The Future Normal: what if you could embrace throwaway culture?
The war on plastic will not be won by recycling. That is the fairly shocking opinion of Cyrill Gutsch, founder of Parley for the Oceans and one of the world’s most prominent anti-plastic campaigners. Gutsch views recycling as “just a bandage and a translation from an old technology to a new one. It is nothing else than a step in between”. He explains, “I believe that the future is about materials that are non-toxic. I think biofabrication ... will replace pretty much everything in the next 10 years."
Bio-based innovation is still shrouded in mystery. Indeed, there’s a certain irony that while many digital innovations reference natural analogies (the web, streaming and cloud computing), biological innovations hang on to their technical acronyms, like CRISPR and mRNA. Perhaps the next decade will see these complex technologies given more user-friendly analogies as they reach mainstream consciousness, just as HTML became ‘the web’. Because make no mistake about it, the next wave of digital transformation will be about reshaping our physical world. We are on the verge of having the tools and skills to manipulate our underlying biology in ways never more possible.
The ramifications are enormous. But here let’s ask a simple yet provocative question: what would it mean if a huge number of the products we used in our daily lives were biodegradable, and we could easily and cleanly dispose of them without worry or guilt?
Vollebak: the Tesla of fashion
Vollebak is a fashion brand with a unique aspiration: to build clothes ‘from the future’. The twin brothers, Steve and Nick Tidball were competing in an ultra-marathon in Namibia (as one does), when they wondered why they were not able to find suitable technical clothing that would calm their nerves and help them to sleep. The result, nearly five years later, was the brand’s Relaxation Hoodie, a frankly bizarre looking item with a zip-up mesh full face covering and pockets that help the wearer ‘hug’ themselves. While unconventional, these science-backed features help trigger feelings of relaxation. The brothers haven’t stopped there, creating such fantastical garments as the Graphene Jacket and the Carbon Fibre T-Shirt, among others.
The brothers also created a t-shirt made from plants and algae, that is less about unlocking higher performance, but about challenging our most fundamental ideas around how clothes are produced and worn. The Plant and Algae t-shirt is made from sustainably-certified wood pulp and plant-based linen, while the ink is made from algae. The algae oxidizes as the shirt is worn, meaning the print on the front of the t-shirt naturally decolors over time. Customers can compost or bury the garment outside when they no longer want to wear it; if buried, the t-shirt will decompose in 12 weeks.
Steve Tidall observes, "while we’ve made clothing with some of the most cutting-edge materials on Earth, what we wanted to do here is demonstrate that natural materials can be just as cutting-edge." He continues:
We singled out Vollebak not simply because its Plant and Algae t-shirt itself is revolutionary. It is just one of hundreds of similar biodegradable initiatives we have seen. Vollebak is interesting because its strategy highlights a powerful truth that is essential for anyone hoping to navigate The Future Normal. Vollebak’s strategy is far from unique, indeed it might be commonly recognized as the ‘Tesla strategy’. In simple terms, it is to start at the top end of the market with what would technically be termed price-insensitive, status-conscious, highly visible consumers (colloquially: woke rich celebrities and influencers), use them to spur demand and generate profits that can be used to create products at lower prices for the mass market. We see this strategy time and time again. For example, Impossible Burger launched in Momofuku Nishi in 2016, before appearing on menus at White Castle in 2018.
Vollebak won’t sell millions of Plant and Algae t-shirts. But H&M does. Which is why it is a very big deal that the behemoth of fast fashion is now selling clothes made from Circulose. Unlike other recycled fabrics, Circulose textile fibers are the same quality as traditional virgin materials such as cotton, meaning clothing can be infinitely recycled. The material is primarily cellulose pulp, one of the most widely occurring substances in nature, which is also fully biodegradable. Similarly, Bacardi recently announced that it had partnered with Danimer Scientific to convert its bottles to be made from polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), a plant-based biodegradable plastic alternative.
You should take away two further insights from these much-needed big brand initiatives:
First, both H&M and Bacardi have promised not to seek exclusivity on these new materials, and indeed both companies talk of encouraging others in their respective industries to copy their actions. When it comes to purpose-driven leadership, The Future Normal will be all about giving away your solutions to our biggest shared challenges. Think not patenting green alternative materials (e.g. Allbirds' SweetFoam), processes (Brewdog's recipes), new technology (Arcelik's anti-microplastic filter), safety data (BMW's traffic data) or even Covid 19 strategies (Jack Ma's healthcare foundation) and more.
Second, it is important to embrace bigger brands moving into new bio-solutions because we – as the human race – need these novel claims and processes to be scrutinized. Small startups like Vollebak experimenting with algae ink simply don't get subjected to the same level of forensic examination as H&M and Bacardi. Yes, there will be major challenges in transforming decades of industrial scale production infrastructure and disposal facilities. But these companies are used to operating at scale. Indeed, there are now thousands of people, internally and externally, diving into the lifecycle analyses and impact reports around Circulose and PHA. That can only be a good thing, as even if these specific materials fail to live up to the hype we will only learn more for the next effort.
But what does the rise of new biodegradable materials mean for you, today? Here are a few thought-starter questions to consider:
What if…?
🌱 You could find novel materials that leveraged natural principles and processes in order to leave no lasting trace?
🏃🏻♀️ You embraced people’s desire for convenience and simplicity, rather than fight it? Change how your product behaves, rather than asking people to change their behavior.
🏎 You looked to the Tesla of your industry? What lessons could you draw from niche, luxury brands that would apply to the rest of the market?
🏭 You thought about which aspects of your physical operations and products will be transformed as the synthetic biology revolution follows the digital revolution?
Now, have your say...
Bio-brilliant? Or bio-BS?
This newsletter is our attempt to explore how we might be able to rebuild a better world.
We'd love your feedback, tips and insights. Will biodegradable packaging save us?! Or will we discover that these materials have unintended consequences? Are big polluters jumping on these as a way to greenwash us as to their bigger negative impacts? Are there other, better solutions? And then there's a more fundamental question: is the entire field of bio-innovation simply a dangerous chimera that distracts us from the more urgent need to change our consumer systems and behaviours before it is too late?
Let us know by replying to this email or, even better, comment on LinkedIn or Medium so that others can benefit from your insights!
See you next week!
Henry & Rohit
Masters of the futurist power pose 😂