We’ve all seen it—the picture of a sea turtle with a straw up its nose or a plastic bag caught in a shrub and waving in the breeze.

Plastic pollution is real and undeniable. We try to do the right thing in our own homes and recycle our plastic packaging, but we can’t escape the images of piles of plastic washing up on beaches. The irrefutable evidence of the plastic waste problem can feel overwhelming, but what if the solution has been right under our noses all along? What if it’s in the literal air we breathe?

The same air we pollute with carbon dioxide emissions could offer the building blocks needed to create the go-to packaging material we depend on.