The mottled bright green leaves of a pothos plant stood out against the flashy expanse of electric vehicles and smart products at the CES tech show in Las Vegas this year. This particular version of the familiar houseplant was bioengineered to remove 30 times the amount of indoor air pollutants of a typical house plant, according to Neoplants, the Paris-based company that created it.
Granholm said she is excited about a range of technologies at CES and beyond, from John Deere’s newest electronic farm equipment, to battery storage using alternative materials such as sodium salt, both of which she said the Department of Energy has helped fund. Varadharajan wrote an algorithm that pulls information about various edible products from published research papers, which allows him to assign a carbon footprint to every food’s barcode. The algorithm then fine tunes that number with information about a product’s farming techniques and packaging.
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company didn’t have a booth this year, but it did demo new tires on vehicles plastered in blue and yellow that rolled around Las Vegas.