The reality of life is that change takes time and shifting the world’s dependence away from technologies that pollute will take decades – especially in less economically developed countries. If we can’t stop our tools from polluting, why not turn their pollution into something useful?

At Graviky Labs, engineers have devised a means of capturing carbon emissions to turn them into ink. Their patent-pending KAALINK filters can be retrofitted to diesel generators and fossil fuel chimney stacks, capturing up to 99% of equipment’s emissions in the form of powder. Once captured, the particles can be processed and re-purposed to create ink used for art.

The MIT spin out was founded in 2014 by Anirudh Sharma SM ’14, Nikhil Kaushik, and Nitesh Kadyan, three friends who were inspired after talking about how heavy air pollution in India stained their clothes. After three years of researching how to repurpose carbon soot for pens, oil-paints, and spray paints, the trio finally released KAALINK filters and AIR-INK to corporate partners.

The team is currently piloting the technology with commercial partners, and they have recently expanded their operations to air pollution recycling in Dubai.