It can be hard to be optimistic about the future of Earth’s climate. Oceans are rising, autumn is unseasonably warm, and wildfires are raging. But some companies are taking lemons and turning them into lemonade—despite how impossible it may seem.
At Fortune’s Global Forum on Tuesday in New York City, Jennifer Holmgren, chairman and CEO of biorecycling company LanzaTech, discussed how her business is creating products out of pollution. For example, the company takes the carbon dioxide omitted from China’s commercial plants and pumps it into a bioreactor to create ethanol. It then converts that organic compound into a monomer that later becomes polyester, which can then be used to make things like jackets and other clothes.
