GreenBiz 350 Podcast Episode 308: LanzaTech CEO Reflects

(GreenBiz) A visit with 'badass' LanzaTech CEO Jennifer Holmgren (29:10) Jennifer Holmgren was thinking about retirement when she was recruited to lead the carbon recycling company LanzaTech. Under her leadership, the company has forged high-profile relationships to turn captured CO2 into materials for the likes of Zara, L'Oreal and Coty. You can learn more about Holmgren in this year's GreenBiz Badass Women feature, as well as a Q&A published this morning. READ MORE; includes AUDIO

Excerpt from GreenBiz: Jennifer Holmgren, CEO, LanzaTech LinkedIn | Twitter Chemist Jennifer Holmgren is the long-time chief executive of carbontech upstart LanzaTech, which is turning recovered carbon dioxide into materials and feedstocks for other products. In 2020, the company spun out its sustainable aviation fuel work into a separate company, LanzaJet, which in January raised $50 million from the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund.

The author of more than 50 patents, Holmgren is credited with developing the first low-carbon, drop-in aviation fuels during her previous role at UOP, a Honeywell company — in 2003, she was the first woman recognized with the prestigious Malcolm E. Pruitt Award from the Council for Chemical Research (just one of her many accolades).

In her current role, which she has held since 2010, Holmgren is forging partnerships with companies such as Inditex brand Zara, which is working with LanzaTech to turn CO2 captured from steel mill emissions into ethanol and eventually a low-carbon polyester yarn. The fabric was first used for a party dress collection. LanzaTech has similar relationships with apparel company Lululemon, cosmetics maker L’Oreal, fragrance and perfume producer Coty, and Unliever, which is using LanzaTech’s carbontech for a surfactant in laundry capsules.

One of LanzaTech’s strategic partners is steel producer ArcelorMittal, which in December invested $30 million in the startup — the two are building a plant expected to produce 80 million liters of bio-ethanol annually. LanzaTech researchers are pushing to extend its technology to other chemicals, including acetone (used in nail polish) and isopropanol (found in everything from antifreeze to household cleansers).

"This bioprocess provides a sustainable alternative to today's production routes to these essential chemicals, which currently rely on fresh fossil feedstocks and result in significant toxic waste," Holmgren said of the recent breakthrough. READ MORE

Excerpt from GreenBiz: The main stage on day one of Impact also featured conversations on carbon. While not all of these presentations were directly related to packaging, the industry could find inspiration and a call to action in the discussions. If participants connected the dots between talks by Justin Freiberg, managing director at Yale Carbon Containment Lab, Matthew Realff, professor at Georgia Tech, and Freya Burton, chief sustainability officer at LanzaTech, they could start to think about how next generation packaging could be manufactured using "waste" carbon feedstocks captured directly from the air.

The team at GreenBlue agrees that climate change and waste reduction should be at the forefront of packaging innovation, and that they can go hand-in-hand. Goodrich made this clear when I asked about carbon emissions. "I would ask, why do we recycle? Why do we want circularity?" she said. "I hope it is because we want to reduce our carbon footprint. I understand there are other valuable reasons but the north star should be carbon."

In fact, GreenBlue’s recently published report, Guidance for Reusable Packaging, makes this argument clearly. Corporate sustainability goals should not be siloed, and efforts towards waste reduction and reuse should be integrally linked to carbon emissions reduction. READ MORE