Paper or Plastic?

Adobe AI Generated Image In this article, architect and activist Kelly Alvarez Doran asks why bio-based materials that were standard practice a generation ago are now seen as niche, expensive, and difficult to procure?

A decade ago I spent a year supporting the Province of Alberta’s development of the Comprehensive Regional Infrastructure Sustainability Plan for the Athabasca Oil Sands Area (CRISP AOSA). Based on industry production and employment projections our regional plan was designed to guide the phasing and location of highways, hospitals, and housing; all in support of expediting extraction. Simultaneously, I was working on my first architecture commission; a summer home in the woods of Ontario. Over the course of the design I relied heavily on CAD details cribbed from previous project experiences, and upon the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) Canadian Wood-frame House Construction to ensure what I was drawing was code compliant and reflective of national best-practices.

New Framework’s straw structural insulated panels (S-SIP’s)

What I didn’t understand at that time was how inextricably linked the two projects were. That my drawings at the regional planning scale of 1:1,000,000 were describing the conditions to supply the materials I was drawing and specifying in my 1:10 envelope details. That the rapid development of the Oil Sands were in large part in direct service to the production of the layers of extruded polystyrenes, isocyanates, polyethylenes, polyvinyl chlorides, acrylics, and bitumens that would insulate, wrap, plumb, frame, paint, and sheath the building. Of the 77 things drawn into my ‘wood-frame’ building, 11 of them were derived from oil. Of the 92 tonnes of upfront embodied carbon emitted during its construction, 58% of it was associated with just two products; XPS rigid insulation and asphalt shingles, two materials ubiquitous across contemporary North American residential construction.

Why have our buildings become the dumping grounds for petrochemicals? Just 60 years ago the CMHC handbook was devoid of plastics. Why, over five versions since its first publication, has it become more and more reliant on petrochemicals? Why are the bio-based materials that were standard practice a generation ago now seen as niche, expensive, and difficult to procure? Why has a country covered in forests and fields not guided its residential construction sector to continue leveraging and innovate upon this renewable abundance? More importantly, how can we reintroduce these materials into our buildings, our guides, our codes, and our imaginations?

The Northeast Bio-based Materials Summit took place in Boston last November.

Last November, I co-organized the Northeast Bio-Based Materials Summit to begin addressing these questions. The idea for the summit emerged from a conversation with Ace McArleton and Jacob Deva Racusin of New Frameworks about supplying a suite of affordable housing projects of MASS Design Group’s in the region. Having pushed bio-based innovation in our projects across East Africa we were looking to find ways to bring locally fabricated, low-carbon materials to our American work. In learning about New Framework’s straw structural insulated panels (S-SIP’s) we were immediately eager to find ways to incorporate them into our 200-unit, wood-framed 4-over-1 project as a replacement to the ‘standard’ steel-studded wall system clad with foam. That excitement soon hit an inevitable set of roadblocks in the conversation; that the current regulatory environment wouldn’t permit their product in a building of this size; that they’d need to scale-up significantly or partner with other regional producers to fulfil an order of this size; and that seeking code-compliance was time consuming and cost-prohibitive for a company of their size to take on alone. We all left that meeting convinced we needed to make the conversation much larger, and that by looking at these issues at a regional scale might help build the alliances and cross-sectoral relationships required to bring bio-based materials back to market and scale.

The Summit brought together 60 people representing the full spectrum of the bio-based material supply chain. Over the course of the day, we uncovered a set of common themes; a) common misconceptions of bio-based materials being more risky, costly, or complicated, b) the existence of structural barriers in policy and regulation that require reform, c) that establishing a bio-based trade association would bolster code engagement, business development, research and development, marketing, and promotion, and d) that there was enormous potential market value associated with the social and ecological benefits of these materials in a market more and more concerned with these impacts.

Like the Oil Sands, these resources require comprehensive (bioregional) plans to scale their production and untap their potential. Fortunately, these plans won’t require new roads, airports, and fly-in-fly-out labor -- the infrastructure and workforce is all in place. All that is required is the redirection of enormous subsidies and investments petro-materials currently enjoy towards renewable materials - a move that would be transformative for material science innovation and rural economic development across the continent.

The most difficult part of this plan will be the broad cultural transformation required for our industry to instigate and advocate for a transition back to these materials. To overcome shared misconceptions and assumptions, we’ll need to foster a culture of collaboration and exchange to replace the petro-paradigm we’ve been operating within. We need to retrain ourselves how to use these materials and work with builders, insurers, developers, local authorities, and vocational trainers to develop a literacy and familiarity with their use. We’ll need to advocate for their use and develop the body of collective evidence required to have them insurable and permitted. Together, we could make bio-based building materials a central character in the new story that is unfolding around collective climate action in the built environment.

If you are interested in learning more about bio-based materials and/or participating in the Northeast Bio-based Materials Collective please contact [email protected] for more information. The NBMC is a growing group of 300 volunteers from across North America.