Finding sustainable alternatives to fossil fuel-based products and reducing waste are two of the key challenges facing society at the moment. If you add in the need to insulate quite a large percentage of the housing stock, that's three big problems. The GO STRAWMAT project is working on a circular bioeconomy-based solution which is relevant to all of them.

It's a research project which is just getting going, investigating the potential uses of rice straw. Rice straw is a by-product of the rice growing sector which usually ends up being treated as waste – but it does have a number of interesting properties. It contains silica and lignin, which make it both good at thermal insulation and fire resistant – definitely useful for construction materials! Rather obviously, it's also a renewable material.

La UNIÓ, AGROBELGA, AIMPLAS and Cesefor are all working on the GO STRAWMAT project. It has two strands: developing a way to collect, dry and process wet rice straw, which is important as rice fields are often flooded, and devising materials from it that can compete with petroleum-based insulating products such as polystyrene and polyurethane foams. These foams have low fire resistance properties, so an equivalent material which scores better in that area would have a significant advantage.

The project, which is co-financed by the EU and the Government of Spain, is just starting: it'll be interesting to see how it develops.