From ionising towers to bicycles, Dutchman’s smog-removing inventions stand to clear the air in polluted China
Daan Roosegaarde’s Smog Free Towers in Beijing and Tianjin parks use ionisers to suck in pollutants and pump out clean air; now he wants to do the same for individuals riding bicycles by harnessing their pedal power
The sky is blue and Dutch innovator and designer Daan Roosegaarde is sitting in the outdoor lounge at Shanghai’s Puli hotel, holding a beer in one hand and a small, clear plastic zip bag filled with a black powder in the other.
He’s just back from installing one of his seven-metre-tall Smog Free Towers in a park in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, after successfully setting up a similar structure last year in Beijing’s 798 Art District.
“This is Beijing smog,” he says, holding up the bag, “the stuff we’re sucking up from the skies with our tower … It’s actually a lot of pollution from the factories, coal factories, cars, a lot of rubber from tyres. Every city has a different mix. We wanted to do something with this stuff we’re collecting from the tower, as we think that waste should not exist.”
“Forty-two per cent of this black pollution powder we collect is carbon; and carbon under high pressure is of course diamond, so we made Smog Free Jewellery,” Roosegaarde says, pulling out a small, stainless steel ring with a black cube inside a larger one made of clear resin, while the waiter nearby arches a curious eyebrow.
“By buying a ring, you donate 1,000 cubic metres of clean air. It’s redefining luxury. Luxury is not necessarily about an LV bag or a Ferrari; it’s about clean air.”
Roosegaarde’s innovations combine the quirky and symbolic with the grand and powerful. The Smog Free Towers (the largest air purifiers in the world) create around them a “bubble” of clean air, and use only about 1,100 watts of energy, a similar amount to an electric kettle. He’s now developing one powered by solar panels.