“Hertha Metals is the future,” Laureen Meroueh, founder of the one-year-old sustainable steel producer startup told me. This may sound like a familiar, hyperbolic sentiment to those in the world of Silicon Valley, but Meroueh, who says she created a one-of-a-kind method for creating sustainable steel without carbon, is being literal.
Steel is crucial to modern industry—and its demand is only growing. Nearly two billion metric tons of steel are produced every year worldwide. Yet the process of making steel contributes to over 9% of global carbon dioxide emissions, making the way it's currently produced untenable for a green future. “This metal is so important and fundamental, and there's hardly any innovation in the sector,” Meroueh said. “I realized it was this trillion-dollar market, and yet no one was really getting deep into the weeds and figuring out how to address it.”
