Can I Drive to Work on Recycled Fuel?



Turning air to fuel
Turning Air to Fuel








Sign up for weekly inspiration right in your inbox

Success! You're on the list.

Can Artificial Shells Reduce Carbon Dioxide?



Turning air into calcium pellets
Turning air into calcium pellets





How Studying Temples Lead to Carbon Capture

I read this inspiring afforestation story in one of my favorite books, Drawdown. The story is about Akiri Miyawaki, a Japanese botanist who developed a novel afforestation method.

In the 1970s and 1980s he realized most forest trees where not native trees to Japan. They had been introduced over centuries for timber. He studied original vegetation around shrines and temples and his idea was to reintroduce those native species back to Japan’s forests. This is the method he developed:

5 steps to growing a native forest
The Miyawaki method: 5 steps to growing a native forest

“The Miyawaki method calls for dozens of native tree species and other indigenous flora to be planted close together, often on degraded land devoid of organic matter. As these saplings grow, natural selection plays out and a richly biodiverse, resilient forest results”

Drawdown: the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to roll back global warming, Hawken – Penguin Books – 2018

He became a champion of creating indigenous, authentic forests. They are more resilient to climate change and other threads. Over the years he has planted more than 40 million trees around the world, from Brazil to France, India and China.

What I like most about his approach is that it only takes 2 years of watering and weeding for the plants to become self-sustaining and they are mature after only 10-20 years. These original forests are denser, more biodiverse, and capture and sequester more carbon than plantations. What an inspiring story. Let’s plant more forests!

Can Taking a Shower Curb Emissions?

As I’m learning more about carbon capture techniques, a Wired article about carbon capture for wastewater treatment caught my eye. While it’s best to safe water when you shower, what can we do with the wastewater we do have? An interesting idea is to use microbes to treat the water as well as capture carbon dioxide.

Some microbes, like bacteria and microalgae, feed on CO2 itself. So one potential fix would be to replace the typical microbes used in wastewater treatment with these CO2-guzzlers.

The article is based on a Nature publication. So I checked it out, and now we are getting into more chemistry than I hoped for. Here we go. The authors are looking at different carbon capture approaches while also looking at environmental and economic benefits:

Outcomes of carbon capture and utilization are clean water and fuels and chemicals, biomass, biochar, or carbonates.
Capturing carbon with waste water

Integrating carbon capture and utilization with wastewater treatment may transform energy-intensive, carbon-emitting wastewater treatment plants into integrated water resource recovery facilities that recover energy, nutrients, water and other valuable carbon products with economic, environmental and social benefits.

Here are the five approaches they discuss:

  1. Use microbial electrolysis to enable wastewater treatment, generate hydrogen and mineralize carbon dioxide to carbonates (Microbial electrolytic carbon capture)
  2. Recover electrons from wastewater and reduce carbon dioxide to organic chemicals (Microbial electrosynthesis)
  3. Enrich naturally occurring microalgal communities to take up nitrogen and phosphorus while turning carbon dioxide in biomass (Microalgae cultivation)
  4. Integrate vegetation, soils, and microbial ecosystems to treat wastewater and capture carbon dioxide to plant biomass (Constructed wetlands)
  5. Produce carbon rich charcoal from sludge and other biomass feedstock to provide long term carbon reservoirs and increase fertility in soil (Biochar production)

In the conclusion they point out all these approaches are early stages, a lot more research and development are needed. But they also highlight the potential:

Carbon capture and utilization can bring tremendous value to the wastewater industry, CO2-generating industries, and to society as a whole.

What I like most about the article is how it looks at a specific industry and rethinks how that industry can operate carbon neutral or even carbon negative. And while this is early R&D work, they are keeping it real by addressing how these approaches could have environmental as well as economic benefits.

Can a Planter Help Capture Carbon?

Native Forests are not only some of the most biodiverse systems, they are also some of the biggest carbon sinks on the planet. Trees store carbon not only aboveground in biomass but also below ground in the soil. To mitigate global warming we have to stop deforestation. But what about the forest we have already lost, can we re-grow it?

You can try and replant cleared forests but protecting those young saplings from the elements and ants is vital. It’s a hugely labor-intensive process that is too costly to carry out.

Bruno and Pedro Rutman, two brothers from Brazil, think we can replant native forest. The BBC highlights their ingenious invention, Nucleário. It is a device to regrow forest without the need for human maintenance.

Biodegradable planter with rainwater capture and weed and insect barrier
Biodegradable planter to protect saplings and provide water for the first three years

It is made from biodegradable materials that decompose after three years. In the first three years of the seedling’s growth, Nucleário protects it from ants and weeds, and provides captured rainwater.

What I like most about the idea is that it’s a complete system for rainwater capture, sapling protection, and it’s made out of biodegradable material.

Right now prototypes are being tested all over Brazil, and Bruno and Pedro plan to have the product on the market in 6 months. I’m looking forward to updates as they go into production, let’s hope they are successful in regrowing native forests.

Sign up for weekly inspiration right in your inbox

Success! You're on the list.