Alive Labs & James Hutton Institute

Alive Labs partnered with the James Hutton Institute to investigate selected mosses and their capacity to absorb common pollutants. The investigation looked into cation exchange capacity and uptake of harmful compounds from the air. 

Moss’ non-vascular structure means it evolved a different system to absorb nutrients from rooted and vascular plants. By using its incredible surface area moss is able to absorb nutrients from the atmosphere, absorbed and metabolised via cation exchange. This opens the door for numerous everyday city pollutants to be removed from the environment via the same mechanism. AL demonstrated that moss is extremely adept at removing atmospheric Ammonias, Nitrous Oxides, PM2.5, and harmful heavy metals. 

A central benefit of the Alive Cladding System is its ability to absorb dirty air and release clean air, contributing towards a reduction of pollution in our cities. With the James Hutton Institute, we were able to provide hard data on this innate quality of moss and its potential for scalability.