Symmetry Wood

Founded in 2021, Symmetry Wood™ seeks to create greater harmony between humanity and nature by producing sustainable materials that can disrupt the demand for tropical hardwoods coming, often illegally, from the destruction of rainforests. For every high-value tree targeted in rainforests, up to 30 others are destroyed as collateral damage. The loggers also open some of the first roads that can be used by ranchers, miners, and hunters, triggering a chain reaction that often leads to complete deforestation.

Symmetry’s patent-pending material, Pyrus™, is meant to displace imported tropical hardwoods and thus defund high-grade tropical logging. It starts from organic wastes (including food waste) converted to nanocellulose by certain bacteria. In nature, cellulose is a primary component of tree-derived wood and the most abundant organic polymer on Earth. Obtaining cellulose from bacteria already in its nano-form offers several benefits: (1) it grows much more rapidly than plant cellulose in many cases; (2) it possesses enhanced mechanical strength that can translate to a wooden material; and (3) because it is produced alone, without lignin or hemicellulose, those compounds do not need to be stripped from it and the cellulose can be customized for various applications more readily. The Symmetry team’s prototyping has also shown bacterial cellulose (BC) to be particularly effective at creating highly dense wood similar to many tropical hardwoods.

Symmetry Wood™ has been chosen as a portfolio company of the non-profit Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI) — which supports economic, social, and environmental excellence — and its invention won the 2021 U.S. National James Dyson Award. The Symmetry team is now seeking founding equity partners who will help usher the company into production as it begins engaging early market segments.