Newlight Technologies’ fashion brand Covalent announced it will implement blockchain technology for its carbon-negative fashion accessories line. The sunglasses and leather wallets appear to use synthetic plastics but are made of AirCarbon, a natural biodegradable polymer, PHB. Cognition Foundry developed the blockchain solution on the IBM Blockchain Platform.
Before exploring the blockchain solution, it’s worth understanding why AirCarbon is considered carbon-negative by the Carbon Trust. According to Newlight, “natural microorganisms in the ocean consume air and greenhouse gas dissolved in salt water to produce a meltable energy storage material inside of their cells called PHB.” And PHB makes this natural type of plastic, which is used in Covalent fashion accessories and by other companies in dissolvable surgical stitches. Newlight says its method of producing one kilogram of PHB absorbs 88 kilograms of CO2e greenhouse gas. AirCarbon was named “Biomaterial of the Year” by the Nova Institute in 2013.
So PHB products could replace the use of plastics, reduce greenhouse gases during production and are biodegradable. However, we wondered whether some of those greenhouse gases might be released when the material biodegrades (we’ll update with the answer). One of the reasons why PHBs haven’t gained more mainstream traction is they are relatively expensive to produce compared to synthetic plastics.
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