Slashing CO2Wood with muscles of steel.
Big Picture
Embodied carbon in the built environment represents 11% of energy-related CO₂ emissions globally, primarily driven by the use of concrete and steel. Increased focus on reducing embodied carbon is driving increased use of lower-carbon products like cross-laminated timber. However, the resultant increase in demand for high-quality wood is leading to unsustainable harvesting practices.
How it Works
Woodoo has developed an augmented wood product for consumer, automotive, and building materials applications. Their patented process removes the lignin in wood through a passive, low-energy process and replaces it with bio-based or recycled resins, creating a strong, flexible, low-carbon material that can be used as a replacement for glass, leather, plastic, steel, or even concrete.
Unfair Advantage
Woodoo uses a platform manufacturing process to create four different end-use materials that can be deployed across applications ranging from consumer apparel to automotive to building material. Their process lets them use low-grade, diseased, or damaged wood (which climate change will make abundant), allowing them to avoid looming supply shortfalls in high-grade lumber.
20
Times lower CO2e
than concrete per unit of load capacity
TIMOTHÉE BOITOUZET CEO & FOUNDER
Tim is an architect with a background in material science who spent half a decade working under Nobel Prize-winning architects.
Woodoo is creating decarbonized wood-based materials
TechCrunch
This startup has raised $31m to turn wood into glass
Sifted
Translucent wood: a resistant and sustainable material for constructing the buildings of the future
MIT Technology Review