Groundbreaking Technology Transforms Green House Gasses Into Plastic

http://news.yahoo.com/groundbreaking-technology-creates-useful-plastic-products-dangerous-greenhouse-201232147.html

A Southern California company called Newlight Technologies has developed a way to make plastic from carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It’s called AirCarbon, and this fall, Dell Latitude laptops manufactured near El Paso, Texas, will be shipped in a Newlight AirCarbon plastic bag made from greenhouse gases that would otherwise be heating the planet. Virgin Mobile, meanwhile, has struck a deal to sell AirCarbon phone cases through Sprint, and furniture maker KI will start using AirCarbon plastic in its products.

“This has the potential not to just change our industry but the world at large,” says Dick Resch, chief executive of Green Bay, Wis.–based KI. “We’re taking pollutants out of the air and turning them into plastics that can be recycled. It’s pretty amazing on several fronts.”

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/blog/greenhouse-gas-mobile-phones-aircarbon

Forget old-style alchemy. A California-based tech company has come up with something far cooler than just turning dull metal into shiny metal. Using a proprietary 'biocatalyst' machine, Newlight Technologies has devised a way of taking greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and turning it into plastic pellets.

Newlight insists that the technology outcompetes conventional oil-based plastic on price and its overall environmental footprint. It also operates recycling facilities to re-process AirCarbon products, edging it towards the holy grail of "cradle-to-cradle" manufacturing. Plastic manufacturing currently accounts for 4% of global oil consumption, according to the British Plastics Federation.

So will it take off? The early signs are certainly promising. US telecommunications firm Sprint has just announced that it will launch an iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s case based on the revolutionary thermoplastic. The case, which is certified by the independent environmental auditor Trucost as "carbon-negative" (meaning it stores more carbon than it emits), will initially sell in limited volumes online.

"Phone cases are a significant use of plastics for us a very easy market for us to get into", says Amy Hargroves, Sprint's director of corporate responsibility and sustainability. "The point really isn't just about the sales of an AirCarbon case, but it's getting it to scale as an acceptable material in our broader portfolio and that of other companies."

To that end, news from Dell will help. The US computer manufacturer recently reported its intention to release packaging sleeves made from the eco plastic for its Latitude series notebooks. If successful, Dells says it will move more of its packaging and products over to AirCarbon in the future.

Came across in Pop Sci 100 best innovations, quite a game changing invention.