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This startup uses volcanic rock dust to suck carbon dioxide out of the air. Lithos Carbon’s carbon sequestration is a winner in Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards.

From sustainable leather that helps boost farmers’ income to repurposed shipping containers that bring digital tools to the developing world, these projects are building new innovations to solve the world’s most complicated issues in clever and unexpected ways.

For increasing crop yields and capturing carbon with “rock dust” Basalt is a volcanic rock, and one of the most abundant minerals on earth. It also has two features that could prove highly beneficial to a post-climate-change world: It can help improve the health of depleted agricultural soil, and it also sequesters carbon from the atmosphere.

Seattle-based Lithos raised a seed round to give away basalt to farmers — and, in turn, capture vast amounts of carbon.

On a Midwestern farm growing corn and beans, a tractor will soon spread 1,543 tons of rock dust over 140 acres. The goal: fighting climate change.

It almost sounds too good to be true: Take basalt dust that today is wasted in the manufacturing of things like asphalt shingles, sprinkle it on farmers’ fields, and it raises crop yields while also removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Lithos, a Seattle startup applying carbon capture technology in an agricultural setting, announced Thursday that it raised a $6.29 million seed funding round.

While agriculture isn’t the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., it certainly accounts for a notable amount. The industry produced 669.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2020, representing an 11 percent overall contribution to emissions that year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Many existing carbon removal solutions are either infrastructure-heavy or costly, making it hard to implement them as wide or as fast as required.

SEATTLE--Lithos, an agricultural carbon removal company, today announced it has secured $6.29 million in capital to scale deployment of its enhanced rock weathering process for transforming farmland into carbon capture centers while increasing crop yields.

Instead of applying crushed limestone to balance pH levels in fields, some farmers are trying crushed basalt. It can trap carbon and could help fight climate change.

The Lithos carbon-capturing system is based on basalt, a silica-based rock that contains nutrients like magnesium and calcium. It is a byproduct of mining. Finely crushed into dust and applied to fields, Yap said, basalt can greatly speed up the natural process of carbon capture in soil.

Over the past decade, there has been a growing push to address the threat of climate change. Consumers are increasingly opting for sustainable alternatives – electric cars, shoes made out of recycled materials, metal straws, reusable grocery bags – all of which have become widely available.

A range of greenhouse gas removal technologies may be necessary if we’re to reach Net Zero by 2050. In the second of our two-part geoengineering feature, Eoin Redahan looks to the sea, the sun, and mineral weathering, and at the ethical concerns such technologies raise.

Lithos works in the space of enhanced rock weathering, a subset of carbon removal that seeks to speed up the planet's natural carbon cycle. In this process, rain absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere, falls onto and weathers rocks and in doing so creates a bicarbonate solution that eventually finds its way into the ocean for permanent carbon sequestration.