New sustainable materials course rewards best projects
First prize: Claire Pinson, Lucie Caulier, Anita Manzolini, Alice Giorgetti, Antoine Foitus © Adrian Alberola Campailla
On Monday, three teams of students from the first edition of MSE-433: Towards Sustainable Materials, received prizes for semester projects that proposed creative alternatives to existing products.
In addition to proposing sustainable alternatives, the student project teams in the new Materials Science & Engineering master’s course MSE-433 had to conduct in-depth analyses to support the commercial integration of their concepts.
In the end, the winning project focused on a material used by us all every day: clothing. The students behind A sustainable winter coat imagined combating fast fashion by swapping PET-based polyester fibers with PEF (polyethylene furanoate): a bio-based, recyclable plastic that is being explored as an alternative to wool. The group’s concept, inspired by the structure of polar bear hairs, consisted of a coat that combines a thick, recyclable inner layer with a removable outer layer, which could be changed according to season and fashion.
In addition to cost modeling, supply chain analysis, and life cycle assessment, the team proposed a smart initiative for their product, in which customers could send in their old and damaged coats for recycling, or for repair using recycled PEF fibers.
“This course really gave us a 360-degree view of sustainable materials,” said winning team member Claire Pinson. Her teammate, Antoine Foitus, agreed, adding: “This course showed me that it takes a lot for a material to be sustainable: it is about design, and cost modelling, and so much more than just the material itself.”
First prize: A sustainable winter coat, by Lucie Caulier, Antoine Foitus, Alice Giorgetti, Anita Manzolini, and Claire Pinson
Second prize: Sustainability and lifecycle assessment of a sodium-ion alternative to the Tesla 4680 lithium-ion cell, by Yoan Cangemi, Eric Greulich, Alexandre Hivorel, Michael Low, and Albin Mermoud
Third prize: Circular tennis ball, by Pin-Ying Chen, Marus Lozza, Leila Mégevand, Germana Sergi, and Pierre-Arnaud Vals
MSE-433, led by Yves Leterrier and Martyn Wakeman, focuses on modeling key sustainability issues through an engineering lens. It examines emerging and critical materials used to manufacture items during the transition to NetZero and NetPositive targets, as well as their environmental, societal, and human impacts. Throughout the semester, students had the chance to hear from guest speakers both from within EPFL, and from industry / NGOs, who shared their experiences in the development and deployment of sustainable materials.
“It has been a very rich, intense semester, and we have seen a wonderful engagement and resonance with the 45 students who took this first class,” says Leterrier. Wakeman adds: “We have enjoyed working with our students, and learning with them as we explored together the systemic changes needed related to our use of materials from multi-faceted perspectives.”
