From lab-grown spider silk to cellulose, design and technology reporter Natashah Hitti continues our review of the year with 10 of the most interesting materials developed or used throughout 2019, with a particular focus on reuse. More
American company Heliogen has managed to concentrate solar energy to temperatures of more than 1000 degrees Celsius – hot enough to provide a fossil-fuel-free way to make concrete. More
A German construction project has saved an estimated 136 tonnes of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere by incorporating air pockets made of recycled plastic within its concrete slabs. More
Kazakhstani designer Enis Akiev has developed a method for turning single-use plastic packaging into tiles, by emulating the organic process of rock formation. More
An easily biodegradable material that could be "part of a global answer" to single-use plastic pollution has won its inventor, British designer Lucy Hughes, the international James Dyson Award. More
Canadian camouflage company Hyperstealth Biotechnology has patented the technology behind a material that bends light to make people and objects near invisible to the naked eye. More
New York designer Charlotte McCurdy has fashioned a water-resistant jacket from a plastic made of algae. More
Rain would repair rather than damage roads if they were made of the tyre-based pavement invented by Israel Antonio Briseño Carmona, a Mexican student and winner of the nation's James Dyson Award. More
Swedish company Re:newcell is aiming to disrupt the fashion industry and save natural resources by creating garments from Circulose – a new material made from recycled cotton clothes. More
Montreal-based fashion designer Ying Gao has created a pair of robotic dresses that respond to their environment by rippling, expanding and contracting as if they are alive. More
Canadian brand Native Shoes has developed a sneaker that is entirely made from one continuous piece of algae-enriched EVA in a bid to clean up the footwear industry. More
The Netherlands could build a million new homes from sustainably harvested local wood and save 100 megatons of carbon in the process, according to architect Marco Vermeulen. More
ÉCAL graduate Luisa Kahlfeldt has designed a new diaper that is more sustainable than even other reusable cloth nappies — an innovation for which she won the Swiss James Dyson Award. More
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have demonstrated an experimental way of manufacturing cement that releases no carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. More
Consumers could change the colour of their cars, shoes, clothes or other belongings at will, using a new light-responsive ink from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More
Robin Grasby has unveiled a collection of tables made from Altrock, a material created by the industrial designer from marble offcuts suspended in resin. More
University of Sussex graduate Lucy Hughes used fish waste to create MarinaTex, a compostable alternative to single-use plastic that has won her this year's UK James Dyson Award. More
Tech-based clothing startup Vollebak has launched a T-shirt made entirely from wood pulp and algae, which breaks down in soil or in a composter within three months. More
Traditional Danish seaweed thatching could be updated into a sustainable contemporary building material, according to research by Kathryn Larsen. More
Researchers at Harvard University have devised a way to terraform Mars by placing sheets of silica aerogel on the planet's surface, which would warm it up to make it suitable for growing plants. More