By Dr. Andrew H. Dent
With Elon Musk’s drive to colonize Mars comes many challenges with creating sustainable, life-supporting systems in that hostile environment – most obviously, the lack of water. Beyond the apparent needs for potable water, any additional construction or production at the planet’s surface faces one major problem: almost everything we produce uses water in some form, whether to clean, irrigate, color, or even as a part of the product itself.
When we think about it this way, a lack of access to abundant water would render many of our day to day production needs impossible. It’s critical that any process that is going to work on Mars, needs to work without water.
That kind of big-picture thinking isn’t just good for Mars, it’s also driving many of the sustainability initiatives in materials production on Earth, and it’s a domain where the packaging industry can lead.
When Water is Part of the Product
Simple inefficiencies can be easily addressed, however more complex solutions range from the obvious yet still engaging to the highly technical. Mirjam De Bruijn’s Project 20 proposes that the remaining 20 percent of non-water ingredients used in standard personal care products be concentrated and sold as either a powder, bar, or liquid capsule. When mixed with water at home, the products can be stored in a reusable plastic bottle.
De Bruijn’s idea has also been taken up by various businesses including Ethique, Brianne West’s cosmetic company devoted to ridding the world of plastic bottles that produces various detergents in solid form. Not only does Ethique minimize water usage, their products last considerably longer with the standard liquid version lasting a fifth of the lifetime of the bar.
More engineering-based solutions include a breakthrough from Uflex, India’s largest global flexible packaging solutions company that, with an award-winning MAP (Modified Atmospheric Packaging) film called Flexfresh™, allows flowers to be shipped and displayed for longer periods of time, with the biodegradable film keeping the product breathing in hydrated oxygen and releasing excess humidity, keeping the flowers dry. The shelf life of flowers can be extended using the AMAP (Active Modified Atmospheric Packaging) technology, where it already has a global presence in the fresh fruits and vegetable market.
When Water is Used to Create the Packaging
With the apparel industry contributing to about 15 percent of all the world’s contamination of water through washing and dyeing, processes that reduce this effect can be hugely impactful. Recent innovations by companies such as Drydye and DyeCoo are enabling the pigmenting of large volumes of fabrics with zero water. Using the same technology as dry cleaning, but at greater temperatures and pressures, it uses CO2 instead of water as the carrier for the pigments and dyes a whole bolt at a time, the gas infiltrating through the layers of fabric to reach the core as effectively as the surface of the wrapped textile. Major sportswear brands have invested in it as a way to cut down their water footprint. So why can’t this be applied to paper and other absorbent materials too?
Malai biocomposite from Malai Design & Materials is a flexible, leather-like sheet based on bacterial cellulose made from coconut water that would otherwise go to waste. Coconut farms in Southern India often find themselves with too much coconut wastewater after they have removed the white flesh from inside mature coconuts. Normally, this wastewater would be released into drainage systems, but this can cause water pollution, as well as acidifying the soil in surrounding areas. Instead, the company places the wastewater into vats for sterilization, resulting in an entirely natural, energy-rich nutrient upon which bacterial culture can feed. The fermentation period takes between twelve to fourteen days. At the end of this process, a sheet of cellulose “jelly” is produced. This jelly undergoes another process of refinement by enriching it with natural fibers, gums, and resins to create a more durable and flexible material. The end product is sustainable, biodegradable, water resistant, and vegan.
When Water is Used to Recycle
When reusing or recycling packaging materials, we can look to PaperLab from Epson as an incredible breakthrough in “on-the-spot” recycling of office paper without a single drop of water. It’s the world’s first office papermaking system, capable of producing new printable paper from securely destroyed waste paper using a dry process, and can produce thousands of sheets of recycled paper a day.
The Systec division of Duales System Deutschland has an innovative technology that recycles plastic packaging without water by removing the labels with special rotor blades so that they can be used for incineration (waste-to-energy). Afterward, a large centrifuge utilizes blasts of air to separate and sort the plastic flakes from the initial shredding.
More recently, Ak Inovex from Mexico has developed a new green technology that doesn’t require liquids and has the capacity to process materials such as Styrofoam, polystyrene, and ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) using the same type of machinery. The technology uses zero water and cuts processing costs by 50% because it avoids the task of heating the recycled plastic to remove the water it would normally absorb during traditional recycling methods.
Innovation Creates Efficiencies
It always pays to think about our water choices—most of the solutions outlined above not only solve a water challenge, but they manage to create efficiencies. These innovations show how simple, yet also how groundbreaking the ideas can be, and all are enabling more fresh, clean water to be used where it matters most: in maintaining life, whether on this planet or our next.
Dr. Andrew H. Dent, Ph.D.
Dr. Andrew Dent is Executive Vice President of Research at Material ConneXion, and Chief Material Scientist at SANDOW. He plays a key role in the expansion of Material ConneXion’s technical knowledge base. His research directs the implementation of consulting projects and the selection of innovative, sustainable and advanced materials to Material ConneXion’s library, which currently houses over 8,000 material samples.
Dr. Dent received his Ph.D. in materials science from the University of Cambridge in England. Prior to joining Material ConneXion, Dr. Dent held a number of research positions both in industry and academia. At Rolls Royce PLC, Dr. Dent specialized in turbine blades for the present generation of jet engines. He has completed postdoctoral research at Cambridge University and at the Center for Thermal Spray Research, SUNY, Stony Brook, NY. Other research projects, during this period, included work for the US Navy, DARPA, NASA, and the British Ministry of Defense.
Since joining Material Connexion, Dr. Dent has helped hundreds of clients—from Whirlpool and Adidas to BMW and Procter & Gamble—develop or improve their products through the use of innovative materials. A leading expert on sustainable materials, his insight has played an important part in creating a new generation of more sustainable products.
He is a frequent speaker on sustainable and innovative material strategies, having given two TED talks at TEDx Grand Rapids and TEDNYC, and is the co-author of the Material Innovation book series. Dr. Dent has also contributed to numerous publications on the subject of material science, including Business Week, Fast Company and the Financial Times.
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