Fossil fuels aren’t just used for transport and energy – they’re also used to make everyday products.
As we move away from fossil fuels, where else can we find these materials? For the team at the forest research institute Scion, the answers can be found in our forests.
Dr Stefan Hill is the portfolio leader for high-value biorefineries at Scion. Photo: Claire Concannon/RNZ
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“We need to strike the word waste from our vocabulary,” says Dr Stefan Hill, the portfolio leader of high-value biorefineries at Scion.
His team are responsible for figuring out what useful compounds can be extracted out of waste biomass – for example, the bark that is stripped from pine trees before they get shipped overseas as timber.
Bark is essentially the skin of the tree, responsible for its protection and defence. So, the team are interested to see if they can extract antimicrobial and water repellent compounds for use in health and clothing applications.
Some of the work is in the early stages, but one idea that has progressed to the proof-of-concept stage is the extraction and use of vegetable tannins.
Leather boots made with New Zealand-sourced tannins. Photo: Stephen Parker/Scion
Chemist Dr Hilary Corkran works on the tannin extraction from pine bark in the lab.
Working with Callaghan Innovation to upscale their extraction process, and in partnership with the leather and shoe research association (LASRA), they’ve been able to show that these tannins can be used to create a soft, good-quality leather product.
In fact, with McKinlay's Footwear in Dunedin, they’ve produced the only pair of New Zealand-sourced tannin leather boots.
Currently, all tannins used in creating leather in Aotearoa are imported and the current most common method uses the heavy metal chromium. The team hope that their work will provide a locally sourced vegetable tannin product to change this.
To learn more:
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Listen to the full Our Changing World episode
Our Changing World has produced many stories on the research work of Scion:
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Listen to the science of wildfires from by William Ray from 2020.
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Alison Ballance did an episode about the use of a parasitic wasp to act as a biocontrol agent against giant willow aphids.
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There are also these episodes from 2018 on converting poo to plastic, bio-based materials for 4D printing and testing the strength of cardboard boxes.
Country Life visited Te Whare Nui o Tuteata after its opening in 2021.
