• molecular biology research,
• biotechnology process and design,
• industrial processes’ engineering and equipment,
• greenhouse gases cap and trading,
• environmental regulation compliance and political policy adoption,
• marketing of smart technologies and green alternatives,
• sales to customers, able to foresee both the environmental impact as well as the major financial incentives and benefits that follow the early adoption of such innovations.

It is not a single day job, this is for sure. For example, the existing solutions how to handle industrial gaseous waste have focused the value network on carbon capture and storage, electrofiltration, flue gas desulfurisation, etc. However, solutions like these are addressed only by large installations and are quite expensive to implement and to maintain. Their major goal is sequestration of greenhouse gases and toxic by-products rather than utilization of waste. The future stands with something smaller, cheaper, and beneficial in many perspectives, tailored to specific operational cycles and able to recycle the waste, reuse the fuel and reduce the environmental threat.

The process of establishment of a new green disruptive technology for the existing value network is described below. The earlier we get to the tipping point, the better for the world. For the specific example of waste management for greenhouse gases the paradigm of the new, green value network will be:

• To identify customer needs, matching them to the expectations of society

Let us face it: industry produces waste. This has been an axiomatic principle ever since the great industrial revolution. However this axiom is going to change in the upcoming years/ decades. It is imperative to figure how profit (as an ultimate goal for every business there is), has to go hand in hand with lean thinking principles while fits into no carbon directives. Industry also requires energy, and carbon energy supply is far from infinite. If industrial plants are able to provide for their own needs while bio-transforming their waste into renewable sources of energy, offsetting cost is on the go and achievement of greater market shares is possible.

• To solve customer problems, increasing its public acceptance and confidence.

Waste is a problem: governmental regulations on its type, quality and quantity, payment of environmental fees and charges for disposal, elevated social and public pressure and many businesses can get into the rat race: someone, somewhere can produce it cheaper than you. If the scarcity of carbon fuel distribution on this planet is acknowledged as well, energy accessibility and its price can become a problem as well.

• To procure knowledge-based and engineering input, bringing the future in daily life.

If we all aim to knowledge based economy, transfer of state-of-the-art techniques and technology that are both scalable and economically efficient on large scale, we need to claim the risks of research and development. We are entitled to the benefit of the doubt:  incremental and disruptive innovations might not bring the desired progress, nevertheless, the sooner we start procuring more molecular expertise and nanoscale know-how in everyday life, the better off we are going to be.

• To react to competitors proactively.

The niche is now developing, there is place for many, join us! We can be smart, green, environmentaly friendly, yet cost effective and extremely profitable, benefical both to society and the environment, and the corporations.

• And to strive for profits, while not forgetting about common green goals

For every ton of CO2, about 0,6t of biomass can be produced.  It is the biggest task in front of us all today: how to reuse the carbon, refurbish the waste and revive all the resources available, as they rarely multiplicate with time. Moreover, to take the advantage, that those sources that multiplicate provide for us.

Yes, we can.

Here’s an example: a tree absorbs between 7.5 to 13 kg CO₂ per year. Of course no one could еstimate whether it is more, less or enough. But everyone could estimate the efficiency of a tree, if we mention the yearly CO₂ footprint of a milk cow – about 5 000 kg CO₂ eq. Hence my question: how many trees we need to plant, just to cover the yearly emission of one cow?

Well, recycling is good, isn’t it?

Actually, it’s not a matter of recycling the stuff you bought, but now you don’t need. It’s a matter of not buying that stuff at all. When we look back to the production and distribution chain, we will see why recycling of packages is not helping too much.

The industry is manufacturing  products, while emitting enormous volumes of toxic waste (both liquid and solid) and green house gases. Then the product goes to the consumer and he fashionably recycles the packaging.  The thing that should worry you as a consumer is that for every recycled garbage can, the industry produces 70! Yes, seventy garbage cans full of waste!

What about the industrial waste?

Industrial waste is the real problem that should be solved. The trend here is called “waste management”, which is actually the only way to go on large scale. Waste management includes toxic gas sequestration, CO₂ mitigation and utilization, wastewater treatment, solid waste recycling, etc.

A lot can be done, in utilization of, otherwise toxic, nitrogen oxides. There are plenty of biological species that can survive in variety of extreme environments. Examples of  extreme environments are toxic industrial wastewaters, high temperature CO₂ airflows, heavy metal rich solid waste, etc.

There is a biological solution for every problem that humankind have created so far. There are microalgae, able to survive in extreme concentrations of cadmium or chrome and bacteria that  thrive in strong mineral acids and boiling liquids.

We could finally say, that there is a matter of consumer behaviour, that could help save our environment, but let’s face it – the real problem is coming from the industrial waste. Industrial plants should realise their corporate responsibility and do the implementation of best available technologies in waste management.

What concern us, though, are the threats and the opportunities green disruptive innovations create in our world, and the green solutions they have yet to offer to the business and society in the 21st century.

What we face today is economical crisis, coupled hand in hand with environmental crisis. Our major concern for decades has been the limited fuel supply and the indefinite demand for energy sources. The due diligence on climate change and pollution, it was not us to take care of that: the future generations were expected to clean the slate and to find the exit from the labyrinth. Wrong we were. Acceleration of demand, brought us closer to the edge than ever anticipated. The aim to reduce the rate of climate change is not good enough anymore. Low carbon economy is not good enough aim anymore. The ultimate target are zero emissions or zero carbon economy. Pioneer states, such as Iceland and Sweden have established their own goals in this direction. It is already late for whatever has to be done is, so change and action are needed. NOW.

We need to innovate in order to solve numerous problems. How can the two different routes can lead us to zero carbon economy, shed a light on the path to non-carbon industries and past-carbon businesses? A direct comparison follows.

Disruptive vs. Sustaining Innovations

Sustaining innovations would be Carbon Capture and Storage for CO2 (the shore countries of North Sea shelf has been quite keen supporters of that idea already); improvement of wastewater treatment techniques based on physical and chemical filtration; research and development on more efficient and more effective nanofilters for capture of greenhouse and toxic gases. To reduce the enlargement of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, we need to do the greatest sustaining innovation of all: to reduce our waste, to reuse some of it and to recycle the rest, with special attention paid to plastics and toxins.

Disruptive, however, will be those innovations that will not only solve our growing energy requirements, but will also provide for the environmental issues, such as pollution, wastewater and solid waste disposal, climate change, greenhouse and toxic gases mitigation. Innovations that are cheap and easy to implement, will address our individual consumer needs and will fulfill our drive for simpler, yet profitable carbon-independent enterprises.

Those innovations deliver for our ever-growing energy needs cheaper and more effective technology for biofuels and then deliver the biofuels themselves. They do not endanger the local and global food supply on the expense of the fuels and alleviate the inheritant social conflict and debate around fuel vs food. Green Disruptive Innovations successfully handle the environmental concerns as they mitigate greenhouse gases via photosynthetic fixation of CO2 into biomass, hence to biofuels of third generation. Clean, Smart, Renewable (CSR). Surely, fit for socially responsible corporations. Do you have one of those?

While this idea might be sci-fi to many of our readers, some C-suite executives among you will think of these incentives:

• you can reduce your business’ environmental impact and carbon footprint,
• and simultaneously increase your profit and economical status.

Can you imagine the new market niche: one that provides the ability to recycle your industrial waste and to biotransform it into fuel for the industrial plant own operational and technological cycle input?

Yes, you can.

In a series of blog posts we will further elaborate on the CO2 mitigation via a biotechnological system as an example of a disruptive technology (it is not merely an innovation any more), with a detailed analysis of its opportunities and risks, current and future competition and the strategic choices that need to be taken on many levels in between.

After the financial crisis many things will not be the same, many (used to be) stable businesses will be gone. They will be gone, not because of the crisis itself.They will suffer from their own rigidity and lack of adaptation skills for the new green consumer era.

The need for reduction of non-renewable energy sources was obvious even for the much criticized autocrat – Shah of Iran in the early ’70s. Now, forty years later, are you still not convinced that the industrial processes should go in greener direction?

Even though renewable energy technologies are applicable, these are still thought of as some exotic fruit, a fashion may be. Yes, many of them need a few more years to be viable and to make sense to your business, but it is not only the CSR that counts. Let’s take, for example, the algae biodiesel technology – it is a quite simple concept, but it took over thirty years to be applied in pilot plants. It is not that expensive (after all you need only water and sun, and the hole in the ground), and you get several times more biofuel compared to average plant source of oil, based solely on CO2 mitigation.

Crisis is a moment of evaluation and hard decisions, but you could make it a time for green technology implementation and good decisions. Now is the exact moment for real business model re-evaluation. Do you think you could end up greener and in addition survive the crisis?

Yes, you can.