Bridging the Gap Between Industrial Manufacturing and the Regenerative Future

At Prowl, Co-Founders Lauryn Menard and Baillie Mischler are creating new solutions for people and the planet by employing materials, processes, and technologies more responsibly. They are reorienting industrial design towards the goal of a regenerative future.

During the Baukunst Creative Technologist Conference, Lauryn and Baillie spoke about mycelium yoga mats, the current consumer “regenizens”, and how to bridge the gap between aspirational commitments and real world implementation.

We're PROWL. Think of the name as “on the prowl” and always hunting. That's our mantra. We're working to shift the design industry towards responsibility and action. We’re primarily based in Silicon Valley, because we want to do the good work with the people who are living in the future.

We're going to start with a little bit of doom and gloom, but hold on, because we will end in optimism, I promise. I want you all to imagine that you are waking up in an apartment in Los Angeles. You're living in a time where it's 9:00 am and it's already 101 degrees. You're waking up, and you're already sweating. You're making yourself a cup of coffee, and you start scrolling through the news. You're reading articles like, "Warning, fourth day in a row, temperatures reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit.” You also see, “We've already reached 4 million acres of land that have burned this year, and it's only September,” and another that's a little bit odd, that describes that the earth has reached this tipping point where the mass of all man-made things in the built environment has now exceeded that of the biomass on the planet. Well, that time you were imagining…was actually 2020. All of those facts were true two years ago. These climate issues are not coming, they are very much here and we're all learning to live with them.

We've made incredible strides with the use of technology, but there are two sides to every coin. We've been able to automate many jobs from the manufacturing perspective, which has led to overconsumption and a culture of convenience. But at what cost? Technology has enabled global communication, we've been able to reach every corner of the earth, nearly on demand. But that's also driving distance in our local communities, and the places we inhabit right here, right now. We've now become very dependent on this flood of information, and left with very little space to process this overconsumption. Especially with the overabundance of information around the climate crisis, we’re seeing what researchers are referring to as “future fatigue.”

We are huge fans of the futurist and sci-fi writer William Gibson, who once famously asked, “When do you ever hear anyone invoke the 22nd Century?” He shines a light on something very important. The 21st Century was a time of enormous advancement in technology. It changed life as we know it. In the 21st Century, the vision of the future was bright and optimistic. Now, fast forward to today, people are tired and there seem to be plenty of reasons to lose hope, but we don't believe in hopelessness. Here at PROWL, we are seeing a shift and an opportunity for action with all of this data and doom and gloom.

The first hopeful progress projection, if you zoom out and you look at what's happening in the consumer sphere and the product world, is a shift with consumers who are working to spend their dollars in a way that matches their values. These folks are referred to as the “regenizens,” feel free to use this term, we didn't come up with it. They want the clothing on their back to make their health better. They want the brands who they're engaging with to be a badge of honor. Additionally, the International Finance Institute published a report in 2020, estimating the global market value of impact investing at 2.3 trillion dollars. While in the grand scheme of things, that's only 2% of the AUM, for us, it’s proof that it's not just the consumers who care where they put their money, but that businesses also want to feel good about what they're doing.

Another signal we're seeing, as proof that the regenerative future is possible, are climate pledges. A climate pledge is defined as a strategy whereby a business delivers its goods and services in a manner that is both environmentally sustainable and supports its economic growth. Climate pledges are constructed by internal teams based on a company's capacity and what they feel like they're able to achieve. Over a third of the largest publicly traded companies across the world are making pledges such as net zero emissions commitments. But most companies still don't really have a set internal team dedicated to working on these initiatives, and as of now, there's little to no outside oversight that's checking on progress.

What we're here to talk about is how PROWL is bridging the gap between these really aspirational goals and good intentions, and action and implementation. As an industrial design studio, we've had careers in material innovation and experience leading teams in creating mass manufactured goods. That whole industry is part of the problem, so why not shift how we work in order to help push towards this regenerative future?

We're going to use leather as a case study to show you how the world is shifting. In order to get one hide, in order to make one pair of ankle high boots, for example, you need to produce crops to feed a cow, you have to raise cows, you have to transport that cow, you have to, we'll say, “process it.” That doesn't even get you to the tannery. Once you're at the tannery, you have to add textures, add colors, so on and so forth. To produce that one single pair of ankle high boots, it takes 13,600 liters of water.

The previous century was a time of physics, where we had massive industrial advancements that allowed us to create these robust manufacturing systems and create products that would stand the test of time. But that strategy can no longer continue. Instead, this century needs to be a time of biology. We got to witness an incredible example of bio-advancements already within the 2000s, with the rapid development of the COVID vaccine. A movement towards regenerative farming is another example. We are also in the midst of a material revolution.

How do we do that at PROWL? For us, this process of working with the earth and choosing less harmful practices and keeping people and the planet at equal consideration is what we are defining as the regenerative future. Anything that we design for human comfort, let's say, a chair, can't just be thinking about the ergonomics for the human, but also about how it's taken back by the earth at the end of its life. Inversely, any product designed to be biodegradable or compostable at the end of life must also consider human contact at every stage of its life.

In our design process, we begin at the end. In thinking this way, we've had to redesign our design process and develop our own methodologies. By starting with a view of a product's life, we can better create a responsible plan for its entire existence. We can't do that by ourselves though. And so, we partner with incredible manufacturers, material partners, even quantitative partners who help on the sustainability side. All of these partners help us to create more informed solutions.

When we are in the design process, we essentially break down our options into two different methods and strategies. One of these pathways, we refer to as “old technology and new materials.” Old technology, actually, can mean anything from a wheel to a forge, all the way up to something that was invented about 15 years ago. We even consider 3D printing to be a little bit “old” because we've been using it for so long.

The reason why we create these marriages, between old technologies and new materials, is because we can't reinvent the wheel every time. If we had new technologies and new materials, it would take years to get anywhere. What we're trying to do is leverage our partners. For example, our partners in Chicago, they are injection molding experts. It's a tried and true process. Why start new there? Why not just take a new material that's more responsible, that can be brought back to the earth at the end of its life, and use it through the same process. The example that you see here is a Mycelium Leather Yoga Mat for Lululemon. They sold out almost immediately. Mycelium is the root structure of a mushroom. It can be turned into things like leather or foam. This one in particular is made into a yoga mat using a weaving process.

The inverse of that strategy, which is another pathway, is new technology and old materials. Similar to old tech, old materials can mean anything from blue algae to wool. In this method, we use these materials with new technology, allowing us to create less waste.

Sustainable materials, regenerative materials…what the hell does that even mean? The way that we break this down is using these three buckets: Recirculation, Synthetic Alternatives, and Bio-Fabrication.

The first of these buckets is very self-explanatory. It’s recyclable materials, like aluminum, that can be put back into the system over and over again – extending its life from production to landfill. Usually, materials like this can be reused up to 10 times and then it will have to go to the landfill because it's no longer a grade that you can manufacture with. We need to tread lightly here though, because when something says that it is a recyclable material, that doesn't necessarily mean that there is scale there to do so, or that sufficient facilities exist yet.

The second of these categories is synthetic alternatives. This means something that is produced in a lab environment to create alternatives for their nasty, dirty, old cousins. We are big fans of Desktop Metal. What you're seeing here is Desktop Metals' free foam technology. It’s a closed-cell foam that is made with an additive process in order to replace polyurethane foam. Pretty much everything you're sitting on has polyurethane in it and that off-gasses forever. What's great about this alternative is that it produces no waste, and it's much less nasty.

The third of these pathways is biofabrication, which is both the oldest and the newest type of material. The term was adopted from the medical industry, but what Biofabrication really means is allowing organic compounds to do their thing. Mushroom mycelium leather. Mycelium grows under the ground and it spreads and it sprawls forever. The mycelium underneath Oregon and Washington is actually the largest living organism. Some examples of this other than mycelium are what you're seeing here from Faber Futures, a biotech company that works with artists to grow bacteria to dye fabric.

Working with what we've already produced, leveraging old technology, and leveraging new technology – we believe all these strategies must go beyond consumer goods. This holistic process is needed for everything we touch. At the end of the day, everything that ever was and ever will be is simply just a material – no matter how long its function or how long its cultural relevance, how long you think it's worth having around in your life – it's all just material. We have to consider where it comes from, how it goes back to the earth, how it affects people, and how it affects the planet.

It's a lot to take in. There’s a lot to be scared of and a lot to be overwhelmed by regarding the climate crisis, overconsumption, radically evolving technology, demanding consumers, and confusion over commitments. But for us at PROWL, it's fuel for our fire. We're devoted to bridging the gap between the regenerative future and industrial design and manufacturing. We do this through our holistic earth-centered methodologies, learning from the goods and bads of advanced technologies, listening to our consumers, and offering strategies to help folks navigate the murky waters of their initiatives.

By employing materials responsibly and in collaboration with nature itself, we envision a future where everything that's produced – consumer goods, the built environment, technology infrastructures – doesn’t rely on unsustainable inputs anymore. And there’s a plan for the end of life, from the beginning. We’re dedicated to showing the world the collaborative potential of a regenerative economy. And by collaborative, we mean that we can't do it alone and we hope you'll join us on the road to the bright future ahead.

This talk has been edited and condensed.