Lisa Dyson is on a journey to revolutionize the way protein is made. “We have a lot of work to do,” she says.
By 2050, the world’s population is estimated to hit 10 billion. Food production will need to increase by 70 percent. Traditional farming won’t be able to keep up.
Dyson knows the answer. It’s literally all around us: carbon dioxide.
An odorless, colorless gas, CO2 is used to carbonate drinks, make dry ice and helps smother flames when put in fire extinguishers. It’s also a byproduct of burning fossil fuels — and a known culprit of climate change.
Producing food from thin air? Sounds too good to be true. That is, until you consider that Dyson holds three degrees in physics, including a Ph.D. from M.I.T., where she studied string theory. “My dream growing up was to become a scientist,” she says.
Several years ago, Dyson and a colleague, John Reed, began searching for technical solutions for climate change. They stumbled across NASA reports written in the 1960s and ’70s that discussed using powerful microbes to recycle carbon dioxide aboard spacecraft.
“We were fascinated by their research,” Dyson recalls. “We wondered if we could develop a similar technology that would enable us to recycle carbon dioxide into valuable products here on Earth.”
The answer is yes. Today, Dyson and Reed’s startup, Kiverdi, uses those microbes to transform carbon into bio-based products. The magic happens in special bio-reactors, similar to the giant urns used to brew beer.
This year, they’re commercializing a new process to transform CO2 into protein powder. The end product, called Planet+Protein, is packed with essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals, and contains over 50 percent more protein than many other non-animal-based proteins, like soy-based foods.
“Think of it like the flour you have in your kitchen,” says Dyson. “It can be mixed with other ingredients to make flavorful foods.” Burgers, pastas, smoothies … the possibilities are endless.
Not surprisingly, Planet+Protein has “an amazingly low environmental footprint,” Dyson says. “To produce it uses significantly less land and less water than most other proteins.”
By the time Planet+Protein is for sale at your local supermarket, Dyson’s hope is that it will be one of the most sustainable protein options up for grabs — but not the only one.
“A change is necessary and inevitable, given the increasing demand for protein and our continuously growing population,” she says. In the future, Dyson predicts we’ll see numerous products on store shelves that follow the same conscientious credo: an earth-friendly process that inevitably helps reduce greenhouse gases.
You don’t have to be a scientist to help stop climate change, Dyson adds. “If you have your own idea that you believe will have an impact, then jump in with both feet. You’ll discover there are so many people willing to help you.”
Tag: carbon
Do Ants Hold the Key to Reducing Pollution?
Ants — some bite, some eat wood and others just come crawling when there’s food left out on the counter. Turns out, however, that these insects (that most of us find downright annoying) could be helpful in reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
How so?
A recent study from Arizona State University, conducted by geology professor Ronald Dorn, found that the presence of ants can cause certain rocks to capture carbon dioxide, therefore preventing it from going into the atmosphere. This CO2 absorption isn’t small either. Ants can increase the natural amount a rock takes in by up to 335 times.
What’s the secret to this powerful partnership? Well, even Dorn doesn’t quite seem to know yet. In fact, he basically discovered the connection by accident. Back in the early 1990s, he was conducting a study about the weathering of minerals, and one of the rocks he was studying happened to become ant-infested. The bugs were annoying to him, pouring out whenever he tried to drill for a sample. Over time, however, he realized their effect on capturing carbon dioxide.
Even without the help of insects, though, rocks absorb a lot of carbon from the air.
The dangerous polluter seeps into calcium and magnesium deposits found in many rocks, which then transforms into limestone or dolomite. If it weren’t for rocks taking in carbon, our earth would be a whole lot warmer and air dirtier than it already is.
“When I take students on field trips, I make them kiss the limestone, because that limestone is just CO2 that’s just locked up in rocks and how Earth has remained habitable,” Dorn told Scientific American.
With carbon-rich rock already having contributed so much to our environment, the effect of ants speeding up the process could be huge. After all, there’s an estimated 10 trillion of the tiny insects on earth at our disposal. Even better would be if researchers could figure out exactly what the ants do to the rock to make it absorb carbon faster. Then, the solution could be mass-produced.
Until that’s the case, we’ll just have to settle for welcoming ants into our yards and enjoying our little patch of cleaner air.
DON’T MISS: A Roof That Can Clean the Air?
The Top 5 Ways to Fight Global Warming
By now you know that global warming is one of the most serious threats we face. So what the heck are we supposed to do about it?
According to an announcement from the UCLA Newsroom, for the first time, scientists ranked all the various strategies that could slow down climate change.
The study, which appears in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, narrowed the vast list down to the top five approaches based upon feasibility, cost, risk, public acceptance, governability, and ethics.
MORE: Watch What a Climate Change Debate Should Really Look Like
Here are the top five, ranked from least to most effective.
Stimulate the growth of algae in the ocean. This means adding iron to the ocean to promote the growth of carbon-consuming underwater plants. It’s ranked as the least viable approach because it’s not very efficient and letting algae grow wild could harm sea life.
Create more shade with solar reflectors in outer space or artificially increase the earth’s cloud cover. Injecting more water droplets into the atmosphere to create more clouds reduces the amount of sunlight hitting the planet. Sounds neat, huh? But, as Daniela Cusack, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of geography at UCLA says, “Cloud seeding sounds simple but we really don’t understand what would happen to the climate if we started making more clouds.” (Perhaps we shouldn’t take that risk then.)
Confine carbon by converting CO2 into liquid form and pumping it underground. This however, could be prohibitively expensive or dangerous due to leakage. “No one wants to live next to a huge underground pool of carbon dioxide that might suffocate them or their children — no matter how small the risk,” Cusack says.
Sequester carbon by leaving it up to Mother Nature’s all-natural CO2 suckers: Plants. We’ve got to leave our precious forests alone. And we have to promote regrowth and planet-friendly agricultural practices, too.
Cut emissions. It’s really the most obvious solution. While the Obama administration recently announced a historic push to cut harmful carbon pollution from power plants — the biggest source of CO2 — it’s only a start.
As Grist puts it, cutting carbon means conserving energy, improving efficiency, and curbing our reliance on fossil fuels by adopting renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.
Besides, the authors found that using all the technology we already have could reduce seven gigatons of carbon per year (humans release nine gigatons of CO2 a year). “We have the technology, and we know how to do it,” Cusack said. “It’s just that there doesn’t seem to be political support for reducing emissions.”
Now if we could only get everyone — regardless of political affiliation — on board.
DON’T MISS: 5 Surprising Things That Harm the Planet (and 5 Simple Ways to Help Save It)