The Importance of a Shift to a Bio-Economy

A bio-economy focuses on producing products, such as food, feed, products, and bioenergy, using renewable biological resources. As homeowners, we tend to think of sustainability in terms of energy efficiency. The less energy we use in our homes, the less impact we are having on the planet. That certainly is true, though the materials that go into home construction also exercise an enormous influence on natural systems. The embodied energy footprint of a home is the total energy consumed during the production of a home. This extends from the mining, processing, and manufacture of materials to the transportation and final delivery.

From Waste to Walls

The company focuses on creating innovative and practical home building materials from waste sources of biological materials. For example, they collect over three tons of orange peels from the cafeteria of a local technology company office. These orange peels are subsequently used to create a cork-like orange peel board used for wall panels, floor tiles, and risers. They also collect dozens of tons of grass cuttings from the London airport each week as another raw, biological source for their bio-based home building materials.

Mycelium Prototypes

The company is currently experimenting with using mycelium (the thin strands of filaments that are a part of fungi) as a natural insulation material. Mycelium can safely break down toxic compounds and waste products. Because of this, Biohm hopes that their mycelium-based insulation product can regenerate damaged ecosystems while also offering a healthy, carbon-neutral insulation alternative for homeowners. Mycelium insulation could potentially help reduce plastic waste while also providing higher insulation values than current synthetic options.

Enforced Recycling

Another unique sustainability feature of Biohm is that it enforces the recycling of the products that it sells to homeowners. The circular economy focuses on designing out waste and pollution by keeping products and materials in use to regenerate natural systems. Relying on voluntary recycling, however, is not the most effective pathway for this transition to occur.

At Biohm, people who purchase their products are contractually bound to return any materials to the company at the end of their useful life cycle. The cost of collection is built into the upfront price, meaning that the company will theoretically have a reliable, "circular" source of raw materials from the products they produce.