Decarbonizing Everyday Life

Fossil fuels are all around us, and not just when it comes to transport and electricity. In your closet, your kitchen, your medicine cabinet, even your walls, petroleum products are hiding in plain sight. Our daily lives are built on embodied carbon in the most literal sense. And unlike metal, glass, or plant-based materials, they return cleanly to neither industry nor the earth. They degrade, but never disappear. Decarbonization is about more than renewable energy. It means remaking the stuff of our everyday lives, and with it the supply chains, design decisions, and consumer habits that put that stuff in our hands. This conversation brings together materials innovators, designers, and industry experts working on sustainable alternatives, from new recycling technologies to bio-based alternatives for petroleum-derived textiles, packing materials, and cosmetics. Together they will explore the innovations that could help us move past plastic, and how we can get those sustainable materials out of the lab and into our homes. This event is part of Assembly, the main Swiss stage at Climate Week NYC 2026. As world leaders gather in Midtown Manhattan, Swissnex assembles Swiss and global voices – from private sector innovators and researchers to artists and policymakers – in the East Village for three days of communal climate thinking and action. Assembly speaks to deliberation and democracy – the idea that communities must collectively define their futures – as well as the ongoing, creative, improvisational process of constructing those futures from the pieces of our present. At Swissnex in Boston and New York, we connect Switzerland, North America, and the world in science, education, innovation, and the arts.