The Global CO2 Initiative is proud to announce that their partners at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning have been awarded a catalyst grant. These catalyst grants, from the Graham Sustainability Institute, fund projects designed to advance potential infrastructure solutions across energy, transportation, and the built environment. The projects will facilitate climate change adaptation, test products aimed to reduce carbon emissions, and foreground equity and justice in sustainability interventions.
The project, “Post Rock: Upcycled Building Material Sourced From Regional Waste,” recognizes that encouraging a more circular economy is a key strategy in combating climate change. Partnerships between research and siloed industries can help connect the dots, identifying new downstream applications that add value to upstream waste materials and capture carbon in long-lasting products. The Post Rock research initiative seeks to do just this by offering circular solutions for waste plastics and other materials through new architectural applications.
Post Rock has gone through two rigorous phases of customer discovery, focusing the material research development toward a specific end use. With this catalyst grant, the research team can take the critical next step toward commercialization: establishing a regional supply of source material, which potentially could fully comprise waste diverted from regional streams. Researchers plan to leverage the unique regional context of southeast Michigan and northwest Ohio, which offers a wide range of materials flowing through various industries.
Project team: Meredith Miller, PI (Taubman); Volker Sick, Co-PI (Engineering); Christopher Humphrey (Taubman); Thom Moran (Taubman).