Business

A startup looking to find better ways to mass-produce lumber for construction has swapped trees for grass. It turns out that with sophisticated laminating and molding machines, the fibers of certain grass species can be just as strong as wood, but lighter, and orders of magnitude faster to produce. Entrepreneur Josh…

A Mallorcan design company has come up with a water-absorbant mortar made from masonry waste on the island archipelago. Not only does this green building material create zero additional waste products, but no additional emissions from transportation, since it’s created locally. But how much construction waste could possibly be generated from…

Using an ancient solution for a modern problem, a firm successfully tested how a giant kite can be used to tug shipping vessels across the ocean and significantly reduce the amount of diesel fuel they use. It’s tempting to call the product a sail, and the activity sailing. However even the…

In the historic Italian city of Vicenza, Veneto, a typically-Italian family business of artisans is handmaking not-so-typical solar panels. Designed to be indistinguishable by the naked eye from regular terracotta roof tiles, “Invisible Solar” tiles are made to improve the energy efficiency of heritage buildings without compromising their historic appearance. They…

An aviation start-up just set a new world-first for the largest hydrogen-powered aircraft flight in history—a 19-seat aircraft called the Dornier 228. Designed by ZeroAvia, the start-up is developing hydrogen-powered engines for regional flights, and over the last 12 months has really taken off. This most recent flight was a 10…

In an effort to come up with a renewable, biodegradable design material that also eliminates a landfill waste stream, French designers are proposing to cover the walls of your home with fish scales. In reality the idea is an elegant tile made from fish scales. It’s called Scalite, and it separates…