Alright, so you’ve just booked your vacation in the Caribbean. It’s been a while since you’ve had any sort of vacation, so you’re especially excited. You quickly drop your things at the hotel, swap into the swimsuit, then rush out to the beach…
…only to find it’s turned green.
Yes – there’s a decent chance you may stumble across a green beach someday soon. And when we say “green beach”, we mean it both literally and figuratively. Let us explain!
Project Vesta: Tapping into Earth’s natural CO2 removal process
Did you know that the Earth has a natural CO2 removal process?
It happens when rain falls on volcanic rock, causing it to degrade and flow into a nearby ocean. This “traps” CO2 under the sea bed, removing it from the atmosphere – naturally and safely!
A new initiative is taking full advantage of this natural process to help clean up our atmosphere – one beach at a time. Called Project Vesta, the initiative will transport this special type of volcanic rock (called olivine) to nearby beaches, maximizing the amount of CO2 the “CO2 trap” can hold.
Not only does this create more opportunity to “trap” CO2, it also speeds up the process – thanks to the waves! As waves crash into the beach, they smash the rock into even smaller pieces, allowing it to carry more CO2 to its safe final resting place.
Bringing theory to practice
Despite the fact that this natural process has been known for years, nobody was doing anything about it – until Project Vesta came about.
“About 30 years of scientific research has gone into this, including a lot of theoretical work, a lot of lab experiments,” says Tom Green, executive director of Project Vesta.
“Where we came along was to say: why is this stuck in the lab? We need real-life beach experiments to prove that this actually works in the wild.”
The project has already begun, with donations pouring in from sources like payment processing company Stripe and others. They announced their first project on Earth Day 2020 – they’ve already selected a beach for the first phase and have commenced sampling of olivine.
The project will continue to ramp up in coming years, especially as it provides real data that the theory works. So, you may not be finding green beaches on your next vacation… but in time, all the world’s beaches could end up green (in more ways than one)!
Learn more at https://projectvesta.org/