The pilot will last two years, bringing on a number of regional partners, among them The Or Foundation, the Metabolic Institute, The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel Limited, the University of Ghana, Yale University, Accelerating Circularity, the Celery Design Collective and the California Product Stewardship Council. The Laudes Foundation has provided catalytic funding for the initial grant to initiate pilots in Western Europe and Ghana.
The institute and its partners will explore decomposition options, demo of affordable and scalable solutions, the biology behind decomposition and the final proof of concept. The initiative stems from a report released last year on “The Nature of “From a biomimetic perspective, we’re looking at true system design in the context of the natural world — and not giving way to some lax demands from industry to keep ‘business as usual,’” said Biomimicry Institute’s communications director Lex Amore. “At the end of the day, we don’t believe the current system of keeping fibers made from synthetic materials makes sense in rotation.