BLOOM at the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven
BLOOM participated at the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, a 9-day exhibition from 19th October to 27th October 2019, the largest Design exhibition in Europe. BLOOM was part of the Embassy of Sustainable Design, at the Van Berlo Design Studio – the Innovation Powerhouse. The Embassy was an integrated exhibition, developed by the Embassy partners and 2 curators, who designed this exhibition. The other Embassy partners were multinational companies such as Ikea, Friesland Campina and Renewi, all showing their ambitions within the circular economy. Further participating institutions were knowledge partners such as Universities of Delft and Eindhoven. Design Academy and Artez Arnhem represented designers who work with biomass and with waste materials.
In order to inform the visitors about the potential of the biobased economy, we have chosen to show the value chain from plant to biobased products. We chose two crops and showed the intermediate and final products:
Maize/Corn —-> PLA —-> packaging material, biofoam, bioplastics (Mouse), textiles (T-shirt, bag)
Miscanthus —-> Granulate (fibers/starch) —-> bioplastics (Lunchbox)
Miscanthus —-> fibers —-> construction materials (concrete) or papers and packaging
As examples, we decided to highlight the products of Corbion, Nature Works (both working with PLA) and Vibers (product development based on Miscanthus) as examples. To show how these value chains function, we used the BLOOM banner, two videos (the “wooden shirt” by Lenzing, and a video based on our ) and the BLOOM quiz.
We generated an enormous outreach: 25.000 people visited the Embassy of Sustainable Design. Different target groups were successfully reached, including the general public of all ages (elderly people, families and young people), interested in new developments. Also, many professionals from local, regional, national and international locations visited the exhibition, looking for new materials for application in different sectors (textiles, packaging, fashion, construction, architecture and product designers).
The activity exceeded our expectations. We were continuously interacting with visitors during the 9 days. When people stood at our stand, we engaged in interesting conversations with them and explained our exhibition. There was a lot of interest and much discussion. Often people were surprised about the potential of plant-based products and that these developments are still relatively small. People were interested in the conversion techniques, the quality of the biobased products, where to buy these products and in climate issues (replacement of fossil fuels). Further we received many questions about the degradability of biobased products.
Outreach activities 2020
In 2020 a Gallery Walk will be developed and applied in the Emmen region and also in the municipality of Wageningen. Further BLOOM will participate in the Expo on Sustainable Plastics and Materials in Emmen.
