Natalie York fell in love with the Colorado Rockies when she moved to Denver in 2013. She had just finished a degree in architecture in Southern California, and was delighted by the interface she saw between work and lifestyle in the mountains.
In 2019, York moved into the Roaring Fork Valley to work on the MOLLIE Aspen project with CCY Architects. “Living here in this amazing community is so inspiring. We live in a progressive part of the mountains,” she effused. “But we also see climate change happening in real-time, between Glenwood and Aspen so much has changed in a relatively short period.”
York has been busy since arriving in the Valley. In 2020, she founded Flora Materials for research and development of functional, sustainable building materials, and quickly partnered with the University of Utah toward those aims. In 2022, she left CCY and started the new firm West 40 with her husband. In 2023, Flora Materials won a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Army Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. That grant was based on her work with the University of Utah; after successfully developing a bio-based plastic film, her team turned that research toward creating algae-based flooring tiles.
“Throughout my career, I always thought about different materials and sustainable materials for building,” York said. Accordingly, she looked for opportunities to pursue that kind of innovation in her work. The SBIR research and development is going well. So well, in fact, that this autumn, Flora Materials completed the Phase I research contract with the Army SBIR grant and secured a Phase II grant with a scaled-up funding tag of $1.9 million.
Given her background and parallel career in architecture, York has significant insights into the amount of unsustainable materials that go into many buildings. The current Flora Materials research is focused on bio-based, durable surface components to replace fossil fuel products. Luxury vinyl tile (LVT) is popular in expensive homes and commercial buildings, and usually a petroleum-based composite material. York’s Flora Materials work eliminates petroleum and instead creates LVT with algae-based vinyls.
York explained that the work has broader implications than increased environmental sustainability. “We’ve signed on to the challenge of what’s called a thermostatic plastic. Right now these are manufactured overseas, and the process is slow and costly,” she said, referencing the time and money involved in importing these materials. “How do we make these more cost-
efficient? How do we speed up the manufacturing process? The idea is to bring this manufacturing process back to the U.S. and even to Carbondale.”
There are obstacles to the work. Among them, York noted public misunderstanding about sustainable products stemming from promotion campaigns of biodegradable plastics such as in straws and utensils. “There’s a lot of greenwashing when it comes to bio-based products; there needs to be clarity and communication around the difference between biodegradable and bio-based,” she explained. People may assume that bio-based products can’t be durable given recent focus on compostable plasticware in restaurants and other venues.
But many bio-based products are very long-lasting, sometimes moreso than petroleum-based products with less environmental damage. “I think being able to educate the community on bio-based products and what is possible [is an obstacle to be overcome],” York said. “It’s like natural wood, bio-products last a long time.”
York holds gratitude for the grants Flora Materials has been awarded over the past four years. “Without this funding, we wouldn’t be able to do any of this,” she said. “Small innovation research can really drive and make change.” Aside from the progressive grant funding, she named the original University of Utah project as a major milestone. “Creating 100% biodegradable film with the University of Utah team took it from a concept and idea to reality.”
Moving forward, York expressed excitement about aligning the Flora Materials work with West 40 architecture projects. She said that her team is planning on installing the flooring product into a net-zero building project in the next year, demonstrating application. By the end of the two-year Phase II government contract, York said Flora Materials will have a viable bio-based flooring product ready to go to market.
From there, she hopes to continue expanding on sustainable materials research and production. “We have other ideas we’re looking forward to developing in the future. The science is there. So many really intelligent chemists are just looking for projects to engage.”
You can read more about York’s work at www.floramaterials.com