🌍 Turning CO2 into rocks #01
Online shopping with less impact, growing schnitzel from peas, and the most consumed material
Welcome to the first edition of the 'tings with impact newsletter 🌍
This time we will be having a look at 44.01 who are trying to remove CO2 from the atmosphere by transforming it into rock, Vaayu who have created an automated solution for online retailers to track & reduce their carbon impact, and Planted Foods who are creating meat substitutes that mimic the texture of actual meat.
🪨 44.01 - Turning CO2 into rocks
Many people are aware of the fact that trees store carbon dioxide, a task they are very good at with half of the mass of a tree being carbon, which is why there are so many reforestation and afforestation (creation of a new forest) projects. There is another incredibly effective but less publicised way to store CO2, which is in rocks.
Storing CO2 in rocks is not new, it has happened naturally since the beginning of time but just at a slow rate and has been a big topic in geology and climate science for a while. The process of storing CO2 in rocks typically involves pumping strongly carbonated water underground where it is trapped in porous rock, kind of like bottling sparkling water but just at a very large scale with the rocks being the bottle.
44.01 take this one step further by storing CO2 in the form of rock itself, rather than storing the carbonated water in rock, to completely eliminate the chance of carbon dioxide leaking out. This is done by pumping the carbonated water into rock formations called peridotite, which when put in contact with carbon dioxide form calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate. Oman, where 44.01 has its carbon storing operation, has an abundance of easily accessible peridotite formations. These formations naturally trap many tons of carbon dioxide a year, but with the technique that 44.01 are developing this could be increased to billions of tonnes per year, according to some researchers. To put that into context, storing 1 gigatonne (1 billion tonnes) of CO2 per year would be the equivalent of removing the emissions from all air travel.
44.01 are at very early stages having just raised a $5M seed round in August, but are on a mission to scale the process of CO2 mineralisation to reach their goal of storing 1 gigatonne per year by 2030. If you're wondering what 44.01 means, it is the molecular mass of carbon dioxide. The key challenge for 44.01 and other companies storing CO2 as rock is developing a sustainable business model as currently it is expensive to do so.
If you have 15-minutes there is an excellent video by Real Engineering on youtube that discusses the topic of carbon capturing and showcases the efforts of an Icelandic company, CarbFix, who are storing CO2 in porous volcanic rock and a team from Harvard that are storing CO2 as carbonate pellets that can be transformed into synthetic fuel.
📦 Vaayu - Online shopping with less impact?
I don't know about you, but I certainly have ordered a lot more things online in the past year and a half, for obvious reasons 😷. I have found myself sticking to this habit of amazon prime-ing long after in-person shopping has opened back up. Humans are creatures of habit and when something becomes so convenient it is hard to change.
If we put these kind of actions in the context of the need to cut global emissions by 50% by 2030, to not cause irreversible environmental damage, it doesn't look so great... emissions due to deliveries from online shopping are set to rise by 30% in the same time period! Approximately one third of global e-commerce revenues come from the fashion industry, which alone is responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions, more than international flights and maritime shipping combined. The environmental impact of online shopping needs to be addressed now.
This is where Vaayu comes in, they've developed an automated solution for online retailers to accurately track, reduce and offset carbon emissions in real-time. Vaayu integrates directly with online point of sales systems, like Shopify, to automatically and accurately provide insights by ingesting logistics, operations and packaging data. This provides online retailers with an up-to-date overview compared to the once a year calculations they normally do.
With the pressure from the UN's goal of reducing carbon emissions, European and US green deals to become carbon neutral, and with 2/3rd of consumers stating that it has become even more important to limit impacts on climate change, this industry is at a pivotal stage.
Only time will tell if Vaayu is able to help this industry tackle its emission issues, but I think they are positioned to be a key enabler for online retailers to track, reduce and offset.
Who do you think should be responsible for offsetting carbon emissions, consumers or online retailers?
🍗 Planted Foods - Growing schnitzels out of peas
A lot of meat replacements are made out of Soy, which although better for the environment than animal meat also has some serious environmental impacts. The largest climate impact of soy production is land use change. The conversion of natural vegetation into farmable land results in an area with reduced biodiversity that captures far less CO2 and releases a lot of greenhouse gasses during harvesting. Additionally, the majority of soy is produced in Brazil and the USA (more than 80% of global production), which from a European perspective is quite far away.
Fortunately, customer interest for soy protein has declined significantly while the far less environmentally impactful pea protein has gained significant popularity. The environmental impact of the yellow pea is less than half that of soy! In terms of transportation impact the yellow pea also wins compared to soy (from a European perspective) with 7 of the 10 largest yellow pea exporting countries being in Europe.
I guess by now we have established that pea proteins may soon dethrone soy as the top meat replacement, at least in Europe. What better way to establish a market presence in German speaking countries than by developing pea based Kebab and Schnitzels 😂, which is exactly what Planted Foods are doing.
Planted Foods is a Swiss startup that has developed a technique to use yellow peas to create a meat replacement that actually mimics protein fibres found in normal meat... so no more crumbly and mushy meat replacements! To do this, pea flour is mixed with rapeseed oil, pea fibres and water, which is then heated, kneaded, cooled and extruded as one piece. These fibre structures are then cut into the specific shape of the product that actually has a texture similar to meat instead of being pressed together like conventional meat replacements. To enhance the flavour of their products Planted also make use of fermentation.
Planted's kebab, chicken and pulled pork replacements are already available in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with the schnitzel set to debut sometime in Q3. Expansion to other markets is already planned with a focus on northern Europe.
🌍 A little 'ting
Did you know that the second most consumed material on earth after water is concrete?
No? Well, me neither!
Cement, one of the key ingredients of concrete, is responsible for a whopping 8% of the world's CO2 emissions. In the next edition we'll have a look at a startup that is addressing this by pulling CO2 out of the ocean to produce carbon-negative industrial materials for concrete production.
Thank you for making it to the end!
If you happened to enjoy reading this, why not send it around to a few friends so that more people can get an insight into what is being done to preserve the future of our planet 🌍
Until next time, much love,
Pascal