You're listening to the reversing climate change, podcast by the team at Nori. The carbon removal Marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change. Hello and welcome to the reversing climate change podcast. I'm Ross, Kenyon, I'm the creative editor at Nori's carbon removal Marketplace, we have a bonus episode, we saw some exciting news come out of new light Technologies. It's been so long.
NG since we have caught up before we get into that radical Moog of car. Radical, thanks for co-hosting with me. Thanks for having me, Ross. I'm excited. Yeah, Radha is nor he's head of methodology and also host of our other podcasts carbon removal Newsroom which comes out weekly on Fridays. It's a Roundup of all the latest carbon removal news. If you haven't listened you should open up your app And subscribe to it and get some radical in your life.
Is that the correct frame for that radical? I've been sober for us but we'll go with it. Mark era my co-founder and CEO of new light Technologies. Thank you so much for coming back. It's a pleasure to be here. Great to see you guys. I was just looking back to when we first did this show because you were on I think it's episode 14 of season 1 and it came out on March 6 of 2018. So more than three years Christoph was there Paul was referred to as producer.
Paul. That used to be how we would run around and do the show back. Then you should go back and listen to if you'd like to see the change over time, but a lot has happened. Since then, both for us, we sound like babies on the show and so young, and so naive. And now, we're all grizzled veterans, and a lot has happened for you to Mark. I keep seeing your stuff pop up, there's cool new products. I don't know. I just seemed like a natural time to check in.
So, how's it been going good? Yeah, it's crazy. It kind of feels like yesterday when we did that podcast but No, I've got a few more grey hairs since then, so it's been a bit but yeah, man, it's really good. You know, we were kind of in semi quiet mode for a while there. And then in September of last year, September 2020, we announced the commissioning of our commercial scale plant that we call Eagle 3. It's at the facility that you guys toward, but, I hadn't yet been built.
And from that facility, we've started a launch products into Market. Using are carbon. Been great. It's been, it's been a lot of fun. Obviously, a lot of challenges, but sort of the beginning of a new chapter for us. So despite how turbulent obviously, the past year has been for everybody. It's also been a year of tremendous growth for us. So we're excited. So Mark, I listen to that episode. And Ross is so, right? So naive, sounding and like babies, but we've come a long way.
But I was wondering, you, you just mentioned your new facility, but one thing, you talked a lot about where your licensing, your desired to license and it is that still kind of the direction your company's thinking about going, or you're more focused on now manufacturing think change, add it on. Well, our focus is ultimately
the impact. And you know, when we started this now almost 18 years ago, our goal is to create a market driven consumer-driven solution to reducing Now, carbon in the air and to do that by basically mimicking, a technology that happens everyday in the ocean. And so it took us about 10 years to figure that out. Once we had a platform there, the running question has been and continues to be how can we expand the utilization of this as widely in as fast as we can?
So one of the ways to do that is potentially through licensing, but there are a lot of ways to do it right now. Our focus is on going as fast as we can. And then supporting everything that comes from that. So how that translates is, we're focused on building plants and building them putting as much Steel in the ground as we can. And then to the extent that we are able to develop Partnerships and relationships that enable licensing, we certainly want to
support and do that. What we don't want to do though is we don't want to kind of, wait around, and sort of way for people to take whatever steps time is of the essence. And so we're going to be building as many facilities as we can. And then sir, Any licensing on the way the show that we did back then also focused quite a lot on things that I would not describe strictly. As consumer-facing things like, packaging is talk of Dell and
Ikea in that episode. But now you have to Consumer brands for apparel and food where that seems very new and exciting. That's when did that happen. So, are carbon has a whole bunch of cool features and because it's meltable can Used to replace plastic and the blessing and the curse of that is that it can just do so many things. We spent the first 10 years Lillian, not really in, as, in kind of, but totally in stealth mode no website, no public
interaction. We're just focusing on the tech but we came out of that we talk to people about what we're doing. We just got a lot of requests for the material. So all these great Brands reaching out and of course we was like, yeah it will do that.
And that and that. So we were immediately pulled and tons of Rations were doing a lot of different projects and there's a lot of good in that in the sense that we were able to show that this material could be used really on a platform basis to replace a lot of different things. The downside of that though is, you know, every company only has so many people and so many hours of the day.
So at some point we had to take a step back because the demand in this space is just it's just vast volumes, are just so big. We had to take a step back and say, all right, where can we provide the most impact today And so we said, all right, the two features where are carbon really shines is number one. It's a naturally occurring material, and because it's
naturally occurring material. If it ends up in the environment, the environment understands that it'll degrade it. So as an example, where able to make things like straws that our ocean degradable that's that's distinctive indifferent and holds a lot of value. And the other one is the fact that it's carbon - so with those two kind of value points in mind, we said all right which Industries are the best fit for today.
It and we looked at the ocean Plastics pollution problem and it turns out that the majority of product types that end up in the ocean are related to food service. So think of everything from straws and Cutlery to, you know, bottles and so forth, but it's things that touch food. And so we said, yeah, that's, that's a place where we can have a massive impact. And so, we decided to go down
that path. And today, we're producing straws Cutlery, and we're going to be Hung out a whole bunch of different products as well that they're made with this naturally occurring material and thus have a totally different end of life story compared to synthetic Plastics that that never go away. The other place was carbon negativity will come back to this because I think we've been surprised by how much interest we've gotten on the food.
We're side relative to that but we said you know where can that have a big impact. So if you're putting your material in the back of a refrigerator part or something that people just aren't interacting with, we didn't think that I have as much of an impact. So we like the idea of taking a specific industry and saying let's help decarbonise this. But put it into people's hands so they can actually see. So this, this is my, my wallet.
I know we're on radio issue as it were so you can't see it. But I'm holding an air carbon wallet and it's kind of cool. You can hold in your hands. Something that has a net negative carbon footprint and with that comes a blockchain number. So you can plug that that number into our website and it'll pull up all the steps In the production process that led to that from gas all the way through the powder and then into the air carbon leather stitched.
And finally, culminating with the LCA third-party LCA that gives the specific carbon impact number on a third-party basis. So that we were hoping that that would kind of really bring it together for someone using this product and serving, not just to try to help decarbonise places that use leather but also serve as a as a maybe Hopefully, you know, not to get ahead of ourselves but maybe as an Inspiration Point, say look, I'm
holding this in my hand. That means that, you know, there's a whole lot, maybe more possible than we initially first thought. So we were inspired by those two Pathways and that's why we went down those paths mysterious. What's like how often can you reuse your plastic? Where is it like washable or is it immediately biodegradable kind of what's the life cycle on those things? First thing that you should know is? Whenever anybody refers to our stuff is plastic, sorry
apologize for that. Your are carbon Cutlery. I think, you know so I guess the only reason we do bring it up is because part of our mission is to try to, you know, prevent the flow of plastic in the environment we think are carbon is a great tool to do that. But it has a really interesting property just so happens that in its natural form. And this is against made in every ecosystem on Earth. It's hydrolytically. Abel so water doesn't break it
down. And what that means is you can use it in your dishwasher, you know, in your home. You'd never notice anything. It is enzymatically degradable though. So what that means is, if it's in your kitchen, nothing's happening, if you take that same straw or cover it with dirt and feed it water, and you grow a Chia Pet on it, then it's going to start to break down. So that's that's sort of a lucky thing that we had nature.
Just made it that way. It also happens to have a Aperture profile where you can put it through the dishwasher so you can reuse these things over and over. That's important to us, of course, from a carbon perspective, but even end of life, you know, just because something's degradable doesn't mean we want it to end up in the environment so it happens to. And again, we got kind of Lucky, it just happens that this profile that allows us to do all
those things. We should probably catch our listeners up in case they haven't heard this show. How does this process work? What exactly are these products made out of? Yeah, the air. Already production process starts with a microorganism derived from the ocean. So if you come visit our facility, the main reactor that carries out, this process is Big stainless steel tank. It's roughly 50 feet tall. And what we do is, we fill it with salt water and into that
salt water. We add a microorganism that's from the oceans naturally occurring. It's non-GMO and it eats greenhouse gases its food source. And so we feed it are in greenhouse gas and as we're doing so it's growing and multiplying but it's also filling its cell with this molecule. That the technical name is PHP and PHP is as fascinating molecule.
It's made in almost all known, living things, the human body makes it. So as it says it's growing, it's playing in cell with PHP and then what we do is we put that through a multi-step high-pressure filtration process. So we separate microorganism from the PHP polymer, that's what we call your carbon. We turn that it into a fine white powder and then into a
pellet. And then in pellet form, we can melt that into anything from straws to Cutlery, to leather sheet or whatever it is. So we're basically mimicking a process that's happening in nature all day every day. Just doing it on land. When we last spoke, your feed stocks were from landfills, if memory serves me.
Well, here is that still how you're getting your methane and and CO2 and other greenhouse gas feedstocks So over the years we've run with a number of feedstocks horses so we've run with biogas from a dairy farm biogas from a food waste digester. We've done with landfill gas, abandoned Coal, Mine gas that we take on a wheeled basis through the grid. We're seeing a number of ways to
access the methane side. On the CO2 side, our primary source was we teamed up with the gas company who is capturing CO2 coming off of an ethanol plant. And then they were delivering that to our Our facility. So we've got a pretty wide range of sources that we have in can use. We do prefer methane right now because it's got that, you know,
meaningfully higher impact. Well, it's of the CO2 at least, 23 x. So that's really our Focus today and then as we grow, you know, will expand into more emphasis, on the CO2 side. That you know, brings up a nice little segue into what Ross. And I do on a daily basis is the carbon market. So how have you been thinking about the carbon markets lately? It's obviously become a much hotter and much more broadly, discussed Topic in the last few years. You know, it's interesting.
When we started new light, we had this ideology that the technology that we're developing in the products that we're making, they needed to Be attractive, or from a consumer standpoint and you can automatically on their own two feet. In other words without the presence of subsidies or credits or anything like that.
So it's taken us a while to kind of come around to the thought that, hey, maybe this is something that we should look at. I think, initially our path was really more based off of consumer communication. When you hold a product in your hand on its face, it's hard to know, you know, what is its carbon impact. So the thing that we did was we teamed up with IBM about 3 years
ago, actually? Right around the time when that podcast, so many, so many gray, hairs ago and we said, all right, we want to have a wave for people to have a verifiable, look into the carbon footprint. And that was a, that took a pretty big effort to get that in place. And we had that today. But in parallel, we also wanted to have a methodology that showed that our process was a capable of generating carbon credits.
So we put together. Other group and worked with Vera who used to be VCS and we created a methodology that effectively covers our process. And that was I think also somewhere between two and three maybe two years to get that through. And now that that's in place, you know, we're starting to look at that and say, well, how do we
want to utilize that? And there are, there are different potential Pathways. One of them is just, you know, kind of take the credits that come from that there's also a potential pathway where you could pass. Those along. And so we're evaluating that right now. But it's now become something that we like there's a tangibility to it that we think is important. And so what you're going to see from us is over the next few years, were going to be increasingly involved in that space.
Do they say it? Took you two years to get your project, your methodology up and running in Vera. I think it was about that period of time. There were so many steps and then this is not, I mean, this is Not a knock on anyone. It it's just a very extensive thing that you go through because I think we had I can't remember how many third parties were involved. But there's there's a lot and public comments and all kinds of
stuff like that. You go through and lots of not just third-party verifications but then even the third party checks on the third party verification. So there's just so many steps to get to that point. It wasn't an overnight process. I'd like to hear a bit more about this passing on to Zoomers, one of the questions that we often face is if say a company is generating carbon offsets carbon removals. If they sell those all the way, do they lose their status as being carbon - as a business?
How are you thinking about that, or how should we be believe they do? Yeah, because you can't Google account. So, that is a consideration that whoever ultimately owns them has, has the footprint, at least that's my understanding, but but certainly there, Can't be a Vestige of double counting. Are you able to not monetize some of the amounts of credits that would say, for instance, a wallet generated, I was like to this is way more than a while.
It would be two tons and you held one back to say like hey this wallet is carbon - someone else didn't buy, the carbon negativity of your wallet off of you before you even got it. Does that make sense? Yeah, I don't know, I haven't played that scenario out. I mean, all of this stuff is increasingly governed by International standards, you
know, ISO standards and whatnot. So you know it's gotten to the point now where the question like that I run through the system as if it's a legal question. Is it effectively in some ways? Is so my short answer is, I
don't know. It's interesting to me that you're talking about increasingly this being devoured by International guidelines and ISO standards because in some ways, I feel like you'd like there's still a lot of work to be done out there and like a two year registration process to get your project. Seems like one of the places
where we could get better. But that also makes me think about what do you think the marketplaces should be evolving through or what do you think needs to change to make them better and more attractive? Who entrepreneurs, like yourself? Well, I think I think you touched on a good point which is that The more we can speed up the process and reduce the cost of getting new methodologies, we
will see more methodologies. The key is ensuring that they meet quality standards and I, you know, the flip side of a long time period to get something approved is is that you know, it generates trust having gone through so many third parties and I think that's, that's the reason that that's in place right now. But even still, it does become a barrier to having more. Things in place that are having an impact that part's not positive.
I think the international standards are they appear to be homogenizing but there's still work to do. I think, for instance, SES used ISO 14000 44, or at least something in that realm, the world is continuing to move more. I least from my perspective to, you know, what should eventually be a single gold standard that everybody uses that way? There's really good visibility.
And then the key is just going to be making Sure that there's unquestionable quality, that's the flip side to the speed question, okay. Our business is to take greenhouse gas and use it as a resource and turn it into into products. So that being the case. There's not an element to which, you know, this is, this is tail, wagging, the dog. This is this is our core
business. So being able to take, you know, greenhouse gas and turn it into a wallet is, is indicative of Of of, hey, why are we using these either animal skin or these other chemicals? There's a different pathway and oh, by the way, if you've got attractive economically, then hey, there's a lot to talk about here.
So we're just showing that there's there's a whole different production pathway and not only, is it a different production pathway, but it's sort of this Nexus of we can and we need to find low carbon or carbon negative ways to produce And so we're rolling out different verticals that demonstrate that and if you then multiply those out by the size of these markets, I mean, imagine decarbonizing food where decarbonizing big segments of the fashion industry.
Those those are things that we want to put in sight and say this, this might actually be possible and if you can do it over there, well why can't you do it over there? So this stuff sort of where we want to be. Hmm. Is this a common approach? You're seeing with other companies that are using captured carbon in some way, or is because there are some that are consumer facing, but I think a lot of it is probably stuff that the average person doesn't even know exist.
Maybe takes for granted, what's your read of this sector overall? I mean, a lot of the sector is pretty utilitarian like concrete's where the where the show is? For that kind of Technology, right? The other stuff is interesting and Cool, but it's not really where the volume is going to be. So in that case, it's a little bit more, nothing wrong with this, a little more marketing based it's show.
It's awful. I think that's where the vast majority of the carbon capture world is at least in terms of carbon to product and that's fine. I think it really just depends on the kind of thing that you're making you know. For instance if you're making a fuel that's totally cool and great but that's not really something that that consumers are going to interact with very much. We just happen to make a
material. Ariel that does result in products that you can hold your hands and have them be part of your life. So I guess we feel fortunate that regard because it's fun for us too. Can I ask what your favorite product is that you've created? Or is that like asking who's your favorite child? Oh yeah, I've had different flings with different products.
There was a time when I was William fascinated, with our straw, it was a bit awkward to really feel so strongly about a straw, but I'll choose a favorite child who is going to be hard, you know, I really, really like, are for you. Here's what I like about it. Obviously, it's carbon - but it, but it also it just, it just works so well. It's not like kind of that. Flimsy Fork, that's annoying and kind of you go, go into the South and it folds over on
itself. It's not too brittle, it's just great. And I guess why that matters to me is, we don't want to make stuff that people have to settle and our goal. The reason that I spent my entire adult life in this is I want to see impact and I want to see scale. I think in order to get there, you got to create products that people love it can't feel like they're settling and so it's just a fork. But it also represents something. It means that. Hey, like, this isn't?
This is possible. This is a different path. Now, of course, I'm sitting your loot, my wallet are carbon. Loading, wall is sitting here looking at me. So I'm feeling a little guilty, but I want to say it out loud, but maybe it's my second favorite. I have definitely used that wooden In Fork has broken on me and it is intensely aggravated. Yeah. I mean you gotta worry about those those splinters that you know, maybe they don't come through. Maybe they do. You don't know.
Are the spork that does nothing? Yeah. Well, those useless talking about the one that I'm talking about is terrible. So, that's, that's the one to beat sounds like, I mean, I enjoy, you know, I haven't convinced it seemed yet to move over to sport. That's that's my next big ambition in life. Wow. What a sentence? Okay, you mentioned blockchain to what are you using?
Yeah, so we teamed up with IBM few years back and we've set up a system where all of our process inputs and outputs are tracked and I'm hyper Ledger. Is that what they're stolen? Yeah I think they use their Linux one system its cloud-based system. And so what were able to do is all of our production metrics flow into this. And so when you plug in this number, each one of these are fashion products come with a unique number.
So there's is not like, there's like, 20 of them have the same, they're all individually, either UV printed or laser etched, and they have a, basically, that number of corresponds to a time, and that time was the moment that the air carbon used to make that product was produced. So you plug it in. And it, and it, then pulls the data from our system that shows when these different steps happened, And then also on the blockchain is the LCA associated with that product.
So that was a pretty intensive setup. But again, we wanted to make it so it's like well how do I know like where this thing came from so well?
Okay, plug this number in and you can see and and blockchain is so unique in the sense that it's really the only technology that could give someone that level of assurance that yeah, this is, this is the pathway so that was, that was something that we found really attractive and then You eventually combine that over into the carbon value side, maybe the carbon credit side, you can see a lot of potential there. I think you're speaking our language.
They're erratic is not going to jump at the bait listeners are probably had their fill of that one. I think I was I was going to say to you and Kristoff. Did that great on the first episode? Oh man, Mark, you had some amazing line. Like I want to do a trailer of the show, and take all the funniest moments and stack them up against each other. And I think you, one of your lines is a natural. Fit which is asking you to find polymer? Do you remember that part of the show?
Yeah. I think I nailed that one ice cream Polly and myrrh period. Just like Mike job the end and we all died laughing. Yeah, of course everyone knows that the Latin Premier is. Yeah, very good whiny predictions moving forward where there's the space going to go in the next couple of years. What are you looking forward to? Gosh. Right now it's all about scale. We feel like we just installed our solar panel. And so now it's installing a whole lot of solar panels and
not to be flippant with that. What I mean is that, we've now achieved with scale, where it's now, more replication of. And that's really important because that gives us the ability to grow faster. You mean, like internally at the factories that your company? Actually, I was not licensing or both well both but you know, our main focus is us just putting our own facilities up, okay? Like I said, we're still totally supportive of and we'll support licensing on the way.
But yeah. By with eagle 3 now online, it's its growth time and so that's really our or at least certainly one of my central focus is now is is where Eagle for is going in and getting that up and going. And then to your point figuring out how to pull the freight, this thing in the smartest way possible. So, we'll see that we'll see more product types coming out. Of our Ambitions is to launch within the next.
Five years over 90% of the product types, the end up in the ocean, currently to share that there. Is it there is a pathway that we can, in fact come close to stopping the consistent accumulation of Plastics in the ocean. It's not gonna be easy. It's gonna take a long time but there is a pathway and you know just continue to have bigger and bigger impact for us. Maybe you can ask for a tour and get another hard hat, huh? They were also very excited about the heart.
They talked about that again today, we've got some serious goodies. Now, Roz, we've got high file storage, which I find particularly exciting. So there's that all of our hard hats are now fully uv-treated, you know, with with our covid protocols. So it's gotten exponentially more exciting if you want to come by, I'm like a sad Humanities writer. Now software guys, anything that touches Hardware, this is very
exciting. And you can't hear because she made it herself but Radha is dying at my expense right now. We're gonna talk about this afterwards actually. One cool thing is now we also have finished products are being produced on site, so it's kind of cool. You look over here, you see gas flowing in or you see the pipes were gas flowing in and then over here you see straws coming out and it's kind of neat. At least I've been doing this quite a while but it's still cool.
Cool to see that. These gases are being turned into finished products. So yeah, come on by. We'll give you some more tomorrow hard hats, and If someone is loving this show, they want to support what you're doing. What's the best way for them to do? So, I think spreading the word is great. Letting people know that we're making these products, both our food, we're and our fashion products and check them out and tell us what you think we love
to give feedback. And you know, I think part of what we want to do is show people that there is another way if we can turn it into these products, you know what else is possible. So So, I think spreading the word is, is our favorite thing. I got my eye on one of these wallets. Actually I'm in the market for one, so maybe I'll, maybe you'll see a little purchase come your
way here soon. All right, there's a, we that's it. We developed a little hexa hexagon pattern on. So, if you're, if you're choosing, I would recommend that one. That's my personal favorite. Thanks for the tip. Yeah. Anything else erotica? Nope. It's super nice to meet you, mark, that was really interesting and really looking forward to where you guys Head in the future. I'm waiting for my class non-plastic. Are carbon water bottle? That's like the dream.
Yeah, yeah, so they bother me the most, the water bottles that I see floating in the ocean. It just seems incongruous somehow, I'll put it this way. That that problem will be solved. So it's on the radar kg industrial speak sounds like, but maybe there's something in the future to come. We'll see, thanks for being here Mark. All right guys. Thanks. Or having me on. Thank you. Yeah good to have you here.
Good to have a catch up. If you like what we're doing here, please give us a great rating and review on Apple podcast. It helps a lot. Hey go buy some stuff over from New Light links to all the things we discussed are in the show notes, and thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in apple podcast and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get this content to a wider audience.
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