Future Bio-Materials

Terrestrial is fully focused on materials innovation. Crafting our products in-house lets us try new approaches that large-scale contract manufacturers simply cannot. Our current products, which use non-woven hemp processed in West Texas, have designs where a tough, lightweight reinforcement is ideal. These fibers are aligned randomly, creating an ‘isotropic’ material - giving it the same amount of strength in all directions, as is the case with metals.

Unlike metals of the same weight, though, our composite will ‘spring back’ when it is bent, rather than permanently deforming. This is great for smaller pieces of gear, such as tools, containers, and camp furniture. It isn’t so great for gear that requires a lot of stiffness, such as a bike frame, skis or poles - which tend to use mostly ‘unidirectional’ or ‘anisotropic’ carbon fiber reinforcement, creating much greater strength (both tensile and bending resistance) in a single direction, like the grain in solid wood.

In the not-too-distant future, our gear can be made with aligned fibers; but this will need significant development, as it requires the use of room-sized textile equipment for opening, combing and ‘carding’ plant fiber.  After decades of outsourcing, there are no longer any such machines (nor operators who know how to use them) anywhere in North America. This means we will likely have to design and build our own, if we don’t want to have to ship our material back and forth from Europe, increasing emissions. In the meantime, our designs leverage the inherent strengths of non-woven fibers, and showcase what high-performance biomaterials are capable of.

Ongoing Research & Development

In addition to refining hemp fiber processing for maximum performance, we are formulating improved resins with higher bio-based content, as well as studying high-temperature bio-composites.

We are also working with suppliers to test 100% bio-based versions of resins that have been used by NASA and Space-X in ablative heat shields for spacecraft re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, which we will use in conjunction with specially-treated hemp to produce fire resistant materials - these can be used not only in stoves and fire tools, but for protection of homes and businesses in wildfire-prone areas.

By using special methods such as ‘hydrothermal carbonization’ outlined in recent scientific literature, biomass in the form of hemp fiber cellulose can be functionalized into long carbon chains with high crystallinity, not unlike petroleum-based carbon fiber - enhancing strength and heat resistance, while still having a net-negative climate impact.

This work is in collaboration with researchers and engineers, and in partnership with the Miller Advanced Research & Solutions Center (MARS) at Weber State University in Utah - which specializes in high-temperature composites for aerospace & industry.

  • Our products are carbon negative, but no - we do not make disposable gear. When it comes to sustainability, we have chosen to focus on the overall life cycle analysis impact of our materials. Heirloom-quality products ultimately do less harm than things designed to be thrown away after a season of use.

  • In a way, yes … we use US-grown fiber hemp, often used to regenerate and decontaminate soil, and resins produced from agricultural waste which would otherwise be burned in the open air. But we do not use post-consumer plastics, which can create more emissions than virgin material.

  • Due to its high growth rate and planting density (yielding taller plants), fiber hemp sequesters CO2 at seven times the rate of natural forests, and 15 times the rate of industrial forestry. This is not the case with seed and CBD/HTC hemp varieties, which are shorter and planted further apart. 

    Fiber hemp is harvested annually and requires one tenth as much water as cotton - often requiring no irrigation beyond rainfall - and can be rotated with food crops to improve the soil, producing even greater yields. It can also be grown in soils that would never be able to produce quality food crops.

  • The passage of the 2018 Farm Bill means that hemp (containing less than .3% THC) is no longer regulated by the DEA as a scheduled substance. Hemp is also a completely different cultivar / variety from THC / CBD plants. You may still need an agricultural license to grow it, depending on your state, but products made from hemp can now be sold freely.

  • Plants such as hemp sequester CO2 via photosynthesis: they chemically separate one molecule of Carbon, stored as cellulose in plant cells, and two molecules of Oxygen - released into the air for us to breathe. If you look at the periodic table, you’ll see that Carbon atoms are actually lighter than Oxygen atoms - which means that less than a third of the mass of CO2 is stored in the plant, including the roots that stay in the ground.

  • We have preliminary designs for a number of outdoor-oriented hardgoods, from coolers to camera gear, as well as some more industrial applications for our high-temperature composite R&D. If you have an urgent outdoor need that you think others share, feel free to let us know - along with any questions you might have.