A Carbon Sequestering Book is speculative — a design fiction, not a built object. The idea: take every material that makes up a normal book and make the book carbon-neutral or carbon-negative in how it’s made, without offsetting.
Where it started
The idea grew out of Fresh Press, a project Eric Benson helped start at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: a paper-making facility that replaces tree fiber with agricultural waste and perennial prairie grasses. The resulting paper is carbon-neutral or carbon-negative on its own. Printing ordinary oil-based ink on top of it felt like squandering that work.
The speculation: ink that draws down carbon
There’s real research already into more sustainable inks — carbon black and the oil medium both sourced from algae or plant material instead of petroleum. The more speculative question was different: what if the ink printed clear, and black pigment formed on the page over time, as CO2 was pulled out of the atmosphere and converted right there on the page? Looking into it, the only reactions that can directly capture and split apart atmospheric CO2 are fairly caustic — so this isn’t a short-term, buildable plan. It’s a concept worth continuing to explore, not a working prototype.
Where it led
I sent the idea to Eric Benson, who connected me with Marc O’Brien. The conversations that followed are what led to the start of Climate Designers.