How Greenhouse Gas Turns Into Plastic?

  • 3 years ago
Childhood friends, Kenton Kimmel and Mark Herrema start to work on their idea by observing the nature.
Indeed, marine micro-organisms are able to capture carbon dioxide or methane dissolved in the water to turn it into polymer, one of the component of plastic.
First in their garage in California, then in rented laboratories, Kenton and Mark spend years to study that phenomenon.
And one day, they manage to reproduce it!
So, they launch their start-up called Newlight Technologies and produce polymers at large scale.
Those polymers are then extracted into granules that can be molded like normal plastic.
But this time, raw material is not issued from petrol but from greenhouse gas!.
The success is huge today and the start-up partners with multinationals like Ikea to produce chairs with negative footprint.
The company started Covalent, the very first brand of fashion accessories made from greenhouse gas. They produce purses, wallets or even sunglasses.
The company is also developing a tool to allow their customers to know the exact quantity of carbon detained in products they’re buying.
The factory is able to capture emissions from more than 6000 cars, a number they’d like to multiple by 200.

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