A Lille start-up uses vegetable moss to insulate buildings and purify indoor air.
Their idea is to bring nature back to the city and make it aesthetic and useful.
The products, launched in 2021, have already been installed at more than a hundred customers.
You will take back a little foam.
Energy savings, energy renovation, air pollution, nature in the city… Topics that have never been as topical as they are today.
While it is appropriate to decorate certain particularly mineral streets with trees, this is not what will cool your house in the summer and keep it warm in the winter.
The Lille start-up PowerOfMoss certainly has the solution for a touch of green to be as beautiful as it is effective in terms of energy performance.
When they arrived from their countryside, Joss Le Blan and Arthur Lejeune, the founders of PowerOfMoss, had a hard time getting used to the mineral side of the city.
"We really wanted to revegetate the cities in which, in general, there is a great lack of nature", explains Joss Le Blan.
For the entrepreneur, this absence of green has many consequences: "We feel it on the quality of the air, on the heat islands, the use of air conditioning", he lists.
The two partners also found that it was not always possible to remedy this with traditional plants, in particular because of their weight, their low energy performance or their lesser resistance.
A resistant, efficient and insulating plant
They had an enlightenment when they met a bryologist, an expert in bryophytes, more commonly known as "moss": "He told us about all the powers of plant mosses, their resistance, their filtration and insulation performance" , remembers Joss Le Blan.
Since 2019, the two partners have worked on their idea of using this plant on two counts.
The first being the thermal and sound insulation of buildings by greening the roofs with moss.
“This plant is very light and has no roots, which prevents damage to roofs.
Outdoors, it requires no maintenance and resists long periods of drought”, assures the co-founder.
Laboratory studies by PowerOfMoss show an insulation gain of 10% for a bitumen roof and 18% for a steel deck roof.
And the virtues of foam do not stop there.
The company has developed moss-irrigated totems to be installed indoors.
In addition to the aesthetic side, this improves the quality of the air.
"Thanks to its power of static electricity, the foam attracts the particles present in the air which will be biodegraded and transformed into phytomass", explains the entrepreneur.
According to him, 1 m2 of foam treats between 13 and 22 grams of fine dust, “the equivalent of eight trees like beeches”.
PowerOfMoss began installing its products early last year and already has more than 100 customers.
Among them, some construction giants like Bouygues or Vinci, proof if needed that their idea works.
The start-up has also raised funds of more than one million euros which will be used, among other things, to boost R&D and secure the supply of foam.
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