Childhood friends, Kenton Kimmel and Mark Herrema start to work on their idea by observing the nature.<br />Indeed, marine micro-organisms are able to capture carbon dioxide or methane dissolved in the water to turn it into polymer, one of the component of plastic.<br />First in their garage in California, then in rented laboratories, Kenton and Mark spend years to study that phenomenon.<br />And one day, they manage to reproduce it!<br />So, they launch their start-up called Newlight Technologies and produce polymers at large scale.<br />Those polymers are then extracted into granules that can be molded like normal plastic.<br />But this time, raw material is not issued from petrol but from greenhouse gas!.<br />The success is huge today and the start-up partners with multinationals like Ikea to produce chairs with negative footprint.<br />The company started Covalent, the very first brand of fashion accessories made from greenhouse gas. They produce purses, wallets or even sunglasses.<br />The company is also developing a tool to allow their customers to know the exact quantity of carbon detained in products they’re buying.<br />The factory is able to capture emissions from more than 6000 cars, a number they’d like to multiple by 200.
