Turning Pollution Into Ink: Anirudh Sharma / Co-founder, Graviky Labs

Direct Talk

Each year, it is estimated that
some 4.2 million people

die prematurely following exposure
to outdoor air pollution.

This pollution comes from cars and factories,

and contains fine particulate matter
known as PM 2.5

that is highly dangerous to our health.

Anirudh Sharma is a researcher
at the MIT media lab in Boston.

He's looking to tackle
this environmental challenge

through a company he launched in India.

He developed a system for
capturing PM 2.5 from diesel cars,

by attaching a device
directly to exhaust pipes.

The carbon from the captured emissions
is turned into usable ink.

It's called Air-Ink.

I mean more than solving
the problem of air pollution,

it's...Air-Ink is a way, it's a method
to look at pollution in a new way.

In nature, the way nature works,
there is nothing called pollution in nature.

And what we are looking at is,

how do you interpret the environmental waste?

going to the lungs of people,

into landfills and all different places,

and how do you find
new product narratives around it?

So essentially is that ink,
it's a form of pigment

that is made by recycling
the same carbon emissions

that would have gone into your life,

your breath,

your living streams and so on.

Turning Pollution Into Ink

The idea came to Anirudh in 2013,

as he walked the streets of an Indian city

and was struck by the level of pollution.

Smoke from a diesel generator

had all but painted
part of a nearby wall black.

So, one of the images
that are very commonly used,

and that actually gave me inspiration
while taking a picture

was this wall next to a generator
that became black from that pollution.

For me it was a very simple observation

that there is so much pollution around you.

And the world that I see is...

if you see, it has become so bad
that now you can see it

in virtually everywhere around you.

And then we started talking to
friends who are chemists,

friends who understand
material science better that I do,

and they said like,
it is a very carbon rich material

that you can utilize in production process,
So, we took it to a lab.

And then we said,
Oh! What if we make a simple contraption

and then use all of these emissions
and turn that into a pigment.

And, what do you do with a pigment?
You write or you print.

Boston, USA

Upon returning to his lab in Boston,

Anirudh got to work developing a prototype
of his idea alongside his fellow engineers.

They extracted soot from a candle,

mixing it with oil and vodka to create ink.

A very early experiment
with the help of a friend, what we did was,

we made this small printer that
would suck in carbon emissions

and then turn them into an output feed
hacked from a regular printer.

The experiment was a success,

and Anirudh took the promising results
with him back to India.

There, he established a lab

and got to work on more serious research
towards making his system a reality.

His first attempts at production
weren't all smooth sailing.

We were working with
high voltages next to fuels.

There used to be times,

when the high voltage would go into
the control systems and catch fire.

There would be a leak in the diesel engine

and the whole lab would be at fire.

And the passers-by on the street
would think that

why...what are these guys doing?

Because they would see all these
electronics in the lab catching fire

and they were thinking that
the startup was into making bombs.

And we had to put these funny labels outside

that "Enter at your own risk."

So luckily, we all escaped untouched.

We learned how to work with more complex
and dangerous types of electrical systems.

But it all went well.

After three years of effort,

Anirudh and his team

successfully developed a
filtering system they called Kaalink.

The system captures carbon soot
from all kinds of exhausts,

including cars, boats and factory chimneys.

So in the process of hunting
for pollution, as we call it,

we started to make...

we designed our own...
we conceptualized one system.

The way the system works
is that the emissions go in

and they get electrostatically
captured on to the walls of our system

and then the air comes out.

Like, most of those emissions are captured.

Up to...from 90 to 95 percent of it.

And all those emissions are essentially the
raw materials to the Air-Ink making process.

And the advantage of turning them into
products is not just recycling the waste;

it is also replacing the conventional color

which is made by deliberately
burning fossil fuels.

So, it is like hitting two birds
with one stone. Yeah.

As Anirudh's project grew,

it became clear that some factory operators
weren't sure what to do

with the material they had collected.

He encouraged people to send the material
to his lab for the team to experiment on.

So, the companies that would burn
a lot of diesel generator fuel,

the companies that would be
burning any type of fossil fuel

and capturing that emission,

they were like, "Now we have captured it,
what do we do with it?"

And we put our name out there
that "Send your emissions to us."

So we started getting
these bags full of pollution.

And, that's where our
analytical team came into play

and they were like,
"OK, we can make this with this.

We can make this with this."

And that's where the narrative started to
become more fun and more products

that you can make around it. Yeah.

A self-professed "chronic inventor,"

Anirudh's ambition and curiosity
towards new technologies

have driven him since
his student days in India.

For me, like the whole degree,

like the whole interest in like building and
engineering around interesting problems

started when I was in my undergrad.

I had some friends who came from
backgrounds in wood work

and some background in electronics.

And all we did was read on the internet,
watch several conferences from TED

and see like, "Oh! These are people
sitting in south of France

and this person sitting in...within the US

is building this thing
by using these raw materials.

And basic simple question,

"Hey, these raw materials are available
all around us in local markets."

And in India, back in that time,

there used to be this culture of
technical festivals all around the country.

And we would say that to go to
technical festivals and meet cool people,

you need to build cool stuff.

So, we took inspiration and we just
copied whatever people were building.

And then once we have made it, we realized,

"Oh! Now we have someone from
computer science background on the team.

Can they write a different type
of a code and make it our own?"

So, we created our own
personality of the system.

We created our own magic around it,

and then started travelling
around within the country.

Driven by a passion for inventing,

he continued to develop
new designs after graduation.

This ruler features a transparent display

which supplements physical lines
with virtual graphics.

This device, he calls Lechal.

It's a smart insole

that can help blind and
elderly users navigate the streets.

It uses a vibration system to
communicate navigational information,

eliminating any need for
the user to consult a smartphone.

Anirudh has sought to contribute
to society through his inventions.

But what's his secret to staying innovative?

I have this notebook
where all you do, like, and

this is very common for people
from design, engineering backgrounds

to sketch like new ideas, new inventions.

And out of hundred that you do, based on
the problems that you see around yourself,

there are twenty that you will work on and
there are five of them you will take forward

and out of those five, two of them
would actually see the light of the day.

For several factors.

So, my method is about like

problems,

collaborations

and observations,

and fusing them all together
to create new ideas.

And it's like a funnel.

Like, a lot many ideas,

and few would chisel down,

few would be impossible

and a few would chisel down to
becoming something that could become real.

Having successfully
transformed pollution into ink,

Anirudh and his team still needed to
prove that their ink was safe to use.

So, the initial days were a lot of fun.

A lot of experimentation
at a very cool level.

But, later on as we scaled,

there are a huge compliance problem
that we ran into.

Because, conventionally,
the way you make these chemicals,

you make them with
conventional materials, right?

But, if you take an unconventional material
that has come from a different source,

and which in our case was pollution,

how do you justify that to
a regular compliance industry?

So, that was a big...so things like
shipping it would be a huge problem.

That..."Are you shipping pollution
or are you shipping a product?"

So, we would say like,
"Oh, this is pollution, but recycled."

So, we had to develop our own terminology

and do a lot of back and forth
with compliance agencies

to solve this problem at a large scale,

because doing experiments
in a lab is like one thing,

but when it scales and when it becomes...

when you are solving
everyday problem of a large industry,

there's a lot of things that
you have to learn on the go

and solve them as we scale.

Three years after launching his company,

Anirudh received a message
from a major beer brewing company.

They expressed a strong interest
in Anirudh's ink,

wanting to use it for
an environmental campaign.

They came to us and said that,

"Oh, this is amazing."

"Can we fund a very large campaign
in like 14 cities around the world?"

Where they will involve
some of the best artists.

It's something that people from science
and technology background don't do.

But, what we thought was,
that what we have made in our labs,

if it can go to these artists,

how much fun it could be!

The campaign was titled
"The World's First Clean Air Gallery,"

and made its way to the
streets of cities around the world

including New York,

London,

Hong Kong, Singapore

and Amsterdam.

Mr. Doodle
Graphic Artist

A range of artists gathered
to create beautiful artworks using Air-Ink.

Anirudh traveled with them
to show off billboards and murals,

illustrating the effects of carbon waste.

Kristopher Ho
Artist

The artists got fully behind
the campaign's message.

Kristopher Ho
Artist

We're transforming something negative
into something positive.

Then we put it back into the street.

So in a way, it's a cycle,

but the end product's different.

And for us,

it was more of like

a way to put our products
in the hands of people

that we would not get to
interact ever in our life.

And that's when the whole
Air-Ink project became very big.

So, that is extremely powerful
when science and art combine.

The carbon used to make one Air-Ink marker

can be captured from
40 minutes of driving with the Kaalink.

The campaign helped produce
770 liters of Air-Ink,

preventing more than
20,000 hours of carbon emissions

from escaping into the atmosphere.

The successful campaign led to

more Air-Ink collaborations
with other companies

who embraced the concept.

This fashion brand specializes
in eco-friendly, ethical clothes.

The firm used Air-Ink for the
printed designs of a new product line.

Another popular brand of Scotch whisky

collaborated with
local artists in six major cities

to create bottle designs using Air-Ink.

Collaboration is the most powerful tool that

exists out there when you are
doing disruptive innovation.

The more I interact with people,
the more opportunities I get to travel,

the more opportunities I get to interact with

people and society and individuals
and processes facing different problems,

the more opportunities I get like,
"Oh! Can I do with this?"

And it's not a matter of like dreaming,

it is a matter of curiosity.

You see what surrounds you,

what problems exist, what tools you have,

what types of communities
you are engaged with

and you combine all of them together.

Following Air-Ink's success,

Anirudh was named by
Forbes magazine's 30 Under 30.

Air-Ink is still gaining momentum today.

But what are the words that
"chronic inventor" Anirudh lives by?

Building new concepts
and inventions in the lab

is very satisfying.

But building interdisciplinary teams

and turning these ideas into scaled realities

is when the true impact happens.

That's why "from lab to reality."