In the post-epidemic era and the current intensified climate problems, the carnival of consumerism has begun to dissipate, and "human sober shopping" has become the mainstream, and this generation of consumers have begun to choose a more environmentally and socially friendly purchasing method - sustainable consumption.

This change is then transmitted to the consumer enterprise side, they are trying to impress this group of more rational consumers with more innovative environmental technology.

"Previously, everyone was volume price, volume performance, when entering a stock market stage, now everyone began to roll low carbon, consumer preferences are changing, competitors are also changing tricks to do environmental protection, which has become a required question from an additional question." Says the head of sustainability at a consumer goods company.

Some companies start with upstream raw materials and replace traditional petroleum-based materials with bio-based materials: such new materials come from botanical gardens and wet markets, such as corn, rice husks and mushrooms. The ingredients that often appear on the table are transformed into clothes, shoes and bags.

Others are keen on "garbage collection". Waste water bottles, old T-shirts, and waste materials that would otherwise be abandoned can be turned into treasures after recycling, turning them into raw material sources for new products and extending their life cycle again.

From biomaterials to waste recycling, consumer goods companies are moving across the spectrum of carbon reduction, constantly "rolling" into black technology.

■ Using plants to play cross-border, bio-based materials become new stars

More and more products are beginning to "grow" out of plants.

Hundreds of years after the birth of petroleum-based materials, the new star of "bio-based materials" is trying to break the pattern.

Bio-based materials are new materials formed by biological, chemical, physical and other means using renewable biomass as raw materials.

Take plants as an example, plants will absorb carbon dioxide during the growth process, if these plants absorb carbon dioxide to produce bio-based materials, equivalent to the product has a lower carbon footprint starting point, and the raw materials are renewable and degradable.

Therefore, some innovative materials will even make people think that they have entered the "wet market".

Seaweed, corn, mushrooms, cactus, and even fruit ingredients such as bagasse, pineapple leaves, and apple peels have all begun to be tried on the body. In the fashion world, this gradually led to the concept of "vegan leather".

For example, mushroom mycelium, which is the root network of mushrooms, is waterproof and fully biodegradable, making it an ideal environmentally friendly material.

Mushrooms do not need light to grow and can even grow from a spore to a mature fungus in a matter of days or weeks. It also has a complex filament structure that acts as a natural glue.

Some brands began to invest in mycelium extraction technology, such as lululemon since 2021, launched the use of corn nylon, mushroom leather yoga MATS, backpacks and so on.

Not only clothing, bio-based materials are also used in the field of daily necessities.

Soni was inspired by the rice husk: It has a unique micro-structure, with three different sizes of pores that allow it to absorb larger organic materials, including bacteria, viruses, and large proteins.

Using rice husks as a "natural dust collector," SONY has developed a porous carbon material called Triporous, which is used to purify water and air.

"10kg of rice husks can produce 1kg of Triporous. This material not only has a higher adsorption rate and efficiency, but also reduces greenhouse gas emissions and PM2.5 when compared to incineration of the same amount of rice husks." SONY (China) Co., LTD. Vice president Taketo Teda said.

Ikea uses bio-based materials in its plate products.

In order to reduce the carbon footprint of plate production, IKEA announced this year that it will gradually transition from fossil-based adhesives to bio-based adhesives, including cornstarch materials.

In today's material life continues to be sufficient, this batch of consumer goods companies are back to nature, upward to the source of more pure environmental protection technology.

However, it is undeniable that bio-based materials are still an emerging track, and large-scale replacement of petroleum-based materials needs a certain period.

Many developers of bio-based materials have a consensus: the current market acceptance is still limited, and it will take time for downstream brands and customers to accept this new technology. Especially in the highly competitive fashion clothing industry, many brands are still very cautious, not a "great leap forward" type of comprehensive replacement of traditional materials, but gradually increase the proportion of environmentally friendly materials.

"It's easier to just make beautiful products, but it's challenging to balance functionality and sustainability and convince customers." Says one of the company's sustainability leaders.

Wang Lei, chairman of bio-based materials company Zhongke Guosheng, also said: "It is difficult to get the market to accept new things, because people are often inert, and people prefer to accept the products they are used to."

Especially when some unfamiliar words enter daily life, consumers are full of expectations and conflicts, including questions about the performance, quality and value of new technologies. Business-to-consumer "translation" needs to catch up.

■ On board the "circular economy" express train, garbage also has a spring

"Garbage is a resource in the wrong place." This sentence not only gives the name of "garbage", but also summarizes the characteristics of "circular economy".

In a circular economy, product materials should be recycled instead of being thrown away after a single use.

Nike has long set its sights on recyclable materials. The Space Hippie collection is one such product - from the upper to the sole, all derived from "garbage" recycling.

Plastic bottles are recycled, crushed, melted and pressed again, and can be converted into a whole new polyester fiber material. Nike Flyknit, as one of the upper production materials, is made of recycled polyester fiber yarn with efficient knitting structure.

In order to further reduce carbon emissions, Nike has replaced 50% of the recycled polyester fiber material in the upper shoe with the remaining T-shirt waste in the factory floor, with a process similar to whittling, instead of heaters or hydraulic presses, and then reduce energy consumption again.

Waste plastic bottles and T-shirts are combined into a new hybrid fabric Space Waste, which can reduce carbon emissions by 70% compared to traditional yarn.

For the sole, Nike is still fully recycled materials, the granular feel in the foam material is from the Nike Grind filler: Nike will be recycled old shoes, through the Nike Grind technology to disassemble and re-processing, in which the old shoe soles will be made into reusable rubber particles, they can not only be used in the production of new shoes, but also for the construction of environmentally friendly courts.

"In the past, when Nike designed a shoe, the first thought was comfort and innovation, but now our first consideration is how environmentally friendly the product design is." Nike Greater China operations and logistics vice president Chang Yuan said.

SONY has a similar idea. More than 20 years ago, SONY began to reduce waste materials in production, "SORPLAS" is SONY using waste buckets, old CDS to create an environmentally friendly material.

Normally, recycled plastics used in electronic products need to add a certain amount of flame retardants, other additives and new plastics to ensure that the plastic is safe and stable, which will make the proportion of recycled plastics can only reach 30%, but SONY used recycling technology to increase this proportion to 99%.

In the process of developing technologies such as wastewater purification agents and highly absorbent materials, SONY found that the plastics treated by sulfonation can produce polycarbonate with high flame retardants.

As a result, SONY independently developed a sulfur flame retardant (PSS-K) : the flame retardant only needs to add 1% to achieve the flame retardant effect of general additives.

SONY will be a large number of recycled waste buckets, old discs, crushed and mixed, and then add sulfur flame retardant (PSS-K) and other additives melting and mixing, and finally made flame retardant renewable plastic "SORPLAS".

SORPLAS is already used in many SONY TVS, cameras and mobile phones, as well as Lenovo laptops and Samsonite suitcases.

According to Du Min, head of SONY SORPLAS China, SORPLAS can achieve up to 99% recycled materials, and these raw materials are from ordinary plastic items that would otherwise be abandoned.

Under the circular economy model, these waste materials, which were originally destined for the garbage dump, have become new treasures.

However, recycling technology is the "dirty work" in the eyes of many companies, which not only requires more investment, but also is not easy to produce results.

Second-hand products, for example, inevitably wear and tear, and recycling means "looking far away" : green innovation on the basis of uneven quality.

If it is not done in place, it will be accused of greenwashing, which has become the fast fashion industry can not escape the nightmare. In recent years, H&M has been repeatedly exposed to such scandals: recycled old clothes are not properly disposed of, but end up in poor countries in Africa, become mountains of garbage on the beach, and even get burned.

In addition, innovative technology brings additional costs, which is easy to produce a "green premium", but it is different for different consumer groups. Some consumers are environmental activists and value green attributes more; And some consumers, despite being environmentally conscious, still seek the lowest price.

Li Yan, head of sustainability for Kantar Greater China, said that everyone has their own consumption habits and needs, and the first thing to respect is this. The price problem essentially depends on the continuous enrichment of green product categories, and the setting of differentiated price strategies for different products, so that consumers with different price acceptability can have a choice, rather than raising the threshold.

We are still in a difficult transition period. The traditional production technology represented by petroleum-based materials has existed for hundreds of years. If it is fully replaced with environmental protection technology and the cost reduction is achieved with scale, it can not be completed overnight.

But at the very least, it is certain that both companies and consumers are beginning to seek change, and are becoming a group of stone gropers on the road to sustainability.