Composite of the Future?

A new composite material being developed plans to revolutionize the composites industry with its extreme properties. The material is called Buckypaper, named after Buckminster Fuller, due to its use of carbon nanotubes that resemble Fullers Geodesic domes.

Buckypaper is said to have an electrical conductivity similar to copper or silicon, that is 10 times lighter and potentially 500 times stronger than steel. Buckypaper gets its strength from the positioning of the carbon nanotubes and their great surface area.

With its extremely high tolerances, Buckypaper will bring vast improvements in structural strength and in weight savings. Plan to see it used in everything from Airplanes and automobiles, to TV’s and other high tech products. With all its great qualities Buckypaper seems to have a bright future, but can anything be said for its sustainable qualities, or plans for its reuse?

Unfortunately there aren’t many sustainable composite alternatives to fiberglass or carbon fiber. It is an industry based on synthetic compounds that are as strong and useful as they are difficult to recycle and reuse. Since Buckypaper is still at a developmental stage, time should be taken for not only maximizing performance, but also addressing issues of reclamation and reuse. Like fiberglass, Buckypaper might be a great material with dismal health and environmental concerns. In today’s world, truly game-changing materials should not only exist in the realm of high performance but also be reclaimable and manufactured with the materials entire life cycle in mind.

Article from the Associated Press

SF IDSA Digging Deeper Conference

Last Tuesday evening nearly 200 designers, consultants, architects, students, and other industry professionals gathered at the San Francisco Temple Club for an evening of presentations, panel discussion, green design dialogue, and eco-material petting. The event was an after-work conference hosted the the San Francisco IDSA chapter. The conference was titled “Digging Deeper: Building Blocks for Sustainable Design”. The mission of the panel discussion was to dig deeper and stir up the questions less comfortable to approach about sustainability and to discuss how to move forward into the next level of sustainability within design influenced professions. The conversation had a heavy focus on our impact as professionals in the field of design and our responsibility to represent educated sustainable design to our clients. The panel, with representatives from the field of design to life cycle analysis to trendspotting, went as far as to mention our responsibility to reject some product requests from clients if they are deemed unnecessary and to react with options for innovation in a more sustainable direction.

The six person panel was comprised of Ted Howes, panel moderator and Director of Sustainability at IDEO, SF; Travis Lee, Sustainable Engineering Lead at Lunar Design; Alexander Rose, Executive Director of the Long Now Foundation, Joep Meijer, founder of The Right Environment; Fransciose Serralta, Strategic Research and Planning Director at Peclars Paris; Nathan Shedroff, chair of the ground-breaking MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco; and finally Dawn Danby, Directory of Sustainability at Autodesk;



As Ecolect, we made our presence by hosting an “eco-materials petting zoo”. We featured 20 chosen materials from the Ecolect website that have unique properties with a leading sustainability performance. The zoo was a hit! We observed people petting, reading, inquiring, and even sharing their newly found material inspiration. The “zoo keepers” were Ecolect Co-founder and President, Joe Gebbia, Materials Correspondent, Elizabeth Redmond (myself), and all-the-way-from-Italy Ecolect intern, Alice Bertola.

Also, presenting and speaking on the panel was Ecolect’s LCA collaborator Joep Meijer of The Right Environment. Joep linked up with the Ecolect team nearly four months ago and is now our primary LCA collaborator on all Ecolect Consulting, through which we are actively working with a fortune 500 toy company to green 4 product lines. Joep is also actively helping us define the framework for our soon to be released Ecolect Eco-Materials Nutrition Label which we shared with many of you attendants.

For those of you who attended last Tuesday and have questions for us, want to share something with us, or simply want to reach out…leave us a comment. For those of you who missed the evening’s event, we hope to be in a town near you in the near future with our travelling eco-materials petting zoo.

Eco-label survey!

We’ve put together a brief survey to find out what elements of an eco-label are important to you. We value and appreciate your opinion! Go to the survey.