Swedish scientists say they have created a renewable alternative to styrofoam—called Cellufoam.
Researcher Lars Wågberg, a professor in Fibre Technology at Stockholm's KTH Royal Institute of Technology, says the wood-based foam material offers comparable properties to Styrofoam.
"But even better, it is from a totally renewable resource—something that we can produce from the forest," Wågberg says.
Cellutech is the company promoting their first cellufoam practical application—a bicycle helmet.
"There are wood helmets out there, but what is unique here is that this one is made totally out of forest products—nothing else. The outer layer is veneer, the straps are made from extra strong paper, and then the foam is made from cellulose fibers," Wågberg says.
The helmet concept is intended to draw attention to the possibilities of using wood cellulose as a sustainable alternative to Styrofoam and other foams from synthetic polymers. Wågberg says the last five years of Cellufoam research has been funded by the WWSC and Cellutech with the confidence that it will become possible to take the material to market on a cost-effective scale in a not-too-distant future. WWSC is a joint research center between KTH and Chalmers University; it is hosted at KTH and financed by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Research Foundation.
The real next question is how much is this going to cost when it’s “cost effective”?