magine if you were given one wish to do anything you could about climate change, what would you do? Resetting the atmospheric carbon concentration back to pre-industrial levels would certainly be a big help. Newlight Technologies extracts carbon molecules from air containing greenhouse gases and rearranges those molecules into long-chain thermoplastic polymers that can match the performance of oil-based plastics called AirCarbon. This material can also outperform oil-based plastics on price. The impact of this approach is comparable to bioplastics, though the net footprint should be lower due to the absence of agricultural inputs such as land, water and chemicals. Every pound of conventionally produced plastic generates 6 pounds of CO2. Using Newlight’s method not only avoids this carbon production, but it also removes an additional pound of CO2 from the atmosphere.