Imagine grabbing a tube of paint, dipping your brush in the black goop and gliding the brush across a canvas. Pretty normal, right? Now image that black goop is made entirely of air pollution emitted from vehicles across Asia, and you can actually use that polluted air to create a masterpiece.
Tiger Beer, working alongside Marcel Sydney and MIT spinoff Graviky Labs, did just that, creating the first line of ink made from air pollution. The brand created 150 liters (roughly 40 gallons) of Tiger Air-Ink in pens, markers and spray cans so that different types of artists could experiment with it.
Tiger then took the product to up-and-coming street artists in Asia, a region facing major pollution concerns, and asked them to work their magic with the spray paint and pens.
“The streets are not only a great place to drink Tiger, they’re also the place where creativity, ideas and passion are born,” Mie-Leng Wong, director of international brands at Tiger Beer, Heineken Asia Pacific, said in a statement.
“By using our entrepreneurial spirit to repurpose pollution into ink, the lifeblood of creativity, we’re giving creative people the tools to enhance their streets, and empowering inventors like Anirudh to take small but impactful actions against air pollution.”
To bring the ink to life, Graviky Labs founder Anirudh Sharma and his team created a series of tools that attach to pollution emitters like the tailpipes of cars. Once in place, the device captures any raw carbon and soot that might seep into the air. That is then put through a purification process to ensure its safe for anyone to use.
While not the first innovative use of exhaust, this technology can be adapted for larger vehicles and vessels, from boats to cranes, to capture even more pollution and clean up the air in Asia one pen and painting at a time.
The line isn’t avabile for sale just yet, but Tiger Beer is working with Graviky Labs to create more of the product for future projects.
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