Dutch sustainable construction materials company StoneCycling in collaboration with Belgium studio Circular Matters developed an interior wall cladding material made of waste corn cobs.

Maize is one of the most common crops on the planet and cultivated nearly everywhere. The cob has no nutritious value and is therefore normally fermented, used for biogas or are simply left on the field. In all cases, the carbon the cobs have stored while they grew is released again.

To counter this, StoneCycling and Circular Matters decided to use the corn cobs to make an interior wall cladding material, keeping the CO2 locked in during the material’s lifetime. The material comes as a tile or sheet material.

To make the material, the cobs are dried and shredded. This is then mixed plant-based biomass to create a recipe that is 99.5 per cent biobased. The remaining 0.5 per cent are the pigments that are not yet biobased, but are biodegradable,.

This mixture is then pressed under high pressure and a heat of about 150 degrees Celsius, which is created using solar energy, making the material carbon neutral. After that, the material is cut to size as a sheet material or tiles and are provided with a biobased waterproof coating.

Photos: StoneCycling