Our mission is to remake Consumer Electronics to respect people and the planet. We’re reducing environmental impact by designing products to last longer through easy repair and upgrade, maximizing use of recycled and recyclable materials, and finding ways to extend life through re-use, and we’re always looking for opportunities to do better. Today, we’re excited to introduce an option to make your Framework Laptop fully carbon neutral through carbon capture and sequestration. To celebrate Earth Day, all Framework Laptop orders through this Sunday, April 24th have $100 USD of carbon capture included for free!
We estimate that manufacturing and transporting a Framework Laptop generates a third of a metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. Most of the emissions come from processing materials like aluminum and steel and from energy-intensive chip fabrication. We’d love to see foundries and fabs improve their energy sources, but instead of waiting, we’re setting up a path to sink the same amount of carbon instead. We’re enabling the option for carbon neutrality by buying carbon capture and sequestration from carbon suppliers and reselling it through the Framework Marketplace. We’re committed to building a climate-conscious product ecosystem, so we’re doing this entirely at cost, passing through the pricing we pay and eating payment processing fees.
Our first supplier is Running Tide, an amazing startup based in Maine that is literally sinking carbon in the ocean through floating bio-buoys that grow kelp microforests over a period of months and then sink to the ocean floor, sequestering carbon for hundreds to thousands of years. The carbon sequestration industry is brand new, and Running Tide is one of the first companies to deliver practical carbon capture at commercial scale, with a path to bringing down costs in the future. We’ll continue to look for opportunities to fund creative startups in this industry to collectively scale up from kilotons to megatons and eventually the gigatons that are needed to head off climate change.
We’ve purchased 334 metric tons at $300/ton, which covers 1,000 Framework Laptops worth of emissions at $100/laptop. We’ll continue to buy more inventory as all of you order it. We’re designing ways to introduce this into the Framework Laptop ordering flow, while in the meantime you can pick it up directly from the Framework Marketplace to add to your order. Feel free to make your existing Framework Laptop carbon neutral or even buy carbon capture totally separately from a laptop!
Sinking carbon in the ocean? Does that even make any sense? Is that what “carbon neutral” means anytime someone says it?
It doesn’t decrease the demand for fossil fuels.
It isn’t free.
All the fruits are sank in the ocean aka destroyed.
In what way is this beneficial?
It’s probably counted as environmentally beneficial because it’s removed from the atmosphere. The only way to actually eliminate it from the planet would be to shoot it into space. Someone must have done some kind of greenhouse math for this.
I’d be more concerned about how this upsets the oceanic biosphere. Taking biomass from the surface and sinking it in an unnatural way (albiet with natural materials, assuming the buoy is biodegradable) sounds like it would disturb the food chain and population levels. Granted, I’m not a biologist. And the minutiae of methodology probably isn’t worth the controversy in this space.
Give the people what they want. It’s impressive that the Framework team is always coming up with fresh ideas. To me it sounds a bit like combining “paying it forward” and a social credit system. I do love the way you guys are always pushing the envelope, though. It’s exciting to be a part of this group of innovators, if only in a peripheral way.
The idea behind ‘carbon neutral’ is that an amount of carbon equivalent to that generated during manufacture of a thing is removed from the atmosphere, so production of that thing doesn’t increase the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere.
There are two aspects to managing pollution. The first is reducing generation of greenhouse gasses, which ends up with less carbon and other pollutants in the air. Achieving that is up to the manufacturers, and since reducing emissions costs more than not reducing emissions there need to be other incentives. The most common are tax credits, energy credits, reduced tariffs, etc; things that offset the cost. Earning public good will is another motivator, or a motivated board of directors who see reducing emissions as valuable despite the costs.
The second aspect is reducing the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere, which is where ‘carbon-neutral’ and sequestration come in: pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and locking it up somewhere else to reduce the overall effect of global warming. Sinking it in the ocean is an appealing approach because that’s one way nature already deals with excess carbon in the atmosphere.
Interestingly, almost every mass-extinction event in Earth’s history coincides with and was likely caused by increased volcanism, which pumps extreme amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and caused periods of global warming. Earth’s ecosystem eventually recovered from those events by sequestering that carbon in plants. In each case I understand it took hundreds to thousands of years to restore equilibrium.
The plants which sequestered that carbon millions of years ago eventually decomposed into the fossil fuels we burn today; we’re releasing ancient carbon nature sequestered from earlier warming events.
Does Running Tide have any kind of report on how well they’re doing? For example, how many tons of plants they’ve planted/CO2 they’ve dumped, what is their success rate, what are the running cost ($$ & C02) of these operations, etc.
Would like to purchase this once Framework comes to Japan, but would also like to know some more details beforehand.
This is excellent to see! I’ve been supporting Climeworks and Wren for a long time, but I can’t support them right now on my disability pension.
I’ve looked into Running Tide a little bit and their science is really interesting. For those interested, Climeworks stores carbon in rocks deep underground (high cost per volume, but long-term sequestration), Wren supports and starts projects to prevent new carbon release and planting forests etc (very low cost per volume, but only short-term sequestration). We need all these strategies but they work on different timescales.
The carbon-loaded rocks at the bottom of the ocean are the planet’s biggest carbon storage unit. One of the ways that carbon gets there is through marine snow. Artificially sinking decomposing biomass to the bottom of the ocean sounds like exactly that on an accelerated timescale. SciShow did a video in 2020 that focused specifically on marine snow, but they talked a lot about the relationship to the carbon cycle in general.
I have heard rumblings of 3D ocean-farming projects in Maine, and it would be cool if what Running Tide is doing could help support that biosphere in a bottom-up approach.
Kudos to Framework for going beyond just the minimum to do business.
I am not that familiar with Running Tide, but I will certainly look into their methods.
As a land manager, permaculturist, and someone directly affected by the current mega drought in the western US, I would love to see other options available that would actively re-sink the short cycle carbon lost from our soils in the last century through our farming, ranching, mining, and development practices. Sinking carbon to the bottom of the ocean is definitely a long term benefit, but in my opinion, revegetation and restoring soil carbon will have a greater benefit in shorter time periods in terms of reversing desertification type climate change effects, restoring watershed function, and ecosystem function. “The Carbon Farming Solution” by Eric Toensmeier does a great job of putting facts, figures, and deployable methods to this problem. I am trying to implement these on the land under my direct control, and my wider watershed, and soon to be collaborating with Restoration Agriculture Development as they try to scale up their design and install of ecosystem based commercial scale agriculture.
So, my suggestion is not necessarily to stop the program with Running Tide, but to add additional options for which method / program to support.
I am not sure why you replied with permaculturist struck through. You state later that your intent was to not be antagonistic, but I cannot see any other purpose for that edit.
For now I will chalk it up to not understanding my meaning, and more importantly not understanding what permaculture is, does, and most importantly could do if more human activities were designed with its principles as guidance. There are quite a few using the word without truly comprehending its meaning and methods, so no surprise there. I will simply invite you to look more deeply into the subject, and will be happy to point you to the primary source writers and designers doing amazing work, if you care enough to ask.
Is doing “less bad” by the environment good enough? Nope. Is Framework doing less bad than the competition? Yup, so they got my money. All I was suggesting was a way to do just a little bit more good and give people more options. The bottom line is this: what atmospheric carbon reduction strategy will it take to pull back from mass extinction risk? All of them.
CO2 is food for plants. No matter how much we produce, there will always be plants who are happy to consume it.
We should be much more worried about the numerous other chemicals produced while making computers that are toxic, like heavy metals and phthalates.
Obsessing about CO2 is trendy now, because big business and big media have made it thus, but it is all meant as a distraction from the serious pollutants, which big business has no intention of decreasing.
No, discussion around that is fine, since Framework sees this as a valuable tool. Trying to “educate” other users with scientifically questionable (or outright wrong) statements is not, and pointing out that others are being misled if they do not adhere to this thinking is definitely wrong.
We are here to discuss the Framework laptop. The revelation that Running Tide is perhaps not what was promised is worth discussing.
Political discussions are just too volatile to take place here and are rarely relevant - there are other venues for these discussions.
Moderation on this forum is really very light. We do not often moderate, but when we do put out a light warning, take it seriously since any pushback on the warning will necessitate further and more drastic action.
Yep that is called greenwashing. A lot of the “green” businesses like Tesla and windmills are actually worse for the environment. If someone really wants green transportation, they should be using a 100% recyclable and biodegradable thing called a horse
Like with many things, the options available to achieve carbon neutrality are dependent on businesses providing solutions, and businesses won’t touch anything that doesn’t lead to a big profit (enough to pay for country club fees, private school for the kids, and a McMansion for every executive) and those profits often involve cutting corners and/or doing really bad things to the environment and possibly using slave labor in Xinjiang etc. I like to recommend the documentary Planet of the Humans (produced by M Moore) to get a view of just how big business has hijacked and ruined the formerly grassroots “green” movement.
I’m in favor of long term carbon sequestration because while trees do a good job short term, they are quite vulnerable. I own 25 acres of forest in California with large trees and I protect it as best I can but it could go up in smoke tomorrow and there would be nothing I could do to stop that large release of carbon directly into the atmosphere. The MIT Technology Review article is very interesting and perhaps gives Frame.Work a reason to consider another sequestration method. Regarding products being carbon-neutral, I agree it is oriented towards consumers but just try not being a consumer. Even a vegan needs to buy refrigerator unless he has a root cellar and wants to live on potatoes all winter.
Perhaps you don’t mean to come across as preachy but this is by and large unobtainable for most people I would think. I have no idea what land prices are like in the UK but 40 acres on an island with limited space for people sounds expensive. I live in a rural state in the US and 40 acres here would still cost you a pretty penny.
If you are saying that the majority of your electrical consumption comes from using your laptop…I don’t believe it, not at 40C temps. That is dangerously hot and requires A/C unless you have an incredibly well designed and insulated home.
It just comes across as incredibly privileged to me.
None of that matter to the main point. Attempts to buy carbon credits is just putting lipstick on a pig. Reductions in emissions will always be better than carbon credits. A manufacturer program that responsibly deals with waste would lend far more credence to what Framework preaches than this Carbon Credit program. This criticism is not new in any way and has been repeated by others on the forum and I’m sure elsewhere.
I live in MS, there are NO recycling programs of any kind in the town I live, there is no public funding for such a program. There is limited ways for me to properly dispose of hazardous wastes. It’s a pain in the ass as it is for me recycle plastic bags and the like, a local hardware store has some bins set up for the purpose but they really are insufficient for a town of the size I live in.
I’m all for re-use of mainboards as that is superior to recycling. There isn’t even a proper way for users who are upgrading to advertise old boards for sale or donation. Not everyone wants to or has a project to repurpose old boards. Framework has done better than most and they credit for that but they haven’t done enough. I would prefer they spent the money on these carbon credits on something that isn’t of questionable value.
Socialists were always backed by capitalists though, starting with the Lenin and Trotsky who were given $millions by Wall St. to incite their phony revolution. Their “caring” resulted in tens of millions dying in camps, often worked to death, plus millions starving to death in Ukraine.
There’s nothing freakish about caring for your health, community and local environment. True independence can be hard to accomplish without wealth. Maybe you can write a book about how you did it.
It’s impressive that the Framework team is always coming up with fresh ideas. To me it sounds a bit like combining “paying it forward” and a social credit system. I do love the way you guys are always pushing the envelope, though. It’s exciting to be a part of this group of innovators, if only in a peripheral way.