Ep.4: Will Biochar Save Us? from "How to be in sustainability when the vibes are off"

Garrett explained biochar with a pistachio shell (an actual pistachio shell) and used it to explain one of the most elegant concepts in carbon science. 

Everything alive is carbon-based. When organic matter dies and breaks down naturally, its carbon bonds get broken: the carbon either escapes as CO2 into the atmosphere or converts into methane, both potent contributors to the greenhouse effect. This is the "fast carbon" cycle, the one that, combined with centuries of burning fossil fuels ("slow carbon" dug up from underground and made into “fast carbon”), has overloaded our atmosphere and is causing climate change. 

Biochar interrupts that cycle. By taking organic matter such as pistachio shells, cactus trimmings, cotton waste, or in Bioforcetech's case, municipal sewage sludge, and heating it to extreme temperatures with no oxygen present, the carbon bonds lock into tight chains that can't be broken. The carbon is fixed, stable, and effectively removed from the atmosphere for centuries, if not millennia. 

"People have been taking slow carbon and making it fast carbon. What biochar does is take fast carbon and make it slow." Garrett Benisch 

The carbon economy has been running a deficit for over a century. Biochar is one of the few tools that can genuinely replenish that store - not by offsetting emissions elsewhere, but by physically removing carbon from circulation and locking it away. 

Not all biochar feedstocks are created equal. What makes Garret’s work with Bioforcetech particularly striking is what they start with: municipal biosolids: the solid residue from wastewater treatment plants. Everything that gets flushed down the toilet, discharged from food processing facilities, or sent through industrial effluent eventually concentrates into this material. It's wet, heavy, contaminated with PFAS, microplastics, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, and every other chemical that finds its way into the water supply. And right now, Garret noted, taxpayers are paying per ton to deal with it. 

The current options for dealing with this waste are not great. Most US biosolids either go to landfill where they break down as methane (a greenhouse gas roughly 80 times more potent than CO2) or get spread on farmland, where PFAS and other contaminants migrate directly into soil, groundwater, and food systems.  

Bioforcetech's process changes that math entirely. Their machines dry the biosolids and convert them through a thermochemical process that destroys contaminants and produces a material they call OurCarbon. The result is game-changing. The municipality sees a 10x reduction in mass, carbon gets sequestered rather than released into the atmosphere, and the resulting material which is clean enough for food containers, enters the product stream. 

"We have a rare event: you're actually catching and concentrating upstream contaminants. We're a break point where we can solve that contamination problem."  Garrett Benisch 

On PFAS specifically, the results are striking. Independent testing by third-party engineering firms and the EPA has shown 99.9% PFAS removal from air emissions, scrubbing water, and the final material. For a class of chemicals known as "forever chemicals" precisely because they don't break down, this is extremely good news. 

Once produced, the biochar can be used in multiple ways: as a black pigment (replacing carbon black, which is currently derived from fossil fuel byproducts and found in everything from mascara to eyeglasses to furniture), as a concrete additive (either as a partial cement or aggregate replacement) and in an expanding range of designed products including flooring, tiles, and 3D-printed furniture. In fact their biochar concrete is achieving 60% lower global warming potential than standard concrete at the same compressive strength. 

Ren and Garrett met through a shared frustration: the certification system wasn't built for what Bioforcetech is doing. Getting an EPD (Environmental Product Declaration) is a standard request from any specifying designer which turned into a multi-year process because the entire infrastructure of product declarations assumes inputs, categories, and production processes that simply don't apply to biochar. 

Biochar has no established category in most material specs. It can replace carbon black, but it isn't carbon black. It can substitute for sand in concrete, but it doesn't meet ASTM C33 sand standards. It comes from a municipal public-sector process, not a factory with controllable ingredients. There was no secondary data for the machines Bioforcetech invented. They had to build their LCA from scratch. 

"The peg and the hole don't fit. The people producing these certifications think we're the coolest thing since sliced bread but it just doesn't fit." — Garrett Benisch 

Garrett's Henry Ford analogy cut to the heart of it: for years after the automobile existed, people called them "horseless carriages." The vocabulary for the new thing was still borrowed from the old one. Biochar is in that same phase, typically described in terms of what it replaces, waiting for the moment when its own category exists and everyone forgets what came before. 

The goal is to accumulate enough performance data, case studies, and demonstrated use cases that the category defines itself. 

Getting biochar into buildings isn't a supply chain problem, it's a human problem, and the path through that problem runs directly through the design profession. 

Garrett described a project with SOM in which the project architect laid out the exact sequence of conversations required to get a biochar concrete pilot approved. It wasn't a single meeting. It was a chain: owner, then architect, then structural engineer, then back to the owner with the structural engineer's sign-off, then contractor, then concrete plant for testing, then back to the structural engineer with the plant's confirmation. Each handshake had to happen in order for the project to go forward. 

"The human factors and the social aspect are oftentimes the biggest hindrance." — Garrett Benisch 

But there's a second, larger role for designers that goes beyond individual project procurement. Bioforcetech's machines are purchased by municipalities and those municipalities need to know there's a market for the material before they'll invest in the infrastructure. When designers specify biochar in concrete pilots, in flooring, in furniture they create visible, documented demand for the end use. They close the loop that makes municipal adoption viable."If we don't have this full supply chain set up and this demand," Garrett said, "the whole initial case might fall apart."  

Designers, in other words, aren't just end users of this material, they're market-makers. Their specifications send a signal upstream that moves an entire system. 

Ren connected it directly to the circularity argument she makes in her work with Cradle to Cradle Certified: designers radiate impact beyond the walls of their own projects. A single specification decision can provoke systems change within a municipality, decontaminate a waste stream, sequester carbon, and create a material story that rewrites how an entire community thinks about what it throws away. 

Holly closed with the questions she asks every guest. What should designers let go of right now and what should they double down on? 

Garrett's answer on letting go was a hot take: If you're spending significant mental energy making sure your coffee cup lands in the right recycling bin, stop. Not because individual choices don't matter, but because the neurological cost of that vigilance may be crowding out capacity for the things that actually scale. "Throw it all in the trash," he said, "and focus on enabling pilots with materials like ours or convincing your leadership to make a path toward sustainability." 

His answer for doubling down was the inverse of his hot take: build the scalable habit into every project. Instead of optimizing the same daily cup, build in one meeting per week with a new material company. Build in team capacity on material health and innovation. Create a standing pilot opportunity on every project. "Do that day by day," Garrett said, "and you're going to do a lot more for the planet than the same cup every morning." 

"It allows us to be possibility-focused, not problem-focused. And that opens our brains to greater creative solutions." — Holly Holton 

Ren ended where we started: with a Captain Picard quote from Star Trek: "Engage!” she told designers and meant it literally. There are pilots to run, municipalities to connect with, and specifications to write. Our Star Trek future awaits! 

Here’s Garret’s current playlist: 

His favoritte pump-up jam: The Joker and the Thief by Wolfmother 

His current go-to song to spark creativity: Echolocations: Canyon album by Andrew Bird