🧱 Captured pollution turned into building tiles

Mumbai is one of the world’s most polluted cities. When Angad Daryani was young, he got asthma from the smog in Mumbai. Now, he’s come up with an idea that turns pollution into building tiles.

When Daryani studied at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he designed an outdoor purification system that removes particles from the air and sucks them into a container. When the pollution is captured, it’s given to another company called Carbon Craft Design. They combine it with stone waste from quarries and a binding agent to create floor tiles.

Daryani’s pollution-capturing device is 76 centimeters tall and can be attached to street lamps, schools, and apartment buildings. It can capture and filter 300 cubic feet of air per minute and store 11 540 cubic centimeters of pollutants.

Because the device doesn’t use a filter, it cuts down on costs and waste. Each device has a collection chamber to capture the pollutants. That chamber needs to be emptied about once every six months, depending on the amount of pollution at the location.

Recently, Daryani has raised 1,5 million dollars in funding in order to conduct pilot tests in schools, hotels, and industrial projects. Besides that, he’s been working on making the device more affordable so they can be used where they are most needed.

“Many of the world’s most polluted countries are among the poorest,” Daryani told BBC. “Poor people work in factories, build the streets and infrastructure, and take public transport to get to work. They live and work in the most polluted environments.”

Innovations and creative people with a positive outlook can make a great difference for the future - even contributing to it coming sooner.