Key insights:
- Advances in synthetic biology will soon make it possible to produce carbon-negative plastics thanks to innovative zero-emission processes that rely on enzymes.
- The new processes could help reduce global CO2 emissions by 2–5%, making a substantial dent in decarbonizing the physical world.
- Along the way, we could reduce the amount of plastic that makes its way into the environment, harming animals and clogging landfills. Solugen’s goal is to make enough bioplastic to get rid of 5 billion non-degradable plastic bottles in the next seven years.
- Large, accident-prone, and polluting chemical plants that are the source of environmental justice problems would be replaced with smaller, clean factories that could be located anywhere, including residential areas, creating better local jobs and contributing to the development of clean circular economies.
In recent years, our dependence on plastics has become a massive, rapidly growing environmental problem. Around 99% of the 400 million tons of plastics produced every year, from disposable water bottles to industrial-strength pipes, are derived from fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal. Besides the greenhouse gasses that are released to extract and refine these materials, more CO2 is emitted during the wasteful production processes used to convert these raw materials into products. Every ounce of the plastic used to make plastic bags requires five ounces of carbon emissions. And the negative impact of plastics goes well beyond production, clogging landfills, polluting our oceans, and creating hazards for humans and animals alike.
Left unchecked, plastics will become one of the fastest-growing sources of industrial greenhouse gasses. While far more CO2 is currently emitted by cars, trucks and power generation plants, those sectors are undergoing a massive shift toward greener energy sources. Not so with plastics. According to the UN Environment Program, the production, use and disposal of plastics is expected to reach 19 percent of the total global carbon budget by 2040, up from around 4% today.
Decarbonizing the physical world
Fortunately, there is a clear path out of this predicament. A new way of making plastics will soon help us reduce overall CO2 emissions thanks to a combination of synthetic biology, AI and other technologies that Solugen and others are developing.
Today, we are already creating a variety of new materials that are engineered from the ground up to be sustainable. Our current line of products include an exfoliant used in skin care products, agents used to aid crop growth, and chemicals to produce higher-quality cement and to prevent corrosion in water treatment systems, to name a few. These products are made possible thanks to engineered enzymes and metal catalysts that, when combined with the right equipment and processes, produce chemicals and materials without any of the emissions and other pollutants of traditional approaches.
“The first-of-its-kind combination of computationally engineered enzymes and metal catalysts is a gamechanger for the way plastics, and many other materials, will be designed and produced in the years ahead.”
Rather than apply huge amounts of heat to convert fossil fuels into the chemicals we need, we use two renewable feedstocks — air and a type of sugar found in corn syrup — and water to drive reactions that require little energy and have little to no emissions or waste.
We know this process can be adapted to produce a majority of all the substances and materials currently created through traditional methods, including plastics — and it is very much in our plans to do so in the coming years. To maximize the environmental benefits, we are also working on a way to use cardboard rather than corn syrup as the basic feedstock. Given the massive demand for plastics, it would be far more economical and environmentally responsible to use the millions of tons of Amazon boxes and other cardboard packaging that now end up in recycling centers or landfills rather than put additional burdens on farms to deliver even more corn syrup than is already used in food production.
The opportunity for a major win-win is clear. Instead of finding ways to extricate our society from its dependence on plastics, consumers in the not-so-distant future — probably within 10 years — will be doing the climate a favor by choosing products made of plastics with this “carbon-negative” profile. Our goal is to leverage our revolutionary technology to one day revamp plastics’ reputation from a leading cause of environmental damage to an important part of the solution.
Neighborly chemical plants and green jobs
The benefits of carbon-negative plastics go far beyond eliminating CO2 from the atmosphere. Today, plastics are produced in large, inefficient, carbon-intensive chemical plants. Because they process massive amounts of hazardous substances, they are often clustered in remote, lower-income areas, like Louisiana’s infamous “Cancer Alley.” All too often, local residents have little leverage to push back against these large employers regarding pollution, hazardous working conditions, water contamination and other health risks.
Solugen’s manufacturing platform, called a Bioforge, points to a far different future. The “chemienzymatic” reactions occur entirely within proprietary chambers that are designed to create a specific compound. The high efficiency and scalability of Solugen’s process results in overall carbon negative or neutral GHG emissions. There are no smells and no smokestacks — just a shiny tower that houses the “bubbler” reactor where the enzymes do their thing. The City of Houston was so impressed with our design that our Bioforge became the first manufacturing plant — in any industry, not just chemicals — permitted to operate without wastewater discharge or air emissions. The plant is powered by renewable wind energy.
In the decades to come, we believe many of today’s massive, polluting petrochemical complexes will begin to disappear and be replaced by a network of smaller, Bioforge-like facilities distributed within residential areas. Rather than blots on the landscape, we believe these molecule factories will become essential and beneficial parts of the local infrastructure, offering good, safe jobs for people in their local communities. We recently announced plans for a second Bioforge to be operational in Marshall, Minnesota, by early 2025. This first major expansion kicks off plans for a multiphase, large-scale Bioforge buildout.
If this vision materializes, we could well see substantial reshoring of the chemicals sector, much of which was outsourced to China and other regions over the past three decades as more communities adopted a “not in my backyard” perspective. The economic damage from this trend was greater than expected. Not only did manufacturing jobs disappear, but so did many of the companies and services businesses supporting those industries. If chemical plants are no longer dirty, ugly and dangerous, and are welcomed back into US communities, many of those economic benefits will return as well.
Pushing a nascent industry forward
The first-of-its-kind combination of computationally engineered enzymes and metal catalysts is a gamechanger for the way plastics, and many other materials, will be designed and produced in the years ahead. But time is of the essence. Maximizing the impact of carbon-negative plastic will require government policies that ensure capital is available for innovators to build modern factories that might cost $100 million, to compete with incumbents who may have spent $10 million to build a similar capacity facility 40 years ago.
“A new way of making plastics will soon help us reduce overall CO2 emissions thanks to a combination of synthetic biology, AI and other technologies that Solugen and others are developing.”
Those incumbents will also play a crucial role. Producing plastics is no simple thing. The specifications even to create the polyethylene used to make disposable garbage bags are strict. It could take intensive rounds of experimentation to perfect processes and refine the quality of chemicals produced using our methods. Cooperation between incumbents and innovators could speed things up greatly.
Plastics will continue to be an essential component of many of the products that the world relies on for the foreseeable future. There is little doubt that with the right incentives, investments and ingenuity, the enormous environmental damage they are causing can not only be contained but also reversed.
