A brand new event from PopTech,  the renowned network of innovators of future sustainable ideas has been announced!

PopTech will convene its first Lab to help foster breakthroughs in green materials, which are benign and low-impact, and which can exist in new large-scale “closed loop” systems wherein the materials in finished products can be used as inputs for new products. PopTech’s “Closing the Material Loop” Lab will examine such materials in a number of contexts, including the technical, green chemistry, supply-chain, policy incentives, industrial scaling, intellectual property, and collaboration issues involved.

The Lab will investigate questions such as:

- Is a closed loop material ecosystem just a useful metaphor or a real possibility?
- What performance criteria would new materials have to meet in order to be useful?
- What type of sources (biological, agricultural, or synthetic) should be used to generate these future materials? How do we evaluate the lifecycle impacts (water, carbon, embedded energy, toxicity, and waste) of proposed materials?
- How might a market for such a material operate at scale? How could policy be used to promote its use?

So far they have Nike as a partner and many more to be announced soon – so if you would like to be in with a chance of attending the invite only event check out their site here: Closed Loop Lab