Newlight Technologies Creates Plastic From Air Pollution

We all know plastic is bad for the planet – it pollutes the oceans, takes forever to decompose, and it is made out of fossil fuels, which of course are limited natural resources and are also products of the oil industry. Indeed, plastic has historically been viewed as one of the biggest pollution problems our planet currently faces; to see proof, research the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But what if we could make plastic out of pollution? In other words, what if every plastic product that was made was actually reducing air pollution instead of increasing it?

That's exactly what Mark Herrema, CEO and Co-Founder of Newlight Technologies, says his company has figured out how to do. The burgeoning startup is using a complicated process to extract carbon from the air and turn it into small plastic pellets, which are then being used to produce plastic products of all kinds. The new technology is a scientific breakthrough that could cause a complete paradigm shift in the environmental sector.

By creating plastics out of CO2 that is extracted from the air, the company is actually producing a carbon-negative product – meaning it is actually taking pollution out of the air. In fact, if entire industries were to switch to this method of plastic production we could see a reduction in carbon emissions as high as 2 billion tons per year.

How Does the Technology Work?

Newlight Technologies uses special machines to extract carbon molecules from air that contains greenhouse gases. The extracted carbon molecules are then rearranged into long-chain thermoplastic polymers that are similar in performance to other plastics that are oil-based.

The company's flagship product is called AirCarbon and is available in a variety of grades.The company has already made various functional grades of their plastics commercially available, providing an environmentally friendly alternative to various grades of polyethylene, polypropylene, high-impact polystyrene, TPU, PMMA, and ABS plastics. Best of all, the end products can be manufactured to be both recyclable and biodegradable.

While this approach to plastic production is similar to the production of bioplastic, this is more like a new type of bioplastic that doesn't involve the usage of agricultural land, water, and chemicals. The new technology takes a triple-sided approach to solving the plastic pollution problem:

• reduces the plastic left in landfills (because it is biodegradable and recyclable)

• reduces greenhouse gas pollution by removing extra CO2 from the air

• eliminates the need to use a limited natural resource (fossil fuels) for plastic production

About Newlight Technologies

Newlight Technologies was founded as a joint venture of the alumni of Northwestern and Princeton. Their facilities have been operating at commercial scale for a few years, mostly obtaining their greenhouse gas inputs from public sources like landfills, wastewater treatment facilities, and energy facilities. By extracting and using an exact amount of pollution-born CO2 in every plastic product, the company has stated that they can calculate how much carbon pollution is being stripped from the air per pound of plastic produced. Newlight Technologies is already partnering with major companies like Dell to push awareness about their game-changing product.

Newlight Technologies CEO Mark Herrema being interviewed for a Dell ad: