For companies around the world and across industries, sustainability has rapidly gone from a nice-to-have to a business imperative. Global brands including Amazon , McDonald's , Ikea and General Motors have announced ambitious plans to eliminate single-use plastics, reduce carbon emissions and otherwise shrink their environmental footprint in various ways.
Newlight Technologies hopes to speed up that process with a biodegradable material that can be molded like plastic. The California-based company has spent more than a decade developing a material it calls AirCarbon, which it says functions exactly like plastic but is completely biodegradable.Newlight developed the material using microorganisms found in the ocean that feed on methane and carbon dioxide — two greenhouse gases among the biggest contributors to climate change.