LanzaTech, a carbon recycling tech company, views addressing those industrial emissions as an opportunity. It uses CO2 as a feedstock to create products. And in its latest announced partnership with athletic apparel company Lululemon, it’s creating yarn and fabric using recycled carbon emissions.
Here’s how it works: LanzaTech captures pollution from industrial sources — for example, greenhouse gas produced by a steel mill in China, the source for the Lululemon fabric, which is similar to the proprietary fabric that it uses for its leggings. The company hasn’t yet announced which of its products will be made from the new textile.
In a process similar to beer brewing, Lanzatech converts the greenhouse gas into ethanol. Then it passes that ethanol onto project partner India Glycols Limited, a petrochemical manufacturer that turns the ethanol into monoethylene glycol, a chemical normally made from fossil fuels. Lastly, one other partner, Far Eastern New Century, a Taiwanese textile producer, converts the monoethylene glycol to polyester.
What makes the fabric Lululemon is making with LanzaTech different from the textile that it has historically used is that it doesn’t require more fossil carbon to be pulled from the ground. “What you don’t want is to always have to use fresh fossil carbon,” said Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech. “We’ve got to keep fossil carbon in the ground.” LanzaTech previously brought its process of capturing and recycling carbon to airlines with a jet fuel application and home care companies, creating packaging and surfactants. Lululemon is the first company it’s working with on textile production.