Greentech Media

Green-materials companies create sustainable, cost-effective products to substitute or replace current building and living materials. These companies emphasize the use of zero-emission, non-hazardous inputs to create end-use products and processes that are as good as, and sometimes better than, their traditional-materials counterparts. Green materials also include nanotechnology processes that are more energy-efficient than their industrial-scale counterparts. Ultimately, green materials present environmentally friendly means of enjoying our current lifestyle while decreasing our reliance on harmful chemicals and pollution-heavy processes.

Green materials exemplify the pervasive and disruptive trend of green technology. In applying this logic to work in chemistry and architecture, we are able to capture a major green-technology trend: interlinkages. Advances in green chemistry have the possibility of affecting how cars are made, how long our clothes last and the materials we use in construction. Architecture and building are major extensions of this effort, as a number of these groundbreaking technologies are applied to efficiency and sustainability efforts in construction and design.

Key Components

• Chemistry - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has established 12 principles that guide the application of green chemistry. They boil down to emphasizing the use of environmentally safe substances, reducing waste in the chemical-engineering process and in the end product and encouraging efficiency in the production process. In this way, green chemistry encourages both finding replacement technologies and processes to make existing materials greener and the creation of replacement materials to substitute for inefficient materials.
• Biopolymers - Traditional polymers used to make plastics and packaging are petroleum-derived. They have environmentally negative lifecycles and are hard to dispose of. Because they are petroleum-derived, traditional polymers and their end products will increase in price right along with petroleum. Plastics derived from biopolymers, rather than from polyethylene or polystyrene, are biodegradable in air or light, and cost less than traditional polymers. This is because biopolymers are derived from the same materials used to manufacture cellulosic ethanol. CO2 released in the biodegradation process will ultimately be absorbed by new biomass, making biopolymers carbon-neutral replacements for plastics.

Biopolymers
Tepha, Inc.	EnCoate	Rodenburg Biopolymers
Metabolix	Earthcycle

• Molecular Nanotechnology - Molecular nanotechnology involves the fabrication of smart materials, nanosensors and nanorobots. These applications work on a molecular level to replace identical, macroscale technologies. This technology is applied toward the creation of atomic factories that assemble complex products - light sensors, metals and computers, to name a few. They have the potential to produce materials that are stronger, lighter and more energy-efficient than any other process currently known. Combining nano devices with nano solar technologies will allow these devices to be self-powering, enhancing their sustainability.

Molecular Nanotechnology

Molecular Imprints

• Solvents & Chemicals - Industrial chemicals and cleaning solvents are heavy polluters. Whether it's runoff from a factory or dishwater going down the drain, chemicals found in modern materials eventually make it into the water system and soil. A primary application is using molecular chemistry to entirely replace the use of solvents in industrial processes. Another application is the use of biologically based cleaning materials.

Solvents & Chemicals

Vertec Biosolvents

• Building - Residential and commercial buildings account for 67.9 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption and 38.1 percent of total U.S. CO2 emissions. Making more efficient buildings is clearly an important step in reducing environmental impact. Accomplishing this depends largely on creating buildings from materials that efficiently use energy inputs. Design is an important aspect of this, though we think it more pressing to focus on the ways in which buildings are created, how the materials and methods used reduce maintenance and operating costs and how this process improves both occupant and environmental health.
• Cement - Cement manufacturing accounts for nearly 5 percent of total greenhouse-gas emissions. A ton of CO2 is created for every manufactured ton of cement. A new cement-making process promises to not only limit the amount of CO2 emitted during the process, but also to sequester CO2 out of the atmosphere to prevent further environmental degradation.

Cement
Calera	Planteco

• Dynamic Tinting Windows - Windows that lack insulation or tint are a major source of heat and energy loss in buildings. Current applications for dynamic-tinting windows have stayed the same for the last five years. However, new technologies being developed to increase the light-capturing capabilities of these windows using nano-thin ceramic coatings is attracting interest from the semiconductor industry. One dynamic-tinting company has recently formed a joint venture with a supplier of semiconductor manufacturing materials.
• Drywall - Conventional drywall, which is made from gypsum and requires numerous heating and mixing stages, emits nearly as many greenhouse gases as cement and steel. New drywall production processes eliminate heating stages, promising to drastically reduce the amount of energy consumed and pollution emitted during the drywall fabrication.

Drywall

Serious Materials

• Solid-State Lighting - Solid-state lighting is a high-intensity, energy-efficient means of lighting. It uses light-emitting diodes, instead of filaments or gas, to create a broad visible light spectrum with reduced heat output. Solid-state lighting is easily controlled to produce different colors, shades and intensities while also being shock- and vibration-resistant. The primary benefit of solid-state lighting is that it uses much less electricity than normal cathode-filament or fluorescent bulbs and lasts much longer than either technology.

Solid-State Lighting
Light Beam Industries	LedEngin, Inc.
BridgeLux	Plextronics