CleanFiber

CleanFiber makes cellulose insulation out of recycled cardboard. Cellulose insulation has always been made from recycled newsprint, and newsprint is disappearing, because people stopped buying newspapers. The industry that depends on that feedstock is watching its raw material evaporate while cardboard, thanks to everything arriving in a box, piles up in growing volume.

CleanFiber's wet process impregnates fire retardant into fibers drawn from corrugated residuals, and the result is a better product than the newsprint version: less dust, no clogging in the installer's blower, and a drop-in replacement with no reason for a customer to hesitate. Insulation is the least exotic decarbonization there is. It stores carbon in the wall for the life of the building and cuts what the house burns every winter after. It took ten years to work out how to make it from cardboard.