The beverage company Asahi Soft Drinks Corporation will install in June on the streets of Tokyo several vending machines that absorb CO2. If the initiative works, it plans to install them nationwide.

Vending machines are quite polluting devices. Not because of their functioning, but because of the heat they produce and the large amount of electricity they consume, when they remain in operation 24/7, keeping the drinks fresh in the street, with temperatures that rotate 40 degrees in summer.

Asahi Soft Drinks wants to reduce your carbon footprint by installing vending machines that absorb CO2. What do you do with it?

Vending machines that devour CO2

The press release does not explain how they work, but it does state that inside there is a mechanism that absorbs the air and stores CO2. Purified air is used in cooling work, or is expelled back outdoors.

In this first version each vending machine catches the same CO2 a year as 20 cedars 55 or 60 years old. Despite this, it is only 20% of CO2 produced.

It's still a low figure, so the company says they're going to continue refining the absorption mechanism to, in a few years, capture 100 percent of the CO2 they produce, making them carbon-neutral vending machines.

The first coin-operated vending machine was used by the Greeks 2,000 years ago.

You're probably wondering what they do with that CO2 they capture. The project collaborates with other companies that convert CO2 into concrete to make houses, and into plant fertilizer. This prevents it from returning to the atmosphere.

It will also be used for projects that generate clean oxygen and purify the seas, by creating seabed with cement where purifying algae will be planted.

As we say, if the CO2 absorption mechanism works well in the tests, hundreds of these vending machines will be installed all over Japan.

This is an interesting idea, because this system could be applied to all kinds of street furniture that uses electricity, from streetlights to billboards, and thus could help reduce pollution in cities.