Aguahoja

According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, over 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year. Less than one tenth of this material is recycled, with vast quantities being transported to landfills as waste or circulating ocean currents indefinitely. By contrast, ecosystems produce and consume material in a perpetual cycle where waste is nonexistent. From a relatively small palette of molecular components, natural systems construct a vast array of functional materials. Aguahoja is a 3D printing platform that tailors the properties of organic matter such as cellulose and chitin to enable the additive manufacturing of large-scale, sustainable composites. With this technology, we aim to establish a paradigm wherein products do not become waste when their purpose is served, but are instead consumed by ecosystems to fuel new growth.

While the accumulation of waste from single-use plastics presents a global threat to the health of communities and ecosystems, developing nations and coastal populations are disproportionately impacted. The environmental damage caused by this pollution is particularly pressing in cases where it threatens not only human communities, but biodiverse ecosystems. We propose that our platform technology can serve not only to provide alternatives to single-use plastics, but enable human supply chains to synergize with and promote the health of these ecosystems.

The organic materials cellulose, chitin, and pectin are produced and decomposed in abundance Latin America’s biodiverse ecosystems. Our system enables the creation of functional materials by diverting a small portion of these materials in the form of fallen leaves, shellfish carapaces, or fruit skins, and tailoring their material properties to suit a broad range of applications. These methods can provide a sustainable means through which locally abundant organic materials can be temporarily diverted from ecosystems and used to create products before returning to the environment that created them. By placing the power of these ecosystems to produce and consume matter at the center of this technology, we aim to prioritize their health.

We aim to use biodiversity hotspots impacted by plastic pollution in Latin America as context sites for the deployment of experimental, sustainable fabrication techniques. In particular, we look to propose how our platform technology could integrate in harmony with the ecosystems of the Galapagos Islands and Ecaudor’s Bellavista Cloud Forest to create functional materials in a manner that synergizes with and promotes the health of these critical environments.  

Our team conducts research at the intersection of computational design, digital fabrication, materials engineering, and biology. Research projects employ a process-based view on design which centers on the development of novel design platforms and strategies. This approach is in contrast to a product-oriented, top-down view where the outcome is the focus of design development. Thus, our projects often result not only in artistic expressions such as exhibitions and performances, but also in platform fabrication technologies documented in patents and gained process knowledge documented in scientific publications. Through the interdisciplinary nature of this research, we hope to engage a broader audience in a scientific dialogue on the subject of sustainable materials and the impact of plastic waste accumulation.

Our Water-Based Digital-Fabrication platform allows for the 3D-printing of cellulose, chitosan (deacetylated chitin), pectin, and other abundant biopolymers refined from organic matter. In contrast to other bioplastics, the composites made using this system do not require synthetic binding agents or toxic refinement processes and are printed at room-temperature and can be decomposed by most ecosystems. Advances in digital design have enabled us to combine multiple biopolymers during fabrication such that their joint chemical compositions, geometry, and hierarchical structure allow for the creation of a wide range of material properties. To date, this platform has been used to fabricate two prototypical structures for museum display and the demonstration of the system’s capabilities at scale.

Current research efforts are centered on the identification of industrial and ecological waste streams that may provide sustainable materials, low-impact methods of harvesting organic matter. We seek to leverage the power of natural resource cycles through this novel class of renewable materials. In contrast to the current paradigm of inefficient recycling, we propose a continuous system wherein materials are refined from abundant biomass, functionalized as performance materials, and upon disuse, are consumed by ecosystems, fueling growth and ultimately the production of more biomass from which materials can be refined. This continuous cycle of growth, functionalization, and decomposition bypasses recycling and waste infrastructure by instead leveraging the innate power of ecosystems to produce and consume matter.

As we continue to develop the capabilities of this technology, a critical step in our research is the deployment of our methods on-site. The ideal site for the deployment of this technology would be an active biodiversity hotspot threatened by the accumulation of plastic waste. South American ecosystems, particularly Ecuador’s cloud forests, therefore represent an ideal site for this research. We aim to extend the capabilities of our system to refine site-specific organic waste for the development of composites with material properties that mimic common single-use plastics. Through this next stage of research, we aim to not only expand the capabilities of our sustainable additive-manufacturing system, but publicly display the capabilities of Nature’s material. The successful realization of these aims promises to set a precedent in sustainable manufacturing where materials do not become waste but instead are grown, live and respond to their environment, and upon obsolescence, decompose to fuel new growth.

More information and scientific publications can be found here: https://mediatedmattergroup.com/aguahoja.