From Pollution to Products: How Recycled Carbon Dioxide is Transforming Industries

Imagine a future in which everyday products, from soap to industrial materials, are made from captured air pollution. The reality of transforming emissions into products is closer than we think, driven by the urgency to remove 1 billion tons of CO2 by 2025 to meet Paris climate goals. The speed of innovation in this area has accelerated dramatically.

I. Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) in Everyday Products

Companies like Germany-based Covestro are turning pollutant CO2 into materials that go into a wide range of goods: mattresses, medical equipment, socks, sneakers, car seats, phone cases, insulation, and floors. While these applications are promising, the question remains: is this truly going to make a serious dent in global carbon levels? Carbon capture itself has been around for decades; in the 1970s, oil corporations used captured emissions to pump CO2 into oil wells to boost oil recovery. While pollution can also be converted and stored in the ground, recycling it into something else is the core principle of Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU), the hottest new acronym in climate tech.

How Carbon Replaces Fossil Fuels (The Mattress Example)

The potential for recycled carbon is vast because, as Susan Fancy, program manager at the University of Michigan’s Global CO2 Initiative, notes, CO2 can be integrated into nearly everything. "If I go on to a clothing store, most clothing are made from synthetic fabrics, and all of those are made from fossil fuels."

Consider the mattress, for example. Most are made from polyurethane foam. Christoph Gürtler, who develops products at Covestro, explains: "So you have a huge block of polyurethane foam, some $10 to $20 kgs. So we take CO2 and we simply substitute a part of the fossil material that is needed to build up these mattresses." This process replaces up to 20% of the fossil sources with recycled carbon dioxide. The scale of this substitution is significant: in the EU, over 30 million mattresses are thrown out every year.

Gürtler acknowledges the necessary balance: "...you just have this methodology at hand, this alone will not help you save the world. I said yes, you’re perfectly right, that’s not the intention." CCU in consumer goods is one piece of a much larger puzzle.

II. The Energy Challenge and Scaling Up

However, making those products can also use a lot of energy. Converting CO2 to polymers and fuels tends to be more energy intensive than other applications. "We can do this only if we have green energy," states Görge Deerberg, a chemical engineer. "This is I think the main bottleneck. We have not enough green energy for the production of green chemicals as well as the production of green steel."

Saving the planet cannot rely solely on purchasing carbon-negative consumer goods. The total amount of CO2 that might go into chemicals, plastics, and fibers would be too small to make a significant dent in global emissions—estimated between 40 million and 90 million metric tons a year, compared to the 33 billion tons we currently emit annually. Therefore, replacing carbon in much larger scale industrial processes is essential.

III. Scaling Up: Carbon Capture in Cement

One of the best candidates for large-scale carbon abatement is the cement industry, which alone accounts for 8% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. As an expert explains, "For chemical reasons, you cannot produce cement without emitting CO2. That's one industry which has to emit CO2."

Enter Chris Stern, founder of a company dedicated to cement alternatives. "Concrete’s not the sexiest subject, we're trying to make it that way, somewhat." His company creates carbon-negative concrete by replacing cement with steel slag, a byproduct of the steel industry. Stern takes an entrepreneurial approach: "Instead of trying to decarbonize cement, what we've done is come up with a process to replace cement."

Carbicrete's CO2 Curing Process

Carbicrete sources CO2 from industrial gas suppliers, who collect and purify the gas from industrial emitters. The company’s patented technology, developed with scientists at McGill University, is called CO2 curing. This process injects CO2 into a chamber where it reacts with the steel slag and converts into stable calcium carbonates. The offsetting potential is substantial: "We avoid two kilograms of CO2 emissions by not using cement, and we can bury up to a kilogram of CO2 into that concrete block. So the total blended abatement and removal is about $3 kilograms per 18-kilogram block. We can take millions of millions of tons of carbon off the table by using this technology, it's a no brainer."

IV. Market Growth, Investment, and the Consumer

Today, around 230 million tons of CO2 are used globally each year. But so far, the capacity to capture it is only 40 million tons annually, with 70% of that in North America. The potential for substitution is massive: "If we can substitute more or less of these fossil sources by recycled carbon dioxide, then we can reduce the fossil carbon footprint by 50% percent."

However, the CCU market is in its infancy, requiring significant investment in technology and infrastructure. "Lots of money," is the consensus. Consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates the 2030 market for carbon dioxide-based products alone will be between $800 billion and $1 trillion. But experts caution on the timeline: "I think we don't really know yet what's going to get commercialized, what's going to really take off. What exactly will work? So we're talking about at least a $20 year timeframe."

The Consumer's Role in Sustainability

This leads to the question of whether the market can self-regulate the issue. "Absolutely. 100% percent. People like me that are starting companies are going to fix the problem, right? How else are you going to do it?" However, cost remains a barrier. "Typically people say – you do something that is more sustainable, who will pay for it?" The answer is the consumer. "New products can be marketable but of course they are more expensive. And this is a gap which has to be closed by regulations on markets for example." Ultimately, acknowledging the existential threat of climate change requires changing consumption habits and accepting the necessary cost of sustainable materials.

V. Conclusion: Beyond the Recycling Bin

Arguably, CCU’s biggest impact would be in substituting fossil sources in manufacturing. However, we cannot treat it like an endless recycling bin. The long-term solution requires attention to the entire lifecycle of CO2: where it comes from, where it goes, and where it ends up once the product life is over. The transformative potential of CCU will only be realized through comprehensive policy, investment, and consumer acceptance.