6 The bag hanging in HAN BioCentre proves it can be done. The question now is how to make even more CeFem, BIOMA Lab's sustainable alternative to leather. "Because in our ideal world, there will soon be no need to slaughter animals for leather or cut down trees for textiles and paper", says Charlotte van Alem, ‘biodesigner’ and founder of BIOMA Lab. It's a distant prospect, but a key driver for Van Alem and co-owner Yvonne Das. Together, they’re developing biomaterials based on green chemistry in hopes of changing the world. "We’re 2 girls in a biolab who want to show that things can be done differently." KOMBUCHA AS A RAW MATERIAL One example of doing things differently is creating a bag that at first glance is made of leather, but whose raw material is the waste product of kombucha. Kombucha is the fermented tea that has become popular as a natural substitute for soda. It works like this: kombucha is made by adding live yeast and bacteria to tea and letting it stand for a while. Fermentation creates a kind of jelly-like pancake in the tea called SCOBY, which is largely discarded by kombucha brewers. That pancake consists of bacterial cellulose, basically a network of very fine fibers. Like ordinary cellulose (extracted from plants and trees), those fibers can form the raw material for paper or textiles. PURSES, BELLS AND WALLETS "We succeeded in using bacterial cellulose to develop a material that has the same look and feel as leather", Das says. "So it’s also water-repellent, while by nature it’s water-absorbent. We can use this material to make purses, belts and wallets." The research for CeFem took years. Van Alem first brewed her own kombucha to grow the bacterial cellulose. "But that was labor intensive", she says. "And it wasn't circular, while we wanted to combine the brewing of kombucha with the resulting bacterial cellulose." A ‘LEATHER’ BAG MADE FROM TEA Charlotte van Alem and Yvonne Das can make a bag out of tea. Their company BIOMA Lab uses the waste generated from brewing kombucha to make material similar to leather. With the help of HAN BioCentre, they are now investigating how to scale up production.
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