Gürtler Finalists for the European Inventor Award 2021 Category: Industry German chemists Christoph Gürtler , Walter Leitner and team have pioneered a technique to use CO ₂ ₂ . Their work has solved a decades-old problem and is paving the way to more sustainable manufacturing. Plastics manufacturing consumes 6-8% of worldwide oil production, contributing significantly to our overall carbon footprint. Polyurethanes - a class of polymers widely used in foams and plastics to make furniture, insulating material, sports equipment and components within electronic devices - also need large amounts of crude oil to source the carbon required for manufacture, rendering the process environmentally unsustainable. In the past, scientists