Hundred Year Materials is a local, southwestern Ontario start-up business that is developing a suite of natural fibre insulation products made from straw agricultural waste.
AgriSpan® – Rigid insulation board, R-3.6-4.0/inch, a direct alternative to polystyrene and rigid mineral wool continuous insulation boards.
AgriFlex® – Cavity batt insulation, R-4.0/inch, a direct alternative to fibreglass or mineral wool batt and spray foam insulation.
AgriFill® – A blown-in format insulation for dense pack and loose fill insulation.
Why It’s On The Leading Edge
Adding traditional insulation to improve energy efficiency creates a trade-off with diminishing returns – as more insulation is added, the operational emissions are reduced but the embodied carbon keeps increasing.
Embodied carbon (the total greenhouse gas emissions generated by the extraction, manufacture, transport, installation, maintenance, and disposal of building materials) accounts for roughly 11% of all global carbon emissions and roughly 50% of a typical home’s environmental footprint.
AgriSpan® insulation sequesters 9 times more carbon than it takes to produce – so there’s no trade-off between increasing insulation and reducing embodied carbon. It has a lower installed cost and higher heat capacity (which increases energy efficiency), while also being bio-based, non-toxic, and offered at the same or lower price as products like mineral wool.
History
Co-founder Garrett Johnson was researching the available natural fibre insulations currently on the market, a task that revealed a need & opportunity for an innovative, local product. Most existing products were manufactured in Europe or the US and used either purpose-grown hemp or an expensive wood fibre process. With mentorship and/or financial support from Evolve Builders Group, the Grain Farmers of Ontario, the Boundless Accelerator, and Mohawk College, Garrett researched and developed a new alternative.
They’ve recently launched an investment round to begin small scale industrial manufacturing for local pilot projects and pay for regulatory testing.
The Local Impact
The Hundred Years Materials suite of products are made from straw, a waste product from grain farming. Farmers typically sell straw for animal bedding or to sow into soil. But there’s much more supply than demand, and is an underutilized resource that can add revenue for farmers. Without this sale, the revenue from grain alone often brings farmers to a break-even position with no profit for their hard work. Straw is also a material with wide geographic availability. The company’s plan is to set up many small production facilities to serve local markets, with all raw materials sourced within 100km of each facility. This will also save significantly on shipping costs for the end user. Currently, to ship a wood fibre insulation from Europe could add up to 40% in shipping costs alone.
