Turning Waste Biomass Into Carbon-Negative Buildings with Allison Dring
About this episode
This episode discusses how waste biomass can be transformed into carbon-storing building materials to combat emissions from the built environment.
Right now, roughly 40% of global emissions come from the built environment. Most of those emissions are hidden deep within the materials themselves, in the concrete, steel, and plastics that are mined or extracted from underground at enormous energy costs. What if that model could be reversed entirely? In this episode of Business For Good, Paul Shapiro sits down with Allison Dring, CEO of Made of Air, to explore how waste biomass can be converted into carbon-storing building materials through a process called pyrolysis. Instead of mining resources from underground, the company uses sawdust and wood waste that would otherwise go to landfill, bakes it in a high-temperature, low-oxygen oven, and produces biochar, a stable form of elemental carbon that locks atmospheric CO2 away for roughly a thousand years. The conversation covers why the built environment is such a massive source of emissions, how biochar-based cladding panels can replace steel, cement fiber board, and fossil-based plastics at competitive prices, and why the real bottleneck is not the technology but industry adoption. Things You Will Learn: Why roughly 40% of global emissions come from the built environment, with…
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