16. May 2014
Newlight Technologies sprints ahead
US telecom giant Sprint takes pride in its reputation for bringing sustainable options to market. The company, who made the Dow Jones Sustainability Index the past three years, is now once again living up to that reputation, with the announcement that it is becoming one of the to first to use AirCarbon, a new carbon-negative PHA made from greenhouse gas to create plastic products.
The material will be used to produce black and pink cell phone cases for the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s that will be available online exclusively on Sprint.com by late May. Sprint is the first telecommunications company in the world to launch a carbon-negative product using AirCarbon.
AirCarbon is manufactured by California-based sustainable materials producer NewlightTechnologies, using a proprietarycarbon capture process to convert air and greenhouse gases (GHGs) into a plastic that has similar durability and performance characteristics to petroleum-based plastics. The conversion technology can synthesize high-performance thermoplastics from a wide range of sources, including methane and/or carbon dioxide from agricultural operations, water treatment plants, landfills, anaerobic digesters, or energy facilities. The PHA material has wide applications, as it can then be formed and molded into almost any given design.
Newlight announced on January 1st of this year that it had achieved successful commercial scale-up of its technology. Today, its commercial site is a four-story operation with a multi-million pound per year nameplate production capacity, using air and captured methane-based carbon emissions from a farm to produce AirCarbon.
AirCarbon is an independently verified, cradle-to-grave (including all energy inputs, transportation, and end-of-life) carbon-negative material, quantifiably reducing the amount of carbon in the air in every ounce of AirCarbon produced.
“AirCarbon offers a new paradigm in which products we use every day, like cellphone cases, become part of the environmental solution,” said Mark Herrema, Newlight Technologies co-founder and CEO. “Newlight’s mission is to replace petroleum-based plastics with greenhouse gas-based plastics on a commodity scale by out-competing on price and performance – harnessing the power of our choices as consumers to make change. We’re thankful for companies like Sprint, which are helping us realize our founding vision of taking greenhouse gases and turning them into commercially useful products that generate both an environmental and economic benefit.”
With two facilities in California, Newlight is working to expand its carbon capture operations at other sites throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
As Herrema pointed out: “We have spent over a decade optimizing our technology. Today, we have a four-story plant capturing carbon that would otherwise go into the air, using that carbon to make products that would otherwise be made from oil. As a result, our efforts have shifted from technology development to commercial expansion.”