Sometimes, a little friendly conversation over a few beers can lead to positive environmental change.
Such was the case with two students in Munich back in 2022, as the topic shifted to a lecture on how banana fiber was being used to make more sustainable building materials in Colombia, according to an Associated Press report shared by CBS4 in Indianapolis.
Munich, the capital of the Free State of Bavaria in Germany, is home to the famous Oktoberfest beer festival, as well as historic breweries. This set the duo's minds thinking about an abundant local resource: hops.
Soon their talk turned into reality, as the report detailed, leading them to create a startup called HopfON, deriving the name from "hopfen," the German word for hops. (You can see a video of the process here).
The company's goal is to support a "sustainable building culture based on environmental responsibility, efficient use of local resources, and innovation," according to its website, in translation.
"We saw a huge potential in sourcing locally and also using a waste stream that was neglected by basically most people," said HopfON entrepreneur Mauricio Fleischer Acuña in the news report.
The company discovered that for every 2.2 pounds of usable hop material, there would be 7.7 pounds of waste biomass. As the report detailed, some of this can be used as fertilizer, while other portions can be used in making more environmentally friendly biogas to produce energy.
The majority of the hop waste material, however, ended up being dumped and emitting heat-trapping gas that ends up in the atmosphere.
HopfON sought to use this waste material as a resource to create products instead of tapping the Earth's finite raw materials.
As the BBC shared, around half of the materials we extract from the Earth go into construction projects. That industry produces nearly a third of global waste materials and is responsible for 40% of planet-warming carbon pollution.
The company is taking the excess hop material left over from the fall harvest, drying it and removing impurities and then running it through a patent-pending process to create a workable material. HopfON's product line currently includes acoustic panels, thermal insulation, and building boards.
The company also offers a circular model for its customers, per the report, which allows them to return old products to be remade into new materials.
The company's original duo, Marlene Stechl and Thomas Rojas Sonderegger, have since partnered with Fleischer Acuña to grow HopfON's business. They plan to add new organic materials into their process, and as such, the name may change from HopfON to onmatter, according to the report.
Other groups in Bavaria are joining the charge to help reduce waste and promote a more sustainable economy.
Walter König, managing director at the Society of Hop Research, told the AP that its researchers have developed new hop varieties, which reduce the amount of waste to around 3 pounds per 2.2 pounds of usable material.
More importantly, these new breeds shouldn't affect the beer in any way.
"It's a very sophisticated thing to bring them all together for a new variety that smells good and that fits to the beers that we need," as König shared in the report.
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