Human Practices

Both issues are artifacts of unfavorable climate change. Global warming is afoot, and it calls for immediate remediation. When we dug into facts about the various greenhouse gases that are responsible, we found that more than 105 million tonnes of carbon dioxide’s worth of HCFCs (halocarbons), a commonly used refrigerant, is released every year. Somewhat ironically, cooling is more necessary after global warming, especially with concrete landscapes like urban Bangalore. This was also when refrigeration was vital for preserving Covid vaccines. Not only are HCFCs pernicious because they cause global warming, but also because they are potent ozone depletants. Coincidentally, the ozone hole also was the longest-lasting in 2021, after 1999. The Montreal Protocol was effected to bring attention to HCFC-mediated ozone depletion, and World Ozone Day on September 16th was hardly a month’s time away. 

India ratified the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol in September 2019. That means we are en route to phasing out HCFCs/HFCs and utilizing alternative coolants. A caveat, however, is: what do we do however with existing coolants which constantly leak out? 

Turns out the phased-out halocarbons are typically recovered from discarded refrigerators, air conditioners, and spray cans by trained technicians and stored in gas cylinders. The fate of these gas cylinders depends on the availability of recycling and destruction services. In industrialized countries, the collected gases are recycled and reused till feasible, and they are then sent for destruction. There are many methods of destruction of these gases, but most of them are incineration based and hence unsustainable in the longer run. Additionally, some of these technologies need high initial investment. Our search revealed that the costs involved in the setup of destruction facilities are much higher than is economically feasible in developing countries. The location of such plants may pose problems in terms of transportation and distribution. We need a better and more cost-effective disposal system, especially for developing countries.

So, there we stood, with the problem at hand: A sustainable way for disposal of harmful halocarbons. A problem we picked from the community, a solution we aspire to give back. 

We decided to remediate the stocks of phased-out gases using a cost-effective, highly efficient bioreactor. With the proposal came attached a pressing question: how do we motivate the establishment of a facility that generates no economic product in a business-driven world? 

Our stakeholders appreciated that we are giving thought to a problem that none of the authorities have been concerned about, and some pointed out we must come up with methods and models that allow the prevention of active emissions and not limit the project only to the degradation of discarded stock. We quickly arrived at the conclusion that while it was very hard to target domestic emissions, it was possible to develop methods to curb systematic emissions that occur in the industry. 

When our initial attempts at a general model for sequestering and degrading industrial emissions were dampened by the complexity of the problem, it was decided to focus our efforts on the largest source of emissions in Bangalore: the recycling of foam. Foam is blown using halocarbons. The gases are retained in the material due to the high solubility of the gases in the hydrophobic pores of foam, which are released on compression into hales during the recycling process. 

To propose a responsible solution, we decided to survey the plastic and foam recycling plants of our city and not only understand our target in a holistic manner but also incorporate inputs from the industry owners themselves. The survey was a grand success! We obtained a wealth of information on the recycling process and the nature of the industry. Due to the modular and small-scale structure of the recycling process, it was concluded best to build the reactor in the same locality as these recycling plants. Most importantly, it helped us decide on the scale of our model, which was crucial in working out the financial model and reaching the final design. 

The owners had a favorable outlook toward our project. Out of the six owners interviewed, one responded positively to constructing such a setup, and three were appreciative of the work but would only consider the same on govt. investment/subsidies and only two were unsure about the idea. This also answers the question of economic viability. Industry owners are willing to implement such designs by themselves in the vicinity of their industries if favorable government subsidies are granted on doing so. Such subsidies would serve a dual advantage of helping scale up plastic and foam recycling and at the same time, incentivizing the prevention of the emissions associated with the process. 

In our final reactor design, special care has been taken to standardize our model to Indian manufacturing norms to ensure easy translation of the proposal to a cost-effective, easy-to-setup reactor. We made sure that no special parts were required for manufacture or maintenance, even proposing novel designs for biocontainment and the halocarbon gas sensor so that they can be manufactured cheaply and maintained using local resources. 

Besides talking to the community about climate change, we aimed to empower them with the tool that enabled us to design the solution - synthetic biology. Through our efforts in Education, we tried to reach out to the students and the masses, irrespective of their background. We put in our best efforts to ensure that we are as Inclusive as possible in all our endeavors. In our quest for Outreach, we tried to bridge the gap between science and the public. At each stage of our project, we tried to Integrate the knowledge of the stakeholders into the essential components of our project. While doing that, we made sure that our efforts do not leave a scar on the very planet we live on. All our efforts are driven by the greater goal of promoting Sustainability.