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CASBA

California Straw Building Association

Open-Source Incubator

CASBA has a long tradition of open-source information-sharing, research, and mutual support; and deep roots in the natural building movement.

As a result we are uniquely positioned to help scale the movement in two ways:

  • Providing open-source materials knowledge and best practices to support natural and biobased product development
  • Supporting businesses oriented toward natural and biobased building methods. We want to help more bio-based businesses flourish.

Historically we have played this role to a degree through consultations, mentoring, resource assistance, and our invaluable network of practitioners ready to work with new products and companies. We feel that there is now a new opportunity to increase our impact in this regard by developing member benefits for business support through more focused research collaboration with product developers.

Our approach

We approach incubation from an open-source, bioregional perspective, building on our community's history of freely sharing knowledge and working toward a symbiotic relationship with the region we inhabit, and on which we rely.

To us this means scaling biobased material practice on the shoulders of resilient construction processes, rather than black-boxed, or universal solutions. CASBA sees bio-based business and product incubation as essential to our goals for a regenerative building movement.