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Future Forecast
Every year, global materials consultancy Material ConneXion places its cards on the table and predicts what the key advances will be in its Material Technology Reports. Here it shares its findings for 2010 with Simon Jones
The desire for sustainability will be a core value for 2010. “We are beginning to see some scarcity of resources in specific areas such as green technologies and electronics, and this will affect the prices of critical elements. There is hope however, with the greater adoption of take back schemes for electronic products, as well as more efficient use of materials due to economic constraints” says report co-ordinator Andrew Dent, vice president, materials Library & Research at Material ConneXion. He believes there are immediate issues that will affect this sector of the market this year. One will be government regulatory bodies stamping down hard on spurious sustainability. Too many companies have jumped on the green bandwagon with unsupportable claims but with global legislation this looks set to change. Other regulations will affect the materials market too; recycling in the US continues to be shameful. One of the key problems identified has been a lack of clarity with recycling symbols. Dent has said that according to the ASTM, within 18 months there will be a broader collection of recycling symbols in the US. “This should help to extend consumer responsibility,” he says.
© Preserve Products. Recycline’s Preserve Products recycled designs continue to be one of the only recycled food items from polypropylene available in the U.S.
There are encouraging signs that the eco-message is at last getting across in the US. Coca Cola is developing a programme for recycling, aiming to reclaim the plastic from discarded bottles (both its own and other companies), giving the company greater control of its resources. As materials get more expensive Dent believes this is a trend set to grow. “If a manufacturer takes back it’s product that changes everything. Not only is the manufacturer more in control but more expensive, less wasteful materials can be used. In essence you remove much that is wrong with the ‘throw away’ culture,” he says. Of course there are issues with this scenario, as Dent points out. “With mobile phones for example contracts will need to be adjusted and service providers will have to sell their packages on service rather than the newest and shiniest product, branding will need to change.”
© Preserve Products. Recycline’s Preserve Products are manufactured from 100 per cent recycled materials. The company also takes responsibility for its own recycling
Consumer concern about the toxicity of products will also make an impact on the decisions made in 2010. Media coverage of the endocrine disruptors found in some plastics such as BPA and phthalates has created new opportunities for ‘safe’ products from other plastic families. The distrust of all things chemical segues neatly into the increasing interest in bio-mimicry; learning from nature. However Dent points out that there are limitations to what is achievable. “Nature works with a complicated interplay of many systems. It is impossible to pick and choose elements within an eco-system and expect them to work in isolation,” he says, citing the interest in spider silk, dashed by the material’s lack of water resistance and speedy degradation.
Bio-based Hytrel resin used in this ski boot performs exactly the same as its petrochemical alternative
Material ConneXion’s annual report also looks in detail at the consumer products likely to push the boundaries of material innovation in key sectors across the market. Firstly it focuses on ceramics where Dent believes there will be few advances in the coming year. “Ceramic has wonderful qualities, both ancient and new at the same time, but we are still limited by cost implications and the inherent qualities of the material,” he says. Dent does see an improvement in the scope of colours available and is keeping an eye on the new ceramic headphones from Panasonic, designed to make the most of the material’s acoustic qualities. But, he says, research into overcoming ceramics limitations is still a few years off.
Photo: Green Toys™ Inc. Green Toys creates ‘clean’ toys made from recycled HDPE from milk containers. They are BPA, phthalate and lead paint free
Dent sees plenty of potential in the area of electro-luminescent polymers; organic LEDS (OLEDs) that rely on a polymer emitting light with an electric charge run through it. Polaroid has débuted this technology for one of its picture screens and other display companies have included OLED screens in their lineups, but Dent believes the technology is too young to make a serious impact in 2010 although there is potential there, once the cost, size and lifetime issues have been resolved. What would be interesting, he suggests, is a printing process that can create this type of screen on wallpaper, creating a viable ambient light source, and possibly even as a display screen.
| Protective and decorative coatings will be taking an extra step forward in 2010. Tough coatings have already been |
 Korean company Topnanosys, Inc. uses carbon nano tubes as the conductive layer in transparent flexible polymer sheets that incorporate working LED lights | successful but by their very nature these products are invisible, so innovations are not noted by the consumer. Despite this there has been measurable improvement using nano-composites in paint and with touch sufaces on phones, which used to be problematic and a bugbear among users. “Coatings will continue to be essential and 2010 will see more effective treatments, the idea is that they will get thinner, you will need less and they will last longer,” says Dent. Attempts to get surfaces to easily and cheaply change color on demand are still not there yet. “Everyone talks about it, and the technology is possible but there is not yet a viable economic solution,” says Dent. |
Dent thinks we won’t be seeing any radically new plastics in 2010, but manufacturers will be finding better ways to use existing options. Bio-based sources will become less dependent upon food sources. In the past, some versions of these have suffered from lower performance, suitable only for packaging applications and eventual composting, but now there is interest in more durable, higher performance plastics, removing oil from the equation and replacing it with something more environmentally friendly; experiments with castor oil for use in nylon in particular have yielded exciting results. “Reverse engineering of durable plastics using bio-based sources will be big news in 2010 and not necessarily from food sources, other options are being explored too, switch grass, algae and even waste gases. Manufacturers are thinking more intelligently,” says Dent.
Valox iQ Resin from SABIC Innovative Plastics was developed as an environmentally friendly solution by incorporating up-cycled PET content and comes in either pellets or product
Will we at last see the long talked about incorporation of electronics and lighting into moulded parts rather than added as a separate component? Dent thinks so, but with provisos. “There is massive potential here, especially for tracking clothes tags but there are still cost implications,” he says. What is interesting is the marriage of electronics with low cost printing processes, with both technologies working together to produce flexible surfaces, large volumes and in essence printable electronics. Dent notes that a lot of money is being sunk into this idea, unsurprising when you consider the applications; touch packaging, interactivity and of course security. As for fashion, Dent remains unimpressed with the current approaches to creating interactivity within garments which has relied upon e-textiles and woven electronics. There has been little effort to create solutions that can keep up with an industry that needs to turn styles around is as little as six weeks.
What these reports highlight without a doubt is that the development of materials is no longer just a simple equation about being the quickest, the smartest, the cheapest. It is now very clear that caring for the planet is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. For Dent, fear runs hand in hand with optimism. The technology and capacity for change is there, it remains to be seen whether 2010 will be the year that people at last start to take their responsibilities seriously. To read Materials ConneXion’s annual material technology reports in full contact Thomas Jacobs or Maider Irastorza at +1 212 852 2050 |  Motorola is making new phones using up to 25 per cent post-consumer recycled content from discarded water bottles |
Article originally published in mix Magazine issue 19 - published by Global Color Research. Reproduced with kind permission.
