Author: Anne Konertz

Can we Turn Greenhouse Gases into Water Bottles?
As user experience designers we create customer journeys. In those journeys or scenarios we design how a customer might use our product. Imagine we wanted to design a smartwatch. We don’t just think about the moment someone interacts with the watch but sketch out an entire day. This helps us make better design decisions.

That got me thinking… What is the customer journey of a plastic bottle? We drink the water, but what happens before and after? What is the entire lifecycle of a water bottle? This is what I sketched up…

Nearly all bottles are made from petroleum. During the oil extraction and the manufacturing of plastic, greenhouse gasses are released into the air. Then during transportation more greenhouse gases are released. After we enjoy the water and throw it away, I sketched five different endings:
- A. Recycle into other plastics for carpets or tiles (only 7 % of plastic in the US is recycled)
- B. Greenhouse gases and toxins are released when burning plastic
- C. It takes hundreds of years to decompose and toxins each into soil and groundwater when put in the landfill
- D. In the ocean it kills and negatively affects marine life and ends up in our food chain
- E. When decomposing into microplastics it kills or harms bacteria that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen
I promised you positive and inspiring stories and so far this post has been pretty depressing. In a recent post I featured water pouches made from algae.

Here is another fantastic startup, this time from California. Cove makes water bottles out of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) – wow, that’s a long word. It’s biodegradable, compostable and produces zero toxic waste.

It is produced by microorganisms feeding on sugar, starches or greenhouse gases. I love this part: Microorganisms can actually turn greenhouse gases, such as waste methane and carbon dioxide, into biodegradable PHA plastics. Companies like Newlight Technologies are developing these kind of bioplastics.

Imagine a plastic-like material that is produced by greenhouse gas eating bacteria! Cove is currently testing how long it will take to break down the bottles in different scenarios. They are launching in California this year, so stay tuned!

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May 23, 2019
Can Drones Capture Carbon Dioxide?

The British Startup BioCarbon Engineering develops drones to restore wetlands by planting mangroves. Wetlands sequester a huge amount of carbon dioxide in plants above ground and in the soil. In fact, they store five times more carbon dioxide than tropical forest.

The soil of mangrove forests alone may hold the equivalent of more than two years of global emissions—22 billion tons of carbon, much of which would escape if these ecosystems were lost.
https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/land-use/coastal-wetlands

Besides capturing carbon dioxide, mangroves provide protection from storm surges. Once restored, they clean the water and bring back marine animals.

Unfortunately, mangroves are being cleared at an alarming rate. More than half of the world’s mangrove forests have been lost in the last 50 years. That brings me back to BioCarbon Engineering’s drones and how they help to restore coastal wetlands. So, how does it work?

Drone crates a 3d map, drops seedlings, and monitors reforestation

First, a drone flies over the area to create a 3d map. This map is then used to decide where to plant. It drops biodegradable pods that are filled with a germinated seed and nutrients while recording each pod’s location. After planting the drone monitors the progress of the reforestation.

One of BioCarbon Engineering projects is in the Thor Heyerdahl Climate Park in Myanmar. Locals appreciate the restored mangrove forests because they are flood barriers and bring back crabs and fish. Long term success of the restoration can only be achieved with support from locals. Non-profits such as Worldview International Foundation work with local communities to train them to fly drones and monitor progress. Instead of making a living by selling the mangrove wood, locals are now making a living by restoring these wetlands.

And who pays for it? Non profits such as Sustainable Surf are launching projects for consumers and companies all over the world to finance the restoration of coastal ecosystems.

What I like most about BioCarbon Engineering is how the drones can scale up the reforestation of wetlands. We need all the help we can get to balance out our carbon dioxide emissions and this looks like a promising approach.

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May 17, 2019
Can we Replace Plastic with Seaweed?

Let’s talk plastic again. Plastic is everywhere. Most of it is made from fossil fuels. Project drawdown estimates that 5-6 percent of our global oil production goes into plastic manufacturing. After we use it, only 9% gets recycled! The rest ends up in landfills or in the environment where it emits greenhouse gases. Some of our plastic trash gets shipped to other countries which emits even more greenhouse gases.

So, what if we could replace plastic with a natural material? Something that takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere instead of producing it? Something that doesn’t need water or fertilizer to grow? And something that, while it’s growing, cleans our oceans? You guessed it, I’m talking about seaweed.

The British company Skipping Rocks Lab is working on just that: Replacing plastic with seaweed. This Forbes article covers how these seaweed pouches reduced plastic waste during the London marathon a few weeks ago. Organizers replaced 200.000 water bottles with seaweed pouches.

Skipping Rocks Lab calls these pouches Ooho. They use brown seaweed and remove it’s color, odor, and taste to produce a thin, edible membrane. To produce Ooho they are just using seaweed, calcium and water. The seaweed and calcium react to form a membrane. Here is how it works.

Seaweed pouches made out of seaweed, water and calcium

Skipping Rocks Lab has been experimenting with these pouches for a few years now. They are making pouches for drinks and little sachets for sauces and dressings. So instead of a little plastic bag, your ketchup could come in a seaweed package.

Brown seaweed is a sustainable and renewable material. While plastic takes 700 years to decompose, seaweed turns into soil in just 6 weeks.

“Growing up to 1m per day, it doesn’t compete with food crops, doesn’t need fresh water or fertiliser and actively contributes to de-acidifying our oceans.”
https://www.notpla.com/technology/

What I love most about this is that Skipping Rocks Lab are working on improving the properties and making the packaging better and better. With the marathon they showed they can produce on a scale. Now they are working on nets and plastic wraps made out of seaweed. Imagine how a plastic free future might look like!

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May 10, 2019
Can I Drive to Work on Recycled Fuel?

How cool would it be if cars and airplanes could run on gas that has been made from carbon dioxide?

Part 1 of my story about Carbon Engineering covered how they capture carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into calcium carbonate pellets. This is part two, it covers how they turn the carbon dioxide that they extract into fuel that could be used by cars or airplanes.

Turning Air to Fuel

So, here is how it works. Carbon dioxide from the air is turned into calcium carbonate pellets. These are heated up to reach a much more concentrated form of carbon dioxide. This reacts with hydrogen and energy and is turned into hydro carbon fuels, such as gasoline, diesel or jet fuel.

This technology enables the production of synthetic transportation fuels using only atmospheric CO₂ and hydrogen split from water, and powered by clean electricity
https://carbonengineering.com/about-a2f/

Carbon Engineering designed a closed cycle of turning carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into concentrated carbon dioxide and then into fuel. By utilizing as little water as possible and renewable energy for the process, they are creating a green fuel.

This technology forms an important complement to electric vehicles in the quest to deliver carbon-neutral 21st century transportation.
https://carbonengineering.com/about-a2f/

The BBC has an interesting article about Carbon Engineering’s technology. It also covers concerns from environmentalists that carbon capture could be used as an excuse to prolong the fossil fuel era or prevent us from reducing emissions in the first place.

I think we need to work on reduction emissions as well as capturing carbon. I would love to rely on natural ways such as restoring forests and wetlands only, but it looks like that might not be enough. Carbon Engineering’s technology certainly looks promising.

What I like most about it is the idea of tuning the extracted carbon dioxide into a valuable product. If there is monetary incentive for carbon capture this technology might get adopted more broadly.

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April 29, 2019
Can Artificial Shells Reduce Carbon Dioxide?

The Canadian company Carbon Engineering takes carbon dioxide out of the air and turns it to calcium carbonate – that’s what shells are made of! They developed a scalable process for capturing carbon dioxide from the air, a technology called Direct Air Capture (DAC).

Imagine an industrial plant with big fans to suck in air. This air is then mixed with chemicals and turned into calcium carbonate pellets.

Turning air into calcium pellets

What stage are they at? That’s the interesting part. Carbon Engineering have been capturing air from a pilot plant since 2015. Now in their commercial validation phase, they received major backing from industry to scale this technology.

Our proven Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology can scale up to capture one million tons of CO₂ per year with each commercial facility. That quantity of CO₂ is equivalent to the annual emissions of 250,000 average cars.
https://carbonengineering.com/about-dac/

What I like most about Carbon Engineering is that they have been capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for several years now and are ready to scale. We need to use all the options we have reduce emissions and to remove carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and this definitely sounds like a good one.

While I personally like shells, they are turning it into something of more monetary value: Fuel. Stay tuned for part two of this post to read all about how Carbon Engineering creates clean fuels.

April 19, 2019