{"id":159414,"date":"2023-03-03T05:24:30","date_gmt":"2023-03-03T11:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/this-startup-is-making-ultra-strong-building-panels-out-of-grass"},"modified":"2023-03-03T05:24:30","modified_gmt":"2023-03-03T11:24:30","slug":"this-startup-is-making-ultra-strong-building-panels-out-of-grass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/this-startup-is-making-ultra-strong-building-panels-out-of-grass","title":{"rendered":"This Startup Is Making Ultra-Strong Building Panels Out of Grass"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Wanderers - a short film by Erik Wernquist\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/108650530?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"640\" height=\"272\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After testing several different types of grass and other raw materials, Plantd settled on a perennial (meaning it grows back every year and doesn\u2019t need to be re-planted) long grass that can grow 20 to 30 feet in a year.<\/p>\n<p>Though grass is obviously softer than wood, it contains a similar cellulose fiber that can be broken down then reconstituted and engineered in such a way that the final product is even stronger than wood (check out this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/posts\/dorfmanjosh_myhouseisstrongerthanyourhouse-activity-6836658578644844544-gg71\/?trk=public_profile_like_view&originalSubdomain=lt\">video<\/a> that made the rounds on LinkedIn last year: a regular wood panel and a Plantd panel are subjected to a sledgehammer, and just one of the two withstands the test).<\/p>\n<p>Plantd makes structural building panels for wall sheathing, roof decking, and subflooring, and they say their product outcompetes wood on every metric: it\u2019s stronger, cheaper, lighter, more moisture-resistant, and captures more carbon\u2014all for the same cost as wood. The panels are meant to be a replacement for a plywood-like material called traditional oriented strand board, or OSB. Custom-built machinery uses heat and pressure to press shredded grass into panels, with a standard four-by-eight-foot panel using about 50 pounds of grass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After testing several different types of grass and other raw materials, Plantd settled on a perennial (meaning it grows back every year and doesn\u2019t need to be re-planted) long grass that can grow 20 to 30 feet in a year. Though grass is obviously softer than wood, it contains a similar cellulose fiber that can [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}