Daan Roosegaarde turns pollution into diamonds

“Going green will cost too much” wail the deniers, in their increasingly desperate attempts to prevent us cleaning up the world. Not if you could turn the mess into something valuable-like diamonds maybe? And Daan Roosengarde is not only sucking the air clean, he is -amazingly- turning the dirt he collects into beautiful diamonds.

One day Daan was in Beijing and when he looked out of his hotel window he realised that he couldn’t see to the other side of the windowsill, or something like that. So he came up with a tower which sucked all the particles out of the air (don’t worry, it’s solar powered) thus cleaning things up considerably. But what to do with all the filth he had thereby collected? We’ll let Hailey Reissman tell the story for TED [1] But as an extra bonus she has included a TED talk by Daan in which he explains his accomplishments.

Daan is hoping to roll out his magic towers across the world. We wish him well. And get this-if you believe in the nuclear family, then the price of engagement rings just got a whole lot cheaper.