What is the solution to this Air-Pollution Problem?

We get asked about this a lot! Everyone expects a solution to this large global threat, and that is acceptable

Lets think about this a bit, from a startup perspective. Humans pollute 95% of Earth’s pollution. As it stands now, though, the world’s population is over 7.3 billion. According to United Nations predictions it could reach 9.7 billion people by 2050, and over 11 billion by 2100.

Air pollution affects everyone. That means it affects all the 7.3 Billion people.

As a startup we are 5 people, we are 11 now (as we raised funds), and how ambitious are we that we are about to solve this large problem. But, we need to have a solution to this. Agreed. Lets see how we can go about this thought.

Lets consider some more numbers off the shelf of W.H.O 4.2 million deaths every year as a result of exposure to ambient (outdoor) air pollution. 3.8 million deaths every year as a result of household exposure to smoke from dirty cookstoves and fuels. 91%of the world’s population lives in places where air quality exceeds WHO guideline limits

Phew!

So if we put a purifier at some 800 CADR (Clean air delivery rate) which is very big (Most of home air purifiers are less than 300 CADR); that covers about 2sqmts then we would need about 5billion air purifiers to purify air in the world and would take 79.3 years to bring air to bearable level. You have to be something beyond crazy to think this can be a solution. This means we should replace every building on earth and build 100x more with air purifiers to do this. This is not even impossible, its worse than that.

So don’t talk to us about purifiers. Although we have built the world’s smallest, smartest, autonomous, portable, connected air purifier, we believe its not a solution to this problem.

Then what IS the solution?

The first problem of air pollution is not air pollution itself. It’s the lack of access to information is the problem. Don’t go blaming your neighbour and humans of the planet when you don’t even have the information.

Awareness to a threat is 50% of the solution and not doing the kind of activities that increase the threat is the other side of it. All the tech that exists out there should be applied in solving this problem.

The solution to this problem is taking responsibility right after being aware. To not drive vehicles that are out of emission standards, to drive better policies across the municipalities, to not burn garbage but find a way to recycle them, compost them, do them at scale, to drive a behavioral change about the health of the one and only planet we got to live on Earth (living on Mars is still a century away).

So lets face it. This is what we do at Ambee. We provide hyperlocal data, data about air near your balcony, or where your child plays that is healthy or tell you the best way to go for a walk or a time to commute to your office, or even tell you when to turn on your purifier and also monitor the place you work and give you insights that are actionable, information that is reliable and recommendations that help make the world a better place.

At Ambee our mission is to improve the health and quality of life for millions of people worldwide by creating the world’s greatest repository of accurate air quality data, that is dependable, insightful and actionable.