From Climate Scepticism

BY JIT

We are pollution.

Humans breathe out 500 ml of air at 4% CO₂ concentration * 12 breaths per minute * 60 minutes per hour * 24 hours per day * 365.25 days per year – that’s north of 3 tonnes of CO₂ per person, per year, year in, year out. Every breath you take is your little contribution to the climate crisis. Don’t be thinking that you can give up flying and swap to an electric vehicle and everything will be OK. It won’t. As long as you’re alive, you’re part of the problem.

That’s where we come in. Don’t worry, we don’t offer to send hitmen around to your house to reduce your carbon emissions that way! Instead, we’ve developed the VIRTUEsignal mask to help you take the guilt out of just being alive.

The idea for the VIRTUEsignal came when our CEO took a holiday to the Maldives, and with a pang of guilt wished that he could somehow attach some sort of device to his G5 private jet to absorb the CO₂ shooting out the back as he whizzed over the Indian Ocean. Well, we had to lower our horizons a little, and decided to make a start by tackling personal emissions at source instead.

Disposable Filter

Both daytime models of VIRTUEsignal have disposable filters that should be good to absorb 6 hours of CO₂ exhalation. The content of the filters is proprietary, but the key mineral comes from artisanal mines in the Belgian Congo. The international commodity trade offers great opportunities for young Congolese entrepreneurs to learn new skills. We don’t use machines in our mining operations, so you don’t need to worry about great diesel monstrosities spewing out tonnes of CO₂ and doing the work of a hundred on your behalf. In our mines, a hundred do the work of a hundred! Our workers get paid for what they dig. Working out how much we owe them improves their numeracy levels too – it’s a win-win, because there are no schools where they can learn such skills.

Once the minerals are extracted, we ship them to China to be refined, and of course we observe the highest environmental standards every step of the way. We have green certificates to prove it! After that, the refined minerals are shipped to the UK, where we assemble the filters in our VIRTUEsignal factory, built in Sunderland on the site of a former car parts manufacturer. The local council wanted us in so badly, they offered to pay our rent for the first 3 years, and waived business rates for the first half decade. The disposable cartridges themselves are of tough plastic. A patented magic dye reacts to the CO₂ passing through the filter; new filters have a healthy green hue, and when the filter is full, they turn a dull hellscape red. When it goes red, it’s dead. Simply twist, remove and replace. After that, the spent cartridge can just be thrown in with the rest of your rubbish. Once buried in landfill, the CO₂ should remain trapped for at least 500 years.

The Gaia and the Greta

The entry level mask is the Gaia. This will retail at about £9.99, and comes with a free starter cartridge. The Greta meanwhile is our flagship mask (about £99.99), and comes in the form of a mischievous goblin. A stylish upgrade to the Gaia, the Greta is Wi-Fi enabled, and can be set to automatically tweet to your thousands of followers whenever you reach a CO₂ saving milestone. We like to think of it as showing off the size of your halo! Both masks have handy straw holes, so you can drink your oatmilk latte without letting any CO₂ into the atmosphere.

A year’s supply of replacement cartridges should cost under £5000, not including double-capacity overnighters which go with our extra-comfort Hypnos mask (likely to be priced at £19.99, with a free double-capacity cartridge).

At under £100 per week, it’s an inexpensive way to show the world you care.

VIRTUEsignal: we take care of your personal emissions. Together, we tackle the climate crisis.