Can Pollution Be Made into a Story?

Writing a story is tough. You need the right setting, good characters, an interesting plot, some degree of conflict, and a theme at the centre of it. How about pollution as a theme? Set on earth, lots of influential characters to choose from, plenty of conflict, and of course the ongoing, ever-worsening plot. Could pollution really be made into a story?

Putting pen to paper with pollution

Ok, so ‘Donald Trump and the Ever-Worsening Pollution’ hardly sounds like it could rival the works of JK Rowling. But thanks to scientists from MIT, there is another way pollution can make a story. Introducing Air-Ink…

Air-Ink has been developed by Graviky Labs, an MIT Media Lab spinoff. They invented a device that can collect unburned carbon from a car’s exhaust pipe. After collecting the soot, they remove any carcinogens and metals left in the mixture. The result is a pigment which can be used to produce ink.

Moving onwards

So how much ink can the device produce? In 45 minutes, it can collect enough carbon to make one pen’s worth of ink – approximately one fluid ounce. As well as providing a useful stationery resource, the ink has something of a sentimental value. Because it has been made from substances that would otherwise contribute to pollution, it gives artists a secondary meaning in their work.

This was clear in the testing of the product, where artists were asked to use the ink in their work. “I wrote with ink made from three hours’ worth of pollution from Bangalore, India. It gave my art more purpose. This is how ink should be made,” said Sneha Sreshtha, an artist at Harvard University’s South Asia Institute.

After a successful KickStarter campaign raised them well over the $14,000 needed, the team will soon begin developing the project further. So far, they have produced a range of 2mm, 15mm, 30mm and 50mm markers as well as a 150ml screen printing ink set.

Turning waste into wonder

Fortunately, the Air Ink project isn’t the only initiative making use of waste. Innovations in environmental technology are changing the way we look at some forms of waste and realising their potential as energy sources. ‘Converting Wastewater into Energy’ looks at the new facilities which can enabling water companies to become more efficient, more cost effective and to reduce their carbon emissions.