"PHAs have long been recognized as a promising alternative to petroleum-based plastics," noted Neri Oxman, CEO and Founder of OXMAN. "We have successfully elevated the potential of PHA through the development of O°, a new technology for the design and fabrication of products that seeks to minimize harm in its conception and nourish the environment in its afterlife. We are thrilled to unveil our first product using this new technology: the O° shoe, which is made using 100% PHA, is 100% biodegradable, and has no petrochemicals or microplastics."
0% petrochemicals, 0% forever chemicals, 0% microplastics, and 100% biodegradable
PHAs can be produced by bacteria which consume atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane, and/or food waste, reducing carbon in the environment as they grow. They are biologically recyclable, and 100% biodegradable in ambient conditions. As a result, O° textiles and shoes do not leave behind microplastics when they decompose. O° textiles and shoes are made entirely of PHAs, so when they decompose they become one with the environment, returning to the bacteria from which they originated. However, just like traditional biodegradable materials used for apparel such as cotton, wool, and silk, PHA will not biodegrade while being worn, washed, or stored.
A high-efficiency design process
O° shoes embody the versatility of PHAs by incorporating precise designs informed by the kinetics of human motion. Whether they take final form as a walking or running shoe, or ballet slipper, each shoe has a base layer of a knitted upper and outer layers that are printed on the textile to provide specific functionality including reinforcement, cushioning, strength, and pliability. The versatility and automation built into the O° platform enable rapid iterations and an accelerated development process from design to production.
A near zero-waste production process
A compact robotic system is central to the O° platform: the O° robotic system 3D prints custom PHA blends onto a textile that is 3D knitted on an industrial flatbed machine from a 100% PHA yarn produced through a process of extrusion and melt spinning. By using this knitting and printing technology to create shape and movement, OXMAN has eliminated the cut-and-sew and adhesion processes associated with traditional shoe assembly. The O° technology offers a near zero-waste production process and requires minimal human involvement and intervention, enabling local, low-cost production, minimizing the transport cost and environmental impact of the distant supply chains typical of the shoe industry.
Bio-engineered colorways, free of petrochemicals
Many industrial pigments and dyes are sourced from raw materials derived from petro-chemicals which release environmentally damaging chemicals during their production and usage. These dyes and pigments are dependent on a resource-intensive and complex global supply chain for synthesis, processing, and transport. In contrast, bacteria can produce pigments from simple and abundant natural resources. O° uses bacteria not just as a source of material, but also to encode other functional properties such as pigment production to simplify and centralize the manufacturing process.
OXMAN's O° platform builds on the promise of PHAs by tuning the fabrication process and offering an alternative design and production process that holistically considers a product's entire lifecycle, from conception to decomposition.
OXMAN is now initiating discussions with potential partners, investors, and brand collaborators to bring the production of O° shoes and textiles to scale and to market. We look forward to hearing from you. You can reach us here.
About OXMAN
OXMAN is a design lab whose mission is to create and deliver nature-centric products and environments to its clients and the natural world. Bringing together computational design, robotics, materials science, green chemistry, biology, and eco-system engineering, OXMAN's work reinvents the industrial systems that dictate how we design and produce everyday things—from the foods we eat and the clothes we wear to the buildings we inhabit. https://oxman.com
O° CONTACT
https://oxman.com/contact
MEDIA CONTACT
Alex Klimoski
[email protected]
+1 (212) 671-5184
BACKGROUND
The Problem: Endless Assemblies, Forever Chemicals
The footwear design and manufacturing industry faces significant environmental challenges that include hazardous chemical formulations polluting our air, water and soil, greenhouse gas emissions, human exploitation, lack of supply chain traceability, as well as lack of sustainable end-of-life scenarios for materials that cannot be recycled or biodegraded.
Facts & Figures:
- 24+ billion shoes are manufactured worldwide each year1,2,3
- 300+ million pairs of shoes are discarded annually, 95% of which wind up in landfill2,3
- Shoes do not break down easily or quickly: shock-absorbent soles can remain in a landfill for 1,000 years4
- On average, 40 distinct materials are used to create a traditional shoe (e.g., foams, fabrics, rubbers, coatings, adhesives)5
- "Forever chemicals" are found in almost all mass-produced shoes today (33-4200 parts per billion can be found in a traditional shoe)6
- Shoes made from petroleum-derived plastics account for 1.4% of global greenhouse emissions7,8
The Solution: One Material, One System
O° is a design platform that starts and ends with biology. It embodies an automated, vertically integrated, bio-digital fabrication system for lifecycle design of multi-functional mono-material products.
Made entirely of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), a bacterially-produced thermo-plastic polymer, the mono-material O° enables the design and digital fabrication of apparel items, such as shoes and textiles, that exhibit a range of physical properties, functions, and end-of-life trajectories. By cultivating our materials from bacteria—as opposed to extracting them from resources like oil or sourcing them from farmed materials such as wool and cellulose—we unlock the potential for a radically new production paradigm—one that bears more resemblance to growing than to the conventional manufacturing processes. This approach envisions centralizing all components of production into a single material, a single site, and a single process. O° aims to remove the complexity involved in the fabrication of objects by staying within one material class for all technical requirements. Streamlining manufacturing allows us to remove externalities that would incur environmental damage; if we only need one material to make a shoe, we have no need to import specialized components from around the globe. Reducing microplastics, reducing atmospheric greenhouse gasses, and promoting biological growth through targeted biodegra-dation follow as further vectors of possible positive environmental impact.
Unmatched Versatility: Efficiency in Design, in Tune with Nature
The versatility and automation built into the O° platform enable rapid iterations and an accelerated development process from design to production, enabling a wide array of mechanical, thermal, chemical, and manufacturing properties that meet a broad range of processing needs and applications. Such high levels of versatility, achieved through design tunability across design stages and media—production, processability, and programmable decomposition— are at the core of O°'s designs and platform technology.
Key Features:
- Origins: PHAs are derived from naturally-occurring "feedstocks" which include carbon dioxide, methane, sugars, and waste streams. There is a broadening scientific consensus that PHAs can be produced in bulk from atmospheric carbon and other sources that provide it with a very small or even negative carbon footprint.
- Processability: Considered the most versatile bacterially-derived thermo-polymer class, PHAs are easily integrated into most industrial manufacturing processes, including melt extrusion, injection molding, melt blowing, fiber spinning, and casting.
- Functionality: With over 13 formulations designed to provide a range of mechan-ical properties for specific uses, our PHA yarn is 6x as flexible as polyester and as soft as lyocell. In place of assembling independently produced parts, each with its homogeneous material properties, we harvest biological mono-materials with highly tunable properties to create gradients of functionality.
- Product features (pigmentation, scents, branding): The bacterial production of PHAs enable genetically and chemically-encoded pigmentation, scents, and labeling. The genetic label of O° is synthesized in DNA. Once embedded, this label can be used to detect and read the genetic code following polymer biodegradation. This can enable a future where precise identification of disposal and biodegradation products is an everyday reality.
1 https://www.worldfootwear.com/news/10-countries-were-responsible-for-88-of-total-footwear-production-/9148.html
2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/04/01/plant-based-sole-sneaker/
3 Bodoga, A., Nistorac, A., Loghin, M.C. and Isopescu, D.N., 2024. Environmental Impact of Footwear Using Life Cycle Assessment—Case Study of Professional Footwear. Sustainability, 16(14), p.6094.
4 Lippa, N.M., Krzeminski, D.E., Piland, S.G., Rawlins, J.W. and Gould, T.E., 2017. Biofidelic mechanical ageing of ethylene vinyl acetate running footwear midsole foam. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part P: Journal of Sports Engineering and Technology, 231(4), pp.287-297.
5 Cheah, L., Ciceri, N.D., Olivetti, E., Matsumura, S., Forterre, D., Roth, R. and Kirchain, R., 2013. Manufacturing-focused emissions reductions in footwear production. Journal of cleaner production, 44, pp.18-29.
6 https://www.ecocenter.org/our-work/healthy-stuff-lab/reports/wolverine-worldwide-shoes-pfas-results/toxic-pfas-chemicals
7 https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
8 Bodoga, A., Nistorac, A., Loghin, M.C. and Isopescu, D.N., 2024. Environmental Impact of Footwear Using Life Cycle Assessment—Case Study of Professional Footwear. Sustainability, 16(14), p.6094.
SOURCE OXMAN
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