Engineers attempt to clean the ocean with a 3D-printed bikini

The Sponge material can also be used up to 20 times without losing its absorbency.

“This is a super material that is not harmful to the environment and very cost effective to produce”, said Mihri Ozkan, an electrical engineering professor at UC Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering, in the release. The material has been created from heated sucrose and has “a highly porous structure that is super hydrophobic, meaning it repels water, but also absorbs harmful contaminants”. We’re not sure what your padded bits might smell like when you channel your inner James Bond/Halle Berry and return to dry land, though.

Being one of the most promising ventures into wearable technology with a touch of eco-conscious ideology, it’s not surprising that the Sponge material won first place in the worldwide design competition Reshape 2015. Originally created to desalinize water and clean up oil spills, the husband-wife duo of Mihri and Cengiz Ozkan chose to make it into a bikini and enter it into the Reshape15: Wearable Technology Competition.

Pinar Guvenc, Inanc Eray and Gonzalo Carbajo, partners at the architecture and design firm Eray Carbajo, had the idea to incorporate Sponge into clothing and helped design the initial swim suit mockup.

The team visited the Ozkan’s labs and worked with them to design the swimsuit. The final form of the 3D print shell was obtained through the various iterations of the same undulating form. Engineers have incorporated the material into a swimming bikini which had been 3D printed.

The material’s outer layer is covered in pores which trap contaminants, whilst ensuring none come in contact with the skin.

The precursor to the Sponge material is simple sugar. These absorbed contaminants are released only by way of exposing the material to heat with a temperature of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius.

And it would be relatively cheap to mass produce. “Per gram cost of Sponge is roughly 15 cents, a reducible cost when achieving economies of scale”, the team wrote.

The Sponge Suit bikini has been created to absorb pollutants as wearers splash about in the water. Reprogrammability, recyclability and affordability are intriguing properties of the technology, allowing room for further research and development in clean-tech wearable.