AirCarbon

Not all plastics are created equal. Some are the bane of the environment. Oil is
pumped out of the ground, "cracked" under high heat and pressure, and the resulting
chemicals are formed into drink bottles, computer keyboards, and other goods.
Disposing of them often releases toxins, cripples sea life, and wreaks other kinds of
environmental havoc.
Other plastics are now being designed that are manufactured by microbes and
disappear back into the environment once were done with them. One class of such
biodegradable plastics known as PHA, (that stands for polyhydroxyalkanoates), has
come into its own. Although around for decades, new ways to build PHA molecules
essentially long strings of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atomsby harnessing
microorganisms have made PHA competitive with commercial, oil-based plastics.
Newlight Technologies is one of the first companies to tout its eco-friendly (and "carbon
negative" plastic) made with unique "biocatalysts"essentially the biochemical machinery
of specially trained bacteria. These microbes turn waste gas, or even normal air, into
plastic by recombining oxygen and carbon molecules into the shape of bottles,
dashboards, or other plastic products.

AirCarbon is a thermoplastic material made by combining industrial sources of methane-based

carbon emissions, such as methane from dairy farms, digesters and landfills, with air to
produce a thermoplastic polymer.
Using a process developed by Newlight over 10 years of research and now operating at
commercial scale, Newlight uses a biocatalyst to carry out a carbon sequestration process in a
water-based reactor, where carbon emissions are combined with air and converted into longchain thermoplastic polymers by a biocatalyst at a yield that is 9 times higher than previous
technologiesthereby providing a solution that does not increase cost relative to the oil-based
process, but in fact enables cost reduction.
Once produced, AirCarbon can then be used as a standalone material or incorporated into
existing materials, such as Dells linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) bags, resulting in
products that capturecarbon that would normally become part of the air we breathe and use
that carbon to displace oil.
By capturing methane emissions, which are over 20 times more potent then carbon dioxide

emissions as a greenhouse gas, AirCarbon is independently verified by SCS Global Services to

sequester more carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas than is emitted to produce it,
meaning it is a carbon sequestration material on a net basis.