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
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