crQlr Awards, a global award for designing a circular economy

2025-03-10

We are honored to receive an award at the crQlr Awards 2024 organized by FebCafe and Loftwork.
The crQlr Awards is an award to discover and support creative, unique, and promising projects that give new perspectives to society and individuals aiming for a circular economy.

Award Details

We are fortunate to have received three awards. Thank you very much.

Prize : EcoMobility Prize

Jury : Cecilia Tham

If the material science behind this project proves accurate, and these white tires demonstrate measurable environmental benefits in both production and usage, the impact could be transformative. The global scale of tire usage—considering the billions of vehicles in operation and the frequency of tire replacements over their lifetimes—presents a huge opportunity for reducing environmental harm.

The approach to replace petroleum-derived carbon black with cellulose nanofibers in order to reduce CO2 emissions during manufacturing and disposal is really intelligent, and it addresses the pressing problem of marine microplastics resulting from tire dust (I would love to learn the magnitude of this problem of the tire dust). The potential to create biodegradable tires that integrate seamlessly into natural ecosystems represents a significant step forward in circular economy innovation. I feel that if this is successfully implemented, this technology could redefine industry practices while significantly reducing the ecological footprint of tires, marking a substantial contribution to global sustainability efforts. This innovation has the potential to be a game changer for the automotive and materials industries.

Prize : Out of Dark Age Award

Jury : Renaud Haerlingen

Tires are black and the black is dirty. The pursuit to develop a natural tire reinforcement material invites us to look at a sub-part of an extremely common object. While it may not seem to be a sexy topic, reinforcement is the elephant in the room, and tire pollution is a major problem.

The work of Lipper, associated with an extended Shizuoka ecosystem, demonstrates a high level of maturity. Once our attention is caught on this issue, Lipper’s white color-based solution is bliss. The look is a quintessential inversion and a refreshing display to introduce a new era. I’m looking forward to its industrial deployments.

Prize : when tires change color

Jury : Sachiko Hirosue

Many of the automobile technologies are reaching 100 years old. This project aims to replace the carbon-black for cellulose derived nanofibers. This is an exciting prospect, with carbon black being an important resource that can be used for other applications. This is a pro-spective technological solution to possible upcoming EU regulations. Now that technology can do it, it is whether we can achieve a design challenge – to get society and consumers to accept the 100 year old notion that tires are black. It would be important (and also on the company timeline) to determine the degradability, and what the health effects are of the new material tire dust.