BioPuff, a new plant-based material manufactured by the startup Saltyco using reedmace - better known as bulrush - has a similar structure to feathers, providing warm, lightweight and water-resistant insulation, according to the firm.
About 20 bulrush heads are needed to make enough material for one jacket, and the first rushes are expected to be harvested from the UK site in 2026.
“The bulrush has an amazing high-volume structure,” says Finlay Duncan, a co-founder of Saltyco.
“I’ve been farming this land for 35 years and have seen steadily declining yields and increasing difficulty finding a market for traditional crops,” says Steve Denneny, who will be growing the bulrush crop on land owned by the Peel Group.
“Farming on lowland peat can be really difficult. It’s not the most profitable farming.” Ideas like the bulrush project could mean a lucrative “Win-win”, says Longden.
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Yet a project near Salford in north-west England is aiming to help transform the plant into an environmentally friendly alternative to the goosedown and synthetic fibres that line jackets, boosting the climate and the productivity of rewetted peatland in the process.
BioPuff, a new plant-based material manufactured by the startup Saltyco using reedmace – better known as bulrush – has a similar structure to feathers, providing warm, lightweight and water-resistant insulation, according to the firm.
For farmers on lowland peat in the north-west, it is hoped the trial could provide an alternative source of income while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
For the project in Salford, the Wildlife Trust is collecting baseline data at the site, which will be rewetted this autumn to raise the water table.
“If we can make this trial successful and upscale it, there is so much lowland peat in the UK that is crying out to be rewetted, both environmentally and economically,” says Mike Longden of the Wildlife Trust.
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