Image alt text: Dark off-black MO6 wall tiles with rough texture installed on an interior wall in a minimalist space

Lignin is the part of wood that paper mills and timber companies tend to get rid of. It comes off as a byproduct when wood is processed, resists most conventional uses, and usually ends up burned for energy. A Finnish materials startup called Elementic decided to treat it as the main ingredient instead.

The result is MO6, a wall-surfacing tile that is 90% carbon by chemistry and, according to Elementic, stores approximately 2.4 kilograms of atmospheric carbon dioxide for every kilogram of material. That is roughly double the carbon storage of wood. And unlike wood, it does not decay. Elementic says the carbon could remain locked in the material for potentially thousands of years.

How is MO6 made?

The manufacturing process is patented and, by Elementic’s own description, highly secretive. What the company will share is the general shape of it. Lignin is processed in a bioreactor to strip out impurities, including oxygen. “We take the lignin, we create a kind of dough that we bake like a cake, and in the end we get a hard, resistant, durable material but which is lightweight,” said Johanna Normiala, MO6’s general manager.

The finished tile is fire-resistant, durable, and lightweight, with an off-black color and a rough texture that Elementic describes as dramatic. Thermal and acoustic properties are comparable to wood, and the company expects further improvements as the manufacturing process develops.

Carbon negativity, explained

Carbon negative means more than reducing emissions. It means removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than a material produces across its full life cycle, including manufacture and disposal.

Most building materials are carbon positive: they emit more than they store. Timber has attracted attention as an exception because trees sequester carbon as they grow, and some of that carbon stays locked in the wood after harvest. But wood has limits because it burns, decays, and releases its carbon eventually.

MO6 claims to solve that last problem. Because the material does not decay and is designed to be recyclable, Elementic argues the carbon it holds could remain stored far longer than any living or recently living material could manage.

A design product first

MO6 launched its debut collection, MO6 Eternal, on September 2 at Habitare, a design trade fair in Helsinki held as part of Helsinki Design Week. The timing and venue were deliberate. Elementic is positioning MO6 as a premium interior design brand, not a green materials company that happens to make wall tiles.

The distinction’s significance can’t be overstated. A product sold on environmental credentials alone reaches one kind of buyer. A product sold as a design choice that also happens to store carbon reaches architects, hotel developers, and interior designers who might not otherwise be looking for sustainable materials. MO6 is already delivering product to projects; a spa under construction in Paris is among the first named examples.

“We are very much eager to help or support our customers whatever is the area of application, but I would say that the focused interest are in the area of hotels, restaurants,” said Normiala.

What comes next

For now, MO6 is marketed for dry indoor spaces only. Tiles are available in rougher or smoother finishes and can be coated. The company’s next development is bricks, an ambition that would shift the product from interior finish to structural material and open up considerably larger applications in construction.

“There’s a huge potential for that, not only interior part, which is now our first business, but in future in a much larger scale in building,” said Normiala.

The secretive nature of the patented process raises a question sustainability researchers have started to ask more often: as green materials become commercially valuable, how much of that knowledge gets locked behind intellectual property protections rather than shared openly? It is a tension the industry has not yet resolved. For now, Elementic has a product on the market, a growing project list, and a claim that could reshape how architects think about what their material choices do for the climate.