Tiles made from egg shells or coffee bean husks, leather made from tea, insulation material made from egg cartons - what other useful materials can we make from our everyday waste to replace harmful plastics? 

These are the questions that two organisations are exploring together in their cross-continental biomaterial collaboration partnership; FUTURE MATTERS.

Materiom in the UK and Big Circle in South Africa are using Materiom’s open-access material recipe database to test and adapt recipes alongside 100 community members to develop biomaterials specific to the waste found abundantly in Johannesburg. 

This cross-border grass-roots collaboration was fostered during the Scaling Out for Impact programme funded by InnovateUK, Technology and Innovation Agency of South Africa, supported by the Newton Fund and Black Business Council, and facilitated by Liminal. 

“SOFI has opened our eyes to our ability to forge meaningful working relationships whilst being physically removed.” Kiera Crowe Pettersson, Big Circle

As a collective intelligence community, Liminal’s work centres on breaking down the borders between sectors, disciplines and geographies to facilitate these kinds of collaborations that are needed to transform our interconnected systems and mitigate the climate and environmental crisis. This is just one example that has informed and influenced what Liminal and TEDxGlasgow are working together to achieve with their Partner’s Climate Action Initiative; bringing together a diverse group of 18 businesses and organisations from different sectors consistently over a year, with the ultimate aim of moving together faster through collaboration.

Future Matters is an incredible example of the power of sharing, adapting and decentralising knowledge across regions to solve some of our most pressing contemporary problems - together. Find out more about the project here and check out both Materiom’s open-access material recipe database and Big Circle’s material library.