A renewable and biodegradable alternative to Styrofoam

wood based foam

KTH.se

Maybe soon we can say goodbye to polystyrene, the petroleum-based material that is used to make Styrofoam. In what looks like an ordinary bicycle helmet, Swedish designers have replaced Styrofoam with a new shock-absorbing material made with renewable and biodegradable wood-based material. Researcher Lars Wågberg, a professor in Fibre Technology at 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. That’s a big plus for a country where forests are planted and harvested continuously, much like any other cash crop.

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