The NEXT Store:  What’s arriving and important in Chemicals, Materials, Health & Nutrition?

This week in the bioeconomy, we see three trends advancing fast. First of all, sustainable materials, there are two hot stories this week involving sneakers, also there’s a carbon black deal between Origin and Intertex that is hot on the radar. On the nutrition front, interesting to see a first product from sugars-to-lipids technology, something that first surfaced with LS9 in the 2000s as a fuels and chemicals play, resurrected with many of the same people in the guise of Zero Acre Farms. We’re not crazy about the marketing campaign, which focuses on demonization — doesn’t mean that ZAF’s Cultured Oil is not tasty or good for you. On the chamicals side, two methanol technologies from Project Air and Tokuyama/Mitsubishi are in the news this week — both using CO2 as a feedstock. Now that’s a sensible idea, and methanol as a platform is highly popular among the Digesterati.

Materials

Designers consider a future where homes are grown, not built

Rubber maker Intertex World Resources signs offtake deal with Origin Materials

Cepsa begins supplying renewable surfactant to Unilever

Rose in Good Faith launches sneakers made from cork and rejected adult toys 

Project Air developing sustainable methanol for the chemical industry

Greenbutts secures Canadian patent for biodegradable cigarette filter

Tokuyama and Mitsubishi Gas Chemical sign MOU to study CCU-based methanol production

Simplifyber scores $3.5M in seed funding for garments made from cellulose-based liquid

Health & Nutrition

Pope asks youth to cut down on meat 

Cardboard pregnancy test targets greener gestation  

Cultivated wildebeest could soon appear on South African menus 

The Digest’s 2022 Multi-Slide Guide to Beyond Meat

Cultured Oil has arrived – a new type of cooking oil, made by fermentation.