BRB w/ Nathan P – Carbon-Negative Construction Materials, Spinach Pasta Pesto & The Hard Thing about Hard Things
Fossilizing waste to make eco-friendly construction materials, a hearty weekday pasta dish, and Ben Horowitz' memoir on start-ups and Silicon Valley (#26).
Hi all,
Welcome back to BRB w/ Nathan P — a weekly newsletter featuring 💥1 Breakthrough, 🥘1 Recipe, and 📚1 Book on food & climate.
Before we get started, here are some highlights of food & climate in the news this week:
How climate change drives hotter, more frequent heat waves (Grist)
As Jobs Disappear, Could Restaurants Become a Battleground For Pushback Against AI & Automation? (The Spoon)
💥 Breakthrough: Carbon-Negative Construction Materials
From our morning coffee to mid-day snacks and evening desserts, we all use packaging that (sadly) can’t be recycled.
That waste is currently disposed of in one of two ways: landfills and incineration for energy recovery.
Landfills are obviously a problem – we’re condemning a plot of land for life. There are significant methane emissions from rotting, pollutants enter waterways when it rains, and lighter plastics can still be blown away.
Incineration releases a lot of CO2 – burning plastic is like burning gasoline.
There is a 3rd and more climate friendly option: waste fossilization.
French start-up Neolithe is reducing GHG emissions by “fossilizing” industrial waste into a carbon-negative gravel-like material for construction.
Here’s how it works:
🗑️ Industrial waste (plastic, wood, cardboard, etc.) is collected
⚙️ The waste is ground to sand-sized particles
🛠️ The particles are mixed with a proprietary binding agent
🧪 The mix is extruded in a cylindrical shape
🪨 After 1 week of drying, it becomes construction stone
Each of Neolithe’s factories – which they call Fossilizators – can treat about 10,000 tons of industrial waste per year.
That amount of waste prevents 5,000 tons of CO2 emissions, or amount, the equivalent of planting 200,000 trees.
These stones look like and function like gravel. The company named this agglomerate Anthropocite™ – the mineral of the human era. It has been tested to be safe for soils as it does not release any contaminants.
France alone uses 450 million tons of gravel each year to build roads, cement, bridges, and buildings. It is the second most used raw material after water.
Anthropocite™ has the potential to reduce France’s CO2 emissions by 7% per year. France committed to 30% CO2 emission reductions by 2030, so this start-up could get the country a quarter of the way there.
Next, Neolithe want to tackle non-recyclable household waste – 15 million tons of it in France, most of which is burned. It’s a unique waste stream because it still has food in it, which has its own challenges to manage.
Scaled circular initiatives like this one are crucial. Of course, the real goal remains to have less waste to deal with in the first place – by consuming mindfully and responsibly.
🥘 Recipe: Spinach Pasta Pesto
If you’ve been looking for a new delicious meal prep recipe – this is it.
This hearty recipe combines whole-wheat pasta, mushrooms, spinach, tomato sauce, onions, and garlic for a filling lunch or evening weekday meal.
And it tastes even better than it looks.
If you make it, please send pictures :)
📚 Book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Ben Horowitz is best known today for the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, AKA a16z.
Before launching a16z, he founded a start-up called LoudCloud during the dot-com boom. This book is about that founding story, and how he navigated the hardships of start-ups few talk about.
Ben Horowitz felt most business books out there were written by Peace Time CEOs. This is a book about War Time CEOs.
He offers practical advice on the unglamorous aspects of a start-up CEO’s job: how to lay off people respectfully, how to deliver bad news, how to motivate people, how to go public in a downturn, how to hire and fire executives. It’s a treasure trove of advice.
Here are 3 takeaways that resonated with me:
Creating a great place for people to work is an end in itself.
Take care of people, products, and profits – in that order.
Always ask yourself – what are we not doing?
A must read (and re-read) for anyone who wants to lead or work at a start-up.
As a teaser:
Every time I read a management or self-help book, I find myself saying, “That’s fine, but that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation.” The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those “great people” develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.
Thank you for reading – BRB next week ✌️
🥘 Recipe: Spinach Pasta Pesto
Source: Fork Ranger
Ingredients:
400g whole wheat penne
400g canned tomatoes
8 sun dried tomatoes in oil
200g spinach
400g cremini mushrooms
100g green beans
90g green pesto
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
Instructions:
Prepare ingredients. Dice onion, mince garlic, cut mushrooms into slices, cut sun-dried tomatoes in small strips, take off tops of beans and halve them.
Saute onion and mushrooms on high heat with salt and pepper.
Reduce heat and add garlic at medium heat, simmering until most of the moisture from the mushrooms is gone.
Cook pasta and after ~2 minutes add green beans, which need to cook for ~10 mins.
Add tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, and pesto. Stir and bring to a simmer.
Add spinach, stir until spinach. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve warm :)
About Me
Hi there! My name is Nathan Paumier - I’m an avid reader, food enthusiast, and climate optimist. I started this newsletter after frequent questions on food tech, reading recommendations, and my secret recipes.
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