Piana Technology, a 439-year-old textile company known for innovation within the fiber and nonwoven textiles markets, announced that it has been named a CES 2022 Innovation Awards Honoree. The Innovation Award honors the outstanding design and engineering of E/SMART – a high-performance nonwoven fiber technology that surpasses the qualities of polyurethane foam while reducing its negative impacts. Piana will debut this technology at the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show, its first year in attendance, through their virtual activation experience.

E/SMART offers uncommon integration of digital wellness and product sustainability. Its recyclable and nontoxic fibers are vertically-lapped to provide even pressure point distribution, unprecedented airflow, and antiviral capabilities that outperform those of conventional materials. Even at its reduced weight, it boasts superior compressional and thermal resistance for extensive applications. Flexible integrated pressure sensors within E/SMART can enable healthy posture and sleep quality through personalization of the products. Piana is developing this technology to act as a diagnostic tool in hospital settings. Combined with digitally-printed molecules, it can adapt to wide consumer requests for a user-friendly experience. At its end of life, it can be 100% reclaimed and molded for endless customer possibilities.

Replacing the 1.3 million metric tons of annually landfilled PU foam with E/SMART would eliminate over 4 million metric tons of CO2 each year, leading to reduced impact on quality of life, health, productivity and slowed environmental decline. CEO Andrea Piana sees E/SMART as an opportunity to change the way we approach sustainability.

“The modern world is reliant on materials of the past. If we want to maximize our human potential, we must develop new technologies that adapt alongside us,” says Piana. ” With E/SMART, we’ve built a tech platform for the circular economy with renewable materials that can be upgraded as technology improves—without waste—for endless applications. Along the way, we can make foam obsolete.”

Piana Technology began in 1582 in Biella, Italy. In 1995, Andrea Piana became CEO, ushering in an eco-friendly era for the company and opening their first U.S. factory in Cartersville, GA, before developing SaveDrop Technology and expanding into nonwovens. Today, Piana’s innovative technologies are used in B2B settings to power Fortune 500 companies in product categories including sleep, furniture, transportation, lifestyle, medical and in-flight.

The recognition of E/SMART’s capabilities as a CES 2022 Innovation Award Honoree comes as Piana Technology prepares to launch direct-to-consumer products. E/SMART’s moldability, recyclability and adaptability tied with intuitive molecular technology will lead society one step closer to a user-driven circular economy.