Two childhood friends spent a decade, beginning in college, figuring out how to cheaply make plastic from carbon that’s been captured from the atmosphere.
A decade ago in his Princeton dorm room, Mark Herrema had an aha moment. He read a newspaper story about the rise in heat-trapping methane emissions from dairy farms and decided to do something about it.
He thought — why not pull the carbon from the air and use it to make stuff? A politics major who also studied chemistry, he teamed up with childhood friend Kenton Kimmel,a biomedical engineering student at Northwestern University. They took odd jobs after graduation to fund their research.
“I was a bellhop and Kenton was a valet,” says Herrema, recalling how they worked 14 to 16 hours every day — even holidays — for years to pay their bills and test their ideas in rented lab space.
Industry experts told them it was a fool’s errand. For good reason. Scientists had spent decades trying to capture carbon and use it to make plastic but couldn’t do it cheaply enough. The two friends cracked the code by developing a ten-times more efficient bio-catalyst, which strips the carbon from a liquefied gas and rearranges it into a long chain plastic molecule.
The result? Today, the 31-year-old co-founders of California-based Newlight Technologies have two factories that take methane captured from dairy farms and use it to make AirCarbon — plastic that will soon appear in the form of chairs, food containers and automotive parts. Coming next year: cellphone cases for Virgin Mobile.
“You’ll be able to hold carbon in your hand,” Herrema says of the products, which an independent lab says remove more carbon from the atmosphere than their manufacturing emits. By replacing oil-based plastics, he says he wants to help reduce global warming: “We actually want to change the world.”
“This will be a paradigm shift in our industry,” says Dick Resch, CEO of furniture maker KI, saying AirCarbon will produce the first carbon-negative furniture. KI, which has backed Newlight for eight years and holds exclusive industry rights to its product, plans next year to sell AirCarbon chairs and eventually other products.
“I wish I had been smart enough to figure this out,” says William Dowd, former global director of industrial biotech research and development at Dow Chemical. He says venture capitalists asked him to look at Newlight’s work, but he initially demurred, doubting it would break ground. “I was astounded by what they were able to do.”
The Latest on: Plastic from carbon
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Plastic from carbon” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Plastic from carbon
- Virgin Media O2 UK Cut 65 Tonnes of Plastic from Products and Serviceson April 26, 2024 at 1:52 am
Broadband ISP and mobile operator Virgin Media O2 has this morning announced that, since 2021, they've managed to remove 65 tonnes of single-use plastic from i ...
- The Best Zero-Waste Swaps from Hollywood-Loved Home and Beauty Brandson April 25, 2024 at 12:55 pm
As the climate crisis continues, sustainability has earned a starring role in film and TV — these plastic-free products can help cut down on waste.
- The US is under pressure to lead the way in reducing plastic pollution — but it keeps making more of iton April 25, 2024 at 11:40 am
World leaders are negotiating a treaty to end plastic pollution, and the US is under pressure to step up.
- Catalyzing carbon and plastic recyclingon April 24, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Energy Solutions Forum speaker Karen Goldberg spoke about the methods her lab is pursuing to recycle carbon and plastic ...
- If plastic manufacturing goes up 10%, plastic pollution goes up 10% – and we’re set for a huge surge in productionon April 24, 2024 at 3:15 pm
The more plastic, the more waste we produce. It sounds simple, but this discovery could help us find ways of ending plastic pollution.
- Shopping showdown — what's greener, plastic or paper?on April 24, 2024 at 12:43 am
Paper packaging is more environmentally friendly than plastic, right? But concealed within this deceptively simple choice are chemical contaminants, marketing tricks and greenwashing.A visit to the ...
- Plastic pollution: three numbers that support a crackdownon April 23, 2024 at 5:00 pm
As negotiators haggle over a global treaty to curb plastics pollution, a flood of data outlines how a treaty could make a difference.
- Global plastic pollution treaty talks hit critical stage in Canadaon April 23, 2024 at 1:53 pm
Thousands of negotiators and observers representing most of the world’s nations are gathering in the Canadian city of Ottawa this week to craft a treaty to end the rapidly escalating problem of ...
- As plastic treaty talks open, countries more divided than everon April 23, 2024 at 9:20 am
Countries are under pressure to make progress on a first-ever global plastics treaty this week, but they face tense negotiations in the Canadian capital with parties deeply divided over what the ...
- Global plastic treaty talks are happening. What do stakeholders want?on April 22, 2024 at 3:36 pm
Global leaders will gather in Canada's capital this week to discuss progress in drafting a first-ever global treaty to rein in soaring plastic pollution by the end of the year.
via Bing News