: Tara Shirvani
: Plastic Eaters and Turbo Trees How to Save the Climate, Remove all the Trash from the Sea, and Master the Rest with Brilliance
: Edition A
: 9783990017326
: 1
: CHF 16.20
:
: Ökologie
: English
: 196
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Trees that bind ten times more CO2 than those previously known or bacteria that simply eat up the plastic floating in the sea: Synthetic biology is one of the great opportunities to save the world. Tara Shirvani portrays this young scientific discipline that is fundamentally changing all of our lives in an exciting and easy-to-understand manner. It shows what benefits we can all derive from it now.

Tara Shirvani, born in Vienna in 1986, studied at Cambridge and Oxford. As an expert in sustainability, innovation and climate policy, she advises companies, governments and institutional investors in the areas of sustainable investing, ESG and green finance. She is co-founder of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group and one of the Forbes 30 under 30 and researches synthetic biology and climate change at the University of Oxford.

The most widely used material in the world


»We Built This City«

Starship

No material is produced more frequently by humans than concrete. The reason is simple: there are few materials as versatile, durable, and cost-effective as this mixture of cement, water, and sand. The high thermal mass and low air infiltration of concrete help to reduce the energy demand for heating and cooling buildings. However, there is an unpleasant side effect, as the production of concrete leads to enormous CO2 emissions. But if we take a look at nature, we find that it also builds with concrete, using a method that doesn't pollute the environment. So why can't we be inspired by the natural ecosystems of the Earth? If nature can produce cement without CO2, why can't we?

At present, we produce 4.4 billion tons of concrete each year, and it is expected that this number will exceed 5.5 billion tons by 2050 due to rapid urbanization in poorer countries. This accounts for 8%*consistency of global CO2 emissions. It's gigantic! This amount – equivalent to 2.8 billion tons of CO2 – is so significant that if the industry were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of CO2 in the world after China and the US. Furthermore, this industry consumes enormous amounts of water and produces a muddy, highly polluting industrial waste product during the manufacturing process without significant additional benefits.

The cement of shells


If we compare the CO2 emissions of the traditional method of cement production to a disease, we should focus on treating the cause of the disease rather than simply the symptoms. This* means that instead of trying to improve the traditional method of cement production painstakingly and at high costs, we should attempt to produce cement differently and without high CO2 emissions.

Before you turn away shaking your head, let me tell you that in the US, there is already a company that produces green, sustainable bio-cement without CO2 emissions using bacteria at room temperatures. The company relies on bacteria that have been producing cement since ancient times. Just think of shells: the protective outer layer is made of calcium carbonate, the hard substance found in limestone. Hard corals, our teeth and bones and limestone caves are all essentially made of the same material. Through synthetic biology, we are now capable of biologically producing calcium carbonate and bio-cement stones. The process is quite simple: in nature, there are microorganisms like bacteria and algae that form from organic waste. However, in nature, the conditions for this process are only right every few centuries. This means that the process of crystal formation by bacteria is very slow. The appropriate conditions can take hundreds or thousands of years to occur. Thanks to significant advancements in synthetic biology, we can now prompt these bacteria to produce cement within two to three days. A process that would take thousan