Alejandra Cortes
ANA CATALINA GONZALEZ QUINTANILLA
Alan Valle
Ana Paula Velazquez Chao
EGADE Business School Tecnologico de Monterrey
Ezequiel Reficco
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Monterrey is known as one of Latin America’s most contaminated cities with very poor air quality; also it is one of the cities with a high number of visual contamination (billboards). Pollumesh is a transparent coating that can be applied to external advertising on almost any kind and form of surface that neutralizes pollutants in the air around the surface focusing on combustion particles.
The first smog-eating billboard was born as part of a University project lead by Daan Roosegarde a Dutch architect and designer. The project focused on how to mitigate pollution in general in Monterrey, Mexico. Monterrey is known as one of Latin America’s most contaminated cities with very bad air quality counts and 9,712 billboards in the city.
The company's mission is to use the existing billboards and turn them into positive city infrastructure in order to help eliminate pollution in Monterrey. Pollumesh was created as a transparent coating that can be applied in almost any kind and form of surface, it is activated with sunlight or visible light, creating a photocatalysis process and this way it neutralizes pollutants in the air around the surface it is applied to, focusing on NOx and SOx particles that come from combustion.
The target market is companies concerned with the environment that seek for their products and their advertising to follow the same consistent line of social responsibility and sustainable innovation. One coated Pollumesh Billboard is the equivalent of 120 trees absorbing CO2.
"Our project was focused on how to mitigate pollution in general in our city of Monterrey and as we know is known as one of Latin America’s most contaminated cities.
We wanted to turn something negative in our city, like excess of exterior advertising and billboard structures, into something positive, improving our air quality. We are focusing on taking advantage of existing exterior structures and surfaces and applying our coating to them. We don’t need to adapt, construct, or make special adaptations for our solutions, so it makes it a simple way to clean our air."
92% of the world population lives in places where air quality levels exceed WHO limits. Overexploitation of natural resources and environmental degradation will lead to severe, widespread, and irreversible changes for people, assets, economies, and ecosystems worldwide. With Pollumesh 1 Billboard technology it cleans the air for 5.45 people equivalent to oxygen that cleans 120 trees in a day.
Pollumesh is aware their technology applied only to billboards, even though it would be applied to all of them in Monterrey, would not have a significant impact on air pollution reduction. That is why the team is currently working on developing a broader product portfolio which now includes trucks and signboards. Also, they are interested in adapting their technology so it could be applied in manufacturing processes structures, such as the production lines and factory buildings.
The technology has been implemented so far only in a few countries, but this can be easily scaled to any city or country by doing additional R&D to verify that the coating does not require any modification to be applied to the surface providing the expected results. Pollumesh's goal is to develop products for various types of surfaces so that its mesh can be applied to most existing structures.
The coating is sold as the main product, it can be used in billboards, trucks, and packaging. The customer only needs to invest 25USD to clean air equivalent to 1.2 trees. Companies are concerned with the environment that seeks their advertising follow the same consistent line of social responsibility and sustainable innovation.
Right now 15 billboards have been placed in Monterrey city.
For every billboard, it cleans the air for 5.45 people and one truck is equivalent to 56.4L of clean oxygen.
The innovation improves the air quality and life for the community, encourages companies to act on environmental protection, and can be innovated to several layers to keep cleaning the air.
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Ana Cecilia Alvarez, Co-founder
Ana Maria Peñuñuri, Co-founder
Frida Fernanda Leal, Co-founder
Pollumesh's innovation consists of a coating that is applied to billboards to transform visual contamination into clean air. They do not lease the billboard, they provide the service to the advertiser to add to their signboard the coating and contribute to having better air quality while increasing their sales and brand awareness. Pollumesh is working to scale up its business and diversify its portfolio to cover other surfaces such as trucks and buildings.