The inspiration for The Carbon Trap Project began when our children (Millennials/Gen Z) lamented that they and their friends wished there was some way they could directly help remove carbon from the atmosphere to combat climate change. As an inventor I began to look for a solution. The first part of that process was to look at current means for individuals to remove and sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Planting Trees
I love trees. Always have. Plant more, I say. But there are only so many trees we can plant in our yards. And while we can touch a tree, we can’t really touch the carbon inside it or know exactly how much it holds. Mature trees provide wonderful shade in the summer, but if that shade falls on our solar panels, we may end up using more fossil-fuel-derived electricity, which could put more carbon into the air than we’ve trapped. Hard to know. Even when planting our own trees, it’s difficult to quantitatively verify how much carbon they truly remove.
People can also donate to tree-planting programs, but are we sure the trees are actually planted? I hope so. Then there’s the question of whether they survived droughts, floods, or pests. Were they lost to wildfires? Verification remains a big problem. It's even more intangible.
Composting
Biomass composting has many environmental benefits, but it isn’t an efficient way to sequester carbon. Even under optimal conditions, only a small fraction of the biomass carbon is stabilized. Most is released back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. If the composting is done right.
I have close family and friends with acreages and large compost piles. They don’t aerate them, which means anaerobic decomposition is producing methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. When I convince them to stir their compost piles for aeration, they use tractors that burn more carbon than the compost sequesters.
Others pay to have biomass transported to municipal sites for composting. But the heavy equipment used to turn and aerate those piles consumes fossil fuels and again releases more carbon than is trapped.
In the end, verification of how much carbon is truly sequestered remains elusive. And in many cases, the process releases more greenhouse gases than it prevents.
Carbon Offsets and Personal Credits
Individuals can buy offsets that promise to support tree planting, forest preservation, or the restoration of peatlands and grasslands. In theory, these projects sequester carbon. But for the individual, the impact is intangible. You can’t see or measure the carbon you supposedly removed.
Donating also raises questions of trust. Were the trees actually planted? Were the wetlands restored? Did the projects survive droughts, floods, pests, or fires? Verification is always the sticking point. Without reliable proof, offsets often feel more like good intentions than guaranteed carbon removal.
Biochar
People could convert biomass into charcoal in their backyards. But using fossil fuels to make charcoal releases more carbon than is trapped. Ditto when using fossil-fuel-generated electricity. One can use wood if one has enough dead wood laying around (I don't want to cut down the tree I planted). The net result is a negative carbon footprint, but still it seems a waste to burn wood that could be turned into charcoal. If there was only a better way to make charcoal.
Then comes the question of what to do with it. Many advocate spreading it into the soil for remediation (biochar). But not all soil needs remediation. Does my yard need it or not? And working it into the ground takes real effort. Worse is the dust.
I once ground charcoal to mix into my garden soil, but it created a fine black dust that I was afraid to breathe. Visions of coal miners’ lung disease came to mind. I adamantly recommend against grinding charcoal.
But herein lies the answer — with a few tweaks.
Homemade Charcoal is the Answer
Nature is already great at scrubbing carbon from the air. Yard waste, sawdust, coffee grounds, and more can be converted into charcoal using renewable, carbon-free energy. We’ll show you how.
Charcoal locks that carbon away permanently. When’s the last time you saw charcoal briquettes rot? Once it’s underground, it’s even more stable, just like the coal that’s been buried for hundreds of millions of years. The question is, how do we get it underground without adding to our carbon footprint?
The Landfill
Every week garbage trucks pass through our neighborhoods collecting trash for the landfill. Just put the charcoal in the trash, where it will be permanently buried. The trucks are going there anyway, so there’s no extra carbon footprint. But can this really make a difference?
Community
Yes, if we work together. Surveys show that about 37% of Americans compost at home. If each of them made charcoal in their backyard just once a year, we would permanently trap 91 kilotons of carbon. That’s 180 times more than Climeworks’ Orca industrial direct air capture plant and 2.5 times more than their largest plant, Mammoth. There’s strength in numbers!
That’s why carbon trapping matters. Together, on a large scale, we can make a real contribution to cleaning the atmosphere. Carbon trapping is the only DIY home project that reliably makes a measurable, negative impact on your carbon footprint. So let’s start putting coal back into the ground — together.