Foray Bioscience is ending deforestation

You're reading The Vital Component, a breakdown of the week's engineering news delivered to your inbox. I’m Alice, an editor at IE. Let's dive in.

This week we’re talking robots that clean wind turbines four times faster than traditional methods; carbon-eating blocks that ingest eight tonnes of CO2 a day; the $8 billion dollars that FTX was caught depositing; the world's first propeller with 11 blades, which has completed its first test flight; and the inaugural net-zero transatlantic flight from London to New York.

But perhaps the biggest question of the week is …to tree or not to tree?

Because now we have the choice.?

In fact, we can now 3D print as much wood as we want without cutting down a single tree.

Which is a fairly big deal, when you consider that the forestry and logging market was estimated at $285.2 billion in 2021, and is expected to reach a revised size of $438.5 billion by 2026.

And it’s all thanks to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers, who conducted a study that found it’s possible for lab-grown timber to replace real wood.

So, for example, if you want a new wooden chair, you could use their technique to make it in a lab, without going anywhere near a tree.

The 3D-bioprinting process also means you can produce wood in custom shapes and sizes. The idea is that you can grow plant materials in exactly the shape that you need, so you don’t need to do any subtractive manufacturing, which reduces both energy and waste.

And great oaks from little acorns grow… because after completing the research, lead author Ashley Beckwith founded Foray Bioscience, to further develop new techniques and methods for growing wood without trees.?

The company’s current approach involves growing plant matter from common zinnia cells. This is a first-of-its-kind method that uses tissue engineering to produce plant matter in a lab. It’s been used for animal cell culture before, but not plants.?

Beckwith and her team at Foray Bioscience is now planning to 3D print timber in a lab from cells of trees like pine. Once this happens, she hopes deforestation will be a thing of the past, which I think we can all agree is fairly momentous.?

“Trees and forests are an amazing tool for helping us manage climate change, so being as strategic as we can with these resources will be a societal necessity going forward,” says Beckwith.

But will we take her up on her offer? Are we going to stop cutting down trees??

And on a practical note, is it actually possible to scale this technology to such an extent that this might be possible??

Beckwith certainly seems to think so, but she can’t do this alone. She needs buy-in and cooperation on a truly momentous scale to make this dream a reality.?

To be clear, Foray Bioscience is a venture-backed company, and she’s certainly not the only one with this dream, so perhaps there is light at the end of the forest.

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