Adapted from this Berkeley Lab press release
Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is naturally produced in many crucial industries such as agriculture and wastewater treatment. What if we could grab that gas before it goes into the atmosphere, and make something useful out of it?
Mango Materials, a California-based biomanufacturing company and Foundry industrial user, has invented a way to do just that. Using a special mixture of methane-eating microorganisms, Mango’s process converts methane into a biodegradable polymer called polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), which can be compounded into 100% biodegradable polyester pellets to form durable goods, fabrics, and flexible films that have all the convenient properties of plastics but can have a much lighter environmental footprint. PHA-based materials break down in a tiny fraction of the time it takes plastics if they end up in the environment. And they decompose back into methane and carbon dioxide in as little as few weeks or months, depending on the thickness of the product, when they are disposed of at a waste facility as intended.
Read the full press release
