Green
O
By JASON CHIANG
Sustainable bamboo fiber
Photographs courtesy Anubhav Mittal
products created by Bio Craft Innovation, a Nexus-trained start-up, help reduce the use of single-use plastic.
10 MAY/JUNE 2021
ne million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute, while five trillion single-use plastic bags are used worldwide every year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Additionally, half of all plastic produced is designed to be used only once. This proliferation of single-use plastic, which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of its life cycle, is a significant threat to the Earth’s climate. “Emissions from plastic emerge not only from the production and manufacture of plastic itself, but from every stage in the plastic life cycle—from the extraction and transport of the fossil fuels that are the primary feedstocks for plastic, to refining and manufacturing, to waste management, to the plastic that enters the environment,” says the “Plastic and
Climate: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet” report by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for International Environmental Law. A Nexus-trained start-up, Bio Craft Innovation, has pioneered a potential solution for this crisis: sustainable products made from bamboo. Since 2019, Bio Craft Innovation has experimented with bamboo fiber as a possible alternative to plastic. After converting bamboo and other agricultural waste to pulp, some ingredients are added to give the material strength and durability. The result is a proprietary bamboo-based granule that the company has worked to convert into textiles and non-woven fibers, which Bio Craft Innovation calls IBANSS granules. “Our IBANSS granules are made from cellulose derived from non-wood-based
