And Now For the Good News: Newlight Technologies!

Although making comparisons to Teflon provides a remarkably apt way to describe how the steady stream of bad news regarding plastic pollution impacts my soul, you can surely guess why I choose to resist that temptation. Instead I will confide that my intellect manages to take in the information I gather on my own (along with the articles, Tik Tok videos, social media posts, personal stories, frustrations, fears and sense of utter doom that everyone who knows I am fixated on plastic pollution feels compelled to share with me) and process it without diminishing my dream of a world free of plastic pollution, as if there were a protective, non-stick barrier between my sober realization of what the world is and what I want it to be.

I do this out of necessity. I do this because I believe in the power of manifestation. I do this because I have chosen as my guiding star that day when the steady stream of news is more good than bad, because I know losing sight of that star will leave me adrift on a sea of gloom, adrift and of no use to the cause I hold dear.

So I resist. I hold out. Until one day (April 11th, 2023 to be exact) I am touring the corporate headquarters of NewLight Technologies in Huntington Beach, California, listening to Ryan Higgins, Head of National Accounts for Newlight, explain in great detail the process by which AirCarbon gets made.

There is no smell. There is no grime. There is noise, and people scurrying about wearing headphones, but not swarms of them since the core functions of this incredible operation, which turns methane into a true plastic substitute, have been efficiently mechanized.

The tour is a showcase of legacy and cutting edge in equal measure. Neither Mark Herrema nor Kenton Kimmel (the inventors of the AirCarbon process) are present so I have to imagine their brilliance as Ryan shares the story of how this all came to be. Smaller prototypes cohabitate the squeaky clean facility with the latest and greatest—a commercial scale system with enormous vats where microorganisms many generations descendent from a batch harvested off the ocean floor turn methane into polyhydroxybutyrate, or PHB.

The PHB is so nontoxic, you can eat it. I do, as Ryan explains how the pellets made here can be used the same way nurdles are used to make the plastic that is killing our planet. Proof of this stands just a few feet away, where an assortment of machines make and package AirCarbon straws destined to satisfy demand at over 5,000 locations worldwide.

For someone who has devoted the last years of her life to ending plastic pollution, a factory powered entirely with solar energy that generates no pollution while churning out fully biodegradable substitutes for plastic products using greenhouse gases as a feedstock and natural microorganisms as biological catalysts is a dream come true.

April 11th, 2023 is a day I will always remember. It was a day to celebrate, to know that I am not alone, to know that there are good people all over the planet working as hard as I am to end plastic pollution. It was a day to recharge my soul, to give thanks for the entire Newlight crew and to acknowledge myself for holding on and holding out, for standing against false solutions like plastic recycling, and for knowing that one day this day would come.