A complete material transition is only possible with dozens of sustainable alternatives.
Most plastics and additives are made from hydrocarbons (coal, oil, nat gas). These materials are very strong, very light, and very cheap.
Metals and minerals are typically heavy, energy intensive, transportation inefficient, extracted resources.
The built environment needs sustainable alternatives across hundreds of different types of products. It's time to systematically reduce embodied carbon.
Companies can take many years to find, test, & commercialize new materials & products.
Suppliers of sustainable materials are often not world class marketers. These companies could also be on the other side of the earth. Locating suppliers can be time and energy intensive.
Large companies have lots of materials that needed to get tested yesterday. New materials can sit in line for many months (or longer) before R&D teams have the time and resources to dive deeper.
Testing new materials requires a feedback loop from the consumer of the material back to the producer of the material. Often times there are adjustments to formulations and processing conditions that are required for optimal performance.
Sustainable material innovations can cost millions in R&D if not managed properly.
The people at R&D labs who call the shots are well compensated. Experts at these R&D labs include materials scientists, mechanical engineers, polymer chemists, chemical engineers, and other types of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.
The equipment required to run tests on new materials is expensive to acquire (and run). Often times, a company will have to use commercial equipment to run tests.
If they are working on your material, they are dedicating resources that could be going to another material. A company only has so much bandwidth, so you are oftentimes competing with other innovations for the same time, money, and energy.