, even though it lacked a workable definition. ETC has modified its stance to focus on the industrialisation of these processes, and specifically the fact that synthetic biodiesel organisms need food.

Jim Thomas, who works for ETC, passionately feels that the control of fuel production is simply shifting from one set of corporate giants to another. "Large companies are buying up bits pieces of land so that they can grow sugarcane and then they're feeding it to vats of synthetic microbes to make fuels," he tells me. "Synthetic organisms at this point should not be out there in the environment; they shouldn't be out there in industry. That's irresponsible and inappropriate."

The culture of biology is rapidly changing and scientists and the public need to keep up. Synthetic biology has the potential to generate a new industrial revolution. It is perhaps the defining technology for the 21st century and it is happening now. Without an informed public discourse, fear of this unprecedented and sometimes unsettling technology may hinder the world-changing promise it harbours.

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future," as the great physicist Niels Bohr once said. But science fiction never got close to the outlook that came with the advent of synthetic biology. It is now easy to picture a world in which your torn ligaments are replaced with ones made from spider-silk produced by goats; where medicine is served by living programmable machines that seek and destroy only the cells that cause the disease; and where you will drive a car powered by diesel grown by brewer's yeast. Welcome to the future.
Adam Rutherford is a science writer and broadcaster

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Synthetic biology and the rise of the 'spider-goats'

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Horizon presenter Adam Rutherford looks at the advances in synthetic biology and genetic engineering that have resulted in, among other things, computer-made life forms and cancer assassin cells

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co-healing: an institutional reform for caring with reimagines how communities can enact modes of care to prevent and treat multiple illnesses by positioning the microbial body - the micro-organisms that live with, on and in us - as the primary locus of care and people as co-producers of sensorial medicine. it seeks to reform the paternalistic, depersonalised format of modern westernised medicine with a collectivised and embodied practice of health.
by enacting rituals of microbial grooming, a co-healer acts as both caregiver and care receiver. articulated around tools for exchanging microbial bodies, the rituals facilitate a medical experience that is social and sensorial, enabling the safe sharing of the microbiota from the skin, lungs, mouth and vagina. the lung microbiome exchange tool was developed in collaboration with maxime-antoine tremblay, medical microbiologist at rosemont hospital and ad waterschoot, scientific glassblower at tu/e.
this project was nominated for the gijs bakker ward 2020 and received a cum laude and best thesis award at the design academy eindhoven.

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CO-HEALING: AN INSTITUTIONAL REFORM FOR CARING WITH

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By enacting rituals of microbial grooming, a co-healer acts as both caregiver and care receiver. articulated around tools for exchanging microbial bodies, the rituals facilitate a medical experience that is social and sensorial, enabling the safe sharing of the microbiota from the skin, lungs, mouth and vagina.

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Hello I found this interesting read

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Over the last year, I've been laying the foundation for a new company that aims to connect Thailand and the U.S. through the universal languages of craft and design. As we completed our first exchange trip between a visiting American designer and the heritage brass-casting village of Ban Pa Ao, I found myself thinking about how designers can foster a respectful, non-exploitive engagement when they're creating products with artisan communities rather than in factories. So I organized a roundtable discussion on the topic with three participants who have experience with these issues, and with bridging geographical or cultural divides: Peter Mabeo of Mabeo Furniture, which works with artisans and materials in Mabeo's native Botswana to produce pieces by international designers; Carla Sodi, director of the Oaxacan foundation Casa Wabi (above), where artists come to collaborate with local makers; and Tantuvi 's Arati Rao, who designs contemporary rugs that are fabricated by expert weavers in India.

Our wide-ranging conversation tapped into their experiences building deep and trust-filled relationships that are accountable to local values. In their work we are offered lessons on the fragility of these exchanges, why we need to shatter the rigid distinctions that separate 'designer' from 'craftsperson,' and how the slowing-down effect of COVID-19 could have a lasting positive impact on working processes into the future.

Ines Bressand and Patricia Urquiola for Mabeo Furniture I'd love to hear about the origin story behind each of your companies or organizations, specifically through the lens of using art and design to connect people. Peter, when you founded Mabeo Furniture, it seemed like from the beginning, you chose to work with designers from outside of your own home country. What led you to seek out these collaborations?
Peter: There are so many layers to that story, but it was really a question of feeling insulated. I was part of the first generation of children born into a country which was now independent, so we were going through a lot of transitions at that point, where we were pushed to conform to Western-style education. I understood very early on that the information was packaged and limited in a very controlled manner. So that always made me want to engage the world from outside of this insulated perspective. Design offered me an opportunity to select and choose people who - even though they were very far away from me - thought about and saw things the way I did. My broad way of thinking, without the religious and educational influences that I had to conform to, was very free. So I believed that this kind of freedom existed elsewhere. That's what led to me to seek out people who I felt were open-minded enough to see beyond imposed local contexts, who could experiment with me on the idea of universal craft and design.

Today, Mabeo is a furniture and accessories brand with over 10 years of experience producing collaborations with some of the worlds best designers and our local team of craftspeople here in Botswana. The aim of the brand is to make the work of African artisans available to the world in a considered way, to reflect certain qualities - an essential simplicity of form, an idea of purity, the conscientious use of natural materials, the dedication of the craftspeople, and the sensitivity of the collaborating designer with a reverence to the rich aesthetic heritage of Africa.
Carla, this reaching out beyond one's immediate context reminds me a bit of the story behind Casa Wabi's founding, where your brother Bosco Sodi asked the Japanese architect Tadao Ando to design your initial pavilions. Can you tell us a little more about how that first exchange evolved into what Casa Wabi is today? Casa Wabi
Carla: Everything started when Bosco, who is a Mexican artist, did a residency in Japan. He came back and said, "Everyone should have this opportunity, so I need to create something like this in Mexico." Bosco met Tadao Ando through a friend and started to have a dialogue with him, asking him to join in this huge project. It was very interesting because Tadao wanted to do some things in his own way, but there are things that you can't do in this weather, because of the humidity, for example. There was a really nice dialogue between the palapero - the expert builder of the palapas - and Tadao, who wanted a certain kind of palapa. The expert said we can't do it that way because it's going to fall down, and Tadao said, I don't care!
Arati, can you tell us about your entry point into Tantuvi? I know you came initially from a career in fashion. Was starting Tantuvi a way for you to connect more with your own Indian heritage?
So the point that I want to go to is that the whole foundation is based on creating these dialogues. It was a really beautiful thing that the very first dialogue occurred between Tadao and the construction team in the area, which may not be as sophisticated as what a Pritzker Prize-winning architect is used to working with. Later these dialogues moved into our residency program, where we bring artists from all disciplines - they could be writers, painters, sculptors, dancers, performers - to work with the local community here in Puerto Escondido. Our residents develop projects in close collaboration with the region's schools and artisan communities and have sought, among other things, to rescue and reassess local languages, verbal memory, and collective history. Through initiatives like our clay and pottery program, we aim to boost the local economy through traditional crafts, to promote the conservation of local species, and to foster the development of natural resources in the area. Tantuvi rugs

Arati: I came from working in a corporate environment where you don't know who's making your products or where they are, so I felt like Tantuvi would offer me a way to connect with my culture and to learn more about India. I always wanted to do something on my own with artisans, and India is so rich with textile traditions, so that felt like a very clear way to do it. I spent about eight months traveling, and we visited different communities of woodworkers, weavers, pottery villages, silversmiths, all kinds of craft. It was such a learning process and educational opportunity to work with artisan communities that are from regions that have been doing the same craft for 400-500 years, which is something we don't really have here in the States any longer.
Peter, I'm wondering if you can give us an example of Mabeo Furniture's collaborative process. What's the trajectory from conception to outcome?
It was really important for me to understand where I come from and what I could do to work with the communities and support them. When I started producing work two years after our initial trip, I focused on designing fabrics with one hand-loom-weaving cooperative in South India. Today we work with three different weaving communities across three different states. Our cotton rugs are produced by eighth-generation weavers in the Thar desert of Rajasthan, our hemp in a former Mughal capital, and our fabrics at the same place we began in, South India.

Peter: Design and the products we make are a medium for very broad ideas, and they cannot be confined to a particular technique, motif, or process. Sometimes it's an idea that's literally translated, other times it's a process that stems from a joke, or a serious discussion about industry or life. The designer can lead the way, with me being the intermediary, to determine what comes next as we work our way towards condensing something substantial into a focused idea. It can come from observation, impulse, or an evolution from a pre-existing idea.
When people interact with a community that's not their own, it seems crucial that they educate themselves on local sensitivities and that they develop strong relationships of accountability. That can be one way to avoid the pitfalls of those sorts of 'fly in and fly out' design initiatives. But cultivating those deep relationships isn't always easy.
For example with Garth Roberts, for the Seri Series, which is based on a pattern on the edges, the idea that came later on was to convert a typically slow carving method into something that can be applied in our production setting. This resulted from a slow process on another idea where the details were lost in translation. So out of a kind of frustration, Garth decided to try something that had an immediate effect. As with other methods we use, we achieved this through hacking a hand power tool - using the tool in a way that it was not intended - in order to apply the edge detail. Of course then there was a process of applying the magic, the proportions, in a way that a great designer can. The talent and skill of the designer, the uniqueness of the collaboration, and the ability to experiment by all resulted in a collection that exceeded expectations from the initial, unsuccessful idea. Garth Roberts for Mabeo Furniture

Arati: For us it's been about establishing a sense of trust. One thing that's helped is my own heritage, and being able to understand the culture and local values in a way that others might not. I've always tried to consider our weavers' interests. It's not, 'here's an idea, now go do it.' I want to know their feedback, what they think about the new design or a new fiber I want to try.

In India, so many communities are now working in a factory environment rather than in a cottage industry, because it's appealing for Western production purposes, even though it's often better for the artisans to work from home. But the weavers have been removed from the conversation in many areas because of agents that are go-betweens. Sometimes there will be local festivals, and they'll overlap for weeks at a time. And the weavers are not going to work at that time. Money doesn't even matter, there's no extra promises I could possibly make. So I accept that there's something great about that, that they value their time and their traditions and rituals over meeting a deadline or making my client happy. That's not part of their world and they shouldn't have to adjust for that.

Carla: What used to happen in Mexico is, as soon as you have a foundation, when you approach a community, they expect you to give them money. We had to convince them that we were going to be there long term. We believe art and culture is a human right, it's not the cherry on the cake. At the very beginning we were almost begging them. We could be bringing in the top artist in the world, and they would say 'I don't care, I don't want to work with a guerro!' (blondie in Spanish). But they started to see that this process had potential for a new type of interaction. All the projects that the residents do have to be a very long-term project that stays forever with the community. There was a fear that these artists might come and then leave quickly, like they just want to appear in a picture and won't care about us afterwards.

I always say that at the very beginning we weren't building bridges, it was more like a piece of thread. And now I say that we have built a 'crochet bridge.' If you pull one thread, it can unravel. We have to be very careful and respectful. Now, after six years, we have the privilege of the communities starting to approach us about new initiatives.
A screen by Swiss artist Julie Richoz at Casa Wabi, and Richoz working with palm fronds Right, these relationships can be very fragile. It can't be something we just quickly abandon.

Peter: The word 'community' has a connotation for me. It's a beautiful word that's been corrupted to describe a group of people as lacking. In a similar vein, the word 'craftspeople' - or having to use any word or imagery to bring exclusive focus to us as a group of people engaged in craft - carries this connotation. But I realize that when engaging, especially with the outside world, this is what forms the basis of discussion. It's also not very inspiring to first have to deal with issues outside of the process of creating, collaborating, and making, but these are categories I had to fit the work into.
Mabeo Furniture In many ways I feel like the work you're all doing is being 'interpreters' - you're connective tissue between places, cultures, and communities. What's key is being open to the dialogue, and that itself can be a struggle for some designers who are used to being in complete control of the creative process. So I love this idea of letting go, and what emerges from that can be quite rich.
In the beginning I thought, what's the best way to do this? Things have been so decimated in here in Botswana that there's very little activity by way of craft and culture that's independently active. Most activity is limited to safaris and tourism, and any extension to craft still has this basis. Do I set up a foundation to allow for a broader sense beyond commercial activity? Or a training institute of sorts? What I realized is that if I separate my primary way of making a living from what is yet to be made viable through community foundations and training, it perpetuates the problem, as though I do not see value in what's already here. So I decided to set up a commercial entity, with immense confidence, where the value itself is built on the fabric of the talent, the craft, and the beauty that was not easily apparent. A refusal to see the geographical, cultural, and psychological distance as a barrier. There was no other way other than going straight to the point by creating a design brand that would be a basis unto itself, allowing our identity to be built on the realities that are here, and that we would weave our way through the process. Outwardly we have built a structure that the outside world can identify with, but a totally different way of thinking had to be stubbornly practiced.

Arati: It's interesting because in the beginning our master weavers really didn't like our designs. They thought they were so weird and abstract compared to what they were used to. But there were two families who were excited and eager to work with us. It took time, but now they really like the challenges that come up. Our rugs aren't traditional warp and weft weaves - we have to graph it out and there's all these extra steps - but they've really gotten into the idea of problem-solving with us. It's interesting what we've learned from them through the whole process, especially ideas that the weavers have come up with on their own. We try to give them agency and the value of being more than just skilled labor. They can have ideas, and can think conceptually. It's important to make sure the community knows how much they're valued and how much we need them. Not that they just need us for monetary reasons.
I recently watched an interview with the architect Bijoy Jain where he explained that rather than refer to his local collaborators as craftsmen or artisans, he prefers the term 'thinkers,' because that better describes the fullness of what they do. These are people who are encoded with a deep knowledge. I'm curious if your practices are trying to help break down those traditional labels that separate 'craftsperson' from 'designer,' which has created a kind of hierarchy in our industry.
A great moment for us was when we created our Kulfi collection, which is a very abstract, colorful series of rugs. There was no real pattern or easy-to-follow method to weave them. The weavers were up for the challenge, and we graphed out the whole composition. They told us it would be difficult and we let them take over from the graphing stage and do what seemed most intuitive for the design on the loom. In the end it was perfect; the outcome was so wonderful that I was sincerely shocked. These are still my favorite rugs. Kulfi rugs by Tantuvi

Peter: I do like the idea of breaking down a classification or the blurring of boundaries, but distinct classifications within our work are impossible to maintain. If you come with this rigid mindset with the idea of imposing a preconceived idea, then good luck! The building process for us comes out of an initial idea of order, but with a clear understanding it's going to be a result of its own evolution. The limitations are creating the outcome. So the designer, who you were saying might be rigid, will come in with a very clear conceptual idea of what they want to do. But it's a learning process because you have to make compromises that you aren't normally accustomed to making. If you don't, the project will be conflicted or compromised.
That give and take is the beauty of the process. Carla, I'm sure this is what happens with the residents when they're working on their collaborative projects. I'm thinking for example of that really nice collaboration between the Swiss design team and the local palm artisans.
I can't prescribe and say, 'This is the position the designer will hold and this is the position the craftsperson will maintain.' By virtue of the fact that I've placed the craftsperson at the core, they are the basis of the whole company and the whole design process. Some of them started with no skill whatsoever. Even that idea of skilled and unskilled is something I question. If you can't weave, and you try and weave in a naive way, something interesting might come out. You're a free thinker. You're not constrained by your technique or lack thereof. That's what keeps things interesting for me. As the relationship is nurtured during experimentation, real order borne out of each interaction will make itself clearly apparent. The kind of order that no amount of top-down formal training, that is currently so pervasive, can create.

Carla: All of our projects are a result of the dialogue between both parties. What I mean is that we are not conquering the communities. We are talking about a country that is full of so much culture and so many traditions. So what's funny is that when the artists arrive at the beginning, they might think, 'I'm going to come and teach them how to do things,' but obviously the ones who are the actual experts are the local people. These are people with so many traditions who are ready to teach the residents. Once they arrive they realize that they both can win, and you can learn so many things without 'using' the community. That's an important rule for us. No artist can use the community as cheap labor. Any collaboration that happens is owned by the community.
There's so much generosity that can emerge when you allow yourself to engage more fully in this daily life. That's been my experience in Thailand, where we grew closer by sharing meals and doing home stays with the people we were working alongside. I fear this is lacking when brands come into a place purely to use that 'cheap labor.' Arati, you were telling me about a troubling email along these lines that you received recently.
Who am I to arrive and say that the things you are doing are wrong, or you should do it this better way? The only thing I can say is, 'maybe we could try doing it this other way together, and if you like it, we can continue.' The first word that always has to come to mind is respect. Marginalized communities are more respectful than anybody else in the world, from what I have seen in my life. They are so giving. They share food or invite you to sleep in their houses. So you have to respect their way of thinking and doing things, because they have so much wisdom in their life.
Casa Wabi
It's a lack of respect both for the community that they are taking from as well as the one that they're working in. There have been a lot of conversations lately about that line between cultural appropriation or appreciation, but I think we would all agree that we do still need people to mix and meet and share ideas. Peter, I think that's part of the beauty of your process, that it starts with an invitation.
Arati: Yeah, this person asked me if I could connect them with my weaving community because they wanted to make a Southwestern, vintage-inspired rug collection. I'm always so angry when I receive emails like this. It's flippant and careless to think, 'I want to go work in India because it's cheaper than Mexico or cheaper than Peru.' But you're taking designs that are indigenous to a specific community, and asking artisans on the other side of the world to make them, when there's no connection to the place or the icons you want to use in the design. You'll see a lot of brands who are making rugs in India that are very clearly Moroccan or North African in origin. These designs have meanings. Rather than taking away from those communities and erasing them, it would be much better if you could employ the people where the work originally comes from.

Peter: With our designers, it's really about the approach: What is your standpoint, your attitude, your mentality, your instinctive inclinations? Some designers are super open-minded while others are very strict, and will ask the craftspeople to go beyond the context of what their skills are. But what's more important is that there's space for interaction and expression. The product is just the outcome; it's secondary. Making a product is really just an excuse for us to relate, you know? A very difficult one, but an excuse nonetheless, where all aspects of material, craft, people, design, and mentalities have to be valued and revered. The reason I started Mabeo was to have the freedom to start a universal dialogue that is multi-dimensional and equally directed from multiple angles in our terms.
Ines Bressand and Garth Roberts for Mabeo Furniture This idea of seeking out difficulty as a means of breaking through is so important. I love that even in the name Casa Wabi, the second half references the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which is about embracing the beauty of imperfection. It's a reminder that we can't strive for perfection, because if we do we'll never break out of our one way of thinking.
An active process that compels one to dive in head-first makes whoever's involved, like an international designer, realize that even as open-minded as they might perceive themselves to be, they're actually quite closed-minded as circumstances to be dealt with appear. Hot topics of the day, like sustainability and the recent topic of cultural appropriation, or systemic racism in the creative industry, are engaged from a totally different place when one is actively involved. Having an opportunity to work the way we do makes it necessary to confront these issues directly in our projects. As we engage in making products, the result isn't purely logical. If it's not difficult, then it's not really building or transcending or breaking through whatever was there before. So the beautiful evolution of craft and design has to be directly proportional to a beautiful evolution of culture, of relationships, of how material is handled, right down to the simple joy of living with the functional object made. The minute hand gestures and design ideas expressed have to make minute contributions to the overall.

Carla: Nothing is perfect. At the end there is nothing perfect. Who defines what that is? There's no perfect face, or furniture, or textile, or art. So the important thing is to respect that all things are perfect in their own way.

Arati: And also I think when something is handmade, it's not a machine, and there's always going to be that individual's touch, and however they maneuver the material, that's going to affect the final piece as well. Those inconsistencies are something that I personally love and think makes something more beautiful.
Right, there are definitely logistical and technical challenges that come up with running a business. I'm curious, have there been specific issues that emerged recently due to COVID-19?
Peter: Unless perfect means getting the right amount of press coverage, and getting the right income from a product, because it seems like that's what people are preoccupied by. So that's one of the problems we face. The opposite of beauty in design is a lot of ugliness behind the scenes: the business side of it, the contracts, the disagreements. These are some of the things that I think we have an opportunity to direct in a different way somehow. We can bring a different mindset, a different context, to the so-called 'developed design centers of the world.'

Carla: At Casa Wabi we've had to change the way we're working with the community. For example, we have an artist who is making a mural from tiles of wood, so we're sending each student from the school a piece of tile. They'll draw on the wood and then the artist will put it together afterwards. We also have our mobile library program where we lend books to the local schools, of course now with some extra sanitary requirements. So the point is we just keep going. We won't stop. COVID won't be stronger than Casa Wabi!

Peter: It's funny, we've been talking about the beauty of imperfection. The client might talk about the beauty in the weaving, 'Oh I love when the line is not totally straight' or something like that. But then when it comes to the imperfections of the working process, when there's a delay in delivery, all of the sudden the imperfection is not good! So you want to enjoy the imperfection, but without enduring the cost of it, and waiting the necessary time. Arati mentioned the festival season in India. For us it's funerals; these are very important and people need to take weeks off. It's all a part of the process. You have to embrace the whole picture, then you get to also have the authenticity. I may sound a bit radical with this view, but I want to simply point out that the industry and the marketplace has to shift, to create more of a platform, especially for the craftspeople and artisans who work in factories around the world. The whole structure has to be reconsidered. Not through a new model or system but through actual engagement, the real kind, not the marketing kind.

Arati: Our culture has become so focused on instant gratification. Amazon and all of these stores have taught us that you see something online and you can have it at your door the next day. People have become mis-educated on how long things take, and the process behind it. People say they want to support artisans, but then we have these unforeseen delays. In India there was one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, so we had no goods arriving. And some of our clients could understand, but others couldn't and there was nothing we could do to explain it to them. This is a moment where I think we're all reevaluating our work and process on some level. We have been trying to switch to ocean freight, but we never could due to our projects always being urgent. This has at least given us the chance to slow down and consider our carbon footprint and how we can improve. Our first container is arriving in a couple weeks, and the wait wasn't so bad. It feels nice to slow things down a bit and do better. As Peter said so well, 'You have to embrace the whole picture.'

Peter: This idea of buying something on Amazon and the instant gratification - what's helpful about the current moment is that people have come to understand that things cannot always be as we expect, and the world has become more conscientious in some senses. Even the tone of our logistics companies has totally changed. Now people are becoming more fluid and questioning things, which leaves us some space to have more of a voice. That space to question the system was previously not open to us, because we were the ones who were trying to fit in, even to the corrupted parts of it. Now, more is open to be put on the table. Whether or not this continues on a wide scale, we will continue, as there are pockets in the world who find our approach useful.
This sense of urgency that you describe isn't always conducive to making the right decisions. For me there was a real depression that first set in during the lockdown, because we were in the middle of starting a new company in Thailand. But later I realized that this was an opportunity to think about how we do this right. If it's something that really matters, it doesn't have to happen today. That pressure is something we put on ourselves.
Carla: I totally agree. Covid has made us ask, do we question ourselves enough? We used to live life at a pace that was always running. We need things fast, now, and beautiful! It's made us realize that there are people around the world whose issues are bigger than ours. It has given us the opportunity to realize that we don't have a superpower. We don't have everything under control. And this time during confinement, speaking personally, it really gave me the opportunity to rethink things: with Casa Wabi, my own life, my family, and the environment. There was something that an artist who worked at the foundation said that I love: 'Usually we're the hunters, and on this occasion there is a very small thing, something we're unable to see, that is hunting us.' So it's given us this new relationship and a way to see our standing in the world. Tantuvi
In my mind, people like you guys who are operating in these in-between spaces and baking it into your process to challenge our accepted way of thinking, that's what we need more of. It could be challenging your residents, or the designers you work with, or educating your clients - that's how we can grow into a new future. So just to wrap up, what's next, what are the future innovations or initiatives for Tantuvi, Mabeo, and Casa Wabi?
Peter: For me that pressure that you're talking about, it's that time base that is so strict, that demands from us all the time. And as much as I've been indoctrinated into it, that's not part of my psyche. You know people used to joke around and say in a demeaning way, 'There's no hurry in Africa.' They would say that in the worst possible way. But now all the sudden there's no hurry anywhere. So maybe there's something that you can learn from us, you know? It doesn't make sense to me that a piece that you are going to buy, that is going to give you so much pleasure, should also be the cause of so much pain. How can the beauty transcend the physical object itself? You want the beauty to be all the way from the beginning to the end of the process. Respect means demanding from people to go beyond everything they know. It's not easy because you're asking them to totally change the way they think. But COVID has brought it about fast, and it's given me a lot more self confidence to speak about these things.

Arati: The communities that we work with are very proud, but during COVID some situations came to our attention that made us realize that they do need more support than we were giving them previously. So we recently came out with a village fund to create more profit-sharing and focus more on what they need in the villages. And although I don't know when I'll be able to travel to India next, I know that I want to start working with the artisans more hands-on in the sense of having them design their own work. I would love to be able to sell those pieces, and have it be marketed as their own ideas. They've already done a couple designs in the past for me just for fun, and they're so charming. I'd love to have them take on this role as more of a designer and be able to express their ideas creatively besides just weaving. I think this would give them more respect, agency, and a deeper sense of pride; COVID has brought on a real fear of instability so many are worried about the future of weaving. This would also be a great way to contribute to the village fund, as we would pay the weavers for the rugs and give back all profits from the sales to the community to support their needs.

Peter: We always have new collections in the works, that's what we're constantly working on. The idea is to try and grow it to the point where there is independence. Ultimately what we're looking for is equitable participation of everyone concerned. As you said, we need to be the transitional players. But ultimately I just want to live in a way where I don't even have to think about these things. My idea is to grow it and make it strong structurally, so that we have more room to play. By playing I mean have the craftspeople take more of a creative and leadership role. And even redefining what it means to be a brand in our region. We've just moved out of the city to a rural area where we'll have our new workshop, and maybe even have a small residency for the visiting designers. I think for all of us, we need to become as self-sufficient as possible.
Well it sounds amazing and I hope to come visit someday!
Carla: For us, our next big step is to start a new carpentry program. We want the kids to start acknowledging wood and to respect it in a new way. For teenagers in the area it could be a hobby, or even create the possibility of starting a new career path. We also have plans to bring Japanese carpenters to come and work with the local carpenters in the area for a year, as well as to bring international designers to collaborate with them. But one of the things that COVID taught us here at Casa Wabi is the importance of having a hobby and a way to release your stress. So our next big step is to start with this new carpentry pavilion.

Carla: Yes, I hope that the next time we all meet up it won't be on Zoom, but will be in Casa Wabi having a nice glass of wine!

Arati: Hopefully we'll be able to travel internationally again next year!

Peter: I just wanted to say that you all do amazing work, and it's been a privilege to have this conversation. Casa Wabi

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A Round Table on the Ethics of Working With Artisans, and How to Respectfully Bridge Cultural and Geographic Divides - Sight Unseen

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Over the last year, I've been laying the foundation for a new company that aims to connect Thailand and the U.S. through the universal languages of craft and design.

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Recostruction of images from humain brain activity 

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Recostruction of images from humain brain activity 

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An ongoing project from 10 years ago is showing some promising advancements! Deep neural networks (DNNs) have recently been applied successfully to brain decoding and image reconstruction from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activity.  (https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006633)
A picture of what it looks like now is below
Here is the video nicely explaining their research - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrO1v7-KcXs

It is so rough for now as they are looking for ways to teach the algorithm without having to store tons and tons of images in its memory. But maybe one day they will succeed and we can literally see what others have on their minds.

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A timber shortage in France has forced prices up as architects struggle to comply with a new environmental law that requires public buildings to be 50 per cent wood.

French architects are reporting price rises of up to 50 per cent since the start of the year.

"The prices are going up every week," said Christophe Lemoal of Paris studio Lemoal-Lemoal. "We have two construction projects where the wood company can't give us any date for the delivery because they can't find the supply."

Michel Hardoin of Bordeaux architect A6A said shortages were affecting "all project scales from the smallest to the largest."

He added: "It mainly concerns structural timber, both posts and beams or panels."

Last year, France announced a new law requiring half of the materials used to construct public buildings to be wood or other natural substances. The law is part of the country's drive to become carbon neutral by 2050.

"At the moment in France there is a lot of interest in building in wood because the new law that is being implemented obliges all the buildings to respect a certain carbon footprint," said Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh.

Despite being one of the forested countries in Europe, with over 30 per cent of its land covered in trees, the country's timber products industry is under-developed. This means architects have to source wood from other countries.

"We do have a lot of wood in France but we don't have enough industries that transform the wood into construction materials," said Ghotmeh.

The rush for timber in France has coincided with a worldwide slowdown of production due to the coronavirus pandemic. On top of this, French oak is highly prized in China, which buys lumber at prices that are too high for local users.

In addition, global timber supply chains are still reeling from tariffs imposed in 2018 by former US president Donald Trump on imports of Canadian timber.

This caused softwood lumber prices to triple in the US last year, leading American specifiers to order wood from other countries, including key European suppliers such as Sweden and Finland.

Architects around the world are reporting difficulty sourcing timber as well as other materials including steel, cement and aggregates as construction activity bounces back after the pandemic and supply chains struggle to resume production levels.

But the timber shortage in France is particularly acute due to the combination of new regulations and a surge in projects ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics being held in Paris.

Ghotmeh said that several of her projects have been affected by the timber shortage, including a housing project for the Olympic village that will house athletes at the games.

VenhoevenCS and Ateliers 2/3/4/ reveal timber aquatic centre for Paris 2024 Olympics

"What we're doing is either we're adapting the projects or putting more budget into the projects to be able to let them go ahead and be constructed," she said.

"We're trying to find other bio-sourced materials and trying to find solutions to lower our carbon footprint by using mixed materials," she added. "For example, at one of our projects in the south of France we're using an optimised wood composite structure."

Architects are being forced to innovate, she added, exploring new materials such as low-carbon concrete.

Ghotmeh said the timber shortage highlighted the "absurdity of our world economy" whereby timber grown in France is exported to China and America, leaving local architects with a shortfall.

"This is quite a disaster for France because we need to construct and work in wood," she said. "If we want to move closer to our goals of reducing our carbon footprint we have to use local materials and develop local industries."

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French architects face wood shortage with "prices going up every week"

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A timber shortage in France has forced prices up as architects struggle to comply with a new environmental law that requires public buildings to be 50 per cent wood. French architects are reporting price rises of up to 50 per cent since the start of the year.

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The images in her Camo - short for camouflage - series create an optical illusion where the person in the photograph almost disappears yet it is impossible to ignore her.

The young Kenyan's playful work has the feel of a glossy high-fashion magazine but also has a deeper meaning.

"I love fashion photography, I could do that all day, but I realised it needs to be fashion photography that is a reflection of who I am and my background," she tells the BBC. "That is how the Camo series came about."

The funky fabrics, elaborate hairstyles and improvised eyewear are an attractive and witty celebration of the 30-year-old's culture.

But there is also a critique.

Muriu says the series is "a little bit of a personal reflection on how I felt I can disappear into the background of my culture.

"And my experience as a commercial female photographer was realising that very quickly - because of the cultural context - I can be dismissed and disappear."

She was self-taught, schooled, in her words, at "the university of YouTube", but her father provided the initial impetus.

Raising a family of four daughters and no sons he was keen to buck the patriarchal assumptions, Muriu says.

He taught them practical skills like how to change the tyre on a car, how to barbecue and, most significantly, how to use a camera.

And when it came to choosing a career she was encouraged to follow her passion for photography. For her it was the "perfect blend of science and art".

Inspired by the images she saw in her sister's Vogue magazine collection, Muriu went into commercial photography, which in Kenya is male-dominated.

"I'm small, I look very young and so oftentimes the biggest thing I would experience is people dismissing me. I would walk on to set and people would talk to my assistant who was male, assuming he was the photographer rather than me.

"I had to learn to be brave and bold and say: 'Hi, I'm in charge.'"

As she was developing her craft, Muriu was helped by a group of photographers who were breaking new ground in the country as homegrown talent. She was encouraged by one of them, Osborne Macharia, to find her own creative project away from the commercial work.

This led to the birth of Camo in 2015.

"Initially I was exploring myself as a creative," she says. But even the early work has what she calls "trademark Thandiwe" - meaning that "everything is very bold, almost in a quirky way".

"I think with the earlier images it was all about celebrating these beautiful fabrics and this vibrant culture that I live in and see every day."

She very deliberately chose a dark-skinned model to challenge what she says is a culture of bleaching in Kenya, where some see lighter complexions as more beautiful.

The first model she used also had a gap in her teeth, which in her Kikuyu culture, she says, "is viewed as a symbol of beauty". And she had to have natural hair.

Muriu wanted a 10-year-old Kenyan girl to see the pictures and be able to say: "That's me."

Looking at the images it is obvious that constructing them is a meticulous process.

It starts with choosing the fabric, which Muriu describes as one of the hardest but most enjoyable parts.

Spending hours in Nairobi's fabric shops, she sifts through floor-to-ceiling piles of cloth imported from across the continent.

She is looking for "something that's really loud with an almost psychedelic quality, as if the fabrics are alive and moving and confusing the eye". It is recognisably African but not necessarily the traditional designs.

"We're in this new Africa, this new generation, where we love our prints but we're not going to wear them in traditional ways."

Another key stage is the hair. As the project developed, Muriu became more intentional about her exploration of African beauty.

She researches historical and traditional hairstyles. Then with the help of a stylist gives them a "modern, funky twist but they are based on hair that our ancestors actually used to wear", she says.

"It became more than just looking at beauty. It was about asking: 'What are some of the symbols of beauty that we have lost?'"

The eyewear, made from soft drinks cans, plastic tea strainers, clothes pegs, bottle brushes and other objects represent the innovative way that many everyday things in Kenya are repurposed for other uses, Muriu says.

They also add to the humour of the images which the photographer wants to make visually stimulating and enjoyable, while at the same time tackling some very profound issues.

And the series is not over.

"I will always do more. A lifetime challenge would be to try and catalogue all of them and become the first modern archive of our hair and our fabric. Why not?"

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Thandiwe Muriu: Standing out in camouflage

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The images in her Camo - short for camouflage - series create an optical illusion where the person in the photograph almost disappears yet it is impossible to ignore her. The young Kenyan's playful work has the feel of a glossy high-fashion magazine but also has a deeper meaning.

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Styrofoam alternative made by "programming fungi" 

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Styrofoam alternative made by "programming fungi" 

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Not the most recent development, but I have not heard about it before!
Packaging, vegan bacon and soft padding materials - all from a mushroom.

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As the leader in mycelium fermentation, we harness the power of fungi to produce proteins and leather-like textiles that are good for the planet. Our unique approach leverages over 3 billion pounds of existing mushroom farming infrastructure, enabling rapid production of high-quality proteins and materials - cultivating a better future for Spaceship Earth.

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Ecovative - Mycelium Technology | Sustainable & Biodegradable Material

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As the leader in mycelium fermentation, we harness the power of fungi to produce proteins and leather-like textiles that are good for the planet. Our unique approach leverages over 3 billion pounds of existing mushroom farming infrastructure, enabling rapid production of high-quality proteins and materials - cultivating a better future for Spaceship Earth.

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Architecture studio Wright & Wright has completed a renovation and extension of the 18th-century Museum of the Home in London, UK.

The Museum of the Home, formerly known as the Geffrye Museum, is housed within Grade-1 listed almshouses built in Hackney, east London, in 1714.

They were transformed into a museum in 1914 after being bought by the city council.

Wright & Wright was asked to create more public and exhibition spaces for the museum, while also reversing detrimental alterations made to it in the 20th century.

The studio achieved this by opening up the museum's lower ground level, reinstating its first floor and adding two garden pavilions.

"The buildings are beautiful but had been destabilised by the original alterations, when the staircases, internal partitions and first floors were taken out, with openings cut through party walls on the lower ground floor in just the wrong place," explained the studio's partner Clare Wright.

"The original alterations meant that only one of the three floors was being fully used," she told Dezeen.

The biggest change that Wright & Wright made to the museum was the opening up of the lower ground floor, which involved excavating the site by one metre.

As well as providing public access to this space for the first time in the building's history as a museum, this also created 80 per cent more exhibition space for the museum's collections, which span 400 years.

Original details throughout the lower ground were preserved wherever possible.

"We saw that if we dug down just a metre in the lower ground floor, we could provide even more gallery space than the client asked for in their brief," Wright said.

"We kept whatever original features we found - such as the curves of the brickwork on the lower floor, that was for lighting a fire and heating a copper pan for washing clothes," she added.

The museum's first floor was also reinstated and its roof space opened up, creating room for a new library, archive and study with views of the museum's gardens.

To ensure accessibility throughout the Museum of the Home, Wright & Wright made sure each space has level access and optimal lighting.

This forms part of a wider restructure of the museum's circulation, for which Wright & Wright has also introduced two lifts and more flexible entry and exit points.

One entrance has been introduced directly beside the adjacent Hoxton Overground Station in a bid to help increase footfall.

Other external changes to the Museum of the Home include the introduction of the two new multi-purpose learning and event pavilions on either side of the museum.

The pavilions are discreetly placed and designed to ensure they do not detract from the original buildings. One is clad in brick and the other larch, each with a grey-black colouration.

"We placed [the pavilions] carefully so they sit beyond the ends of the central range of the almshouses and are attached but visually separate," said Wright.

Collection project by the Museum of the Home will document domestic life under lockdown

A green roof was added to one pavilion to help enhance biodiversity across the site.

This green roof is part of the wider landscape design for the museum, in which the existing gardens have been replanted to showcase changes and trends in urban gardening since the 17th century.

Wright & Wright's overhaul is complete with a new cafe and large reception area that contains toilets, cloakrooms and lunchrooms for visiting school groups.

The cafe, housed in a former Victorian pub next to the site, has a light-filled dining area and terrace that overlooks the new station-side entrance.

Wright & Wright is an architecture studio based in London that was founded by Sandy and Clare Wright in 1994. It was appointed for the Museum of the Home overhaul in 2014.

Elsewhere, the studio is currently developing the new home for the Lambeth Palace Library - one of the UK's oldest libraries that has had a publicly accessible collection since 1610.

Photography is by Hufton+Crow unless stated.
Project credits:
Architects: Wright & Wright Architects
Construction: Quinn London Ltd
Exhibition design: ZMMA
Exhibition fit-out: Elmwood Projects
Structural engineering: Alan Baxter
Environmental and services engineering: Max Fordham
Quantity surveying and project management: Gardiner & Theobald
Living rooftop design: Dusty Gedge
Brand and wayfinding: Dn&co

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Wright & Wright completes overhaul of Museum of the Home in London

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Architecture studio Wright & Wright has completed a renovation and extension of the 18th-century Museum of the Home in London, UK. The Museum of the Home, formerly known as the Geffrye Museum, is housed within Grade-1 listed almshouses built in Hackney, east London, in 1714.

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Forest and Whale designs edible Reuse food containers

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Design studio Forest and Whale has created Reuse, a container for takeaways made from packaging that can be eaten or composted once the food is finished. The Singapore-based studio, founded by Gustavo Maggio and Wendy Chua, created the vessel in an attempt to help cut down on the usage of single-use plastic.

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f you happen to count yourself among those appalled by the seemingly unstoppable rise of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, over the past few months, you might be forgiven a little schadenfreude at the recent news that a dispute has broken out over the ownership of Mars House, a digital file that sold in March for $512,000 (£360,000).

Let's be clear what's been purchased here. Mars House itself is nothing more than a string of ones and zeroes residing on a server somewhere. But the NFT isn't even that string. All it is is another such string pointing to that one, certifying that it is the only copy of that precise sequence of ones and zeroes in existence. Put aside, if you can, the obscenity of a purely virtual dwelling selling for half a million dollars. The dispute over Mars House makes plain what should have been obvious all along: NFTs aren't even capable of guaranteeing the one thing their value is supposedly predicated on, ownership of a unique digital asset.

NFTs are one of the signature fads of this deeply odd late-pandemic moment. At the centre of all the buzz surrounding them is something exceedingly curious: a digital token, generated using a cryptographic protocol of the same sort that underwrites currencies such as bitcoin, certifying the uniqueness of some image or other digital file. Again, what's being bought and sold on the NFT market isn't the artwork itself, just a kind of pointer to it, with the buyer's name inscribed upon it.

An artwork need have no other merit - neither historical resonance nor social relevance nor aesthetic refinement nor even skill in execution - to be valued in this way. You can't do anything with Mars House, other than own it. What is valuable about the string of digits that makes up the token is that you as purchaser are the sole possessor of it. And, as the recent legal contretemps makes clear, even that most basic assertion rests on shifting sands. All of which makes Mars House, like all NFTs, an infinite zero, and a perfect representation of the meaningless churn so much of our economy is based on.

In part, this is because NFTs, as the ultimate in artificial scarcity, solve a non-problem, an issue nobody actually had. The NFT frenzy marks the convergence of the art world and the disturbingly Ponzi-like dynamics of cryptocurrency trading, where enthusiasts speak openly of their contempt for " bagholders", the last suckers to have bought in big before the market finally comes to its senses; the whole thing stinks of tulips. This is evidently no problem for an art market that long ago gave up the pretence that artworks might hold a critical mirror up to the rest of society, or are anything other than a particular, specialised asset class.

But ultimately, this isn't why it's so depressing to see artists rushing to prop up the NFT market. The real problem has to do with a presently inescapable feature of the way NFTs work. Each transaction on the Ethereum blockchain, on which most NFTs are currently recorded, involves a set of calculations called proof-of-work. Those calculations are intentionally designed to be energy-intensive. The furious churn of all the processors involved in validating proof-of-work globally burns vertiginous amounts of electricity, at significant environmental cost. The New York Times recently quoted a French artist taken aback to learn that their "release of six crypto-artworks consumed in 10 seconds more electricity than [their] entire studio over the past two years." Similarly, Elon Musk's recent large-scale transactions in proof-of-work-based Bitcoin released more carbon into the atmosphere in just a few days than the amount saved, in principle, by all the Teslas ever sold.

Artists peddling their work as NFTs may or may not care about this brutal calculus. But it makes particular nonsense of art that claims to spur the viewer to some kind of ecological consciousness. Consider, for example, John Gerrard's recent announcement of an NFT for his video piece Western Flag - according to Gerrard an artwork that, in "flying the flag of our own self-destruction", asks us "to consider our role in the warming of the planet and simultaneous desertification of once fertile lands". By choosing to release a Western Flag NFT, though, it's as if Gerrard and his gallerists have scrawled this statement across the land in letters of crude oil a mile from tip to tip, and then set them on fire ... a thousand times over.

The promoters of Gerrard's NFT promised that its environmental impact would be carefully offset, the sale rendered carbon-negative by investment in something called regenerate.farm, "a cryptofund for climate and soil". But this is more than a little fatuous. Even assuming that all the claims regarding offsets prove to be true, Gerrard's announcement created buzz, credibility and, crucially, validation - and therefore underwrote the market for other NFTs, the overwhelming majority of which were not offset or buffered, either by regenerate.farm or in any other way. Indulging in this kind of sophistry feels like reckless disregard for the planet, and depraved indifference to the damage being caused.

Some 12 years after bitcoin's launch, and six after Ethereum's debut as a blockchain that could be programmedin a way that permits NFTs to be issued, the technology's many promised and radical innovations have yet to arrive. All that has actually come to pass is a transfer of power from the institutions of global finance to even sketchier and less accountable actors, while the rest of us are saddled with an environmental impact nobody can afford to bear. One can't help but wonder if the proud new owner of Western Flag will think it was all worth it on some day, not so very far from now, when the coastal cities have drowned, the brackish water that comes from the tap needs to be boiled before it is safe to drink and climate refugees huddle in tent cities stretching to the horizon.

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Non-fungible tokens aren't a harmless digital fad - they're a disaster for our planet | Adam Greenfield

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f you happen to count yourself among those appalled by the seemingly unstoppable rise of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, over the past few months, you might be forgiven a little schadenfreude at the recent news that a dispute has broken out over the ownership of Mars House, a digital file that sold in March for $512,000 (£360,000).

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Forust: Building a greener future through 3D printed wood

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When Mike Cherman started his own streetwear label in 2016, he wanted its name to acknowledge his roots in New York City, where he grew up. His first thought was to call it Canal Street Market, after the energetic downtown boulevard known to some for vendors selling counterfeit luxury goods, a place he had visited many times with his family during his childhood. That name, however, was taken. So, in a split-second decision that would prove fateful, he named his upstart business Chinatown Market, shifting the focus to the ethnic enclave through which Canal Street runs.

Since then, Chinatown Market has grown stupendously by selling hoodies, T-shirts, sweatpants emblazoned with bold, graphic prints like its signature, a demented yellow smiley-face. Its clothing is affordable, youthful, and widely available at retailers like Urban Outfitters and Zumiez. In an age of unprecedented collaboration, it has collaborated unusually widely: partners included The Grateful Dead, Lacoste, the NBA, and Mike Tyson. Two years ago, at ComplexCon, I saw Cherman walking the floor with a small gaggle of young men tailing behind him, like some hypebeast Pied Piper. Cherman, who is white, is an affable and well-liked figure in the streetwear community. While his brand isn't spoken about in the same reverent tones as Supreme, his irreverent designs-often mimicking or remixing popular high-end motifs-appealed to customers while also delivering a winking commentary on fashion's ongoing copying game.

But things changed earlier this year, when Chinatown Market-specifically its name-became a flashpoint in a larger discussion about streetwear, race, and cultural appropriation. Throughout 2020 and into this year, growing violence aimed toward the Asian American community put the brand's name in a markedly different lens, as insensitive or exploitative. Cherman was recast as a white man taking ownership of a space that was not his to claim. After a string of shootings in Atlanta left six Asian women dead, what was a quiet rumble grew into a roar; the brand's Instagram posts condemning Asian hate and announcing a fundraising T-shirt were deemed insufficient. An online petition to change the name quickly garnered the signatures of well-known fashion industry stalwarts like designer Phillip Lim, Humberto Leon of Kenzo and Opening Ceremony, and the influencer Bryanboy. Diet Prada, the social media industry watchdog amplified the outcry, creating a snowball effect of public awareness.

On March 29th, less than a month after the original petition was posted, Chinatown Market and Cherman posted an update to their respective Instagram feeds. "The Asian American community is rightfully demanding all of us think and act more honestly," it read. "We should have done this sooner but it is never too late to do the right thing. Today, we are announcing that we are changing our name. We are working with our partners and retailers to donate the proceeds from existing products and work to fund non-profits working with the AAPI community."

"The reality is," Cherman told GQ in April, "after listening to people in our community, we realized this isn't our name to have."

The controversy surrounding Chinatown Market typifies the growing pains that the streetwear industry faces as it expands from an insular, insurgent subculture within the fashion world to its dominating force. But it's also a lens through which to view the massive shifts in the zeitgeist that have occurred in a very short time, especially regarding race. It raises thorny questions, none of which have easy, clear-cut answers: Do clothing brands owe their customers more than great products? Should fashion companies be advocates for social causes? Must they stand for something beyond profits? What is the line between appropriation and appreciation? Who owns a name? Or, for that matter, a neighborhood?

"Early on, we said, We're not taking from Chinese culture," Cherman said. "But that was ignoring the name itself. And through conversations we had over time, we had to make sure we weren't being ignorant of that. You know, just the name itself was confusing enough to create an issue. I think, to be able to acknowledge that and take a step back and figure out how we can do this right, is the best approach."

Part of the problem is, of course, one of perception. Chinatown Market branded itself as an irreverent label poking fun at the status quo-a David throwing rocks at Goliath. But in its short existence, the world has undergone a huge change, leaving many brands-not just Chinatown Market-to play catch-up. And over that same span, Chinatown Market's rapid growth has turned it from an underdog to a power player, which made the choice of name look exploitative.

I reached out to Julian Han Bush, who started the Change.org petition. Bush, who works in tech, had his first brush with activism last year, when a close childhood friend and his grandparents were attacked in New York over the summer; Bush started a GoFundMe for him and raised $15,000. Earlier this year, as #StopAsianHate hashtags flooded his social media feeds, Bush noticed that Chinatown Market had yet to make any sort of statement, which rubbed him the wrong way. "Streetwear brands have a responsibility to be honest and sensitive," he told me. "Don't infantilize your customer, and know that your audience is bigger than their consumer. I may not own something from Chinatown Market, but I see their brand."

So he reached out-in Instagram comments, through DMs, going as far as finding Cherman's information on LinkedIn and contacting him directly via email and phone. Bush says he received no response.

Bush said he reached out to other Asian Americans in the streetwear community to help spread the word, but was often ignored. The reasons for that are complex. No culture is a monolith, so some may simply not find the name offensive (take for example streetwear designer Jeff Staple who, in a 2018 podcast for Hypebeast said, "I'm Chinese and it doesn't bother me at all."). Others, meanwhile, may have had their relationships with Cherman in mind. For what it's worth, I reached out to a handful of high-profile Asian Americans in the streetwear community who declined to speak with me or didn't respond to my requests.

But Bush's petition made waves nonetheless, racking up more than 3,000 signatures. It started a conversation. Jian Deleon, a former GQ editor who is now the head of men's fashion and editorial at Nordstrom, compared the situation to the one involving his hometown Washington Football Team, which started using its new name last year. "It took decades of deconstructive conversation for people to understand why the change was necessary and the reasons why it was offensive in the first place," he said.

The main argument made by Chinatown Market's critics was that Cherman hadn't thought hard enough about the name in the first place. "He's a white man, so, naturally he's privileged," says Vicki Ho, who works in social media and founded the Asian culture and fashion magazine Banana Mag. "It's likely he didn't think about his own impact. But now that you know, do better. And he has the ability to influence others to do better too."

"If you're going to put a design on a shirt, and it takes a piece of a different community, then that will open up a dialogue whether you mean to or not," she added. "If you don't want to have that conversation, don't have that graphic on your T-shirt."

Cherman says he'll announce the new brand name later this summer, and that all proceeds from goods that have Chinatown Market branding will be donated to nonprofits that benefit the AAPI community. (The company recently posted an update on its renaming, thanking its partners in that community, while its Instagram page-@chinatownmarket-continues to promote Chinatown Market-branded products.) "Because to give respect, and to leave legacy behind the right way, we need to actually make sure that we're affecting the community in the right way," he said. "Not just walking away, saying, 'Cool, we changed the name and nothing's wrong.' We know that."

This represents a marked shift. Once it was enough for brands to make cool clothes and, ideally, a profit. Today's young consumers, however, want the brands they buy from to align with their political and social beliefs. Some companies, like Patagonia, bake this sort of activism into their core philosophy. But others, especially streetwear brands, are suddenly expected to have a political stance, which can be difficult to forge as an afterthought.

"The popularity of Chinatown Market was never about the name, it was about the signature style and voice the brand had, and the self-aware, tongue-in-cheek way they talk about themselves and what they make," Deleon said. "Mike could have called it Bootleg Market or Los Angeles Apparel Brand from the start and I don't think it would have been any less successful. I think the name change is a step in the right direction, but their complicated history with their previous name now means they have to hold themselves accountable to the work they've started doing, and have pledged to continue to do."

Bush is, of course, happy that Cherman is changing the name-it was the explicit request of his campaign-but when I asked him if he was happy with the outcome, he was conflicted. "I don't feel great about how it ended," he said. "I didn't want to tear the brand down. It's funny: they did everything I asked for, they're changing their name, they're donating the proceeds to Chinatown. But I'm not happy with how it turned out."

In response to criticism of the slow speed with which he responded, Cherman said there were conversations happening behind-the-scenes that were nuanced and difficult-he wanted to speak to his employees to hear their thoughts, and anyway, changing your brand name isn't a snap-your-fingers sort of decision. After all, that sort of quickfire response had led him here in the first place.

In today's world where fashion controversies operate at the breakneck speed of social media, public debacles like this can obscure more nuanced daily actions that take place offstage. "I've known Mike Cherman for a while on a personal level," said Deleon. "I know the ways in which he's helped give kids who look like me opportunities behind the scenes and also on social media, and how he's also been a low-key figure whose access to manufacturing and willingness to help people out through making lines for aspiring brand owners."

"He's having the right conversations," he continued. "And now it's about the actions that will result from them."

While the situation is on its way toward resolution, it's hard to point to a real winner or loser. Bush got what he wanted, but doesn't feel vindicated. Cherman admits that the original name was misguided and vows to change it, but he's no villain. Even many of the comments on the Chinatown Market post announcing its name change include many commenters-some of them members of the Asian community-criticize the decision.

But for now, Mike Cherman is taking his first steps toward whatever comes after Chinatown Market, and the rest of the streetwear scene is no doubt watching.

"It's more than just the name," says Ho, of Banana Magazine. "It's bigger than him at this point. A lot of eyes are on him at that point. And that's an opportunity, really, to step up and do better."

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Who Owns a Name? How Controversial Streetwear Brand Chinatown Market Was Forced to Change Theirs

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When Mike Cherman started his own streetwear label in 2016, he wanted its name to acknowledge his roots in New York City, where he grew up. His first thought was to call it Canal Street Market, after the energetic downtown boulevard known to some for vendors selling counterfeit luxury goods, a place he had visited many times with his family during his childhood.

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You'd think the virtual realms of Animal Crossing and League of Legends would be the last place to find the likes of Louis Vuitton, Valentino or Marc Jacobs. Yet there they are. Fashion houses traditionally catering to an elite minority are now donning their collections on millions of in-game avatars. Seemingly an odd pairing, high fashion's migration to gaming is in fact a well-played move that will open them up to a whole new world of shoppers.

Roblox is an online gaming platform where users can immerse themselves in any of the 18 million virtual worlds created by independent developers. In the first quarter of 2021, it had 42.1 million daily active users spanning 180 countries. Contrary to popular misconceptions, 44% of its base was female.

And in Roblox's many worlds, players can buy an array of items from an Avatar Shop using the game's currency - a Robux. It's in this space that Italian fashion house Gucci decided to mark its 100-year anniversary.

It created the Gucci Garden, a game made up of various themed rooms as envisioned by the brand's creative director Alessandro Michele. As visitors wandered the rooms, they could purchase exclusive virtual Gucci items for their avatars to wear. One item proved particularly popular - the limited-edition virtual Dionysus Bag with Bee, which Gucci was selling to gamers for an original price of 475 Robux (equivalent to $6). But, just as in the real word, users can re-sell the digital wears if the demand is high. And this bag was, leading one user to sell it on for over $4,100 - $800 more than the real thing.

The hype around high fashion brands on Roblox is not restricted to Gucci, with Givenchy and Stella McCartney also recently rolling out collections for the platform.

"Users will dress their avatars up for virtual events or to show off their latest virtual fashion items, and these sorts of collaborations prove immensely popular," says Christina Wootton, vice-president of of brand partnerships at Roblox.

"People's individual avatars go with them wherever they go on the platform, creating an identity recognizable by friends, and we really see how much community members love to express themselves in this way. Branded experiences can feature limited-edition virtual items or collectibles to buy or earn through experiences, and within just a few days there will be millions of people sporting these new items on the platform and showing them off to their friends or wearing them to special events."

We Are Pi, a global digital agency, conducted research that found that young people now see these virtual worlds as an important space in shaping their identity and are experimenting with different brands to find their favorites, which is inherently carried over into in the real world.

"The potential for fashion brands to make money within these emerging gaming worlds and metaverses is enormous," says the agency's head of strategy Mark Lester. "Fortnite has already created a multi-billion dollar industry in selling skins, and this is just the beginning."

The idea that gamers will pay a lot of money for 'skins' - another word for what a digital avatar wears - was something gaming execs have been slow to take seriously. In 2019, a Scandinavian fashion company called Carlings was pitched an idea by Vice's creative agency Virtue to create a collection of virtual skins for games. The company's chief exec called it "the strangest meeting of my life".

Fast forward a couple of years, and chief executive officers and chief marketing officers are finally paying attention to this burgeoning market - estimated to be worth $152bn. Louis Vuitton has launched a skins collection for Riot Games's League of Legends, while Marc Jacobs, Valentino and Anna Sui have created exclusive collections for Animal Crossing.

"62% of UK adults played games during the pandemic. In reality, we should be long past the idea of gamers as some niche subsegment of society. Gaming has gotten so big that 'gamers' are pretty much everyone," adds Lester.

"Chief marketing officers don't always live this reality and there has been a generation gap in understanding gaming. But we are finally starting to turn a corner. Chief marketers are realizing that gamers aren't some separate new group of people they need to target. Rather, gaming is an essential part of the leisure time of the people that already buy their products."

Roblox's Wootton says that some brands are now creating metaverse-focused marketing teams, much like the digital and social teams that have evolved over the last decade.

Some early adopters of gaming have realised that rules of this new marketplace will be written by the game developers. Just like Apple controls its app store and takes a massive cut of all its revenues, game developers may decide to charge fashion brands a significant fee for selling on their platforms. And so some have opted to eschew partnering with gaming platforms altogether and instead experimented with building their own virtual worlds that they own outright.

Earlier this year Burberry launched B-Bounce, an online game that can be played on the brand's website or on a large screen installed at Burberry's flagship store on London's Regent Street.

The game's protagonist - a deer - can be dressed in a variety of monogrammed outfits as it bounces around different worlds where players try to clock up as many 'meters jumped' as they can.

Elsewhere, Hermès decided to deliver its own take on the traditional French lawn game of horseshoe pitching. The game saw players try to win points by throwing horseshoes as close as possible to a stake in a variety of weird and wonderful environments, which culminated in a final throw in a digital version of its famed headquarters on Rue Du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

Fabien Le Roux - head of strategic planning at BETC Etoile Rouge - says we will see more brands like Burberry and Hermes trying to bring physical and virtual worlds together.

"There will certainly be more secondary features that will become mainstream, such as livestream shopping, and that will become a part of every brand's business and communications ecosystem, even luxury brands," he says. "There is no secret: if people enjoy spending time in a place, brands will spend some time there as well."

For Roblox, it is preparing for a wave of luxury brands to launch their collections on its platform. His advice for any marketer ready to jump into the world of gaming is to take time to understand the community.

"It has to be authentic and part of what the community is already experiencing on the platform together with their social circles. Brands coming on to the platform should enhance our community's shared experiences, without interrupting what they are doing," Wootton says.

"We recommend brands to come up with native, immersive ways of experiencing their products or touchpoints. For example, users could come across branded items from the latest fashion show as they browse our Avatar marketplace, or take a virtual train ride to the movie scene so they can be part of it during the premiere -such experiences will feel natural. In April 2021, our community spent over 3.2bn hours on the platform, and there are many ways to make their time on the platform even more exciting and fun, and that's what we are focusing on with brand partners."
For more on what the gaming sector's pandemic-propelled popularity means for marketers, head to The Drum's gaming hub.

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'The potential is enormous': why high fashion brands are getting into gaming

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With virtual Gucci handbag selling in Roblox game for more than real-life versions, as part of our deep dive on all things gaming we consider the opportunities fashion brands have in digital worlds where players are willing to spend serious money to create their own unique identities.

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Remembering Ken Garland (1929-2021)

Ken Garland - the designer, educator, writer and activist - has died at the age of 92

One of the most pre-eminent British post-war designers, Ken Garland had a long and distinguished career as a commercial designer but was also passionate about ethics, particularly the use and abuse of imagery for advertising purposes. Born in 1929, he was fascinated by graphic and commercial art and collage from a young age. At the age of 16, Garland went to study 'commercial design' at the West of England Academy of Art in Bristol, now part of the University of Western England. He graduated in 1947, undertook his military service and eventually found himself at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. It was a fertile time for British design education. His tutors at Central included Anthony Froshaug and Herbert Spencer and among his fellow students were the Pentagram founders Alan Fletcher and Colin Forbes, together with designers Derek Birdsall and DRU member Alan Ball.

Garland's first major role was as art director at Design, the magazine founded by the Council of Industrial Design, forerunner of today's Design Council. It was an ascetic, high minded journal, forever at odds with the burgeoning consumer economy that was re-shaping the British economy around it. As a result, Design tended to be rather disparaging about the excesses - visual, hyperbolic and stylistic - of the more commercially-focused approach taken by the Americans, where the roaring economy was driven by a strong emphasis on graphic art and bold forms.

When Garland left the magazine in 1962 it had been transformed visually, if not in spirit. He set up his own consultancy, and over the years Ken Garland and Associates' clients included Galt Toys, small furniture makers and publishers, posters, book covers and record sleeves. His ethos was to stay small and closely engaged with his clients. Although he very admired the verve of American design, and the rigour of Swiss typography, Garland was more convinced of the importance of graphic design to convey information and help shape our view of the world, not simply as a tool to drive sales. As a result, KGA was never a juggernaut churning out endless corporate identities or ad campaigns. Garland belief that the financial momentum of the ad industry was denigrating the art of design, trivialising skills and adding nothing more than noise to the visual landscape eventually resulted in the 'First Things First' manifesto of 1964. Signed by 21 of his peers, it urged designers to take responsibility not just for their work, but how this work could aid or abet the world around them. It was an ethical stance that garnered a huge amount of attention and which has never really been convincingly countered. In 2000, a new generation of designers revived FTF, buoyed by its rational and emotional demands in an age of ever-increasing wealth disparity.

Politics was integral to Garland's life, most notably through his design work for CND, but also through his humanist and compassionate attitude evident in his many writings and teachings. At the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at Reading, where he taught for 28 years from 1971, he was a hugely valued tutor (as well as 'the life and soul of the end of year party,' and 'an enthusiastic dancer', as two former students recalled). 'Ken would breeze into the prefab typography department in Reading, wearing his trademark embroidered hat and shake us up with his playful one-day exercises,' says the designer John Morgan, 'To those that didn't know Ken, you might think the author of 'First Things First' would be of an earnest or sober disposition. Ken was just as committed to delight and joy in design and life. With a twinkle in those eyes, full of curiosity and intelligence, he reminded us that sometimes it is better to dance first and think later.'

Many of Garland's evolving thoughts and opinions were collected in a book of essays, 'A Word in Your Eye,' published in 1996 and still one of the most readable works on visual culture during this period of rapid change. He also wrote the definitive study of Harry Beck's original work on the London Underground map in the 1930s, a 1994 monograph that predated the enthusiasm for the stoic, no nonsense authority of British transportation design, now spilling over into all manner of ephemeral products.

Ken Garland's legacy is one of quiet confidence, as well as unstinting support and encouragement for individual creativity. He loved the ad-hoc and the ephemeral, especially when they were very personal statements, like graffiti, but decried the visual chaos of unnecessary choice and complexity, especially when it came from large corporations. His legacy lives in a particular form of British design and typography, one that values content and consistency, modesty and restraint, but which is unafraid to let itself go when the time is right. §

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Remembering Ken Garland (1929-2021) Ken Garland - the designer, educator, writer and activist - has died at the age of 92 One of the most pre-eminent British post-war designers, Ken Garland had a long and distinguished career as a commercial designer but was also passionate about ethics, particularly the use and abuse of imagery for advertising purposes.

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You also asked about programmes that help you to organise your references and build bibliographies and source lists... This UAL page gives you a link to 'Zotero' and more programmes to manage your essay:

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Mind mapping tools

If you are a visual thinker and prefer to plan in a non-lineal way mind mapping tools can help:

brainstorm ideas for your dissertation or research topic

capture and visualise ideas

create mind maps, concept maps and process flows

write a study plan for your week or term

use your mind map as a memory aid for revision.

MindView is available on all UAL PCs and Macs in our libraries and learning zones. Key features include:

use templates or create your own

attach files, pictures, lecture notes and links to web pages to your map

organise and structure your essay

plan your tasks over time using the timeline and Gantt chart

export your mind map to Word to help you structure your essay.

Use the MindView LibGuide or visit iView Learning for video tutorials. Create an iView subscription

Inspiration

Inspiration helps you write down your ideas and plan your essays and projects.

It is available on all UAL PCs (Windows only). Use the Inspiration LibGuide or visit iView Learning for video tutorials.

Xmind

Xmind is easy to use with a simple and clear layout. It's available on all UAL Macs and PCs and you can download a free version to your phone.

Access from a UAL computer

1. Log in to the computer.

2. Search for the app you need.

3. If you can't see the app you need, download it from ZENworks (Windows) or UAL Self Service (Mac).

4. Locate the app from the Assistive Technology folder and install.

Note: The programs can take up to 20 minutes to install if they haven't been used before on the machines.

Organising tools

Use these easy tools to stay organised and follow the progress of your project.

Trello is a free web-based application that allows you to create a board for your project. Your projects are saved in the cloud, so all your devices are instantly updated and there's also a mobile app.

Add lists and cards to the board

Organise and manage your tasks

Share your project and assign tasks to people in your group

To Do, Office365 is integrated with Outlook on the web. It is also available as a free mobile app.

Create lists of your daily tasks

Create tasks from your flagged Outlook emails

My Day daily planner lets you add tasks and prioritise by importance or due date

To access, sign into Office 365 with your UAL email.

OneNote - Office 365

OneNote, Office 365 is a flexible digital notebook stored in the cloud allowing you to see your latest notes on any device. It is also available as a free mobile app.

Create a notebook for each of your subjects or projects

Write and edit your notes and create "to-do" lists

Clip information from the web and save audio notes

Getting started with OneNote

Notes is a useful app within your iPhone allowing you to add notes on the go. Your notes can include webpages, photographs, documents and audio notes. Use as a reminder of the library resources you want to check, things to do or ideas for projects

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Plan essays and manage your citations with mind mapping and referencing tools such as MindView and Xmind.

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You asked about referencing... here is the UAL take on it - CTRO and Harvard referencing system:

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LibGuides: Cite Them Right Online (Harvard Referencing): Cite Them Right at UAL

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Information about using Cite Them Right Online for UAL students and staff

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As fashion continues to inch towards the digital, the near-unthinkable has happened: a Gucci bag that exists solely online has sold for more than the real thing.

A digital rendition of the Gucci Dionysus bag sold for 350,000 Robux (roughly $4,115) on Club Penguin-adjacent gaming site Roblox. IRL versions of the bag typically retail $3,400.

Roblox is most popular among children and has a marketplace where its users can buy and sell all sorts of accessories to dress their avatars using the platform's digital currency.

The digital-only bag was released exclusively as part of Gucci's two-week event with Roblox and was available for a one hour window on May 17 and May 18. Despite its original price of 475 Robux (roughly $5.50), the limited-edition nature of the bag meant that it wasn't long until scalpers began reselling the item at extortionate rates.

The bag is only available for use on Roblox, meaning it can't be accessed or sold elsewhere. As Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian tweeted: "Remember: this Roblox purse is not an NFT and thus has no value/use/transferability outside the Roblox world-yet it's worth more than the physical one. Watch this space."

The IRL bag first debuted at the brand's autumn 2015 women's show, creative director Alessandro Michele 's first collection for the Italian brand.

According to The Fashion Law, the Roblox value of the virtual bag has already plummeted to less than $800. But that's the price of fashion, baby.

Revisit the Gucci x Balenciaga collection in the gallery above.

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A virtual Gucci bag has sold for more than the IRL version

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As fashion continues to inch towards the digital, the near-unthinkable has happened: a Gucci bag that exists solely online has sold for more than the real thing. A digital rendition of the Gucci Dionysus bag sold for 350,000 Robux (roughly $4,115) on Club Penguin-adjacent gaming site Roblox.

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Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we're up to by signing up here.
Since the beginning, rosary beads have been a symbol of rebellion.

An early legend asserts that Saint Dominic (circa 1170 to 1221 AD), the founder of the Dominican Order, saw the Virgin Mary in a vision. According to the book Consumption and Spirituality, "In this vision, Mary exhorted Dominic to use the rosary as a spiritual weapon against the Albigensian heresy. Historically speaking, the rosary developed between the 12th and 15th centuries." Its use consisted of meditations and prayers to Christ and the Virgin.

During the 16th century, the Protestant Church considered worship of the Virgin Mary idolatry and an act of heresy. As a result, the Catholic Church "strongly supported the rosary" in order to counteract Reformation doctrine and practices. And, as Catholic missionaries spread "the word of God" throughout Mexico, the Philippines, and Central and South America, they also spread the worship of the Virgin Mary and the significance of rosary beads for prayer. To this day, Latino and Filipino people gift rosary beads as a rite of passage and as symbols of protection. It's also common to see them wear rosaries outside of the home as representations of their spirituality.

But reinterpreting what rosaries symbolize and wearing them as an object of devotion outside of a place of worship has been a point of great controversy within the Catholic Church.

The Catholic religious document the Code of Canon Law reads: "Sacred objects, which are designated for divine worship by dedication or blessing, are to be treated reverently and are not to be employed for profane or inappropriate use even if they are owned by private persons." So, to more conservative members of the Catholic Church, wearing rosary beads as a fashion object removes the rosary's sacredness and transforms the object from sacrament to fashion accessory.

To more conservative members of the Catholic Church, wearing rosary beads as a fashion object removes the rosary's sacredness.

However, how to define what wearing a rosary for "profane or inappropriate use" means is up for interpretation, especially if the person is Catholic and wearing it as an expression of faith.

Mark Miller is a Catholic theologian and an associate professor of systematic theology at the University of San Francisco. "I'm totally not against people wearing rosaries for fashion," he says. "I don't know that I would quite go so far as to say it's heretical. But the [type of] heresy [it's related to] is called pelagianism. It's named after Pelagius, who was born around 360 AD... Pelagianism is connected to wearing the rosary or doing various other things for protection. And the thought is that you have a certain type of control over grace; a kind of control over God. It makes grace no longer a free gift, which it is supposed to be."

So, the intention behind wearing a rosary is directly related to whether or not it is viewed as heresy by practicing Catholics.

But wearing a rosary as a fashion statement is often a hybrid of religious homage and a symbol of personal selfhood.

One of the earliest moments when rosaries appeared in the popular fashion consciousness happened in '30s and '40s Los Angeles. Chicano youth, known as pachucas and pachucos, wore rosary beads in part to proudly highlight their Hispanic heritage. The American-born sons and daughters of Mexican migrants began to form their own identity, one that was emphatically separate from white Protestant America. Men wore a flamboyant style of draped pants, colorful shirts, and loud suspenders, often paired with black or wood rosaries. Women would often wear fishnet stockings, flowers in their hair, and fitted skirts that responded to the hyperfemininity of the time. The style was popularized by the play and film Zoot Suit, which was about the East LA Zoot Suit Riots.

Pachucos were victims of systemic racism and segregation by white America, and were often considered "not really Mexican" by their first-generation Mexican-American peers, so wearing rosary beads connected them to their past while also helping them adopt a new language and style. This style evolved into cholo and chola culture in the '60s, which borrowed many aspects of pachuco fashion, reinterpreting it as a more tomboy, lowrider, and pin-up aesthetic. In some cases, rosaries also signified gang affiliation, with beads of different colors representing the different gangs that members belonged to. In others, the rosary was worn as a symbol of protection and reflection of Latinidad.

In the late '70s, rosaries made an appearance in both goth and punk subcultures. Goths and punks often wore rosary beads as a rejection of conservatism, and sometimes as a way to critique the stranglehold that puritanical values held on American and British culture. Early goth and punk figures who wore rosaries as fashion and used them in their video imagery include Christian Death's frontman Rozz Williams, members of Bauhaus, and Depeche Mode.

"Although there is no overarching religion for goth culture, many are drawn to imagery of the sacred - be that early-medieval artworks, Mexican Day of the Dead altars, Celtic crosses, etc.," says Liisa Ladouceur, author of Encyclopedia Gothica and creator of the video " 40 Years of Goth Style." "These things are 'memento mori' as much as anything. Catholic imagery in particular is appealing because of its overly dramatic beauty - the rosary is not an austere item of worship; it's also intricate, and a pleasure to see and to touch. So apart from the convenience of finding them plentiful and cheap in thrift stores, especially in the early '80s, before goth-branded merchandise was widely available, I can see why so many goths are drawn to wearing them."

Pachuco, goth, and punk all embraced wearing rosary beads as fashion. But the notion did not enter the mainstream until the early '80s.

In 1984, Madonna wore rosaries in her "Like a Virgin" video. She has described her relationship to them as a " security blanket": They symbolize the Catholicism that she grew up with and became part of her religious branding. All aspects of Catholicism were incorporated into her act, from her name to her album title ( Like a Virgin) to her pursuit of icon status.

"She was the first to use mainstream culture and be visible through videos with rosaries," says Diego Rinallo, a professor of marketing at Kedge Business School and co-author of Consumption and Spirituality. "Madonna was transgressive... She normalized wearing the rosary outside of a religious statement. It was a disruption, moving something from the religious world and putting it into a profane moment of fashion."

Many fashion historians credit Madonna with not only popularizing rosaries, but also sparking fashion's interest in playing with religious imagery and iconography.

Fashion photographer Shawn Griffin wrote his thesis, The Church of Fashion, on the intersection of religion and fashion. He studied the ways that fashion designers, marketers, and photographers have employed imagery in fashion that mirrors Enlightenment-era religious iconography. In Griffin's opinion, religious imagery in the fashion world today ranges from models posing like saints to clothing draped in a way reminiscent of religious art to the use of rosaries and crosses as adornment. "In the late '80s and early '90s," he says, "[the rosary fashion trend] really started with the Immaculate album with Madonna and Jean Paul Gaultier [who designed her looks]. That's when you saw [rosary beads] reaching into high fashion."

Then, in the 2000s, Dolce & Gabbana and Alexander McQueen both featured rosaries on their runways. Rinallo believes that Dolce & Gabbana's use of rosary beads was a landmark moment in fashion, especially because of the significance of two gay Italian designers designing rosaries against a predominantly Catholic backdrop.

"Dolce & Gabbana created a moment for religious consumers to show off their religion without offending people," Rinallo says. With the release of D&G's rosaries, he explains, both religious and nonreligious people felt free to wear a sacred item for aesthetic pleasure. And at the same time, D&G's rosaries became a symbol of identity for Catholics who once hid their religion. With the popularity of fashion rosaries, believers were comfortable wearing them in public.

The history of wearing rosary beads for fashion has often gone against convention. An item once thought of as transgressive by the Protestant Church is now a symbol that signifies transgressions in fashion. It has never been "sanctioned" by the church, but many who wear the sacraments of the cross never needed their faith, way of practicing, or existence to be sanctioned anyway.

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Why Wearing Rosary Beads Is Controversial

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Rosary beads: not actually a necklace, no matter what Madonna does.

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The interaction between religion, culture, and dress is fascinating. Dress can be a window into the social world, which is bound by a tacit set of rules, customs, conventions, and rituals that guide face-to-face interaction. To many religious organizations, clothing is an important symbol of religious identification. However, for most groups, the regulation of personal appearance goes beyond clothing. The term dress as it is used here includes clothing, grooming, and all forms of body adornment. Dress also includes behaviors related to the control of the body, such as dieting, plastic surgery, and cosmetics. Holistically, then, dress functions as an effective means of nonverbal communication. Ideas, concepts, and categories fundamental to a group, such as age, gender, ethnicity, and religion, help to define a person's identity that is then expressed outwardly through a person's appearance. Both individual and group identity is projected through dress because people use self-presentation and self-promotion to visually present identity that is congruent with their belief systems.

The Sacred and the Secular

Where religion is concerned, clothing can be divided into two categories often referred to as the sacred and the secular (or profane). In some instances, what is treated as sacred is merely a garment that has important cultural implications with regard to gendered power. In patriarchal religions where the perception is that males are given the responsibility of seeing to the enforcement of religious rules, some garments become associated with the sacred primarily through the prescription and enforcement of a dress code. The most recent example of the conflation of gendered power and dress is the prescription that women in Afghanistan in the early 2000s were required to wear the burqa (or chadaree).

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While secular dress is not exclusively associated with religious activities, secular dress is used in ritual or is worn by certain religious practitioners such as the clergy. Dress used for religious ceremonies and rituals is referred to as ecclesiastical dress; modern dress for Roman Catholic priests resembles dress from the early days of the Christian church when the clergy were not distinguished from other male members of the church by their dress. However, in the sixth century as fashion changed, the clergy did not adopt the new fashions and continued to wear the older styles. Ecclesiastical dress has become a form of fossilized fashion, a phenomenon where the garments worn seem frozen in time and continues to be worn even as other forms of dress evolved.

A common theme with regard to liturgical garments worn by male clergy is the demasculinization of sacred dress. For many religions, sacred dress for male clergy commonly avoids pants in favor of loose, flowing robes. Because hair is symbolic of sexuality, it is controlled in many religions. Some orders of priests, nuns, and monks shave their heads, remove a lock of hair, or cut their hair to symbolize their turning away from the pleasures of the world.

Interestingly, everyday dress for certain ethno-religious subcultures, such as Hasidic Jews, Amish, and conservative Mennonites, is considered sacred, especially in the symbolic separation of the ethno-religious subculture from a dominant culture. As religious groups encounter social change, dress often symbolically becomes important as certain items of a religious group's clothing may be classified as sacred in contrast to what is considered secular. Generally the most symbolic dress features of Amish and Mennonites (hats, beards, head coverings, bonnets, aprons) are considered sacred. Similarly, among conservative Muslim women, very fashionable clothing may be worn underneath the veils (sacred garments), known as chador, chadaree, or burqa, that are seen by outsiders. Sacred dress worn externally then becomes used intentionally to visually separate these religious groups from the larger culture. Often, the rules as to dress codes are imposed by male clergy on female members of the community, and in doing so, these patriarchal religious societies intentionally use dress codes to maintain a gendered imbalance of power.

Some religions have sacred garments that are not visible to outsiders. Mormons who have been to temple wear sacred undergarments beneath otherwise ordinary clothing. The sacred undergarments reinforce their commitment to their religion.

Religious Ideologies

Organized religion has used dress in two related ways: to maintain the customs and traditions of the organization, thereby establishing a visual identity for the religion; and to simultaneously control the individual identities of its members by symbolically denoting dress as inneed of control. Religions create dress codes to overtly define morality and modesty while covertly controlling sexuality. Fundamentally, dress codes are less about clothing than about the control of the body by the more powerful church members who enforce their groups' ideologies. Religious dress codes express group identity and simultaneously function as a means of reinforcing male patriarchal control.

When a religion uses dress to reinforce tradition, it will usually be seen in opposition to fashion, which by its very nature is dynamic. Religious dress will change slowly as organized religions often reject fashion as an attempt to focus on individuality rather than salvation.

To understand how dress is expressive of religious ideologies, it is helpful to understand how each of the world's major religions perceives the role of dress as a means of identity expression. In a later section, more detail will be given as to how particular religious groups use dress to establish sectarian identities.

Hinduism is a polytheistic religion encompassing a holistic view of life in which the inner self is highly valued, and life in the world is seen as temporary. Reincarnation is a belief at the base of both the caste system and religious expression. The individual works through levels of moral development that are indicated by caste. It is believed that the higher the person's caste, the closer the individual is to the spiritual world. Since the focus in Hinduism is on the inner self, dress, an expression of the external self, is less important. Dress is tradition bound, and slow to change by comparison to costume found in other religious groups. Dress and adornment in Hindu society does show a person's caste, level of piety, or the specific god to which the individual is devoted.

Islam is the newest of the major religions and its followers are commonly referred to as Muslims. This religion emphasizes the group over the individual, and Islamic ideology focuses on male power and the separation of the sexes through both physical and visual means. Dress codes for Muslims have great impact on daily life, which involves frequent religious expressions and rituals. Among Muslims, codes of modesty go beyond the covering of women's bodies to include restriction of women's behavior. The Koran requires women to dress modestly, but does not specifically state that they must wear veils. Dress codes regarding veiling vary among Islamic families and cultures; however, among the most conservative Islamic groups the requirements for women to wear veils are seriously enforced. In addition to their ostensible function to protect gender segregation, these rules also are intended to slow down assimilation that began after World War II when westernization started in Islamic societies. As western dress became common, the Islamic fundamentalist movement began pushing for a return to tradition. Modest dress and veils became symbolic of both the acceptance of patriarchal power and nationalism. Throughout the larger cities in Iran, posters announced the specifics of the dress code requiring women to dress in chadors that cover all but the face. In Afghanistan under Taliban control, women were killed if they did not wear the all-enveloping burqa or chadaree.

Judaism, the oldest of the major monotheistic religions, is based on the concept that people exist to glorify God; to be appropriately dressed, then, is a religious duty. Historically, the ancient Jews had customs that indicated dress was seen as symbolic. Since the upper body was seen as pure, but the lower body was perceived as impure, Jews wore girdles to make the division between pure and impure visibly clear. Morality was connected with dress early on; Moses forbade nudity. Similarly, he forbade Jews from wearing the clothing of non-Jews in an attempt to keep his people separate from influences that might lead to assimilation. In recent times, levels of Judaic conservatism are denoted by dress where the most assimilated Jews dress like non-Jews. However orthodox and Hasidic Jews wear specific garments to visibly show their religious conservatism.

Christianity is less clear about values pertaining to dress than is Judaism. Values in Christian theology relating to the body are conflicting; women's bodies are seen as the site of temptation, in that male sexual guilt is projected onto the female body. Adam's fall from grace is attributed to Eve's sexuality. Christian women are required to dress modestly, but this standard is not equally applied to Christian men. Modesty with regard to body exposure is an important value that is a key indicator of religious conservatism.

During the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, early leaders used dress as a symbol of piety. Fashionable, colorful dress and adornment were equated with sensuality and pride, while somber dress showed the Christian's focus on salvation. For fundamentalist Christians (who evolved out of the Reformation) such as the Anabaptist groups (such as Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites) who believe themselves to be uniquely separate from the larger society, dress is used to show that separation. In these groups, dress is often hyperconservative or may even be a form of fossilized fashion.

Sectarian Dress

Some of America's sectarian ethno-religious groups use fossilized fashion to separate themselves from the outside world. Notable among these are the Shakers, Amish, Hasidic Jews, Hutterites, and several conservative Mennonite groups. Fossilized fashion has been explained as a sudden "freezing" of fashion whereby a group continues to wear certain clothing long after it has gone out of style for the general population. This phenomenon has been explained as expressing dignity and high social status or the group's religious, old-fashioned, sectarian identity. Within certain ethno-religious groups, fossilized fashion is used in contemporary settings as a visual symbol of traditional gender roles for women; this generally occurs in societies that find change to be a threat.

Most of the conservative ethno-religious groups who wear fossilized fashion continue to wear clothing styles that were in use for the general population during the time their sect originated. For instance, the Amish separated from the larger Mennonite movement in the beginning of the seventeenth century; their garments in the early 2000s include full-fall trousers for men, and for women, dresses, bonnets, capes, aprons, and head coverings like their forebearers. Like the Amish, Shakers and the most conservative Mennonites in the United States continue to wear long dresses with aprons that provide an additional covering of the bust and stomach, again, like their forebearers. Other Mennonites dress in styles that were popular when their sect broke off from the larger Mennonite movement. Hasidic Jews have retained a complex code of dress for men that indicates a man's level of religiosity; these garments include particular hats, shoes, socks, and coats that are identifiable by members of their community. For Hasidic Jewish women, wigs are worn to cover their natural hair.

Modesty and Female Sexuality in Dress

Among all of the major religions, modesty in women's dress is associated with gender norms; this is a major issue to religious groups. Gender issues are paramount in the dress codes of conservative religious groups since the control of female sexuality is often of great importance in patriarchal religious groups. The dress codes generally relate to modesty and require clothing to cover the contours of the female body. Additionally, some religious groups, particularly the most conservative Islamic, Anabaptist, and Jewish sects, also require that women's hair be covered as well.

As used by religious groups, the issue of modesty goes beyond the covering of the body in order to disguise female curves and secondary sexual characteristics; in the conservative strains of all of the major religions, dress codes also deal with the care and covering of women's hair as it is associated with women's sexuality (Scott, p. 33). Further complicating matters, dress codes are conflated with gender and power issues in religious groups. At the root of this issue is the control of female sexuality that is perceived to be necessary by some religious groups as a means to maintain social order.

An understanding of how dress works within religious groups calls attention to the complexity of meanings surrounding visible symbols such as dress, and sheds light on the ways that bodies can communicate social and religious values. The dress of religious groups can be used to facilitate social and ideological agendas. Clothing and personal adornment are used for establishing and maintaining personal and social identities, social hierarchies, definitions of deviance, and systems of control and power. As a consequence, then, dress within conservative religious groups is a symbol of the individual's commitment to the group while it also symbolizes the group's control over individual lives. For America's fundamentalist Christian groups, and the Anabaptist groups in particular, dress is particularly important with regard to its role in social control and in social change.

Dress and Social Control

Dress is an immediate and visible indicator of how a person fits into his/her religious system. As a marker of identity, dress can be used to gauge the person's commitment to the group and to the religious value system. In many conservative groups, suppression of individuality is expected, in obedience to the rules of the religious organization. Several religious groups are also ethnically homogenous; these are referred to as ethno-religious groups (In the United States, some of these groups are the Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites, Hasidic Jews, Sikhs, and certain Islamic groups.) The conservative branches of ethno-religious groups frequently use clothing to simultaneously express ethnicity, gender norms, and level of religious involvement (religiosity). Through conformance to a strict religious value system, the most conservative of the religious social bodies exert control over their members' physical bodies. Since strict conformity is often equated with religiosity, compliance to strict codes of behavior is demanded. The internal body is subject to control by the religious culture, especially with regard to food and sex. The external body, however, is much more visibly restrained. Strict dress codes are enforced because dress is considered symbolic of religiosity. Clothing becomes a symbol of social control as it controls the external body. While a person's level of religiosity cannot be objectively perceived, symbols such as clothing are used as evidence that the member of the religious group is on the "right and true path."

Normative social control begins with personal social control through self-regulation, followed by informal social control. The member wants to fit into the group, and expresses role commitment by following the social norms, visibly expressed in the group's dress code. When the individual begins to offend, for example by wearing a garment that is too revealing of body contours, peers may disapprove and use subtle methods of informal control to pressure the individual to conform to the group norms. Finally, the threat that an offender introduces to the social order is managed through formal social control measures, such as disciplinary measures and expulsion administered by specialized agents, including ministers, rabbis, and other moral arbiters. Thus, norms are managed through social control to inhibit deviation and insure conformity to social norms at even the most-minute level.

Through symbolic devices, the physical body exhibits the normative values of the social body. Symbols, such as dress, help delineate the social unit and visually define its boundaries because they give nonverbal information about the individual. Unique dress attached to specific religious and cultural groups, then, can function to insulate group members from outsiders, while bonding the members to each other. Normative behavior within the culture reaffirms loyalty to the group and can be evidenced by the wearing of a uniform type of attire.

Within American culture there are specific ethno-religious groups that intentionally separate themselves from the rest of society and attempt to reestablish the small, face-to-face community. Many originated in Europe and moved to America when religious freedom was promised to immigrants. Shakers (Scott, p. 54), Mennonites, Hutterites (Scott, p. 72), and Amish (Scott, p. 87) are such groups. These groups are often perceived by the outside world as quite unusual, but that derives more from their deviant behaviors, visually manifest in dress, than from their religious differences from mainstream Christianity. An essential factor in ethno-religious groups, social control is significant in terms of the survival prospects of the group. Among orthodox Jews (Scott, p. 57) in Williamsburg New York, social control was achieved in ways remarkably similar to those used by the Amish and conservative Mennonites. The most important features included isolation from the external society; emphasis on conformity with status related to religiosity, symbolized by clothing status markers; a powerful clergy and rigorous sanctions to insure conformity to norms.

Dress and Social Change

With changing social, political, and economic environments, even the most sectarian religious group has to contend with the impact of social change. Changes in dress often signal underlying changes in social roles as well as gender roles. Traditional gender roles can be marked by a particular form of dress where the roles are stable for long periods of time; when dress changes suddenly in these groups, we can expect to find a change in gender roles. A good example is that of the change in the dress of Roman Catholic priests and nuns following the changes instituted by Vatican II in the 1960s. The changes were more pronounced for nuns as their roles within the Church dramatically changed; so too did their dress. Additionally, when roles are restrictive, we can expect to see a restriction in women's dress, in the form of either dress codes or physically restrictive clothing.

With immigration and colonization, clothing figured into the power imbalance between people of different religious backgrounds. As American missionaries in the nineteenth century encountered indigenous people, clothing became an issue almost immediately. Christian missionaries advanced their own ethnocentric perceptions of appropriate behavior and dress and, often through subtle coercion, guided the acculturation of indigenous peoples. Missionaries have often taken on the role of introducing western clothing to indigenous people as a means of "civilizing the natives." In some cases the transformation to western-styled clothing was part of the need of a religious group to dominate an indigenous culture. In other cases, a religious group immigrating to another country might also voluntarily make changes to their dress to facilitate their assimilation into the new society. One such example is that of Hawaii where missionaries objected to the indigenous dress of kapa skirts with no covering of the breasts. The missionaries required Hawaiians to wear western dress when at the missions; a particular garment called the holoku was created for Hawaiian women to wear. As Christianized Hawaiians became missionaries to Oceania, they brought the holoku into the islands, but the garment was known by different names outside of Hawaii.

Occasionally a reciprocal relationship occurred, in which the indigenous group more willingly took on the dress of the more powerful religious group. Strategic shifts from traditional dress to western dress among the Dakota tribes in Minnesota were somewhat voluntary. Similarly, the immigration of European Jews to America led to many Jews using dress as a means of blending into the larger society. On the other hand, Hasidic Jews chose to reflect their ethnicity by retaining fossilized fashion to intentionally separate them from the larger American culture. At the end of the twentieth century, some Christian and Roman Catholic churches began to incorporate indigenous textiles in their liturgical garments used in religious ceremonies. While this practice is seen primarily in missionary work of churches establishing missions in Africa and other locations such as the Philippines and South America. The use of ethnic textiles in African American churches has been a long-standing tradition that honors African heritage.

In conclusion, many religious groups have developed cultural norms with regard to dress. Dress codes, both formal and informal, exist as a means of showing group identity. Members of religious groups actively construct their own lives and use dress symbolically to express religious beliefs, adaptation to social change, and the conformity to social norms and religious authority.

See also Ecclesiastical Dress; Contemporary Islamic Dress Jewish Dress.

Bibliography

Arthur, Linda B. "Clothing Is a Window to the Soul: The Social Control of Women in a Holdeman Mennonite Community." Journal of Mennonite Studies 15 (1997): 11-29.

-, ed. Religion, Dress and the Body. Dress and the Body Series. Oxford: Berg, 1999.

-, ed. Undressing Religion: Commitment and Conversion from a Cross-cultural Perspective. Dress and Body Series. Oxford: Berg, 2000.

Damhorst, Mary Lynn, Kimberly Miller, and Susan Michelman. Meanings of Dress. New York: Fairchild Publications, 1999.

Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1959.

Hostetler, John. Amish Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1989.

Poll, Soloman. The Hasidic Community in Williamsburg. New York: Glencoe Free Press, 1962.

Scott, Stephen. Why Do They Dress That Way? Intercourse, Pa.: Good Books, 1986.

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The interaction between religion, culture, and dress is fascinating. Dress can be a window into the social world, which is bound by a tacit set of rules, customs, conventions, and rituals that guide face-to-face interaction. To many religious organizations, clothing is an important symbol of religious identification.

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INTERACTIVE GRAPHICS: Visualising global COVID resilience

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INTERACTIVE GRAPHICS: Visualising global COVID resilience

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Check out the interactive graphic in this article! Very interesting representation of data even tough there were some issues with the clarity of colours on my screen...

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Sustainability Report for the Furniture industry

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Sustainability Report for the Furniture industry

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What are strengths and what are weaknesses of this report?

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Dodds & Shute was founded in 2015 on the desire to make a positive impact. We are focused on our responsibility to work in both a socially and environmentally sustainable way and we are optimistic that the design sector can evolve into a transparent and responsible force for change.

We are fully aware that time is a precious resource for our community of architects and designers. The undertaking of significant research into the environmental impact of different furniture types, companies or materials is an unrealistic luxury. Our focus over the past 3 years has been to do this work on their behalf.

We see the traditional shortcomings of our sector and the role it has played in turning a blind eye to these issues. Too many platforms are based upon outdated information models which do not reflect the modern-day requirements of designers looking to make quick, and educated, sustainable decisions.

We are delighted that almost 1000 Architect & Design practices have signed up to the UK Architects Declare Climate and Biodiversity Emergency Act, a commitment to instigate real behavioural changes in the way we all work. We see the role of our sector as key to achieving this goal.

Research has shown that the Furniture, Fixtures & Equipments fit out has a significant impact on the environmental performance of a building because of its comparatively short life span. The decisions that are made in this regard are fundamental and it is essential that more care and consideration is taken to what is put inside our homes, hotels, restaurants, offices, schools and developments.

Whilst aesthetics, price point, and functionality of course remain essential we are tired of the conversation revolving around these topics and not including discussion of the greater environmental impact behind a product or manufacturer.

Our idea is for a more transparent and informative way of sharing information, to have platforms that will enable users to filter with more valuable criteria; the sustainability performance of a business, where goods are manufactured, if made from FSC, recycled material, low VOC or designed for a circular economy, etc.

We believe that the research we have embarked on, culminating in the launch of our new website, will enable designers to more swiftly reach decisions to buy better products that meet more relevant criteria. This will be a tool to help them achieve more responsible goals and deliver sustainable projects.

For Dodds & Shute this undertaking has focussed around three key pillars of sustainability, and this document will touch upon each of these in chronological order. At various steps we have partnered with experts who have contributed an excellent level of research and insight, our special thanks go to them.

To learn more about our research into the Furniture Industry and request access to the D&S Sustainability Report please contact us at hello@doddsandshute.com.

Dodds & Shute was founded in 2015 on the desire to make a positive impact. We are focused on our responsibility to work in both a socially and environmentally sustainable way and we are optimistic that the design sector can evolve into a transparent and responsible force for change.

We are fully aware that time is a precious resource for our community of architects and designers. The undertaking of significant research into the environmental impact of different furniture types, companies or materials is an unrealistic luxury. Our focus over the past 3 years has been to do this work on their behalf.

We see the traditional shortcomings of our sector and the role it has played in turning a blind eye to these issues. Too many platforms are based upon outdated information models which do not reflect the modern-day requirements of designers looking to make quick, and educated, sustainable decisions.

We are delighted that almost 1000 Architect & Design practices have signed up to the UK Architects Declare Climate and Biodiversity Emergency Act, a commitment to instigate real behavioural changes in the way we all work. We see the role of our sector as key to achieving this goal.

Research has shown that the Furniture, Fixtures & Equipments fit out has a significant impact on the environmental performance of a building because of its comparatively short life span. The decisions that are made in this regard are fundamental and it is essential that more care and consideration is taken to what is put inside our homes, hotels, restaurants, offices, schools and developments.

Whilst aesthetics, price point, and functionality of course remain essential we are tired of the conversation revolving around these topics and not including discussion of the greater environmental impact behind a product or manufacturer.

Our idea is for a more transparent and informative way of sharing information, to have platforms that will enable users to filter with more valuable criteria; the sustainability performance of a business, where goods are manufactured, if made from FSC, recycled material, low VOC or designed for a circular economy, etc.

We believe that the research we have embarked on, culminating in the launch of our new website, will enable designers to more swiftly reach decisions to buy better products that meet more relevant criteria. This will be a tool to help them achieve more responsible goals and deliver sustainable projects.

For Dodds & Shute this undertaking has focussed around three key pillars of sustainability, and this document will touch upon each of these in chronological order. At various steps we have partnered with experts who have contributed an excellent level of research and insight, our special thanks go to them.

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Radical trading up via swapping...

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While many of us were still finding novelty in group Zoom calls last May, Demi Skipper decided she was going to get a house. But not using money. Instead, she was going to trade items.

Now the owner of one of only a few Chipotle celebrity cards in the world, and hoping to reach a house by the end of summer, the 29-year-old's journey started where many voyages do: in a YouTube hole.

Sitting in the living room of her rented house in San Francisco, she had just finished watching a Ted Talk by Kyle MacDonald, also known as the red paperclip guy, who traded up 14 times to get from a red paperclip to a house in 2006.

MacDonald was a 26-year-old jobless Canadian who traded from a red paperclip to a fish-shaped pen, to a handmade doorknob, before trading it for a camping stove, then a generator, then a keg of beer and a neon sign, followed by a snowmobile, a trip to Yahk in British Columbia, a box truck, a music recording contract, a year's rent in Arizona, to one afternoon with the rock band Alice Cooper. His strangest trade was then for a Kiss-themed motorized snow globe, which he swapped with snow globe fanatic and actor Corbin Bernsen for a role in a Hollywood film, before trading the movie role for a two-storey farmhouse in Kipling, Saskatchewan, Canada.

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Skipper, a self-described "scrappy entrepreneurial type", was up to the challenge.

"I can't buy anything. I can't use any money. And I can't trade anyone I know," she excitedly explains over a 7am video call. She's used to early mornings as she's been working 6am to 2.30pm as a product manager for BuzzFeed. "A lot of comments [about my project] are like, 'You need to get a job', and I'm like, Oh my gosh, if they knew I'm working like 12-hour days," she gestures in disbelief.

Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist and Ebay are Skipper's go-tos. She first posted an image of the bobby pin explaining her mission, and traded it for brand new earrings from a woman on Facebook who was excited to take part. People's eagerness to get involved has been the most surprising thing. "I get probably 1,000 messages a day on Instagram. And a lot of them are like: I don't have a trade but I live in this state and I'd be willing to drive your car from here to here, or I have a garage or a safe place where you could keep a trade."

She left the earrings on the porch of a woman keen to get rid of four margarita glasses, which Skipper traded for a vacuum cleaner. Then she had to trade outside of her city to meet a couple who exchanged their kid's old snowboard for a vacuum cleaner. The snowboard went for an Apple TV. It was the first branded item she received, which made it easier to trade. She then arranged to swap it for a pair of Bose headphones, before finding a man on the neighbourhood app Next Door to trade her for an old Apple MacBook.

A MacBook from a bobby pin: it was a landmark moment. Up until this point, her project, named Trade Me, wasn't well-known. Now she had the eyes of thousands of people on her. "The next trade was really nerve-racking because it was the first one I had to ship. So I had to trust that the person I was trading with would send me the camera and lenses," she explained.

The camera went for the first pair of collector sneakers she found. "I reached out and the guy really helped me understand how to tell if sneakers are real." Skipper then went on to trade two more pairs of sneakers, which the first trader advised her on. Desperate to get out of the sneaker world, Skipper found a man who had been searching for those $1,000 trainers for a long time, and traded them for a brand new iPhone 11 Max.

Demi Skipper as she trades items for valuable sneakers. Photograph: Demi Skipper

A family of Trade Me fans offered her a red minivan for the iPhone. While it was the most surprising upgrade, Skipper remembers it as the most emotionally difficult. A couple were so inspired by the project, they drove the van 29 hours from Minnesota to San Francisco with their two kids.

The minivan broke down after its long journey, and Skipper posted this hiccup on her TikTok. What she didn't foresee was the amount of hate the family soon got, including a lot of Islamophobia. "The worst parts of the internet came out," she says.

With the minivan no longer working, and unable to spend money to fix it, she was forced to trade down for an electric skateboardwhich went for the latest MacBook. She swapped that for an electric bike food cart, followed by a Mini Cooper.

Demi Skipper has traded a hairpin for items including an iPhone and a minivan. Photograph: Demi Skipper/PA

The next trade went downhill.

"Ah, the diamond necklace," she says. She thought it was worth $20,000, but she was quickly told that although it was worth that amount when made, it would only be bought for $2,000. The necklace's appraisal value was $20,000, but as she quickly learned, this is not the same as the resale value. "It was a soul-crushing moment. I'd just traded this really nice Mini Cooper that was probably worth like $8,000, and I pretty much cut that in a quarter."

She again then traded down for a Peloton exercise bike. Next was an extremely run- down Mustang, followed by a Jeep, a tiny cabin, a Honda CRV and then three tractors.

Like Kyle Macdonald, Skipper has a large audience. Nearly 5 million people follow her on TikTok. Her most recent trade - the three tractors for a Chipotle celebrity card - was offered to her by the fast-food chain after she posted the video about the tractors. There are only about three in existence. (The owner of this celebrity card gets unlimited free Chipotle food for a year, plus a catered dinner for 50 people.)

Obviously they wouldn't be so keen to get involved if it wasn't for the millions of potential customers following Demi's journey, but Skipper is adamant that anyone can do their own trading project. "There's this 18-year-old guy in London who's gotten really far, and he's not even TikTok-famous, but he's done it on his own, trading with people he knows," she remembers.

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While Skipper doesn't spend any money on trades, she decided early on to pay for shipping. "It doesn't feel right when you're trading with someone and then you're like, 'Oh, can you pay for my shipping too?'" She's spent about $4,000 on shipping so far.

Today's world revolves around money, but cash in and of itself has no actual value. As a society, we've agreed on a story of what money is worth. We spend the majority of our time earning it or spending it, but that's only been the case for the last 5,000 years. Before that, we would directly trade goods and services: I'll fix your roof if you give me a bag of potatoes. "[You can] say: this is worth this many dollars. But part of trading up is to find the person who finds a different type of value in it," says Skipper.

Skipper hopes more and more people will trade in this way. "Trading evens the playing field more, because everyone has that bobby pin or paperclip." Thousands of TikTokers are now tagging her project in their own pursuits for anything from cars to college tuition.

"Honestly, I love that it's a bit of an F U to capitalism."

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Trading up: one woman's quest to swap a hairpin for a house

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While many of us were still finding novelty in group Zoom calls last May, Demi Skipper decided she was going to get a house. But not using money.

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What does this mean for design(ing)?

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China on Mars: Zhurong rover returns first pictures

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Imagery comes back from the six-wheeled robot that landed successfully at the weekend.

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Ai-Da was designed using algorithms to create 'selfie' art works - despite not having a self.

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Recycling Exports & Environmental Crisis

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Recycling Exports & Environmental Crisis

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What is really being recycled? How can this situation be radically improved?

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The UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "We are clear that the UK should handle more of its waste at home, and that's why we are committed to banning the export of plastic waste to non-OECD countries and clamping down on illegal waste exports - including to countries such as Turkey - through tougher controls.

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UK plastic waste being dumped and burned in Turkey, says Greenpeace

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The UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "We are clear that the UK should handle more of its waste at home, and that's why we are committed to banning the export of plastic waste to non-OECD countries and clamping down on illegal waste exports - including to countries such as Turkey - through tougher controls.

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New research shows the superior neurological potential of analogue skills such as handwriting....

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Acknowledgements

We thank participant T5 and his caregivers for their dedicated contributions to this research, N. Lam, E. Siauciunas and B. Davis for administrative support and E. Woodrum for the drawings in Figs. 1a, 2a. F.R.W. and D.T.A. acknowledge the support of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. L.R.H. acknowledges the support of the Office of Research and Development, Rehabilitation R&D Service, US Department of Veterans Affairs (A2295R, N2864C); the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and BRAIN Initiative (UH2NS095548); and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R01-DC009899, U01-DC017844). K.V.S. and J.M.H. acknowledge the support of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R01-DC014034, U01-DC017844); the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (UH2-NS095548, U01-NS098968); L. and P. Garlick; S. and B. Reeves; and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford. K.V.S. acknowledges the support of the Simons Foundation Collaboration on the Global Brain 543045 and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (K.V.S. is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Author information

Author notes

These authors jointly supervised this work: Jaimie M. Henderson, Krishna V. Shenoy

Affiliations

1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Francis R. Willett, Donald T. Avansino & Krishna V. Shenoy

2. Department of Neurosurgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

Francis R. Willett & Jaimie M. Henderson

3. Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Francis R. Willett & Krishna V. Shenoy

4. VA RR&D Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology, Rehabilitation R&D Service, Providence VA Medical Center, Providence, RI, USA

Leigh R. Hochberg

5. School of Engineering, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

Leigh R. Hochberg

6. Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

Leigh R. Hochberg

7. Center for Neurotechnology and Neurorecovery, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Leigh R. Hochberg

8. Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Jaimie M. Henderson & Krishna V. Shenoy

9. Bio-X Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Jaimie M. Henderson & Krishna V. Shenoy

10. Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Krishna V. Shenoy

11. Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Krishna V. Shenoy

Contributions

F.R.W. conceived the study, built the real-time decoder, analysed the data and wrote the manuscript. F.R.W. and D.T.A. collected the data. L.R.H. is the sponsor-investigator of the multi-site clinical trial. J.M.H. planned and performed T5's array placement surgery and was responsible for all clinical-trial-related activities at Stanford. J.M.H. and K.V.S. supervised and guided the study. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Francis R. Willett.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The MGH Translational Research Center has a clinical research support agreement with Neuralink, Paradromics and Synchron, for which L.R.H. provides consultative input. J.M.H. is a consultant for Neuralink, and serves on the Medical Advisory Board of Enspire DBS. K.V.S. consults for Neuralink and CTRL-Labs (part of Facebook Reality Labs) and is on the scientific advisory boards of MIND-X, Inscopix and Heal. F.R.W., J.M.H. and K.V.S. are inventors on patent application US 2021/0064135 A1 (the applicant is Stanford University), which covers the neural decoding approach taken in this work. All other authors have no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature thanks Karim Oweiss and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data figures and tables

We used a two-layer gated recurrent unit (GRU) recurrent neural network architecture to convert sequences of neural firing rate vectors x t (which were temporally smoothed and binned at 20 ms) into sequences of character probability vectors y t and 'new character' probability scalars z t. The y t vectors describe the probability of each character being written at that moment in time, and the z t scalars go high whenever the RNN detects that T5 is beginning to write any new character. Note that the top RNN layer runs at a slower frequency than the bottom layer, which we found improved the speed of training by making it easier to hold information in memory for long time periods. Thus, the RNN outputs are updated only once every 100 ms. Also, note that we used a day-specific affine transform to account for day-to-day changes in the neural activity (bottom row)-this helps the RNN to account for changes in neural tuning caused by electrode array micromotion or brain plasticity when training data are combined across multiple days.

a, Diagram of the session flow for copy-typing and free-typing sessions (each rectangle corresponds to one block of data). First, single-letter and sentences training data are collected (blue and red blocks). Next, the RNN is trained using the newly collected data plus all of the previous days' data (purple block). Finally, the RNN is held fixed and evaluated (green blocks). b, Diagram of the data processing and RNN training process (purple block in a). First, the single-letter data are time-warped and averaged to create spatiotemporal templates of neural activity for each character. These templates are used to initialize the hidden Markov models (HMMs) for sentence labelling. After labelling, the observed data are cut apart and rearranged into new sequences of characters to make synthetic sentences. Finally, the synthetic sentences are combined with the real sentences to train the RNN. c, Diagram of a forced-alignment HMM used to label the sentence 'few black taxis drive up major roads on quiet hazy nights'. The HMM states correspond to the sequence of characters in the sentence. d, The label quality can be verified with cross-correlation heat maps made by correlating the single character neural templates with the real data. The HMM-identified character start times form clear hotspots on the heat maps. Note that these heat maps are depicted only to qualitatively show label quality and aren't used for training (only the character start times are needed to generate the targets for RNN training). e, To generate new synthetic sentences, the neural data corresponding to each labelled character in the real data are cut out of the data stream and put into a snippet library. These snippets are then pulled from the library at random, stretched or compressed in time by up to 30% (to add more artificial timing variability) and combined into new sentences.

a, Training with synthetic data (left) and artificial white noise added to the inputs (right) were both essential for high performance. Data are shown from a grid search over both parameters, and lines show performance at the best value for the other parameter. Results indicate that both parameters are needed for high performance, even when the other is at the best value. Using synthetic data is more important when the size of the dataset is highly limited, as is the case when training on only a single day of data (blue line). Note that the inputs given to the RNN were z-scored, so the input white noise is in units of standard deviations of the input features. b, Artificial noise added to the feature means (random offsets and slow changes in the baseline firing rate) greatly improves the ability of the RNN to generalize to new blocks of data that occur later in the session, but does not help the RNN to generalize to new trials within blocks of data on which it was already trained. This is because feature means change slowly over time. For each parameter setting, three separate RNNs were trained (circles); results show low variability across RNN training runs. c, Training an RNN with all of the datasets combined improves performance relative to training on each day separately. Each circle shows the performance on one of seven days. d, Using separate input layers for each day is better than using a single layer across all days. e, Improvements in character error rates are summarized for each parameter. 95% CIs were computed with bootstrap resampling of single trials ( n = 10,000). As shown in the table, all parameters show a statistically significant improvement for at least one condition (CIs do not intersect zero).

a, To visualize how much the neural recordings changed across time, decoded pen-tip trajectories were plotted for two example letters (m and z) for all 10 days of data (columns), using decoders trained on all other days (rows). Each session is labelled according to the number of days passed relative to 9 December 2019 (day 4). Results show that although patterns of neural activity clearly change over time, their essential structure is largely conserved (as decoders trained on past days transfer readily to future days). b, The correlation (Pearson's r) between the neural activity patterns of each session was computed for each pair of sessions and plotted as a function of the number of days separating each pair. Blue circles show the correlation computed in the full neural space (all 192 electrodes), whereas red circles show the correlation in the 'anchor' space (top 10 principal components of the earlier session). High values indicate a high similarity in how characters are neurally encoded across days. The fact that correlations are higher in the anchor space suggests that the structure of the neural patterns stays largely the same as it slowly rotates into a new space, causing shrinkage in the original space but little change in structure. c, A visualization of how each character's neural representation changes over time, as viewed through the top two PCs of the original 'anchor' space. Each circle represents the neural activity pattern for a single character, and each x symbol shows that same character on a later day (lines connect matching characters). Left, a pair of sessions with only two days between them (day −2 to 0); right, a pair of sessions with 11 days between them (day −2 to 9). The relative positioning of the neural patterns remains similar across days, but most conditions shrink noticeably towards the origin. This is consistent with the neural representations slowly rotating out of the original space into a new space, and suggests that scaling-up the input features may help a decoder to transfer more accurately to a future session (by counteracting this shrinkage effect). d, Similar to Fig. 3b, copy-typing data from eight sessions were used to assess offline whether scaling-up the decoder inputs improves performance when evaluating the decoder on a future session (when no decoder retraining is used). All session pairs (X, Y) were considered. Decoders were first initialized using all data from session X and earlier, then evaluated on session Y under different input-scaling factors (for example, an input scale of 1.5 means that input features were scaled up by 50%). Lines indicate the mean raw character error rate and shaded regions show 95% CIs. Results show that when long periods of time pass between sessions, input scaling improves performance. We therefore used an input-scaling factor of 1.5 when assessing decoder performance in the 'no retraining' conditions of Fig. 3.

a, Example noise vectors and covariance matrix for temporally correlated noise. On the left, example noise vectors are plotted (each line depicts a single example). Noise vectors are shown for all 100 time steps of neuron 1. On the right, the covariance matrix used to generate temporally correlated noise is plotted (dimensions = 200 × 200). The first 100 time steps describe the noise of neuron 1 and the last 100 time steps describe the noise of neuron 2. The diagonal band creates noise that is temporally correlated within each simulated neuron (but the two neurons are uncorrelated with each other). b, Classification accuracy when using a maximum likelihood classifier to classify between all four possible trajectories in the presence of temporally correlated noise. Even in the presence of temporally correlated noise, the time-varying trajectories are still much easier to classify. c, Example noise vectors and noise covariance matrix for noise that is correlated with the signal (that is, noise that is concentrated only in spatiotemporal dimensions that span the class means). Unlike the temporally correlated noise, this covariance matrix generates spatiotemporal noise that has correlations between time steps and neurons. d, Classification accuracy in the presence of signal-correlated noise. Again, time-varying trajectories are easier to classify than constant trajectories. See Supplementary Note 1 for a detailed interpretation of this figure.

a, Using the principle of maximizing the nearest-neighbour distance, we optimized for a set of pen trajectories that are theoretically easier to classify than the Latin alphabet (using standard assumptions of linear neural tuning to pen-tip velocity). b, For comparison, we also optimized a set of 26 straight lines that maximize the nearest-neighbour distance. c, Pairwise Euclidean distances between pen-tip trajectories were computed for each set, revealing a larger nearest-neighbour distance (but not mean distance) for the optimized alphabet compared to the Latin alphabet. Each circle represents a single movement and bar heights show the mean. d, Simulated classification accuracy as a function of the amount of artificial noise added. Results confirm that the optimized alphabet is indeed easier to classify than the Latin alphabet, and that the Latin alphabet is much easier to classify than straight lines, even when the lines have been optimized. e, Distance matrices for the Latin alphabet and optimized alphabets show the pairwise Euclidean distances between the pen trajectories. The distance matrices were sorted into seven clusters using single-linkage hierarchical clustering. The distance matrix for the optimized alphabet has no apparent structure; by contrast, the Latin alphabet has two large clusters of similar letters (letters that begin with a counter-clockwise curl, and letters that begin with a downstroke).

a, Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-derived brain anatomy of participant T5. Microelectrode array locations (blue squares) were determined by co-registration of postoperative CT images with preoperative MRI images. b, Example spike waveforms detected during a 10-s time window are plotted for each electrode (data were recorded on post-implant day 1,218). Each rectangular panel corresponds to a single electrode and each blue trace is a single spike waveform (2.1-ms duration). Spiking events were detected using a −4.5 root mean square (RMS) threshold, thereby excluding almost all background activity. Electrodes with a mean threshold crossing rate of at least 2 Hz were considered to have 'spiking activity' and are outlined in red (note that this is a conservative estimate that is meant to include only spiking activity that could be from single neurons, as opposed to multiunit 'hash'). The results show that many electrodes still record large spiking waveforms that are well above the noise floor (the y axis of each panel spans 330 μV, whereas the background activity has an average RMS value of only 6.4 μV). On this day, 92 electrodes out of 192 had a threshold crossing rate of at least 2 Hz.

Extended Data Table 1 Example decoded sentences for one block of copy typing

Extended Data Table 2 Example decoded sentences for one block of free typing

Supplementary information

This file contains the Supplementary Methods and Supplementary Note 1.

: Copying sentences in real-time with the handwriting brain-computer interface. In this video, participant T5 copies sentences displayed on a computer monitor with the handwriting-brain computer interface. When the red square on the monitor turns green, this cues T5 to begin copying the sentence.

: Hand micromotion while using the handwriting brain-computer interface. Participant T5 is paralyzed from the neck down (C4 ASIA C spinal cord injury) and only generates small micromotions of the hand when attempting to handwrite. T5 retains no useful hand function.

: Freely answering questions in real-time with the handwriting brain-computer interface. In this video, participant T5 answers questions that appear on a computer monitor using the handwriting brain-computer interface. T5 was instructed to take as much time as he wanted to formulate an answer, and then to write it as quickly as possible.

: Side-by-side comparison between the handwriting brain-computer interface and the prior state of the art for intracortical brain-computer interfaces. In a prior study (Pandarinath et al., 2017) participant T5 achieved the highest typing speed ever reported with an intracortical brain-computer interface (39 correct characters per minute using a point-and-click typing system). Here, we show an example sentence typed by T5 using the point-and-click system (shown on the bottom) and the new handwriting brain-computer interface (shown on the top), which is more than twice as fast.

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Willett, F.R., Avansino, D.T., Hochberg, L.R. et al. High-performance brain-to-text communication via handwriting. Nature 593, 249-254 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03506-2
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Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can restore communication to people who have lost the ability to move or speak. So far, a major focus of BCI research has been on restoring gross motor skills, such as reaching and grasping1-5 or point-and-click typing with a computer cursor6,7.

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3D printed houses for climates around the globe 

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3D printed houses for climates around the globe 

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The future of 3D printing.... follow up.

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A Dutch couple recently became the first people in Europe to move into a 3D-printed home, so we have rounded up seven examples of 3D-printed houses from around the world.

3D printing has long been hailed as a potential solution for quickly and efficiently building housing, and this promise is now becoming a reality.

Here are seven examples of 3D-printed homes that have already been built, including a bio-plastic micro home and a house printed from a mixture of soil, straw and rice husks.

Bio-plastic micro-home, The Netherlands, by DUS Architects
Dutch architecture studio DUS Architects used sustainable bio-plastic to print and construct this eight-square-metre micro cabin in Amsterdam.

The structure used deposition modelling, a form of additive manufacturing typically used in household 3D printers, to create its geometric walls.

Inside, the cabin has just enough space for a small sleeping area, with a bed that can be put away when not in use. A 3D-printed bath constructed using the same printing technique is located outside.
Find out more about the bio-plastic micro home ›

Tecla, Italy, Mario Cucinella Architects and WASP
In collaboration with 3D-printing specialists WASP, Mario Cucinella Architects looked to vernacular architecture and ancient building techniques to create and develop this low-carbon housing prototype.

The home comprises two connected domes and has an area of 60-square-metres. The structure was fitted with glass doors and a large skylight at the top of each dome that allows light to enter the space.

The studio combined modern technology and locally sourced clay to produce the homes, using a multilevelled 3D printer that can complete the structure in 200 hours while consuming only six kilowatts of power.
Find out more about Tecla ›

Project Milestone, The Netherlands, Eindhoven University of Technology
Built as part of a scheme that aims to become the world's first 3D-printed houses used as rental properties, this boulder-shaped home became the first lived-in 3D-printed home in Europe.

The home was designed by Dutch architecture studio Houben & Van Mierlo and was developed as part of a research project with the Eindhoven University of Technology in order to broaden knowledge surrounding the production of 3D-printed homes.

It has fully habitable interiors and is fitted with an open-plan kitchen-diner, a bedroom and a bathroom.
Find out more about the first inhabited 3D-printed home ›

Two-storey home, Belgium, Kamp C
Located in Westerlo, Belgium, this home is said to be the first house to be 3D-printed in one piece. The two-storey house is eight metres tall, has a floor area of 90-square-metres and was built to showcase the potential of 3D printing.

It was designed as a low-energy home and contains both ceiling and underfloor heating, solar panels and a heat pump. Inside, it is fitted with a staircase, floor-to-ceiling windows and ceiling support.
Find out more about Kamp C's 3D-printed home ›

Gaia, Italy, WASP
This 30-square-metre house was printed using a mixture of local soil, chopped straw and rice husks obtained from rice waste production.

The structural walls are printed from soil, while the cavities are filled with the rice waste, which provides insulation. Rice husks were also used on the interior of the structure, covering the walls and ceiling of the home to form a natural plaster.

The company claimed that if not maintained, the home can easily biodegrade and break down into the soil. WASP believes that agricultural waste could become a major resource for construction and 3D printing.
Find out more about Gaia ›

East 17th Street Residences, US, ICON
ICON collaborated with housing developer 3Strands to produce four 3D-printed homes that were designed to withstand extreme weather conditions.

The structures took seven days to print and include a variety of two-, three- and four-bedrooms properties. Upon completion, the homes will be decorated by Austin-based interior designer Claire Zinnecker and are set to include pitched roofs, covered porches, central heating and air-conditioning systems.

So far, the cement-based homes have withstood a 7.4 magnitude earthquake and the severe winter storms that took place at the start of 2021.
Find out more about East 17th Street Residences ›

Casa Covida, US, by Emerging Objects
Emerging Objects used 3D-printed adobe to create Casa Covida, an experimental hut in the San Luis Valley formed of three interconnected cylindrical volumes.

The hut was designed for two people to live together in isolation during the coronavirus pandemic and has adobe walls made from sand, silt, clay and water, printed using a three-axis SCARA (Selective Compliance Articulated Robot Arm.)

The house also features an open fireplace and an inflatable pink roof that can be erected if it rains or snows. It was created as a case study for how a combination of modern and ancient technology could be used to create a home big enough for two people.
Find out more about Casa Covida ›

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Seven 3D-printed houses that have been built around the world

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A Dutch couple recently became the first people in Europe to move into a 3D-printed home, so we have rounded up seven examples of 3D-printed houses from around the world. 3D printing has long been hailed as a potential solution for quickly and efficiently building housing, and this promise is now becoming a reality.

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LVMH has announced the launch of Nona Source, the first online resale platform for "re-sourcing" exceptional materials from the Group's Fashion & Leather Goods Maisons. Designed by experts from LVMH via its DARE intrapreneurial program (Disrupt, Act, Risk to be an Entrepreneur), Nona Source supports LVMH's environmental strategy by rethinking sourcing and supporting the circular economy.
A veritable revolution in sourcing, Nona Source offers emerging creatives and brands in Europe access to high-quality fabrics and leathers at competitive prices to encourage creative re-use of materials. Created by three experts from LVMH - Marie Falguera, Romain Brabo and Anne Prieur du Perray - Nona Source is a startup incubated by LVMH's DARE intrapreneurial program to accelerate innovative solutions. With their expertise in materials sourcing and digital transformation, they designed a game-changing platform to re-use deadstocks, the "sleeping beauties" stored in the warehouses of exclusive LVMH Fashion & Leather Goods Houses. Developed with a sustainable vision, Nona Source favors local distribution. Because stocks are located in France, the platform will for the time being deliver within Europe (including the United Kingdom).

An all-digital experience, Nona Source provides an innovative solution for creatives. The catalogue proposes a wide variety of prestigious materials, from lace to leathers in different compositions, weights, colors and patterns. Only exclusive patterns or branded fabrics are not available. All materials are carefully selected and re-valued at competitive prices. Product characteristics are presented in minute detail thanks to high-quality visuals, videos to translate the touch and feel experience, plus displays on wooden mannequin's for fall and drape visualization. Thanks to high-fidelity color data and a digital sensorial experience to faithfully characterize these luxury materials, professionals can purchase rolls, skins or panels, depending on available quantities, without cutting or sampling.

Nona Source is a concrete solution to address the challenges and opportunities of circularity, a key pillar of LVMH's environmental strategy articulated in the LIFE 360 program (LIFE: LVMH Initiatives For the Environment). This future facing creative solution for more sustainable fashion derives its name from one of the three Parcae goddesses of Roman mythology. Nona, the youngest, spins the thread of life, Decima weaves it and Morta cuts it. Nona Source thus embodies the re-use of materials so that the thread is never cut, but on the contrary revitalized with fresh creativity.

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LVMH presents Nona Source, the first online resale platform for materials from LVMH Fashion & Leather Goods Maisons - LVMH

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LVMH has announced the launch of Nona Source, the first online resale platform for "re-sourcing" exceptional materials from the Group's Fashion & Leather Goods Maisons. Designed by experts from LVMH via its DARE intrapreneurial program (Disrupt, Act, Risk to be an Entrepreneur), Nona Source supports LVMH's environmental strategy by rethinking sourcing and supporting the circular economy.

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What does it mean, how do you produce it and how do you evaluate it?

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It wasn't long into the pandemic before Simon Carley realized we had an evidence problem. It was early 2020, and COVID-19 infections were starting to lap at the shores of the United Kingdom, where Carley is an emergency-medicine doctor at hospitals in Manchester. Carley is also a specialist in evidence-based medicine - the transformative idea that physicians should decide how to treat people by referring to rigorous evidence, such as clinical trials.

As cases of COVID-19 climbed in February, Carley thought that clinicians were suddenly abandoning evidence and reaching for drugs just because they sounded biologically plausible. Early studies Carley saw being published often lacked control groups or enrolled too few people to draw firm conclusions. "We were starting to treat patients with these drugs initially just on what seemed like a good idea," he says. He understood the desire to do whatever is possible for someone gravely ill, but he also knew how dangerous it is to assume a drug works when so many promising treatments prove to be ineffective - or even harmful - in trials. "The COVID-19 pandemic has arguably been one of the greatest challenges to evidence-based medicine since the term was coined in the last century," Carley and his colleagues wrote of the problems they were seeing.

Other medical experts echo these concerns. With the pandemic now deep into its second year, it's clear the crisis has exposed major weaknesses in the production and use of research-based evidence - failures that have inevitably cost lives. Researchers have registered more than 2,900 clinical trials related to COVID-19, but the majority are too small or poorly designed to be of much use (see 'Small samples'). Organizations worldwide have scrambled to synthesize the available evidence on drugs, masks and other key issues, but can't keep up with the outpouring of new research, and often repeat others' work. There's been "research waste at an unprecedented scale", says Huseyin Naci, who studies health policy at the London School of Economics.

At the same time, shining examples of good practice have emerged: medical advances based on rigorous evidence have helped to chart a route out of the pandemic. The rapid trials of vaccines were spectacular successes, and well-run trials of possible treatments have shown, for instance, that some steroids help to fight COVID-19, but the drug hydroxychloroquine doesn't. Many physicians point to the United Kingdom's RECOVERY trial as exemplary in showing how quick action and simple protocols make it possible to conduct a large clinical trial in a crisis. And researchers have launched 'living' systematic reviews that are constantly updated as research emerges - essential in a fast-moving disease outbreak.

As the COVID-19 response turns from a sprint to a marathon, researchers are taking stock and looking ahead. In October, global-health leaders will meet for three days to discuss what's been learnt from COVID-19 about supplying evidence in health emergencies. COVID-19 is a stress test that revealed the flaws in systems that produce evidence, says Elie Akl, an internal-medicine specialist and clinical epidemiologist at the American University of Beirut. "It would be shameful if we come out of this experience and not make the necessary change for the next crisis."

The evidence revolution

The idea that medicine should be based on research and evidence is a surprisingly recent development. Many doctors practising today weren't taught too much about clinical trials in medical school. It was standard to offer advice largely on the basis of opinion and experience, which, in practice, often meant following the advice of the most senior physician in the room. (Today, this is sometimes called eminence-based medicine.)

In 1969, a young physician called Iain Chalmers realized the lethal flaw in this approach when he worked in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Chalmers had been taught in medical school that young children with measles should not be treated with antibiotics unless it was certain that they had a secondary bacterial infection. He obediently withheld the drugs. But he found out later that what he'd been taught was wrong: six controlled clinical trials had shown that antibiotics given early to children with measles were effective at preventing serious bacterial infections. He knows that some children in his care died as a result, a tragedy that helped set him on a mission to put things right.

In the 1970s, Chalmers and a team set about systematically scouring the medical literature for controlled clinical trials relating to care in pregnancy and childbirth, a field in which the use of evidence was shockingly poor. A decade or so later, they published what they'd found in a database and two thick books with hundreds of systematic reviews showing that many routine procedures - such as shaving the pubic hair of women in labour or restricting access to their newborn babies - were either useless or harmful. Other procedures, such as giving antenatal steroids for premature births, convincingly saved lives. It was a landmark study, and in 1993, Chalmers was central in founding the Cochrane collaboration, which aimed to follow this model and synthesize evidence across other medical specialties.

On the other side of the world, meanwhile, a group of doctors led by David Sackett working at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, had been developing a new way of teaching medicine, in which students were trained to critically appraise the medical literature to inform their decisions. In 1991, the term evidence-based medicine was coined, and it was later defined as the "conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients".

Today, it's common for doctors to use evidence, alongside their clinical expertise and a patient's preferences, to work out what to do. A bedrock of evidence is built from systematic reviews, in which researchers follow standard methods to analyse all relevant, rigorous evidence to answer a question. These reviews often include meta-analyses - the statistical combining of data from multiple studies, such as clinical trials. Cochrane and other groups published more than 24,000 systematic reviews in 2019 alone.

Organizations in areas ranging from education to conservation also create evidence syntheses, and policymakers find them an invaluable tool. When faced with a slew of conflicting studies, an evidence synthesis "has the power to identify important conclusions about what works that would never be possible from assessing the underlying trials in isolation", says Karla Soares-Weiser, editor-in-chief of the Cochrane Library and acting chief executive of Cochrane, based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

The rise of evidence syntheses has been "an invisible and gentle revolution", says Jeremy Grimshaw, a senior scientist and implementation researcher at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. Once you see the compelling logic of assessing an entire landscape of science in this way, "it's very hard to do anything else", he says.

At least, that is, until COVID-19 hit.

Tumult of trials

Carley compares the time before and after COVID-19 to a choice of meals. Before the pandemic, physicians wanted their evidence like a gourmet plate from a Michelin-starred restaurant: of exceptional quality, beautifully presented and with the provenance of all the ingredients - the clinical trials - perfectly clear. But after COVID-19 hit, standards slipped. It was, he says, as if doctors were staggering home from a club after ten pints of lager and would swallow any old evidence from the dodgy burger van on the street. "They didn't know where it came from or what the ingredients were, they weren't entirely sure whether it was meat or vegetarian, they would just eat anything," he says. "And it just felt like you've gone from one to the other overnight."

Kari Tikkinen, a urologist at the University of Helsinki who had run clinical trials in the past, was equally shocked early last year to talk to physicians who were so confident that untested therapies such as hydroxychloroquine were effective that they questioned the need to test them in clinical trials. It was "hype-based medicine", he says - fuelled by former US president Donald Trump, who announced last May that he had started taking the drug himself. "It very quickly got ahead of us, where people were prescribing any variety of crazy choices for COVID," says Reed Siemieniuk, a doctor and methodologist at McMaster University.

Many doctors and researchers did race to launch clinical trials - but most were too small to produce statistically meaningful results, says Tikkinen, who leads the Finnish arm of SOLIDARITY, an international clinical trial of COVID-19 treatments coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO). Hydroxychloroquine was the most-tested drug according to a database of 2,900 COVID-19 clinical trials called COVID-NMA: it was tested in 250 studies involving nearly 89,000 people (see 'Too many trials?'). Many are still under way, despite convincing evidence that the drug doesn't help: the RECOVERY trial concluded that hydroxychloroquine should not be recommended to treat COVID-19 in June last year.

Researchers have known for well over a decade that colossal amounts of medical research are wasted because of poorly designed trials and a failure to assess what research has been done before. A basic calculation at the start of a COVID-19 trial, Tikkinen says, would have shown the large number of participants necessary to produce a meaningful result. "There was no coordination," he says.

Instead, hospitals should have joined up, as was done in a handful of mega-trials. SOLIDARITY has enrolled nearly 12,000 people with COVID-19 in more than 30 countries. And many researchers look with awe at the RECOVERY trial, which the United Kingdom launched rapidly in March 2020, in part because it was kept simple - a short consent procedure and one outcome measure: death within 28 days of being randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. The trial has now enrolled nearly 40,000 people at 180 sites and its results showing that the steroid dexamethasone reduced death rates changed standard practice almost overnight.

One clear take-home lesson, researchers say, is that countries need more large-scale national and international clinical-trial protocols sitting on the shelf, ready to fire up quickly when a pandemic strikes. "We will learn a lot of lessons from this, and I think RECOVERY has set the standard," Tikkinen says.

Carley says that in February, he treated a man with COVID-19 who desperately wanted to receive monoclonal antibodies, but the only route to do so at Carley's hospital was by enrolling him in RECOVERY. The randomization protocol assigned him to receive standard care, rather than the therapy. "Which was tough - I still think it's the right thing to do," says Carley, who adds that the man did OK. The RECOVERY trial announced in February that the monoclonal antibody tocilizumab cut the risk of death in people hospitalized with severe COVID-19; testing of another antibody cocktail is still under way.

The rise of reviews

The pandemic is "evidence on steroids", says Gabriel Rada, who directs the evidence-based health-care programme at the Pontificial Catholic University of Chile in Santiago. Research on the disease has been produced at a phenomenal rate. And that created a knock-on problem for researchers who try to make sense of it.

The number of evidence syntheses concerning COVID-19 went through the roof, as governments, local authorities and professional bodies flocked to commission them. "We've never seen this level of demand from decision makers saying 'help, tell us what's going on'," Grimshaw says. Rada runs a giant database of systematic reviews in health called Epistemonikos (a Greek term meaning 'what is worth knowing'). It now contains nearly 9,000 systematic reviews and other evidence syntheses related to COVID-19. But ironically, just like the primary research they are synthesizing, many of the syntheses themselves are of poor quality or repetitive. Earlier this year, Rada found 30 systematic reviews for convalescent plasma, based on only 11 clinical trials, and none of the reviews had included all the trials. He counted more than 100 on hydroxychloroquine, all out of date. "You have this huge amount of inappropriate and probably wasteful duplication of effort," Grimshaw says. "There's a fundamental noise-to-signal problem."

One possible solution lies in PROSPERO, a database started in 2011 in which researchers can register their planned systematic reviews. Lesley Stewart, who oversees it at the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York, UK, says that more than 4,000 reviews on COVID-19 topics have been registered so far, and the PROSPERO team appeals to researchers to check the database before embarking on a review, to see whether similar work already exists. She'd like to see better ways to identify the most important questions in health policy and treatment and make sure that researchers generating and synthesizing evidence are tackling those.

Researchers already knew that evidence syntheses took too long to produce and fell quickly out of date, and the pandemic threw those problems into sharp relief. Cochrane's median time to produce a review is more than two years and, although it commits to updating them, that isn't nimble enough when new research is flooding out. So, during the pandemic, Cochrane cut the time of some reviews to three to six months.

Systematic reviews are slow to produce in part because academics have to work hard even to identify relevant clinical trials in publication databases: the studies are not clearly tagged and researchers who do trials rarely talk to those collecting them into reviews. Julian Elliott, who directs Australia's COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce, based at Cochrane Australia, Monash University in Melbourne, says it's as if one group creates a precious artefact - its clinical-trial paper - and then tosses it into the desert, leaving the reviewers to come along like archaeologists with picks and brushes to try to unearth it in the dust. "It sounds completely insane, doesn't it?" he says.

Rada is trying to help. During the pandemic, he has compiled one of the largest repositories of COVID-19 research in the world, containing more than 410,000 articles by early May. The team uses automated and manual methods to trawl literature databases for research and then classify and tag it, for example as a randomized controlled trial. The goal is for the database, called COVID-19 Living Overview of Evidence (L·OVE), to be the raw material for evidence syntheses, saving everyone a monumental amount of work.

Drawing on this and other sources, a handful of groups including Cochrane have been developing living systematic reviews. Siemieniuk had produced such reviews before and helped to convene a group to build one on COVID-19 therapies. The international team, now about 50-60 people, combs the literature daily for clinical trials that could change practice and distils findings into a living guideline that doctors can quickly refer to at a patient's bedside and which is used by the WHO. "It's a very good concept," says Janita Chau, a specialist in evidence-based nursing at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and co-chair of a network of Cochrane centres in China. Chau says it's important to compile the evidence now rather than see interest in it fade away with the disease itself, as she saw during the SARS outbreak in 2003.

Isabelle Boutron, an epidemiologist at the University of Paris and director of Cochrane France, is co-leading another extensive living evidence synthesis, the COVID-NMA initiative, which is mapping where registered trials are taking place, evaluating their quality, synthesizing results and making the data openly available in real time. Ideally, she says, researchers planning trials would talk to evidence-synthesis specialists in advance to ensure that they are measuring the types of outcome that can be usefully combined with others in reviews. "We're really trying to link the different communities," she says.

Grimshaw, Elliott and others would like to see living reviews expanded. That's one focus of COVID-END (COVID-19 Evidence Network to support Decision-making), a network of organizations including Cochrane and the WHO that came together in days in April 2020 to better coordinate COVID-19 evidence syntheses and direct people to the best available evidence. The group is now working out its longer-term strategy, which includes a priority list for living evidence syntheses.

As the world moves into a recovery phase, Grimshaw, who co-leads COVID-END, argues that it will be served best by a global library of a few hundred living systematic reviews that address issues ranging from vaccine roll-out to recovery from school closures. "I think there's a strong argument that you'll get more bang for the buck if, in selected areas, you invest in living reviews," he says.

Mosaic of evidence

Even when rigorous clinical trials are too slow or difficult to run, the pandemic served as a reminder that it's still possible to recommend what to do. In the United Kingdom, Trish Greenhalgh, a health researcher and doctor at the University of Oxford, expressed frustration at those who wanted bullet-proof evidence from randomized controlled trials before recommending the widespread use of face masks, even though there was a wealth of other evidence that masks could be effective and, unlike an experimental drug, that they posed little potential harm. (The United Kingdom mandated face masks on public transport in June 2020, long after some other countries.) "I think that was just a blast of common sense," says David Tovey, co-editor in chief of the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology and an adviser to COVID-END, based in London. "People have focused too much on randomized trials as being the one source of truth."

The issue is familiar in public health, says David Ogilvie, who works in the field at the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, UK. In the standard paradigm of evidence-based medicine, researchers collect evidence on a therapy from randomized controlled trials until it gets a green or red light. But in many situations, such trials are unethical, impractical or unfeasible: it's impossible to do a randomized controlled trial to test whether a new urban motorway improves people's health by siphoning traffic out of town, for example. Often, researchers have to pragmatically assess a range of different evidence - surveys, natural experiments, observational studies and trials - and mosaic them together to give a picture of whether something is worthwhile. "You have to get on and do what we can with the best available evidence, then continue to evaluate what we're doing," says Ogilvie.

However well scientists synthesize and package evidence, there's of course no guarantee that it will be listened to or used. The pandemic has shown how hard it can be to change the minds of ideologically driven politicians and hardened vaccine sceptics or to beat back disinformation on Twitter. "We're definitely fighting against big forces," says Per Olav Vandvik, who heads the MAGIC Evidence Ecosystem Foundation in Oslo, which supports the use of trustworthy evidence.

Leaders in the field will pick up these debates in October during the virtual meeting organized by Cochrane, COVID-END and the WHO, to discuss what has been learnt about evidence supply and demand during the pandemic - and where to go next. One key issue, Soares-Weiser says, is ensuring that evidence addresses issues faced by low- and middle-income countries, as well as richer ones, and that access to evidence is equitable, too. "I really believe that we will come out of this crisis stronger," she says.

Carley, meanwhile, is still treating people with COVID-19 in Manchester, and sometimes still seeing new treatments recommended before they've been tested in trials. The last year has been exhausting and awful, he says, "seeing young, fit, healthy people coming in with quite horrific chest X-rays and not do terribly well".

At the same time, there's a thrill in seeing the enormous difference that evidence - that science - can make. "When results come out and you see that dexamethasone is going to save literally hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide," he says, "you think - 'that's amazing'."

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It wasn't long into the pandemic before Simon Carley realized we had an evidence problem. It was early 2020, and COVID-19 infections were starting to lap at the shores of the United Kingdom, where Carley is an emergency-medicine doctor at hospitals in Manchester.

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China's population grew at its slowest pace in decades, according to government data released on Tuesday.

The average annual growth rate was 0.53% over the past 10 years, down from a rate of 0.57% between 2000 and 2010 - bringing the population to 1.41bn.

The results add pressure on Beijing to boost measures for couples to have more babies and avert a population decline.

The results were announced in a once-a-decade census, which was originally expected to be released in April.

The census was conducted in late 2020 where some seven million census takers had gone door-to-door to collect information from Chinese households.

Given the sheer number of people surveyed, it is considered the most comprehensive resource on China's population, which is important for future planning.

Ning Jizhe, head of the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that 12 million babies were born last year - a significant decrease from the 18 million newborns in 2016.

However he added that it was "still a considerable number".

Mr Ning added that a lower fertility rate is a natural result of China's social and economic development.

As countries become more developed, birth rates tend to fall due to education or other priorities such as careers.

Its neighbouring countries Japan and South Korea, for example, have also seen birth rates fall to record lows in recent years despite various government incentives for couples to have more children.

Last year, South Korea recorded more deaths than births for the first time in history, raising fresh alarm in a country which already has the world's lowest birth rate.

Shrinking populations are problematic due to the inverted age structure, with more old people than the young.

When that happens, there won't be enough workers in the future to support the elderly, and there may be an increased demand for health and social care.

Yes. In 2016, the government ended a controversial one-child policy and allowed couples to have two children.

But the reform failed to reverse the country's falling birth rate despite a two-year increase immediately afterwards.

Ms Yue Su, principal economist from The Economist Intelligence Unit, said: "While the second-child policy had a positive impact on the birth rate, it proved short-term in nature."

There had been expectations that China might scrap the family planning policy altogether along with the new census results, but this did not happen.

A report by the Financial Times in April also quoted people familiar with the matter as saying the census would reveal a population decline.

This did not happen with the 2020 report but experts have told various media outlets that it could still happen over the next few years.

"It will in 2021 or 2022, or very soon," Huang Wenzhang, a demography expert at the Centre for China and Globalisation told Reuters.

China's population trends have over the years been largely shaped by the one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979 to slow population growth.

Families that violated the rules faced fines, loss of employment and sometimes forced abortions.

What else have we learnt?

China's working-age population - which it defines as people aged between 16 and 59 - has also declined by 40 million as compared to the last census in 2010. But chief methodologist Zeng Yuping said that the total size "remains big" with 880 million.

"We still have an abundant labour force," he said.

However, economist Ms Yue warned that going forward, continued drops in the labour force "will place a cap on China's potential economic growth."

She added: "The demographic dividend that propelled the country's economic rise over recent decades is set to dissipate quickly."

After a few extra weeks in which officials were reportedly working to "prepare" the numbers and help to "set the agenda" the bottom line is the number of Chinese in China is growing - just.

Most of that is people getting older - and staying older. There was a small increase in the number of under 14s, a vindication of the decision to end the one-child policy in 2015, according to the government's census chief.

But state media is already talking about the population beginning to fall next year.

This is not a demographic change unique to China, but with the biggest population in the world and an economy that it's trying to make more reliant on domestic consumption, this is a particularly salient issue.

China's Communist leaders have already said retirement age will need to go up to deal with those demands and costs. This could mean more work to come for the country's workers.

Experts warned that any impact on China's population, such as a decline, could have a vast effect on other parts of the world.

Dr Yi Fuxian, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: "China's economy has grown very quickly, and many industries in the world rely on China. The scope of the impact of a population decline would be very wide."

Additional reporting by the BBC's Yip Wai Yee

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China census: Data shows slowest population growth in decades

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China's population grew at its slowest pace in decades, according to government data released on Tuesday. The average annual growth rate was 0.53% over the past 10 years, down from a rate of 0.57% between 2000 and 2010 - bringing the population to 1.41bn.

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The American birth rate fell for the sixth consecutive year in 2020, with the lowest number of babies born since 1979, according to a new report.

Some 3.6 million babies were born in the US in 2020 - marking a 4% decline from the year before, found the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics.

The slump was seen across all recorded ethnicities and origins, according to the findings.

The national picture mirrors a decline in births seen worldwide, a trend some experts say has been accelerated by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

What's in the report?

In the CDC report, demographers examined the country's general fertility rate, which compares the number of live births with the number of women considered to be of childbearing age - between 15 and 44 years old.

In 2020, the general fertility rate in the US was about 56 births per 1,000 women - the lowest rate on record and about half of what it was in the early 1960s.

The decline in birth rates was seen across all measured racial and ethnic groups. Births dropped by 4% among white, black and Latina women, 9% for Asian women, 3% for Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders and 7% for Native American and Alaska native women.

The report also analysed the total US fertility rate, which estimates how many babies a hypothetical group of 1,000 women would have over their lifetime based on actual birth rates. For a generation to exactly replace itself, this number must be at or above 2.1.

According to the CDC, this rate has generally been "below replacement" since 1971 and has consistently been below replacement since 2007. Today, the US total fertility rate sits at 1.6 - another record low.

What's behind the drop?

Experts say the country's tumbling birth rate is closely linked to the average age of American mothers. Women are becoming mothers later in life - a phenomenon tied to increases in educational attainment, growing labour force participation and delays in marriage, according to the Pew Research Center. The average age of mothers at first birth is 27, up from 23 in 2010, recent CDC data has found.

This changing picture of motherhood has been driven in part by declines in pregnancy among teenagers. The birth rates among teenagers aged 15-19 had the steepest decline of all age groups: down by 8% in 2020 to around 15 births per 1,000 females.

The National Center for Health Statistics has said it is too early to determine whether the pandemic had a significant effect on birth rates because this year's data is in keeping with past trends. But initial research suggests that Covid-19 may have compounded existing patterns.

In a June 2020 study by the Guttmacher Institute, one in three US women said that because of Covid-19, they were likely to delay having children or have fewer children altogether. And researchers from the Brookings Institution - who predicted a "large, lasting baby bust" due to Covid-19 - have suggested that the anxiety and economic uncertainty wrought by the pandemic will further depress birth rates going forward.

Data from the CDC shows births falling most sharply toward the end of last year when babies conceived at the start of the pandemic would have been born.

What's the global picture?

The slowing US birth rate is echoed by worldwide trends.

While wealthy countries like Germany and Japan have seen slowing birth rates for some time, the same is now happening in middle-income countries as well, including Thailand and Brazil. Globally, the fertility rate is expected to fall below replacement levels - 2.1 births per woman - by 2070, according to a 2019 report from the UN.

By the end of this century, the report found, the world's population is projected to virtually stop growing for the first time in history. And a widely cited study published in the Lancet last year suggested this population peak would come even earlier - in 2064.

Between 2020 and 2100, 90 countries are expected to lose population, including two-thirds of all countries and territories in Europe. According to the UN numbers, Africa is the only region in the world projected to have strong population growth for the rest of the 21st Century - mostly concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa.

Similar to trends in the US, the UN has linked falling fertility rates and population growth to gradual delays in childbearing among women. Though the mean age of childbearing varies widely throughout the world, overall increases will continue to lower fertility rates and global population growth in turn.

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US birth rate falls 4% to its lowest point ever

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The American birth rate fell for the sixth consecutive year in 2020, with the lowest number of babies born since 1979, according to a new report. Some 3.6 million babies were born in the US in 2020 - marking a 4% decline from the year before, found the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics.

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Revolutionary way to heal our bodies or immersive invasion on a cellular level?

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Advertisement

Optogenetics is revolutionizing neuroscience. The technique involves genetically altering particular cell types to make them produce light-sensitive proteins; scientists can then activate the cells using light pulses delivered to the brain via fiber-optic cable. This has already given researchers an unparalleled ability to probe the circuitry underlying animal brain functions. But some have moved beyond the brain, working toward human medical applications.

Treating blindness

Optogenetics offers a flexible approach to treating, and possibly curing, blindness. The retina's photoreceptor cells use light-sensitive proteins, called opsins, to convert light entering the eye into electrical signals. If these cells fail (a common cause of vision loss), researchers can use viruses to deliver opsin-producing genes to targeted cells-either to restore light sensitivity to photoreceptors or to make other cell types in the retina sensitive to light. This process can potentially treat blindness with many different causes and levels of retinal degeneration. It works in the laboratory, and multiple clinical trials of such systems in people are already underway. Setups sometimes use cameras and special goggles to project light wavelengths and intensity optimized for the opsin being used, but scientists are also testing opsins that respond to direct light.

Regulating glucose levels in diabetes

A team led by bioengineer Martin Fussenegger of ETH Zürich is optogenetically manipulating gene expression to regulate blood glucose levels in diabetic mice. In a 2011 study, the team engineered cells to respond to blue light by expressing a protein known to modulate blood glucose. Controlling genes in this way was a dramatic step forward, Fussenegger says: "It was a direct link between light and gene expression." The group's experiments showed increased insulin levels and reduced glucose sensitivity in mice that were implanted with the engineered cells and then treated with light. In 2017 Fussenegger and his colleagues described implanting wirelessly powered LEDs along with the engineered cells to create a smartphone-controlled semiautomatic system. They have since continued refining the technique.

Controlling gut microbes

The gut microbiome is immensely complex and includes trillions of individual microbes, most of whose functions are not understood. Baylor College geneticist Meng Wang and her colleagues recently described in eLife how they used optogenetics to literally shine light on the link between gut microbes and health. They altered Escherichia coli bacteria to turn on and off colanic acid production using green and red light, respectively. Wang's group previously showed that the acid protects cells against stress, promoting longevity-at least in worms. In the new experiments, worms with the altered bacteria lived longer when exposed to green light. But therapeutic applications are a long way off. "The major bottleneck is the delivery of light," Wang says. "Currently it's more a research tool for putting the microbiome under precise control" to study its links with health.

This article was originally published with the title "Better in a Flash" in Scientific American 324, 5, 20 (May 2021)

doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0521-20

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Simon Makin is a freelance science writer based in London.

Follow Simon Makin on Twitter

Credit: Nick Higgins

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Will this rocket help to colonise the moon? ...

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Will this rocket help to colonise the moon? ...

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... and what are the consequences?

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Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent

Step by step, the SpaceX company is progressing the development of its novel Starship rocket.

The latest prototype, Serial Number 15 (SN15), has just completed a successful high-altitude ascent and landing.

The four previous test artefacts all ran into trouble as they went through their touchdown manoeuvres, ultimately destroying themselves in the process.

But SN15 had no such difficulty, making a tidy, controlled return to the ground at SpaceX's R&D facility in Texas.

A small fire licked around the base of the vehicle on touchdown but was soon extinguished.

There's considerable interest in the Starship concept now that the American space agency (Nasa) has chosen it to land astronauts on the Moon later this decade.

For SpaceX, lunar missions would be just one application of many for the new system.

The expectation is that Starships will replace the company's Falcon rockets.

These existing vehicles carry out regular missions - both crewed and uncrewed - for Nasa, as well as satellite deployments for the US military and other commercial operators.

But SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, believes the new 50m-tall Starship can do it all, bigger and better - and not just at Earth; he says the technology will get people to Mars.

Wednesday's test proceeded much like the previous prototype flights.

The uncrewed SN15 left its launch mount at the Boca Chica facility, and rose vertically on the thrust of three methane-burning Raptor engines.

These power units shut down in sequence as the target height of roughly 10km (6.2 miles) was approached, with the vehicle then leaning over into the horizontal for the drop to the ground.

This belly-flop descent, controlled by large flaps at either end of the vehicle, is intended to simulate how future, operational Starships will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere from orbit, presenting a large surface area to the direction of travel to scrub off speed.

The vehicle is supposed to transition back to a tail-down configuration just before reaching the surface.

SN8, SN9, SN10 and SN11 couldn't manage the process cleanly and were destroyed just before, at, or shortly after the moment of touchdown.

SN15, in contrast, made a perfect flip back to the vertical and set itself down gently on its stubby legs.

SpaceX has more prototypes in various stages of readiness. It is iterating the design, making upgrades as engineers learn how to build and fly the rockets.

Operational Starships will eventually launch atop a booster called Super Heavy.

This will feature perhaps 28 Raptors, producing more than 70 meganewtons (16 million lbs) of thrust - about double that of the mighty Apollo Saturn 5 rocket, which sent men to the Moon.

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SpaceX Starship prototype makes clean landing

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Jonathan Amos Science correspondent Step by step, the SpaceX company is progressing the development of its novel Starship rocket. The latest prototype, Serial Number 15 (SN15), has just completed a successful high-altitude ascent and landing. The four previous test artefacts all ran into trouble as they went through their touchdown manoeuvres, ultimately destroying themselves in the process.

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Are magnets the solution to our energy crisis?

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Are magnets the solution to our energy crisis?

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Dr Greg Brittles' eyes gleam with excitement when he explains the project he is working on.

"It's every engineer's dream really, to have a project that's technically challenging, which requires you to develop new technology and solutions to hard problems, but that are also simultaneously important for the world to have."

Since finishing his research at Oxford University five years ago, he has been working for Tokamak Energy, a UK start-up that has plans to build a fusion reactor.

Fusion is the reaction that powers the Sun and the stars. If that power could be harnessed on Earth it would provide a plentiful source of energy, from only a tiny amount of fuel and producing no carbon dioxide. What's not to love?

The principle is easy enough to understand. Take two hydrogen atoms, add enough heat and pressure and they will fuse together to form helium. During that process some of the hydrogen mass is transformed into heat, which you can use to make electricity.

The catch is that to make fusion happen here on Earth, you have to heat hydrogen isotopes to hundreds of millions of degrees, until they become so energetic they break apart into a whirling state of matter called plasma.

The challenge has always been to contain that plasma. Stars do it with gravity, but on Earth the most common method is to use powerful magnetic fields to keep the plasma confined.

Much of the engineering challenge has come down to building magnets. They have to be powerful enough to contain an insanely hot, whirling mass of matter, but not use so much electricity that your reactor uses more power than it generates.

Later this year Dr Bob Mumgaard and his team at Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) will test a ground-breaking magnet that they say can make that leap forward.

Weighing 10 tonnes, the D-shaped magnet is big enough for a person to step through. Around 300km of a very special electromagnetic tape is wound into that D-shape.

The tape itself is a feat of engineering that has taken decades to develop. Thin layers of superconducting rare-earth barium copper oxide (ReBCO) are deposited on a metal tape. When cooled that bundle of tape can conduct electricity extremely efficiently, which is essential as 40,000 amps will pass through it, enough electricity to power a small town.

When the fusion industry says cooled it means the tape is chilled to minus 253C, which might sound absurdly cold to you, but in the world of superconducting materials is actually rather warm.

"It means the refrigerator that we're using is like a refrigerator that could fit in your kitchen," says Dr Mumgaard, who co-founded CFS and is the chief executive.

"The same thing with the previous generation of technology... would need a refrigerator that's the size of your house."

CFS is planning a reactor that will house 18 of those magnets, arranged in a ring - a set-up known as a tokamak - and has recently selected a site for the reactor in Massachusetts.

"We were the first to really get this magnet beyond just a tabletop, R&D [reseach and development] scale that people had done at some smaller companies and some national labs.

"We're all at the scale now where it's what you need to build fusion machines. You don't have to go up from something that is sort of a toy scale to something that is at fusion scale," Dr Mumgaard says.

The leap forward in magnet technology is also central to the fusion project at Tokamak Energy in the UK.

Dr Brittles has spent the last five years developing that technology and is currently helping to build a demonstrator that will have a series of powerful magnets working together.

"It will be an assembly of many, many coils generating forces that are all interacting and pulling on one another forming a balanced set. This has to be controlled or the forces could become imbalanced," he explains.

The forces that such magnetic fields can generate are mind-boggling. When operating at full power, Dr Brittles likens the force generated by his magnets to double the pressure at the bottom of the deepest ocean trench.

When those magnets are ready, they will go into a spherical tokamak - an apple-shaped fusion reactor.

Research suggests such a design will generate more energy for each unit of power it uses, than the more commonly used doughnut-shaped tokamak - the design that CFS and others are using.

"The real challenge is commercial fusion. And that's really what's driving us, why we're focusing on the spherical tokamak because of the long-term commercial advantages," says Dr David Kingham, one of the founders of Tokamak Energy and currently executive vice chairman.

"We think our technology will be deployable in a fusion pilot plant in the early 2030s," he says. "I think it will be a global race. There are interesting private ventures in the States. And we will be in a race with them."

The promise of a working fusion reactor has been around for decades (and always will be, so the old joke goes).

The biggest project is under way in southern France where a consortium of nations are building ITER, a giant reactor that has, so far, cost billions of pounds to build and is running years behind its original schedule.

However, more compact designs like those planned by Tokamak Energy and CFS are attracting private investors, who are betting they will be viable commercial propositions.

Dr Wal van Lierop founded his venture capital firm, Chrysalix, 20 years ago and, since 2008, has invested tens of millions of dollars in Canadian firm General Fusion.

Historically, he says, the fusion industry has struggled to raise finance, in part because so much money has been sunk into ITER, but that is all changing.

"I see more money being invested, more interest, and people are starting to realise that this is a very big platform technology and that it is not any longer something that may or may not work by 2050."

Dr van Lierop points out that the potential prize is huge. The global electricity market is worth around $3 trillion (£2.15tn) a year and is only likely to get bigger.

"If this [fusion] is successful, this will open up the largest industry transition that we have ever seen."

Back at the coal face (or perhaps plasma face), Dr Brittles confesses that there is still a lot of engineering work to be done, but he is confident.

"We're working hard to tackle lots of challenges that could trip us up at any point. But from where we sit, there's nothing that stands in the way that I think is a showstopper."

Follow Technology of Business editor Ben Morris on Twitter.

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Mind-boggling magnets could unlock plentiful power

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dr Greg Brittles' eyes gleam with excitement when he explains the project he is working on. "It's every engineer's dream really, to have a project that's technically challenging, which requires you to develop new technology and solutions to hard problems, but that are also simultaneously important for the world to have."

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3D Weaving has come of age...

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Stories about the use of 3D-weaving technology in design and architecture including the development of 3D-weaving machines.