A dress completely made of paper from Swedish forests. The innovation project ‘Establish locally grown textiles in Sweden’ aims at enabling textile production of raw material from the pulp industry.

Wood becomes paper, which is turned into fabrics. By using knowledge and skills from classical Swedish industries, wood can be refined into locally produced textiles. This gives new business opportunities for the domestic industry in Sweden and creates opportunities for a more sustainable textile industry through a range of innovative solutions across branches. In the provinces of Värmland and Dalsland, there are dense forests of spruce and pine trees. This Swedish forest raw material is processed and refined into paper by Nordic Papers and Ahlstrom-Munksjö paper mills. The unbleached and locally grown paper is then shipped to the textile cluster in the Sjuhärad region, where it is spun into threads at SKS Textile and then turned into fabrics via knitting machines at the Swedish School of Textiles in Borås. At the dyeing company Sjuhäradsbygdens Färgeri, the fabric is given a dark blue colour and is then turned into a flexible dress at Smart Textiles at the University of Borås.

Futuristic fuels could replace our current supplies, recycling what the latter’s combustion produces most: carbon dioxide. And synthetic diamond exposed to light may hold the key Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed. The principle underlying modern chemistry seems to support efforts by scientists to fight CO2 emissions. European researchers are investigating new possible approaches to decrease the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, with a view to exploiting them. If successful, the experimental technology will help fight climate change and provide a more sustainable supply of raw materials for certain industrial branches. The vision is to produce useful chemicals from the carbon dioxide treated in water or in other green solvents, with the aid of sunlight. The resulting substances could be used to get fuels for cars, or obtain other compounds such as methanol, formic acid or methane, necessary to the chemical industry that, right now, relies on petroleum or natural gas.