301: Could This Change Your Life?: The Climate Tech Revolution

Christiana: [00:29:55] Thank you. So many of us are aware of electronic waste problems that we have, because we know that phones are meant to be obsolescent. And then you have to get your phone replaced every x number of years. All our kitchen appliances are built to be obsolescent and then you have to change those. And what happens with all that electronic waste. So there's a lot of electronic waste that is in our lives. Sadly that is very evident to us. But in addition to that, there's a lot of hidden electronic waste that we don't even think about because it's not evident to us. And here is a solution that is addressing hidden electronic waste. So let's hear from Chloe. So co-founder and CEO of Pulpatronics.

Chloe So: [00:30:45] This startup basically started from a master's project between Imperial College and the Royal College of Art. We were a group of four at the time, and we were fascinated by basically trying to design with nature and for nature to reduce e-waste in the world by using emerging technologies. So RFID technology stands for radio frequency identification. It's heavily used for product identification and product tracking. So if you've been into like a Zara, Uniqlo or Decathlon store, you might have experienced the auto checkout processes where you just kind of dump all your clothing pieces in that basket and it just magically scans. Rfid technology enables that to happen. But the issue is that for that to work, the technology uses a metal antenna and a microchip, and they embed it in the clothing price tag, which is usually made of a mixture between paper plastic. And so as a consumer, when you buy the product, you take it home, you cut it off and you throw that price tag into the rubbish bin, which essentially is landfill. So you're generating e-waste without even knowing it. So we're talking about 45 billion of these tags being made for single use every year. So what we've been able to do is to create a fully recyclable, metal free and plastic free version. So we leverage a laser technology that basically turns paper into a conductive material closer to graphite or graphing. And so paper contains carbon.

Chloe So: [00:32:13] Carbon can turn into graphite or graphite. And so we leverage that laser to basically create that chemical reaction, chemical conversion into a conductive material. So by doing that we simply use paper. We use the laser technology. And we're not, you know, sourcing or mining metals from all over the world. So we're able to kind of reduce emissions on that front. And then the manufacturing method is also, you know, you don't have to go through chemical etching, various methods of like heat pressing, the layering, all of that. So we're able to kind of save cost as well as kind of the missions on that front as well. And then thinking about the end of life, people won't have to be confused on which bin to throw it in. You can throw it into the recycling bin. It can be reused as future paper products again. So we really try to kind of embrace the circular nature of the end of life as well. So our product can cut CO2 emissions Missions of up to 60%, and also reduce the cost of these tags by 30%. So the whole idea is to be more sustainable and to actually give this advanced technology more accessibility across different industries and for different stakeholders. So it's not only just the big retailers that get to use this, but the smaller mom and pop shops could eventually also utilize this as well.

Christiana: [00:33:27] So I'm so glad that she translated as she spoke the complete name of RFID tag, which is radio frequency identification, not something that most of us are aware of. And she explained how it has in the traditional tags a microchip that does have these electronic pieces. Now what they are doing, they are doing it first in clothing, as she explained. But let's just remember that these RFID chips are actually also in our passports. That's how the biometric Information is saved and stored in our passports, and how we can go in and out of our ports quickly. They're in the transport sector because when we do easy passes or bus cards and we just top, you know, something, that's where it is in libraries. It's used to tag books for easier check in and check out. I mean, honestly, it is omnipresent by now that technology. So the fact that they are starting with the fashion industry and moving over to metal free a number one, we are reducing the need for mining for metal. That is really exciting. They are cutting emissions very necessary. They are reducing cost and they're reducing logistics needs. So again, one of these technologies that really is in that sweet spot of smarter economics, smarter logistics, cutting emissions, reducing cost and making it easy for the person holding these tags to be more environmentally friendly without a huge extra lift.

Paul: [00:35:16] If I may, I think I got to applaud her 45 billion of these It's a big number so she's going into this sort of gigantic thing. The idea that you change paper with lasers is straight out of science fiction, but once again, it's absolutely, brilliantly cool that it can go back to being just recycled as normal paper.

Christiana: [00:35:35] You know how many times it can be recycled.

Paul: [00:35:37] You know.

Christiana: [00:35:37] That paper that they're using can be recycled 6 to 7 times before going to the compost.

Paul: [00:35:42] And then it goes to the compost and sends it to a plant and then tree, and then you make more paper. It's the beginnings of the circular economy. I'm getting super excited.

Christiana: [00:35:50] Plastic. Less metal, less silicone. Yeah. It's amazing.

Paul: [00:35:54] And it was achieved with the engineering college, right? Imperial College and the College of Art. And this idea of combining those two, I think is absolutely fabulous. And she's called it she's called it design with nature. But some people will know that this extraordinary spiritual community in Scotland, the Findhorn Foundation, where I've convened meetings before, they talk about co-creation with nature. But here it's not just a spiritual principle. It's like how she's building a business. So a big salute to that.

Tom: [00:36:20] Yeah. And I mean also the value creation opportunity. I mean, the prizes are huge for people getting these things right now. I mean, a 60% reduction in CO2 emissions, but also a 30% reduction in cost. I mean, that's yeah, there's no reason why she can't go on and build an extremely valuable business that is actually helping customers, helping the planet, and helping build a great business for themselves. So this is the place where the innovation and the entrepreneurship and the creativity needs to flow, both because it's actually delivering amazing returns at this critical moment, but also because that builds a great business. So I think I'm discovering I might be a closet venture capitalist in this process. I'm not quite sure what to do with that.

Paul: [00:37:01] I was going to wonder, are you offering, like, investment advice now? Is that going to be like in the show notes? Send us £1 million and we'll send you 10 million back. Maybe. Maybe.

Tom: [00:37:09] Okay. So should we move on?

Paul: [00:37:11] Let's do it. You forgot the drum roll, Tom.

Tom: [00:37:14] The next one that I would like to bring. Addresses the tiny problem of atmospheric carbon buildup, which I know is something that all of us have been to a degree, concerned.

Paul: [00:37:22] No, I heard about that. Yeah. It's like a kind of like a problem. Like, you know, like things getting hotter and, you know, like the energy from the sun and, you know, like ice caps melting. No, I heard about that. True.

Tom: [00:37:29] The parts per million keeps going up and up. And really, it should be 350. And you know, all those other things you may have heard about that issue. And as a result, the climate itself appears to be changing. So let's try and do something about that.

Christiana: [00:37:39] Wait, Tom, I thought all technologies that we have discussed do that. Why are you claiming that you have just discovered this?

Paul: [00:37:47] That's a very good point, Christiana. He's like building it up like this, my one, you know.

Christiana: [00:37:50] Yes.

Paul: [00:37:51] World. Yes.

Tom: [00:37:52] And we don't have an interview, but we do have the audio from an informational video, which we're going to play you now so you can understand the technology.

Emma Money: [00:37:59] Algae can absorb lots of carbon dioxide, so it can buy effects up to 50 times more than terrestrial plants. So just land plants, and it takes just 30g to absorb the same amount as a fully grown tree over less than a process of a year, which is staggering. My name is Emma Money and I am CEO and co-founder of Sinai Skin. Sinai skin is a new form of carbon capture and it works through an algae based coating. So what we do is we come to a site and we apply our coating to the outside of the building, and then it utilizes the CO2 and the sunlight to grow and forms this moss like biophilic finish.

Speaker12: [00:38:33] Hi, my name is Antoinette Newton. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Sinai Skin. It's able to fight climate change while offering a very interesting business model. So not only are we doing carbon absorption at a very high rate because we're using algae, but also we're providing the construction industry a very strong model where they can increase the value of their building. We are testing all the final steps to have our algae based coating that we can place on any facet.

Tom: [00:39:03] This is basically a green, algae based paint that transforms the surfaces of buildings into carbon sinks. This is why I describe it. It is directly taking carbon out of the atmosphere. Christiana. There's a coating that then ends up on the building, and it grows and thickens over time through the photosynthetic process of the algae and absorbs CO2 from the urban environment. The aim here is to scale this across mid to high rise buildings that would convert the facades of the buildings in our cities into carbon sinks, and it would integrate.

Christiana: [00:39:39] Into direct air capture. That's what it would do

Tom: [00:39:42] And it would do it at room temperature without having to heat materials, without having to suck lots of air.

Christiana: [00:39:47] It would on all buildings.

Tom: [00:39:49] On all buildings, as the coating would thicken. It would include sensors and monitoring, offering clients live CO2 uptake data so that you can see exactly how much CO2 your coating is actually absorbing from the environment. What's more, the cities turn green. Um, it's low tech, high reach. It can be applied with familiar methods. It gives people jobs. No complex retrofits needed. And it's already been backed by government funding and awards. It won Imperial College's Venture Catalyst Challenge in 2024, and has been awarded the Green Concept Award with some other founding members from Imperial and Innovate UK. Um, so it's a little bit unclear at this point. Exactly. So there are some questions about it. Long term resilience against weathering. Can it really be scaled? Does it need to be maintained and repainted on. But the prices of this are enormous. The possibility that we could paint our cities with this blue green algae that would then continue to photosynthesize, absorb carbon, we could see this changing in our urban environments. I think it's incredibly exciting and the real world environment tests have shown it does have pretty good durability. So I think this is very exciting. What do you think?

Paul: [00:41:00] My instinct is that the power of replicating organisms is absolutely key. I remember being extremely gloomy about the fact that the oceanic acidification was going to just, you know, be the end of us all. And then someone said, well, maybe, you know, there's a certain kind of plankton or algae that could come along and change the acidification of the ocean. Maybe there's a certain kind of algae that can, when put on large surfaces, absorb significant amounts of, uh, CO2, draw down out the atmosphere, get the parts per million down. It's a moonshot, but if it works, then, you know, last time I looked, we were using a lot of paint everywhere, all the time. It could be a great way for us to just add another resource, because I think we all know there's not a silver bullet, right? It's going to be, you know, should we do this or that or the other. And the answer is going to be yes.

Christiana: [00:41:50] Yes to all. Yes to all.

Christiana: [00:41:53] Yeah. No, I'm excited about this obviously for cities because cities do use so much energy. So I see the combination of this and combined then with the microfilm that is being developed for windows, turning them into basically solar panels. So you can imagine that each building could eventually become both a clean energy generator and a CO2 capturing surface.

Paul: [00:42:26] I was gonna say, if everything comes down from the sky, you know, your walls might end up like 4 or 8 or 12m thick, but in principle, it's pretty damn good.

Tom: [00:42:33] Well, and of course, you know, there are other solutions to absorb carbon into concrete as well. Right. So carbon into the concrete, carbon into the algae paint, you know, generating power.

Tom: [00:42:42] There's a lot that can be done in buildings and cities. Yeah. Very exciting. Yes. Like mimicking both Palpatine and Cyan skin received support from the undaunted program run out of Imperial College London and, undaunted, will be running a programme next week in London. Okay, so I think we're on to the last one, aren't we? You saved yourself, Paul.

Paul: [00:42:58] I have. This last one is called Hurd H U R D and it is from Kite Insights. The rather inspiring Sophie Lambin and her team, who've had an amazing partnership, for example, with the New York Times over many years and done some extraordinary communications events. Here is Sophie Lambinn speaking about it.

Sophie Lambin: [00:43:15] 12 years of running kite insights has shown me that while many organisations were putting in bold and ambitious climate targets, they were often failing to recognise the vital role that people in their own organisation could play in making these targets a reality. Leadership teams spoke boldly about net zero, yet they often were tentative when it came to fully upskilling and empowering employees to act. Corporate climate strategies rarely translated into clear, role specific pathways for the people that work within the organizations. Running alongside this problem, I saw a groundswell of people within organizations working fiercely but often independently, to drive change. The disconnect between corporate hesitancy and grassroots enthusiasm was the spark. I realized we needed a tool that channeled that emotion into structured learning opportunities for sharing success stories, concrete workplace action, and productive engagement between employees and employers. We have created a herd to meet people where they are on their phones, at work, and in their day to day reality. It's really a brilliant mix of smart design, careful data handling and scalable technology, but its main objective is to make climate action easier, more engaging and more meaningful for employees and more fun as well.

Sophie Lambin: [00:44:47] It provides practical, rule specific, actionable ways to bring climate action into everyday work. There are so many features that bring it to life. From curated lessons on sustainability to also role specific guidance for people in, say, procurement, finance, operations, just to name a few. We also creating mini courses to help people to deal with climate anxiety, for example, or to help people deal with how do I talk about climate with my colleagues? It has community features where users can share insights, answer questions and see what others are doing. They are also live events, real world stories from other employees taking action, and anonymous reflection tool that helps users assess how the organization's climate commitments show up in practice. Best of all, heard Herd is completely free. Obviously it is early days, but we have seen some really promising early traction. We have over 70,000 downloads across 84 countries. One third of our users are from the Global South, and we have already launched over 60 microlearning lessons tailored to how people feel, job rules, sectors and themes like biodiversity, circularity and wellbeing here.

Paul: [00:46:13] There's been an attempt to deliver a successful attempt to deliver what I call politic or political technology politics with a small P. This is like, uh, essentially it's the ability for people in companies to both make small steps but start to act in aggregate. I've been playing with the app all afternoon, and what it allows you to do is some people would be familiar with a platform called Glassdoor, where you can kind of see how companies are performing. Well, this is really essentially the idea of Glassdoor, but it's a brilliant way to sort of bring employees together. You know, we're all employees of companies in different ways. How can the employees of companies actually influence the companies they work in? How can they get together? I think the genius of heard is to see that corporations are, in fact, kind of contested spaces in a certain sense that, you know, whether they do this or whether they do that, whether they do ABC or XYZ depends upon the spirit of the employees. Employees really count. And, you know, rational organizations just can't pretend climate change isn't happening. You know, this is about people's lives, people's careers. So I'm extremely animated at the prospect that, you know, the union makes the force. We the people, we the employees of organizations can get together through the herd platform, look at our own emissions, look at ideas and actions that you can take to reduce the emissions of the company and change management and strategy. Because, you know, if not us, then who? And if not now, then when and if not here, then where? And that's the third one where, you know, the biggest impact you've probably got in your, in your life is through your employer. I didn't even give it a drumroll. I'm going to give it a drumroll before you comment. What do you think>

Christiana: [00:47:55] Paul? I wonder if this is a mirror image of what you have devoted your life to for so many years? Because top down, you have mobilized investors to put pressure on companies to change their products, their footprint, their mode of work. And this seems like 180 degrees. This is a bottom up. But for the same purpose. Do you see it like that?

Paul: [00:48:25] Yeah, I know 100%. And I think it's brilliant that, you know, I mean, we've had this before, like things like Avaaz and move on and stuff have brought people together by the thousands, by the millions. And this is just another version of that. Because, you know, when we get together, we the people, we have the power. And so yeah, no, it's exactly the same. And thank you for spotting that. It was you that called CDP where I worked for a long time, the x ray. This is almost kind of like the I don't know what about to describe it. It's kind of the the moss of the forest floor growing up into a sort of a collective wisdom from the employee base. If we convinced you. Tom, are you in?

Tom: [00:49:00] Yeah. No, I mean, obviously, I think it's we have to harness that kind of collective power to try to change the places where power resides. And actually, I think this is a great platform by which that can happen. So it'd be really interesting to see how it gets rolled out and the way in which that kind of level of engagement from employees can lead to an evolution of corporate strategy. I would love to delve into the app as you have done, and to understand a bit more about it and how it's manifesting and who's using it.

Paul: [00:49:24] Well, indeed. And I just also one thing I've got to mention is alongside herd, which is a fantastic product, I am legally obliged as chair of Giki Calcs, which is a kind of friend of heard. Also, there's another platform which we'll put a link in the show notes where you can. They've had more than a million actions taken from employees looking at their own carbon footprint and how they can modify that. So there's just an enormous amount of resource for us to kind of look at our own carbon footprint, look at where we're working, look at how we're organized, and look at how we're able to change things together. I think this kind of technology is incredibly exciting. And, you know, we're still in just the early days of this. Let's remember that. And it doesn't have to be National platforms like this can be global with the most phenomenal impact.

Tom: [00:50:08] I think that wraps up our sort of tour of some of the most remarkable technologies. Hurd will be at Reset Connect during London Climate Action Week, and I've loved this episode, and I've loved talking with you both. Not about the problems, not about the challenges and the politics. And we all know there's plenty of those and we could spend our entire life. But about the solutions and about the amazing things that these brilliant, entrepreneurial, creative, brave individuals have come up with and are driving forward. And honestly, anyone who does that. I mean, the nature of a startup is some succeed and some don't. But anyone who does that has, I think, our deep gratitude and deep respect for running at this, and we hope very much that all of these are successful. So any other sort of reflections from either of you now that we've looked at a complete suite? Yes, go for it.

Christiana: [00:50:50] What I really like is I sort of zoom out and look at all of these together and ask my the question, so what does this actually mean for the global decarbonisation of the economy? And what seems to me that what we're seeing is evidence of decarbonisation cutting across many different sectors, becoming systemic, becoming multisectoral, technology driven. Decarbonisation for such a long time was confined to energy generation or energy efficiency, or in fact even how energy was distributed. If you remember, our grids, conversation and so much of the effort and time and investment has been focused on the energy system for a good reason. But the fact that decarbonization is now being pervasive across materials, supply chains, consumer goods, buildings, water behavior that is, I think, a completely different level of maturity in the decarbonizing ecosystem, because now we have innovation that is both specialized into each of these products and services and broad reaching. Right, because they're reaching thousands, if not millions of users. It is based on evidence, accountability via their certifications, their lifecycle assessment, benchmarking against the previous and the incumbent technologies, and scalable. That's what is so exciting because we have been saying decarbonization is great, but it's not yet at scale and speed. So the fact that this makes it more scalable and is sending a very clear message to the fossil fuel industry, meaning we are no longer dependent on the fossil fuels, we are moving to other things. So I'm just, you know, really excited about this because I think it's a small but very powerful example of the fact that climate action is about to become systemic.

Paul: [00:53:08] Very, very well put. Very well said. And just I mean like a, like a tiny story from a long time ago, there was a lorry company that had one lorry and they bought an electric lorry and it cost kind of at the time it was more expensive than, than a diesel lorry. And they were worried if they were taking like a big risk. But it turned out that they won loads and loads of contracts to move things because they had an electric vehicle. You know, the entrepreneurs I want to just my last word is about entrepreneurs. There's a famous saying you've probably all heard it. It says, if you think you can or if you think you can't.

Christiana: [00:53:43] You're probably right either way.

Paul: [00:53:44] Exactly. And I just want to salute the entrepreneurs who say, you know, if I might quote a famous and much missed US president. Yes we can. That's what this is all about.

Tom: [00:53:56] I think that's the note to end it on. Thank you both very much. Thank you to the production team for pulling this great list of solutions together. I hope you've enjoyed this.

Christiana: [00:54:04] Thank you to the production team.

Tom: [00:54:05] Tons of Solutions and Opportunities. We will be at London Climate Action Week next week. We're doing a live event on the Wednesday morning. We'll be around and about. We hope to see you. So we'll definitely look forward to saying hello to many of you there. And we will also be back with Christina's interview with former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and other reflections from the week. So for now, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next week.

Christiana: [00:54:25] Bye bye.