Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are contributing to global warming, so could technologies removing some of the gas from the atmosphere help slow the process?
When you tuck yourself into bed tonight - curling up on your memory foam mattress and fluffy pillows - consider this: you could be helping to reduce climate change.
This is because CO2 can now be captured from the air and stored in a range of everyday items in your home and on the street.
It can be used to make plastics for a whole host of things: the insulation in your fridge-freezer; the paint on your car; the soles of your shoes; and the binding of that new book you haven't read yet.
Even the concrete your street is made of could contain captured CO2.
UK-based Econic Technologies has invented a way of encouraging CO2 - a typically unreactive gas - to react with the petrochemical raw materials used in the making of many plastics.
In this catalysed form, the CO2 can make up to 50% of the ingredients needed for making plastic. And recycling existing CO2 in this way reduces the amount of new CO2 emissions usually resulting from the process.
"Our aim is that by 2026, the technology will be used to make at least 30% of the polyols [the units making up plastic] made globally, and that would reduce CO2 emission by 3.5 million tonnes each year," explains Rowena Sellens, chief executive of Econic Technologies.
"This is equivalent to taking more than two million cars off the road."
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