#279 Painting a Sustainable Future: BioTech's Role in Carbon Reduction, an interview with Beth McDaniel

0:00:01 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased joining me from the US, beth McDaniel. Beth, the way I love to do it is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves, so to tell us a little bit about you and about your company and what you do. So the floor is yours. 

0:00:21 - Beth
All right, thank you, mehmet, thank you for having me. So what I do and it takes some explanation because most people have never really thought about it, but we operate in the paint and coding space, and I'm saying coatings, like COAT, ings, coatings. A paint and a coating are similar. A paint is just a coating with a color in it. Ok, so I use those terms interchangeably a lot. Anyway, what we do is we add functionality to paints and coatings. Now, everything is pretty much coded in your, in your world. At some point it's manufacturing process. If it's manmade, it's got a coating on it to protect it. It might not have color, so it might not be a paint, but it's going to be something to protect it. Ok, so look around you. It's not just on the floors and the walls, but the ceilings and your desk and your computer screen, your clothing, everything you're looking at has a coating on it, and that's surface area. And what we think about what we've done is we've added biological molecules in general to create functionality, things that have some sort of functionality in nature, enzymes and peptides and such that have a functionality in nature. What we've done in the past is we put those biomolecules into a paint or coating, and then spread it out on surfaces, that coating dries and then it has that functionality. Ok, so where we use an antimicrobial peptide, for instance, now these peptides are all over you, so they're naturally nontoxic and naturally occurring. And we will take a peptide that has a functionality that's antimicrobial, breaks down bacteria, algae, fun, fungal it actually kills it algae, fungi, molds, even viruses like COVID and we put that into a coating system, a paint, and we spread that paint over surfaces and then the paint dries and then it has antimicrobial functionality. So we're in the paint business and we're in the surface area of business, and what you've invited me onto your show to talk to your audience about, I believe, is another development that's taken place in that company. 

Another platform technology is what we call them. That has to do with climate change, and in that case what we've done is we have put a algae, a real organism, into a coating system this time, and asked it to do what it does in nature, which is we all know from eighth grade biology that plants and algae pull down CO2 from the atmosphere and they use it to make their glucose and to release oxygen, along with the help of sunlight and water. And so we've taken algae of an organism, a living organism, and put that into paints and coatings and we've allowed that to do its work and it pulls down CO2. So it's a climate change technology. I'm the president of the company that did this. It's a company called Reactive Surfaces and we are an XPRIZE competitor. We can talk about that a little bit, but there is a prize the largest prize ever given for any competition $100 million sponsored by Elon Musk and the competition is to develop the best carbon removal technology, and that's what this is. It's carbon removal technology, as opposed to mitigation. 

0:04:09 - Mehmet
We can talk about that, but and we're team like in that competition- that's great, I'm very happy about, because I believe this topic usually not covered enough, right? So so you know, we tried a couple of times here on the show to get people to talk to us about green technology, to talk about, you know, sustainable technology, to talk about climate tech, if you want. So I'm very happy that you know we, we, we managed to to to have this episode together and, of course, we will discuss all this. But first of all, I'm sure that, like you know, there is a motivation for for anyone behind the work they do, like, especially for someone on the executive level like yourself. So what was the motivation for you? You know, to pursue, you know this with with the company? You know, like, I'm sure, like you have some ambitions. 

0:05:11 - Beth
So if you can tell us a little bit more about that, yeah, well, sometimes, sometimes we're motivated by someone coming like a company, coming in and saying you know, we need a particular paint and a paint that does this, and we're paid by that company. So we do business to business a lot of the time when a paint company like an Exo Noble or Sherwin-Waynes might ask us to develop a certain paint for them that has a certain functionality. In this case, we were struck by the urgency of climate change. Okay, and you know, climate change, we all kind of lived with it for a while and disregarded it, and then it's just, these reports started coming out from the UN's international panel on climate change and we, in October of 2018, actually, and so I'm I'm married to the chief scientist, okay, that's one of the things that motivates me is that I'm married to a genius biochemist that started this company, and we've been and this is our baby Okay, so we've been developing functional coatings for the last 20 years, and but we were both struck by the urgency of climate change in 2018, when one of the major reports came out by the UN, and so we took this on by ourselves. 

No one hired us to do this. We are self-funding. Up until recently, we've been self-funded. We are seeking investment for this particular technology because it's very important, it's very effective and it could be a real tool that the world can use in their fight against climate change. And it's natural and it's non-toxic and it it overcomes a lot of problems that some of the other technologies might have. But, yeah, we were motivated by I mean, if you want to hear a story I don't know if you really want to hear a story yes, please. 

0:07:11 - Mehmet
Yes, please. 

0:07:14 - Beth
Because I remember the moment when we read that report and it was October of 2018 and there was an IPCC report and we discussed it and I remember my husband, steve, was just like wow, this is way bigger than than I ever realized and it's so urgent and it's so right now. And he said I've been thinking about something for a long time and I think we need to pursue it, and that is another functional coding. Like I said, we have different platform technologies. Like you know, an antimicrobial technology. Like I talked to you about the peptide, we have an enzyme technology, and so he said I've been thinking about this for a long time and I think we need to pursue it. 

Now he used to be do a lot of scientific research, like in the Arctic, and he spent some times, some time, in the Arctic, and this was on kind of a on a different mission. But what he noticed in the Arctic one time was when they were doing, they were, they were exploring in an area that just had nothing. It was just big rocks and and and that's it, just giant rocks in this Arctic desert. And he saw a rock and it had this giant like GPS marker on it, a big red marker and he thought that's weird. It was just one of them. So he goes over there and he sees and it's not paint, though it was lichen and lichen, as you know, like I'm talking about lichen, like you see in the forest, when you, when you see on rocks, you know this brightly colored, all different colors of lichen, and they're real thin and they're really stuck to the rock, and he saw that he thought it was paint, but it was like it and he was like that is like lichen is like paint. That was when it struck him this was years ago and along before 2018, and he had been thinking about it, and so he realized that lichen is like paint. And so, at this moment, when we were contemplating the urgency and the emergency of climate change, he said I think we need to pursue this, and so we designed a paint that works like lichen. 

And so what lichen is is lichen is composed of two organisms a fungus and an algae, and algae does what algae do, and that is pull down CO2, just like plants. And what the fungus does interestingly in the lichen is the fungus provides a nice environment for the algae to do its work and helps it, like it keeps it from overgrowing? Okay, because algae will do that and become into, turn into an algae bloom. Okay, that can be toxic in some ways. They need to be contained a little bit. It will help the algae get sunlight that it needs, but not too much UV that would kill it. It will help it get the nutrients that it needs. So, anyway, they work together in the lichen and we designed our paint just like that. But the paint is like the fungus and we designed that paint to do what the fungus does and keep the algae from not growing, from not overgrowing I mean, from overgrowing. We keep the algae. 

We have things that we do with paint, because we manipulate paints all the time, so we put things in paint that maybe cause it to grab water from the atmosphere that's very helpful with this technology or that use UV, and I mean that use sunlight we can gather the sunlight but that block the UV. 

We manipulate paints in that way all the time and that's like the fungus side of the lichen. And well, anyway, it works. So now we have a paint that actually captures CO2, and we can spread that on surfaces. And just for your audience to understand a little bit better, this is not a paint necessarily that goes on the wall. This is a different kind of paint. It's like paint in that it is thin and it adheres well to surfaces. Okay, so you can put it on vertical spaces and we but, given like the breadth of the problem, that is so huge and we need so much surface area to do the work of photosynthesis. Imagine using this particular paint in a facility in which we've maximized the amount of surface area, and so we have modules containing a whole bunch of painted surface area, as much as we can get in there, and then we use as many of those modules as we can to do the work of photosynthesis. 

0:12:18 - Mehmet
That's great explanation. I love it. Actually, I love when I hear these details that everyone can understand. So you're not, you're not like taking it too much technical, like everyone I believe can understand so, but like quick one, and I mean we can categorize the company in the field of biotech, right, am I, am I correct? 

0:12:42 - Beth
And material science. Well, what's interesting about that is that it's a it's a merger of biotech with material science, which is the paint part of it, and that part had not really been done before. 

0:12:56 - Mehmet
Yeah. So my other question to you is, like you mentioned couple of applications, right, you mentioned where it can be applied. Now, how you are seeing, you know, the I would say the reaction from the people or like from the companies like you work with, like are they getting excited, you know, and are they saying, okay, this is cool. Or you know you're getting them really say, hey, we need this today, we need to have this because really we want to contribute. 

Because I'm trying to understand here, honestly speaking, when it comes to anything similar to what you are doing, people approach it a little bit with kind of kind of you know, doubts, capitalism, you know. So how do you see the reaction of people because we need it and maybe you know, but, like, just a couple of weeks back here we had the climate change conference. The call, you know, and there are a lot, you know, people sometimes they doubt this although, like I've seen a lot of people was coming with very ambitious ideas and you know, I've met, like for example, founders from the States who are trying to even generate electricity from a more green sources. So for you, especially being in the biotech and kind of you know, climate tech if you want because you're trying to reduce, you know, the production of the CO2. So how people are reacting with this, from your interaction with them. 

0:14:32 - Beth
Yeah, so different people react in different ways. Okay, what I can say is when it get, when you get down to it, okay, and I told you this, but I'm not, I'm not the scientist on our team, but we have a bunch of PhD level scientists that are working on this in all different fields, and so the science is really good and when people dig into it, they can, they can see it. Okay, it really works, it's provable. We do good science, okay, and so those that look at it and get into it are very pleased with the science. 

Now, investment doesn't always follow that logical path. We're still seeking investment and, unfortunately, and I think, and we have, you know, a lot of interest in this technology because it really, I'm telling you, it really works out. Okay, the numbers work out. There's all sorts of numbers that are third party analysis that are taking place, for instance, a lifecycle analysis, which which calculates how much CO2 you're taking from the atmosphere versus how much your process is emitting. Okay, so you got to make sure that what it what it is is, it's a negative and net negative, right? So you want to have net negative CO2, you can't be emitting more in your process and you're pulling down in CO2, or that doesn't even make sense. And so we have outside reports that validate that this is indeed a net negative technology where we're pulling down more CO2 than we're emitting in the process by far, and and what the cost of that is. And so we favor, we we compare very favorably to other technologies and we can talk about what those might be in this space. 

But people are investment into new technology and I've been in that space for quite some time is is is a little bit of a different animal, because people have to take a real leap, you know, to invest in something new. They say that pioneers get arrows in their back. Okay, so we've been in this space, you know, several times, and so we know how to raise dollars and we will, and there is a lot of interest by companies, for instance, that are in hard to abate. Industries like steel making and the airline industry could even be interested. There's a lot, of, a lot of interest right now in these types of technologies, and what we're talking about in comparison to a mitigation technology or a sustainable technology, is this is a carbon removal technology, just so your audience knows what we're talking about. 

It's this is actually pulling down CO2 from the ambient air, or it could be pulling down CO2 from a, from an emission slipstream like an industrial emissions. 

We could actually capture that and and use that CO2 as well, but as compared to a mitigation technique, which would be like an alternative fuel, that is, is, has less of a carbon footprint, so that's a mitigation versus a carbon removal, we're actually pulling carbon down. 

They're just two different technologies and they're both very important. I'm just identifying where we, where this technology falls, is on the carbon removal side of things, and there's not a lot of carbon removal removal technologies out there, unfortunately, that are doing a whole lot of this work, and they're very necessary in order for us to not overshoot these climate goals and and get into a place where we can't roll the clock backwards. You know, and we're stuck in a situation where you know, for instance, the, the, the coral reefs are dying and you know ecology is changing and we're losing animal species and that kind of thing. So we need carbon removal, we need mitigation and we fall in the carbon removal space and, yes, people are extremely interested in it, but still and we're in the middle of raising dollars for this to really promote it big and hopefully we'll win the XPRIZE yeah, hopefully, yeah, tell me more about this and tell me you mentioned something about the, the competition right. 

That's XPRIZE, yeah. 

0:18:58 - Mehmet
Yeah, so so you know, like, is that something that you know you think it can happen soon? 

0:19:06 - Beth
Yes, well, we won't know. The competition doesn't. They won't announce the winner until Earth Day 2025. 

And the reason why is because, in order to win this competition, what you have to do is you have to actually have a facility that removes 1000 tons of CO2. Okay, and then there are also things. You have to remove 1000 tons of CO2, you have to model costs at a million tons of removal, and you have to, and you have to have a model for reaching a billion ton or a gigaton of CO2 removal, which is extremely important because, frankly, unless we can get to the gigaton level, you might not spend your money, because if we can't get there, then we're not doing anything. We should build shelters instead. 

0:20:00 - Mehmet
Yeah, I see. Now I want not just give completely, but, like from your perspective, you know you're taking care of the business, right, so, and you are a leader in a space which is emerging as we spoke, so what I'm curious to know when you are in something which is you're solving an essential global problem, right, but at the same time you have to run the business. So what are some of the strategies you know you employ to stay ahead of the curve? You know, especially in a very innovative domain, and at the same time you're trying to prove your market presence. So what are kind of these strategies that you can share with us? 

0:20:49 - Beth
Well, there's many. Some of them are better than others, right, but I would say, like we are using a lot of outreach. Okay, and so I thank you so much for being interested in this topic, because it's important that everyone, you know climate change and the bad effects of climate change are not just for scientists anymore. Everyone's starting to freak out about it, right? And so what some of the strategies that we use are, you know, really, like I said, outreach, just letting people know there are other alternatives, because there are certain technologies in this space that are kind of sucking up all the oxygen and that's a bad way. So that's a, that's a, just an expression, but what? I'm not literally sucking up all oxygen, I just mean they're taking up all of the you know, they're getting all of the attention in that space and there's, there are things that might not be as beneficial in those technologies. And I'm not knocking on because we hope the best for all of these. There's plenty of room and there's plenty of space in this area for all of these technologies, because there's so much work that has to get done, because so for your, for your listeners, the United Nations and their IPCC report says that we need to be pulling down two to 10 gigatons, I believe, or two to six gigatons by 2030. And if you, and where we are right now is in the tens of thousands globally, okay, and that's net negative. There are carbon capture technologies, okay, that are utilized here in Texas and probably in Dubai, that are capturing CO2. They're just not permanently sequestering it, okay, and that's that's the idea. 

And so some of the strategies that we have to get out are we use promotion. I have a PR firm that is helping us reach out to a lot of, to a lot of podcasters like yourself, to journalists. We kind of just have to let people know there's a different option out there, and so we've been doing. I've been doing a lot of podcasts about this and and writing some articles and such. You could see that on my LinkedIn and and then I mean we just have to fight. We talked to a lot of paint companies, because that's our space, you know. So we work within our space and promote this, and then we're talking to investors so that we can get some bridge financing to really launch this and take it to the next level. 

0:23:38 - Mehmet
That's good to hear and you know like this is my pleasure again, but because this is, I think it's a you know it's the minimum thing we can. 

We can do back, you know, or give back when it comes to making the earth livable. I would say so yeah, of course. So anything that help in that, I would be more than happy to share it on my podcast. And I told you, you know about also the episode we've done with the Gleb Yushin, from you know, the manufacturer of the electric, the batteries for the electric vehicles. So yeah, anything that that can promote that more than happy to do it. Now, out of curiosity, like do you see, because I know, like it's like science, more into science, as you mentioned, and you know all the things but have you considered collaborating with other? I would say, of course, not competition, but you know any. 

0:24:41 - Beth
We like to call them colleagues because we yeah, yeah. 

0:24:44 - Mehmet
So, and you know, maybe because now the world is moving very fast toward, like you know, uniting sometimes different technologies in order to make you know this comes to market much faster. Even sometimes I can see people leveraging this to attract actually the attention of investors. Sometimes you know so are you seeing this some possibility for you to collaborate with, with other companies, even not necessarily in your same domain or the same field, but you know something that can definitely add to your reach, I would say. 

0:25:23 - Beth
Yes, great question, and I hadn't been asked that question very much. But the thing is is that we're all trying in within the space of carbon removal. We are all trying to do the same thing, and we would be there to work with other competitors. I don't consider them competitors, I consider them colleagues that are in this space and we would like to help them. So here's how we could actually do that in is. There are other carbon removal technologies. So, for instance, you'll hear about one the one that's probably best known is called Climeworks, and they've been operating for a number of years and they're pulling down about in the I don't know if they've gone to 40,000 tons, but that I think they they were definitely doing like 4000 tons, and this is in Iceland. They're using energy from a geyser geothermal energy, that and so, anyway, they're located next to that geyser and, and so, for instance, we could work with these and what they have is they have like a fan technology that pulls down. They're these big fans and they pull down CO2, and then the CO2 is converted into a liquid and then it's pushed underground and that's a very simplified way of putting it. But there's a chemical reaction that takes place and then it separates the CO2 and it puts it with water and then they push that underground, like a couple miles underground, into like old saline, old water caves down there or where, or they put it down where there's been oil before that's been depleted. 

And what we could do with if we joined forces and we are definitely interested in doing that, and a lot of people don't cap, you know, catch on to that and that's interesting that you brought it up is that we think we have a better way of sequestering that CO2. So if they, so, yeah, we have our own way of capturing the CO2, and they do too. But we could take their captured CO2 and instead of having to put it down literally two miles down into the ground, which has its own issues Okay, I mean, you know there's geological issues, there's water tables you got to pass by there's it hadn't really been done before. There's a whole bunch of regulatory permitting required for that that hasn't been done we could take their CO2 that they capture and put it through our system and we don't have to sequester down underground. 

We could, but we can either sequester in the paint, we can sequester, and what I mean is that it doesn't. It puts that CO2 in a place that does not re-release into the atmosphere for at least 100 years, and so we have the ability to sequester, like in our paint. And then we have other means of sequestration that are permanent, that don't involve something as difficult as putting it down into the ground like that and in kind of an unknown also. So I think we have a safer, better way to sequester and we could connect with those companies and offer them that surface, and we intend to do so. 

0:28:49 - Mehmet
That's good to hear. Always I like the way you explained it like they are not competitive, they are colleagues. I love to approach, even you know, in my domain, the same thing. Now, final thing, beth, and because I told you before we started, I love also to inspire entrepreneurs, and young entrepreneurs, especially so because you've been in this. So what are some of the things you can give to young entrepreneurs? 

First and this is I'm a little bit changing usually my last question. So first, you know, advice is, in general, so for someone who wants, he or she wants to start her own business, right, but what you can tell them to, because I believe we need more entrepreneurs in this domain, because I believe we don't have enough everyone. You know, unfortunately or fortunately, I don't know but you know, we follow trends. So we people, we follow what we see like it's promising and you know like at some stage, everyone goes fintech, everyone goes like it's what can bring us money. But here we're talking about something what we call the ESG, like environmental, sustainable and governance. So I want to hear like kind words of wisdom from you, beth, because you've been in this for a long time, to first give them some advice and also try to attract them to this space. 

0:30:17 - Beth
Well, yeah, advice on being an entrepreneur is well, you have to have a good stomach, okay, and you have, because it can be a little nerve wracking and there are times when you know if you come up with something innovative, you might not have someone that's paying you to do that and that's happened to us many times and if it's good enough, you got to find a way to stick with it, and the way to stick with it is to make sure that, no matter what you're doing, you always have your bread and butter, okay. You always have something that can make money on the side, that can keep you going over here, and so that's one of the more important things about just operating a business. That is new tech. That involves new technology is, you know, have something running that you can make money, and it might not make you a millionaire, okay, but but, but it can keep you going while you're developing this other technology. And or if you can sell funded or whatever you know, then that's that's fine. 

But you're not always going to make money, and if you have a really good idea like this and this is it was so important to us I mean, we were actually just when we realized the, the emergency situation of climate change, and I do every day Now. I mean, then you know, we knew we couldn't do anything else, that we had to do this, and, and especially when we saw the successes, that the technology really works and it works like it does and like it then we were like, well, we got to do this and we got to find a way. And so that's the other thing is, find a way to do it. Don't get knocked down because the first person that you talk to or the 10th person you person you talk to, doesn't act on it. Okay, people are nervous to be the first at something, and so you got to push on through, and that's what we intend to do, and we're putting all stops. We're putting everything that we have, we're throwing everything that we have at this In, you know, in this nascent space. It is a new space, it's nascent. People don't know that much about it. So what we're having to do in addition to that, is teach them about why they need it, and so sometimes in new innovation, you've got to do that. 

We had to do that with our, with our previous technologies in the paint company, in the paint industry, because you probably wouldn't know this unless you were in the paint industry. But putting biological molecules into paint was a complete like paradigm shift in that industry. And the reason why is because paints degrade okay, they, they get moldy and you can't use them anymore. And they do that in the can. No one wants to put. They thought they didn't want to put biologicals in the paint because biologicals were called causing this spoilage. And so we had to overcome that whole mentality in the in the whole industry, and we did that, for it took us a you know a number of years in the paint industry to just for them to realize it's okay, we can put these things in, they become stable, they work, they don't spoil your paint. 

But we had to fight that, just that notion of it. And so I know I'm just kind of rambling on about it, but that was just my experience is that we just had to keep on pushing. We had to keep on letting people know what's out there so that the end user has an expectation, you know, because otherwise you just have, like the big companies that are shaping the space and you know you might need to get out there and let people know there's an alternative that you're not seeing. That you know is not being produced by one of the big giant conglomerates that you're so used to. So in our case, that would be Sherwin Williams, axo, noble, ppg the big giant paint companies. We've had to fight that, and they like to keep their innovation in-house. So that's a challenge, and so you just have to keep so. We're using a lot of promotional tools, including AI, to really get this technology out there so that we can get some traction. 

0:34:43 - Mehmet
That's good. I have good advice. Final question where we can find more about yourself and the company better. 

0:34:51 - Beth
Yeah, our company is called Reactive Surfaces and that's like surfaces of a table, not services I always have to make that I would write that in the show. 

0:35:03 - Mehmet
No, don't worry, okay. 

0:35:05 - Beth
And you can reach me on my LinkedIn. But you'll see, on Reactive Surfaces there are several different tabs with our different technologies. So you can go to the Carbon Capture Codings tab and you can learn more about that. And we've had a lot of recent articles in USA Today Success Magazine. I can provide those to you if you'd like to put them in your links to the podcast. 

0:35:28 - Mehmet
Yeah, sure, so audience will be seeing that, don't worry about it, beth. Thank you very much for your time. Today I learned something new, and this is really I appreciate the time, and I am sure the audience as well, whether they are listening or watching this, they have learned a lot, because at that maybe I repeated also several times today it's for a bigger cause, which is saving the planet and keeping things as should be, at least so to not go worse. As you said, we cannot flip the clock at some stage, maybe later on, and we're all in this together. 

0:36:07 - Beth
It brings the whole world together. No one is safe from this. So we all have to band together this time. 

0:36:15 - Mehmet
Yeah, exactly, and again, thank you very much, and this is usually how I end my episode. So if you're listening to this the first time, I hope you enjoy it, I hope you will subscribe and keep coming. And for the loyal fans who always keep sending their notes and their suggestions, thank you very much also for all your support that you showed this year and because in the new year we will have, like, more topics similar to this and even some topic that we didn't discuss before. So stay tuned and thank you very much for tuning in and we'll meet again very soon. Thank you, bye, bye.