3 days ago
The Filipino engineer bringing sustainability to flight
At just 26, Filipino aeronautical engineer Mark Kennedy Bantugon is already changing how we think about aviation maintenance. With his invention Pili Seal®, a sustainable aircraft sealant made from agricultural waste, he's offering a safer, biodegradable alternative to conventional adhesives used in the aerospace industry – many of which contain hazardous petrochemical ingredients.
His innovation has earned him a spot among the top 10 global winners of the Young Inventors Prize 2025, awarded by the European Patent Office (EPO).
For over half a century, polysulfide-based sealants have been standard in aircraft manufacturing and repair, particularly for sealing fuel tanks. But these products often pose serious health and environmental risks. They can cause skin and respiratory irritation, and their disposal requires special handling due to their chemical composition. Pili Seal® challenges this norm by using the resin of the Pili tree, a substance that is normally discarded as waste by the food and perfume industries in the Philippines.
"I am addressing two different pain points," Bantugon explains. "The first one is the drawbacks of commercial sealants and adhesives. The second one is the 155 million kilograms of annual Pili resin waste. With my Pili Seal, it tackles two different problems with one solution."
Made from this naturally sticky resin, combined with a solvent and hardening agent, Pili Seal® performs under extreme conditions – withstanding fuel exposure, heat, and pressure. It has already passed multiple industry-standard flammability tests, proving its potential for aviation use. But Bantugon sees far wider applications. 'This product is effective in various material applications – metals, wood, glass, ceramic. For example, if you have roof holes, you can use it to prevent leakages,' he says.
Raised in Batangas, a rural province in the Philippines, Bantugon grew up watching his father work the land and his mother teach in the local school. Early memories of patching leaky roofs with chewing gum sparked his fascination with adhesives. That curiosity followed him into his studies in aeronautical engineering and later during an internship at Lufthansa Technik Philippines, where he encountered firsthand the health risks posed by traditional aircraft sealants.
Determined to find a safer, greener alternative, Bantugon spent years experimenting with six types of tree resin before selecting Pili. He refined 84 different formulations before landing on the one that worked. The result: a bio-based sealant that supports a circular economy and could offer a new revenue stream for Philippine farmers.
In 2024, Bantugon founded Pili AdheSeal Inc. to bring the product to market. His work directly contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goal 9 (Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure) – but it's also deeply personal. 'Success,' he says, 'is best experienced when shared.'
Bantugon hopes that Pili Seal® will soon achieve international certification, opening doors for global aviation partnerships. He's also exploring collaborations with construction and automotive industries, aiming to scale production and create sustainable jobs in rural Filipino communities.
Two of Denmark's biggest municipalities are ending their use of Microsoft systems in the latest move by European governments away from US Big Tech companies.
Henrik Appel Espersen, the chairman of Copenhagen's audit committee, told newspaper Politiken that the council is making the decision to move away from Microsoft Office programmes due to the economy and the "monopoly-like" control of the company.
Plus, the foreign policy situation with US President Donald Trump has made the problem "more topical," Espersen added.
The same decision was made in Aarhus, Denmark's second-biggest municipality, where, according to the newspaper, a German system has already replaced Microsoft technology.
Euronews Next contacted both municipalities to independently verify local reporting.
The reported moves from local governments in Denmark follows a public debate in the Netherlands that saw the Dutch parliament approve a series of motions earlier this year to build a digital cloud and reduce its dependence on US cloud technology.
There are concerns from experts who previously told Euronews Next that the Trump administration could either compel tech companies to provide the US with Dutch data or force them to no longer provide cloud services to Europe, which could cause massive disruptions to public services.
The debate on US Big Tech influence has been going on for some time in Denmark, based on the results of an expert panel looking into their influence.
The Danish expert group on tech giants released a report in December 2024 that called for Big Tech alternatives in Europe to "be able to emerge and grow large".
"No one should be forced to use the services of tech giants to get information and participate in social, cultural, and democratic communities," the report said.
It also asked for an "overview" of the tech giants' influence on digital infrastructure in Denmark, saying that the public sector and education systems should not be "dependent" on the services of tech giants.
"We need to fence in the tech giants," Morten Bodskov, Denmark's minister of business and industry, said in a statement at the time.
"If we only use their solutions, it makes our society extremely vulnerable in a world that is changing with pressure from great powers, geopolitical tensions, and a technology race. That is why we must develop our own solutions".
Euronews Next followed up with the panel of experts and the Danish government to see whether this inquiry has been started or promised but did not receive a reply at the time of publication.
Another alternative for Denmark, the Netherlands, and other states concerned about the influence of US Big Tech companies is EU-wide initiatives that are in the works.
The European Commission is holding public consultations until July 3 on the future of cloud legislation in the bloc to "address Europe's gap in cloud and AI infrastructure capacity".
The act will eventually address research and innovation to accelerate data centres for cloud and AI, private investment in sustainable cloud and AI capacity, and increasing the "secure processing capacity" of EU-based cloud providers.
Mario Draghi's 2024 report on the state of Europe's competitiveness noted that the bloc has to "enhance technological infrastructure and reduce dependencies" on non-EU cloud service providers.
