Unless we go to circular it's game over for the planet it's game over for society We don't have a choice but to do this This is imperative for our survival If we really don't change our mindset, I think it will be the end of the world. We're moving from a world of 7 billion people in the plant to 9 billion. The way we're existing right now on planet Earth, this biosphere is really being driven by humans. who are parasites. If you look at how much plastic pollution is accumulating in the ocean, that plastic is starting to accumulate in the fish that people eat.
There's not a lot of stuff left. And the stuff that we've got, we've got to protect and we've got to care for and we've got to use it. It's not utopia, it's necessity.
I am frightened that my generation will be the first generation in the world which will leave my children and grandchildren an earth which they might never be able to fix. It takes 20 years or 50 years or 100 years. It is inevitable that we will hit those limits.
We'll run out of resources or the pollution will become so bad that it affects our human health and we start to feel the impact as human beings. I think if we continue with a linear economy we're, to use a technical term, totally screwed. Is it too late? This is one I get asked often when I lecture at Cambridge University and other places. And sometimes I have to answer this way.
If I look at the science and if I look at the trends and the facts... it's very hard not to be pessimistic. It's very hard not to say that we're heading off the cliff at a hundred miles an hour.
But if I look at the speed and the scale of the changes that are happening and I look at the people working on these problems and I look at the breakthroughs in technology that we're seeing right now, it's very hard not to be optimistic. I began this journey of looking at the circular economy through my work in sustainability, but really through my realization after many years consulting to multinationals, businesses around the world on sustainability, that if we don't solve this one problem, everything else we do, no matter how well intentioned it is, will be like... shifting deck chairs on the Titanic.
Nobody's going to stop growing. Nobody's going to stop striving for growth, whether it's a country or a business or a consumer. And so the only way we fix that problem is to make it circular.
And so I started to think, you know, I'm working in sustainability, I'm lecturing, I'm consulting, but it's just not enough. The only thing... that's enough is redesigning.
The industrial system. Literally a new industrial revolution closing the loop. This is no longer a dream, this is no longer a fantasy.
We're not talking about a utopia. We're talking about something that is absolutely happening right now and that if others could follow the example of those we would change the world forever. That's why I'm so excited to go and visit these companies that are pioneering in this space because they're showing that not only is it possible, but that they're doing it already.
We don't need new technologies. They're already there. What we need is new thinking, and these companies demonstrate that we can bring that new paradigm, that shift, to actually change the world today. I think it's an immensely exciting time.
You've got experiments happening around the world in the social entrepreneurship space, in the clean technology space, in the integrated reporting space, in the secular economy. It goes on and on. And it's in that...
of almost historical U-bend that you would expect the maximum confusion, uncertainty, anger, sense of loss, existential challenge. And I think that's exactly what we're seeing at the moment. So the question for the sustainability...
industry in a way, is can we project the sort of vision of a future that people would really aspire to and want to be part of. I think we can but we've got to come together in a very different way. That's a great challenge, that's a really great challenge, but I think this is a great time to do it.
We have a great opportunity to go ahead and make the local government, make the city, the municipality as the main actor. in this process you know i think one of the things that allows me to be positive is i was fortunate to live through the transition in south africa to democracy and what i saw was we had a system where people resist change for decades 40 years apartheid was in place but when the change really started to happen there was that tipping point and it happened incredibly fast so you know i I really believe that change can happen positively very quickly. What is circular thinking?
It's the change in perspective, the shift in consciousness from linear thinking, take, make, waste, to circular thinking. How waste, instead of being disposed of or becoming... rather becomes another product, becomes an input back into the process. Circular economy is an economic system that is regenerative by design.
Essentially what we aim to do is to create a system that is to do is to encourage our partners to move away from a linear economy where we take, make, dispose, or waste to a take, make, take, make, take, make. So it's more optimization of resources that are already in the system to reduce the need for extraction of more resources from a finite source, essentially. Yes, recycling is a big part of it, but so is refurbishing, reuse, sharing, zero waste essentially, just closing the loop on the resources. that are already in the system. I think the circular economy basically sexes up waste, you know, it makes it quite funky.
Suddenly if you can buy a swimming costume that's made out of discarded fishing nets, what a great story, you know, because basically you're helping to clean up the ocean, I guess, by maybe swimming in it at the same time. I tend to think that the circular economy represents our best chance of being able to consume comfortably and maintain our community. current lifestyles. The alternative would be to go back to the dark ages and no one wants to do that. I think that circular economy is all about co-creation, working together, bringing all the innovations and knowledge together at one chain and being responsible for what you are doing and making.
Close the loop. So basically a perfect circular economy is where you have zero diversion to learn field that every... Everything that you produce is recycled and brought back into economic activity that we get to a point where whenever... An engineer or designer designs a product that it will be compulsory for them to also put forward a recycling plan.
I think a lot of what people call circular today is just generally improved waste management. It's not fundamentally thinking about produce something from the very beginning that can be circular, ensure that the customer can see real benefit from using it, and real benefit in terms of reusing it and returning it to us. So I think there's a challenge of genuinely satisfying customer need.
We cannot be satisfied until... tens of thousands of companies, hundreds of thousands of companies servicing hundreds of millions of customers are really doing circular and as long as it remains in the lab and exploration we're struggling and the world around us is moving so fast in terms of the climate crisis, the resource crisis, it is not enough to stay tinkering for the next 10 years we need to deliver scale quickly. Would you say that what you're doing here is in some way revolutionary? I would certainly say that it is revolutionary because we really changed the whole model of the way we do business.
We're moving from a... make waste model to a fully circular model. Aiming for zero impact, mission zero by 2020, that's pretty ambitious.
That is pretty ambitious and with the present capabilities and the present technology. you cannot even imagine that you can achieve it. So this really ambitious mission that Ray gave us really forces us to new avenues.
And that is very exciting. In Europe, we are now in a 98% reduction of carbon with 95% renewable energy. We have little use of water in our processes.
We have no waste going to landfill. And we have more than 50% of our raw materials are already recycled or bio-based. Now, our challenge is how to upscale that to close to 100% in 2020. Innovation and sustainability are very interlinked in our company. Actually, the person in charge globally of sustainability is the same person in charge of innovation.
So the idea is that any innovation that we put on the business should go for sustainability. Our R&D people developed way to produce a carpet tile with about half of the yarn that we use in a normal carpet tile. And half the material we use is a lot less environmental footprint. But in the meantime, they created a completely new look because there's almost no yarn in the tile.
It's a very flat, minimalistic look and it opened up a complete new market for us, especially in Scandinavia and southern Europe where they like hard flooring. There are many opportunities in the waste from other industries. If other industries are not clever enough to recycle their own waste, we will look at what is the potential waste which is interesting for us.
So for example we've looked at fishing nets, gathering fishing nets to make nylon. We look at the laminated glass and extracting PVB from that laminated glass and using it as a substitute for latex. We're looking at various ideas for our backing and the idea is that your processes are flexible enough so that they can take different waste streams and I think normally in the old industry model was about just you know making machines efficient for only one raw material in the new model is about making machines that maybe they're a little bit less efficient but they can handle more raw material Tell me what's happening here. Here we have an ultrasonic technology cutting, which is unique in the industry. And the beauty of it is that it cuts 24 tiles at one stroke.
So therefore there is no waste in between. It's ultrasonic so it's very accurate and it leaves little waste on the side. Okay, so getting you closer to that goal of zero waste.
Getting there. Let's go and have a look at those trimmings. Yes The only thing you have is These sides, these trimmings are at each side.
Okay, it's very impressive, very thin, very few resources being used and wasted. So what's the end of the process now? The next process is then when the tiles are packaged in boxes.
Okay, let's have a look. So it looks like this is the end of the process. Now's the final stage, this is the packaging of the carpet tiles.
Okay, and this goes out to happy customers in Europe from here. Middle East and... This is the manufacturing site that serves all that region. And how many carpets or what volume are you turning out here? Around 14 million square metres per year, which is around 60,000 square metres every day.
So that's a lot of carpet, and what we hope with the Mission Zero is the more carpet you're selling, the more sustainable the world is getting. We hope to get there as well. All right.
Thank you so much for taking us around today. Thank you. And we really hope that you have all your success with Mission Zero. We're watching your progress and cheering you along the way. Brilliant, thank you.
All right. What would you say to other companies that want to follow this revolutionary path, that want to be part of what is effectively the next industrial revolution? What are some of the lessons that you've learned that you could pass on? For companies to... to proceed on this revolutionary path.
I would say it starts with your own people within the company. If you turn your own people into believers, if they get that something has to change. Then they become investors that work with your customers and that work with your supply chain.
It starts with leadership and top management having that vision and supporting that implementation. I wish you the best of luck. Thank you for your leadership. And I really hope that we see this new industrial model come fully into being.
To play a role in a revolution like this is very exciting and very stimulating. And it really is. really adds something to working at Interface. That's true for me and that is true for all our employees. Wonderful, thank you. Thank you very much.
A facility like this, you take a long-term view on it when you invest in something like this. You think beyond today, you think the next 20, 30, 40, up to maybe 100 years. Even though we may have invested... a significant amount of money that returns not only to Balo world, but to the country, to the world at large, you can't quantify that.
Give us an idea of what we have here and the scale of the operation. This is a 30,000 square meter facility. 20,000 of that is for the rebuilding of components and the remainder, 10,000, is for warehousing purposes. Okay, and walk me through the process. What are the steps when components arrive here?
What happens? Once the component arrives here, we disassemble the component completely. We do an inspection on the component.
We determine what parts need to be replaced with new and which part can be refurbished. refurbished and reused again. Parts would then go through a process of cleaning, refurbishment and then reassembly.
After reassembly the component will be tested, painted and then it's good to go back to the machine like new. Through remanufacturing we are able to reduce the cost of green business because we are able to give the customers components at a fraction of what it would cost to get a new one. When we remanufacture It also reduces the load on raw materials such as iron ore and steel.
And what we can reuse, we send through for recycling. So this is obviously a process that replaces having to get new equipment every time something breaks. That's the essence of remanufacturing. I presume there must be some real benefits to that. Absolutely, yeah.
Benefits could be, depending on the component group, between 20% for a specific component after failure, up to as much as 60% saving on the price of new. So the benefit is quite big. Is there a role for government to play in supporting these kinds of initiatives? In a big way.
Government as a regulator, you know, they have a role to play. One of the ways in which they could do is to provide tax incentives. for facilities such as this but also to make sure that there's adequate supply of skills so that we can continue to bring people here and train them. Okay so you've got definite economic benefits by what we call remanufacturing here but they're clear environmental benefits as well. Iron is reused, I mean there's an iron shortage or steel shortage worldwide so we reuse steel and we also clean some of the runoff water on the cleaning plant and reuse some of that water for the cleaning process.
What are some of the things you think that Barlow World has overcome that are lessons that other industries could learn from if you were to advise them to go down the circular economy route? I think it would probably be to say let's think beyond profits because if we don't take care of the environment. None of us would be in existence. If we don't take care of the environment, none of us will be around in years to come. And the generations to come will blame us.
And therefore it's a responsibility that each one of us has to make sure that we do our best to minimize the impact of our economic activities on the environment. So let's think bigger and also when we become sustainable. We take the cost out of dream business.
Those increased profits we should be reinvesting them to make sure that we become sustainable over many years to come. I am hoping that my children and their grandchildren when I'm no more around they would say you know we had a group of people who had the foresight to ensure that the economic activities of their companies reduce the impact, the negative impact on the environment. How's that? On a certain moment I went to Ethiopia. We saw the land and it was all land filled with clothing.
And on that moment I said, okay, I have to take my responsibility and I have to do it in another way. Industrial Reservation was started with the textiles. So we are stating, okay, we are from textiles, let's start up a new revolution with textiles. So we have to show that it's possible to make a raw material that's recyclable eight times. We have to show that we can put it into the market.
We have to show that we can track and trace it and make an LCA, a life cycle analyse. We have to show that there are business opportunities and new business models. That's what we're showing with performance based contracting. And that's something amazing what's happening over here. You will see all the innovations, you will see all the clothing and the partnerships.
And the love, I hope. One of our innovations of the suits, we made together a new brand, wherever. We made suits for them.
fabrics and they are very young and they are going with the motion into the market making it very sexy to have a circular product it's amazing yeah It feels great, it looks great. Isn't this one of the concerns that if you go for a suit that is somehow sustainable or circular, that you sacrifice quality? It is polyester. However, if you look at polyesters which we can make, It's not what it used to be.
Look at when you go sporting for example. If you wear a sports trousers, sports shirt, it's 100% polyester. If you look at the durability, this material is way stronger and therefore will last way longer.
than for example a woolen suit. So the technical lifespan of the product is quality wise better. And that's quite different from what we sometimes call fast fashion, right? It's the opposite I would say. It's definitely the opposite because if you look at fast fashion, there are three pillars.
It needs to be cheap, super affordable so people can buy large quantities. It has a short technical lifespan so people will throw it away quickly and also buy new clothing quickly and that's why it's so expensive. And it has a short, stylish lifespan. All these factors result in huge quantities of resources needed, fossil fuels needed to uphold the system.
And this is the opposite. How many times could this suit be recycled, turned back into fibres and back into a suit? Eight times.
The quality we demand from this fabric, we can bring the fibre back to the quality, our acceptable standard for eight times. Amazing. So I mean if this suit lasts me five years, that's eight times five, that's 40 years effectively making a sustainable suit. With entering resources once and creating no debris at the other end for 40 years.
Here we are at the heart of your process and tell me what's going on here. Well at the moment we are at a melt spin process. That's what you can see over here. Polymer pellets are all in this machine and it will...
perverted pellets to PET yarn. So you keep this running and running and the pellets are melted, it comes out as what you call filaments. So what is a filament, how big is it, how do you use it? The yarn consists of of hundreds or hundreds of filaments.
One filament has a diameter of about 5 to 29 micrometer. The human hair is approximately 80 micrometer, so this is in fact much smaller than human hair. Okay, so anything from a quarter to even a tenth of a human head. Now, what is it that makes something more or less recyclable when we're talking about these kinds of yarns?
Well, essential for the process is a clean waste... stream. If you have a lot of contaminations in your waste stream, you're not able to process it into a filament or a yarn. So even dyes, if we're not thinking through the whole process, it could be that the coloring that we add to the yarn is making it less recyclable.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. All right. And I suppose this is why it's so important to have the life cycle thinking.
It makes it easier once you get to the end, if you thought about the beginning. Yeah, if you really think of what you how to to handle in the start of the process then it will help you in the end of the process. Then of course we have to test the mechanical properties of the material.
Of course you want to meet the same requirements as a virgin material. So for example what we do is test the tenacity of the yarns. Okay, this is quite important because you're suggesting that just because it happens to be recycled doesn't mean that it's got a lower performance.
It goes through the same tests for performance as any other yarn maker. I mean that's the big challenge of using recycled material. The challenge is to meet the same requirements, specifications as a virgin material.
But you're finding that's possible to do? Yes, I'm sure of that. We are staying in front of the weaving department. We can produce here in a year about five or six million running meters. One loom is producing about About 100 to 150 meters, it depends on the style and fabric.
The equipment we see behind us, do you need different kinds of equipment if you're doing circular threads and clothing? No, the machinery is always the same. We use the same machinery but we have to use the right material. So here we come to the final result after eight weeks production.
We see the already finished Infinity fabric. Okay, this is no ordinary fabric. What is Infinity fabric? Infinity fabric is It's 100% polyester, it's recyclable and it has motion control function.
So really a high quality brand new fabric, brand new developed. And this is what you developed in collaboration with Dutch Awareness and it's for their suits especially. How long did that collaboration take?
We worked more than 18 months on this. Wow. Through this fabric you become part of the sustainability, circular economy revolution.
How does that make you feel this is your company? It makes us proud. It makes us really proud because it was a lot of work and all my people worked hours and hours at this quality and now we are happy to have the final product in our hands. Well, I think it's a big step because we are used to thinking linear. Produce, sell, wear, stop, throw it away.
And now we have to go take it back to our production countries. So that's another way of thinking. not only for workwear, but I think for all kinds of industry. It has to be as well supply and demand.
We need clients who say we want to buy this and we are not afraid to pay maybe a little bit more for the same quality. That is what we need. How did you come to choose the circular option for the outfits that your workers wear? We really find a supplier that had a vision and that was in this market.
Together with our supplier Dutch Awareness we could use clothing. waste material in construction materials. We are piloting a new material, the name is CLIF, and we can use that instead of this wood, a problem with a lot of waste, clothing waste, cotton waste in our cities. And if we harvest that waste and make it into a construction material, that's a second problem that you are solving with this material.
This is the idea of urban mining, right? This is the idea of urban mining. Use the waste that you have, reuse it, and we also... think reuse it really nearby where you are mining it. We are all in a rat race of consuming, producing and not thinking.
Grabbing, eating, drinking, spoiling. Of course, we still have to eat and we must drink, but we have to do it with more awareness. And I'm a proud father of a daughter, and I want for my daughter the best there is. The best in education, the best in health, the best in anything, so also the best in a good environment. It's not only for my daughter, but also for my children's children.
A circular economy is the best for all of us. Just look at yourself, find yourself again, and make the right choice who you are and what you're going to do and what you're going to consume. That's the most important thing of all. The starting point was several different research projects in different areas, but the first one that arrived to obtain important results was what we have defined as the complexation of starch. the ability to use starch as a regular plastics.
From this first application, new products were generated. And together with these new products, also a new approach. to chemistry and to the use of renewable raw materials and to the exploitation of biodegradability was developed.
These products are part of the raw materials that can be transformed in order to obtain matter B, matter B that is bioplastics made using starch complexation technology. So it's a way to combine starch with some specific materials. to obtain biodegradable. So the inputs are entirely natural from bio-based inputs and the output is entirely biodegradable. This is a completely biodegradable material that can be transformed in several different products.
And these objects can be used for different applications and then can be disposed in an industrial composting plant. These are often the products that we dispose of very quickly. Exactly.
In our throwaway society. And not only will they degrade, but you're saying the plastic bag will degrade as well. Exactly.
So it is a perfect support to divert organic waste from landfill and from incineration. Now this is interesting because this looks to me like diapers or disposable nappies. And these are biodegradable also.
Yes, this is a backsheet. The backsheet is made by one of our matter beings. and the back sheet is a biodegradable.
So how long would it take to get from that to this to that? It depends from the different objects, but the time can vary between a few weeks and a couple of months. So 30 days, 60 days?
30 days, 60 days. Quite quick? Yes, quite quick.
So the different raw materials are mixed and dosed, and here the reaction, the transformation happens. And this is the finished product. It looks like spaghetti when it comes through.
Yes, we are in Italy, so we like spaghetti. Okay, so it comes through as plastic, bioplastic spaghetti, and then it ends up down there. And then the product is cut down into small pieces, and the granules are prepared. Okay, and those granules are what then goes to your clients?
These granules go to our customers to be transformed. in different types of films, sheets or injection molded items. We've been looking at the process of producing bioplasts. and those converting into compostable plastics, one of which is the Lavazza coffee capsule. And that comes to you at the end of its life.
And what do you do with it? Yeah. We reuse the coffee waste, the new capsule, and we use it for making very good mushrooms.
Now we were told that the plastic biodegrades and through a composting process is once again good for the soil. And have you tested what the quality of that compost is? Yes, we have tested that the vegetables grow much more with this kind of soil than the normal soil. it grows 30% more, means we have 30% more of zucchini, 30% of salad, so just putting the coffee waste in the soil.
So you have to try it, it's amazing. And this is a relatively new idea of upcycling. Can you explain what you mean by that? We take the waste of production of food, the coffee ground, and we use it to produce Food again we used to produce mushrooms very good mushrooms So the coffee is going back to the soil to produce new food after producing food So you're actually creating value from what would have previously just been waste gone to landfill and possibly created a problem in the environment. You've now created new value.
Yeah, it's a very good example. We take almost a quarter of a million tons of food waste from anywhere from households to manufacturing plants to retailers and we transform it here into renewable energy and as a byproduct of that we also produce a fertilizer. that goes back on the field, so a true closed-loop process.
So this particular plant will take around 45,000 tonnes of food waste in a year and generate around 45,000 megawatt hours of electricity, which is enough to power around 40,000 homes. This is where all the food first arrives from wherever it's come from, whether it's come from someone's home or from manufacturing or from a restaurant. And it'll be brought in here in big trucks.
The guys will tip it on the floor, mix it up. The more it's mixed, the better it is for the process. So once it's been dumped here, how long does it sit here before it goes into process?
Ideally, it doesn't sit on the floor for any more than a day. The fresher it is, the more calorific... value so the more gas we can generate. Right, right.
So you take it from here and then it goes into the process behind me. What happens here? The mobile equipment will pick it up in a bucket and transport it into the hoppers that you can see behind you and in those hoppers it will be mixed and then it's slowly fed into a big machine that pulverizes it into a smaller particle as possible and then liquid is fed into it so it creates a slurry, a pump All right, now we've seen inside the process of receiving the food waste, mangling it up and turning it into a kind of slurry and then it comes outside into these tanks. So what happens in that process? The first part of the process is the liquid will go into the raw waste tank and there it's mixed and blended together and then it's slowly fed into the two tall digestion tanks where it'll digest over a period of 35 to 40 days.
Gently. generating methane. That methane is then pumped to the gas holder, which is the green bubble you see. There the gas is mixed and transported to the engines, which turn it into electricity. Okay, so that's where the green electricity is that you create and you feed into the grid, but presumably you're left behind with all of that waste and slurry.
What happens to that? Once we've used all of the gas from the liquid, the liquid is then sent to the engine. into a pasteuriser where it is cooked at 70 degrees to kill off any pathogens or any germs remaining in the process.
Then that liquid is stored in tanks and there it will stay until it is needed for the local fields around us where it is spread as a nitrogen rich bio-fertiliser. This product has actually proved very beneficial to the farmers. Over tests they have managed to gain a much higher yield from the digestate fertiliser that they have used from our project. process compared to a chemical fertilizer that they've used in the past. When I look at this process that we've seen here today, it's ticking a lot of boxes, it's doing a lot of things right, it's solving a lot of problems.
Why hasn't this gone to scale? It requires legislative support. There are incentives that we use to effectively fund the plant over the long term.
One of the barriers really, again, for this specific industry is how do you get more food waste out of that 10 million tonnes? It's a huge problem for the UK. huge problem for the world. If you look at Scotland and Wales, both of those sets of authorities have done a really good job in forcing food waste out of landfill.
If I look at where food waste goes today, there is still a huge amount that goes to landfill, typically out of our householder's bags. There's a huge amount that goes to incineration, which arguably scientifically is not the right thing to do, so we've got to do more. There's still millions of tonnes out there to go after. What we see around us here is the hosting of various waste tires in this depot. On a daily basis there's a process where each and every time Transporter has been allocated an area of about 50 kilometer radius.
It has been given an opportunity to daily go and collect tires from the different dealerships. We've got waste pickers who collect. as individuals and they earn a living.
So daily there's a transporter who benefits, there's also a waste picker who benefits. Kumle, how long have you been doing this job and what does it entail? What does a normal day look like for you? Okay, I've been doing this for about a year and six months now.
And I'm collecting waste tyres. And my daily routine is I go to certain places where I usually know that there is tyres around there. And then I collect to the neighbour place where I store them and call Redisa to come and pick the tyres up.
The thing that makes me get to work is because I know that the scores is far higher than just repurposing. tires. We have mothers who have never owned bank accounts in their lives. The first time I went out into the field to register our first group of waste collectors into the program, when we returned after the training program we issued them with their bank cards and I had a 53 year old woman break out in tears and I thought what have I done to offend her and she said to me nobody's ever done this for me you don't understand it was impossible for me to get a bank account before because I don't have a residential address.
I don't have a credit record so there was just no way but through us becoming a collective bargaining tool we were able to negotiate with the banks to empower these people to have a bank account. I have transporters in our network who would write me letters to advise on the fact that this is the first time ever they've been able to pay school fees. What a pleasure it is to own their own home to have that. So this wasting to worth is far more than just talking about the commodity. or converting the commodity.
Worth speaks into self-worth. It speaks into growth. It speaks into development of people. And I think because our heart is in the right place, we do know that through pushing for the circular economy, we are able to change lives. How do you see the benefits of being involved in a business like Redisa?
Three years back when I started with Redisa, I was not working. I didn't have a car. The only thing I had was a small bike with a trailer and I managed to register with them and I was appointed as a transporter. So far after three years I managed to get four trucks and I'm giving work, I'm giving something to eat to about six families.
So Redesa really helped me, even my children they go to a better school. I also managed to pay all my debt. There's a lot of social benefits and economic speed.
Can you give us a specific example of somebody you know whose life has been changed by being involved in Redesa? An example is me. Yes, well tell us your story. My life has changed completely.
I got very, very sick. And at my age I couldn't get any job. In life if you're not working, it's very, very difficult. But especially if you're not a thief and you don't know what to do and then... You get an opportunity like this, it has changed me forever.
And I'm a better man and my family enjoys the opportunities that I give them, you know, and they benefit. We have food in the table and also, you know, as Africans, it's not only your family that benefits. It's not only my family, there are other close families that benefit.
I'm currently employing 14 people. I started with about six people. They also support their families.
So my life has changed to see other people happy and also myself happy and healthy. If only all the other industries can look at these other waste processes in this fashion, I think it can go a long way to creating a healthy South Africa. And also we're having a lot of opportunities to do that. lot of businesses springing up and people getting jobs. Remember when you talk of waste pickers, you're talking of a family, probably the entire family is not working.
Now suddenly they are able to collect tyres and these tyres bring food into the table and that's what motivates me that at least people are getting jobs and people are doing something you know. Waste is worth something if people can put their mind. into it.
When I grew up There was 1976 where we banned these tires, but today I'm creating jobs with these tires. So I'm very proud to say my end, my end will be a better one, you know. and I'm happy to live in the South Africa that we are in today.
Unlike a linear economy where we're taking, we're making, and we're disposing of products, in this case in South Africa, we're taking, we're making, we're not disposing, we're diverting. into another industry which is looking at beneficiating and transforming those tires into commodities to add to economic growth to allow for job creation and to allow for small business development. This is a an OTR downsizing process so basically what we do we take a whole OTR tire which range from 1.5 tons to about 6 tons. per tyre. The scale of the operation, I think we can do up to 120 tonnes per day.
Okay, and after that it goes off and becomes other products, other uses? Yes, it then becomes a raw material for other processes and those processes could be to feed it as what they call tyre derived fuel for cement kilns. You can take it further and convert it to what we call ground.
that is used for making rubber products and used for road paving. And then there is also a process called pyrolysis, which is the extraction of oils or fuel from these tyres. Now, what is it that personally motivates you to be involved in a business like this?
You know, you could be doing many other things. Is there a personal drive? It's about where we grew up. I mean, tyres were always an unspoken problem.
They became breeding grounds for all kinds of diseases. Even though we don't have malaria in this part of the country, mosquitoes and other insects still carry other diseases. In summer, after rains, as children, it became very difficult. You could hardly play outside because of the amount of mosquitoes that would have bred in these tires. But also in winter, if you go to most townships, the smog is there.
You can see the smoke. yes there is coal also but a huge part of it also came from tires and tires unlike coal also emit a lot of toxins when they they are bent so we are not only looking after the physical environment but we are looking at the health and well-being of the surrounding communities so for me those are The reasons that motivate me and that excite me about this business, because it does really excite me. What kinds of things can this rubber crumb become? It can be used in various industries. I think the most common one is that used as infill for synthetic sports surfaces, for football or soccer.
We are actually... looking at developing ways that it can be utilised in industry. So we're looking at the paint industry for instance that utilises it for non-slip paint. We're manufacturing acoustic underlays and acoustic products that are utilised.
globally from one of our other factories. We're exporting those products to 45 countries currently and also we've developed a market for paving bricks, interlocking mats for sloping driveways. So they really play a very strong role throughout the value chain.
And when you talk about the kinds of products that come out of here it sounds to me like those products didn't just exist you had to find ways to create new products. So I'm just interested in the role of innovation in this whole circular economy as well. That's right.
I think South Africa in the utilization of rubber chrome is in its infancy. It's not like many developed markets like in the United Kingdom and the United States where it's in a stage of maturity. So our role as a processes or recycler is to help from an innovation perspective to try and work with other industries.
to create innovative products from the products that we are producing here and also work with research institutions to try and spend more or generate more innovation coming through. It shows us that particularly those countries which are less developed, particularly those countries which don't have an industry which already exists, and those countries which have a high labour force are well-placed in order to actually deal with their waste in this particular way. Creating in the developing countries a cleaner environment is game-changing to the whole future of our people in the Earth. It is proven that when children grow up...
and adults grow up in a cleaner and more good environment, that they become more productive and actually create better countries. We are in the middle of the mountains, but actually the land that is part of the metropolitan district of Quito is quite diverse in altitude, so we have many different ecosystems, some of them very fragile. So we are extremely committed in protecting them, ensuring the next generations to enjoy it as we can do, the beauties of our city and the surrounding areas.
Ninety percent of our territory is rural and is a high endemic biodiversity. So we are in the future foreseeing to declare specific protected areas what we have now in natural resources. It is obvious that mobility is the main problem in the city.
Public transportation issues, traffic jams. So we are approaching those problems through a sustainable vision. We started the construction of the first subway line in the city. This is the largest infrastructure project ever in Quito. We are also building a cable car system to serve those areas of the city that are located in the top of the mountains.
And that's not only an environmentally friendly project, but it is also an initiative that helps to regenerate areas that have been poor for decades. And Quito is highly known because of the efforts of a conservative... the watersheds to provide Quito for a long-term water in a better quality and in quantity.
So we have developed this specific water fund that is very well known and it was a pioneer fund in Latin America and now other cities are doing the same thing to conserve these watersheds. We're also pursuing the vision of We have a lot of technical plants where we do a decontamination of this liquid, complying with an environmental norm, before unloading it to a receptor body, which in this case is the river. Here in the Sanitario region we do a process of purification. of the waste. We have provided more than 40% of the city with waste containers.
We are also working towards introducing in the city a culture of recycling, separating waste from the very beginning. Likewise, we are working towards protecting our natural resources, prohibiting certain activities that are harmful. for the environment, like for example, manury, which is actually an activity that some sectors of the country were pursuing in that area, but we actually prohibited that through an ordinance in the metropolitan district.
So these are a few examples that reflect how we are fully committed in making our city not only a sustainable one, but also an example for the region. It's crucial to be sensitive. to be passionate about the things you do and sustainability is the one that is a vocation.
It's a grain that you can add to see that natural resources can be conserved for future generations, for our kids, for our city, for our planet. Ecuador is one of the most by the rest countries in the world. and we try to keep it that way.
So we're putting our grain of sand in the process and helping a bit. This is all about recycling of waste, specifically Tetra Pak. Now I know a little bit about Tetra Pak and to me it seems like a really difficult material to recycle because you've got a layer of cardboard, you've got a layer of foil and a layer of plastic. How do you deal with that? The thing is we have two main products.
One One which is made from the three types of material and the other one we take the cardboard out through a process that's called hydropulping and we use the cardboard to recycle paper and we keep the foil and the plastic to make the products you see here. Okay and give me some idea, I mean what kind of products can you make from Tetra Pak? It's amazing how versatile Tetra Pak really is.
We make roofs. Our roofs can last 30 years. We have chairs, we have outdoor. furniture which is hand-moving in Ecuador and we're sending that to the coast so they they're probably the most skillful artisans in Ecuador. We have jewelry and we have the countertops and we're doing whole kitchens and bathrooms with Tetra Pak so we're turning waste into something amazing like something you would have in your house and you would never know it's Tetra Pak.
What do you see is the future for businesses like this? Well it's it's a great business. and we're actually trying to expand internationally because the biggest impact of this is the transportation.
So we don't want to bring Tetrabricks from Mexico or from Panama, but we want them to process them locally, and that way it will be less of an impact for the environment. I mean, you see Tetra Pak as a resource. It's an input to your process, and yet I understand that in other countries they actually pay to get rid of it. Yes, and they pay a lot to get rid of it.
So not only are you getting rid of a problem, but actually it's just creating a product for you. So it's a business opportunity. Everybody wins. We can make pretty much any product that's using wood or cement or non-renewable materials and make something even better.
The quality of our products are better than the ones that are in the market right now. So it's a great business. We produce about 20,000 cars per year.
Our production is one of the most important here in Ecuador because the market share of the company is about 48% of the total market in the country. All right. Let's look at these crates over here and explain to me what's special about them.
The special thing about these boxes is that they are returnable. It means we can collapse them, they go again to Japan, so the people there take new parts and go over again to Ecuador. It happens about ten times before the box is not useful anymore.
When you say the box, you're really talking about this metal frame. It's much stronger, it doesn't break like... like the wood or like other casings.
It's a very elegant solution. Yeah, it's a very simple idea, but in fact, the results are very good for us because we are avoiding to buy another metal boxes. What are the achievements you've made here on environment? Our calculation is that at this moment, the 99% of the waste from the company, they are total reusable or recycled.
It means all the material has a solution or has a partner who makes it. anything with that material. So the whole chassis of the car gets dipped into the water with lots of chemicals.
What happens to that water and those chemicals? Okay, the water goes to a wastewater treatment plant. So the water is recovered. We take off all the chemicals, all the hazardous materials, and the water come back. It's a closed loop for the water.
Amazing, so you've got two closed loops there. The water is going round and round your system, and the chemical sludge, waste coming out of that process, goes to the cement company Holcim and they use it as a fuel for their process. Here we receive all the water, we try to mix it up a little bit, we regulate the pH of the wastewater and then we apply a biological treatment system that is intended to remove all the organic compounds that are present in the water. It comes in, I guess, through pipes and there's some treatment tanks here. Yes.
And then it comes through to this. This is the sewer where it used to be discharged. Exactly.
We used to discharge like from 5,000 to 6,000 cubic meters. of treated water per month right here. And now you just charge nothing?
Yes, we noted that there was an opportunity for us because we were charging really good quality water to the sewage system. system so we decided to promote a project to implement an ultra filtration and a reverse osmosis system that will allow us to get a water with potable quality and this water will be used in our biggest consumer of the plant that is the paint shop so behind us is is the technical process and you designed this yes okay fantastic as an environmental engineer and you get it to what kind of quality i mean is it drinkable quality Yes, water is drinkable. So I could drink a glass of this water and I won't die? No, you wouldn't die. Well, maybe we should do that now.
I brought a glass. That's the water quality we get here. Okay.
And this is water that's come out of that plant that we were just in, with all the chemicals and the paint and the treatment, and now it should be drinkable. Yes, purified water. Cheers.
It's like drinking distilled water, right? Yes, exactly. Completely pure. Completely pure.
You can keep going with the industrial process while you take care of the environment and while you do something to solve some kind of problems. This project was not approved because of the financial profit or benefit. This project was approved because it has a lot of environmental and social benefits.
This is a very humid region, but despite being so humid and it rains a lot here, it is very difficult to get water on the land. So the only way to get water or to be able to bring that water, that water that is here in the the clouds is with trees. Well, I came to work on this farm more or less about a year and a half ago.
We want to reduce the area, to reduce the pressure on the forest. In this region there is a lot of pressure on the forest because people what they do is normally enlarge the pastoral area by throwing mountains, throwing forest and we have done the opposite. We have reduced the area of potreros and we have intensified the practice, for example, of conservation, of making more forests, of reforesting, of recovering areas that were lost here.
We have done this. achieved that for example normally in this region in this area is maintained one animal per hectare or even less we are leading it to to manage 34 animals per hectare many times it is a bit difficult that people believe in something in a system without seeing it before what you can do is compare it and see in the end that it is a system that is not so difficult do what only implies a little more work but that in the long run gives tremendous results. Is there a way that you also reutilize your resources?
The other situation is also the water harvest or the reuse of rainwater through the roofs, they are driven with canneries and taken to reservoir storage tanks and this water can be reused as drinking water for animals, as water for cleaning of the roof. equipment and many other things. The other situation is that we reuse the manure that is produced here with the animals.
Our vision or our focus is on a purely organic fertilization, without the use of chemicals or pesticides to produce pasture. What keeps you motivated? What inspires you to take care of the environment while you also take care of your cows? I have children, they come from other generations, who deserve a clean planet, a planet that offers them good living conditions. Ok, now we are here in the Yunguida community, a community I am a farmer who has been working in an organized way for 20 years in order to find sustainable alternatives.
Here in the community, 20 years ago, the main activity was the extraction of natural resources. Now, after 20 years, people have understood and managed to find other sustainable development alternatives. Now, after 20 years that we have managed to change people's mentality, we have been recovering those areas that have been degraded, and people have been changing their economic activities.
Now, a large-scale livestock farming is no longer practiced, but in that sense we have other activities. such as the production of native fruits, organic gardens, a little to help preserve the area in general. However, we are very aware that we still have many areas that need to be recovered, they need a lot of work to be recovered. And behind these mountains, There is the large amount of primary forest that we still have here in the community.
There are approximately 5,000 hectares of primary forest and here in this part there are about 3,000 hectares. That is, our work in the community is not focused here on this community farm. It is focused on about 8,000 hectares in total that we are working. To get involved in this project... It's been a lot.
I just built my house and my father told me, you planted those trees, you can use them to build your house. After 20 years, look. So those things are what have motivated us here in the community to continue working because we are convinced that resources can be managed in an adequate and sustainable way. Seeing that you're protecting this for the future generation, that you really believe that. So really, you know, we have to engage people in this and we have to make them want to actually be a part of this equation and get their participation.
Part of our problem in moving towards secularity is most people neither see the importance of secularism as a way of living, but they see it as a way of living. And that's why we have to engage people in this. And we have to engage people in this. And we have to engage people in this. And we have to engage people in this.
of it nor exactly know how to do it. They're not engineers and actually very often it's much easier to see the complications than it is to see the longer-term benefits and that's why I think the the political and the government endorsement and subsidy for the right sorts of activities is so crucial. I think businesses have to lead. In my time working in NGOs or in business, I haven't seen the leadership that the world needs from governments. Again, I think governments in some places and sometimes are more short term than businesses.
It's very hard for governments which are in a short term position to be able to do that. cycle of voting and elections, four or five years, to make long-term decisions. And so what we find is that sustainability is about investing for the long term and the pressure is all short term. And especially in a democracy what is often very difficult is asking the public to make short-term sacrifices for a long-term gain. We love to accumulate stuff I think.
It's a very human condition, you know, we kind of, we relate stuff back to our sense of self and our values, if you like, and our status in society. So to suddenly give up stuff and to access it rather than own it outright, it's going to be quite a step for us to make. And getting that messaging right is...
It's going to be critical going forward and the circular economy community hasn't really worked that out yet I don't think. They haven't really done much work around the public engagement piece that's needed. We expect even in our countries and our economies to always be growing. If we're not growing it's a crisis.
We expect our businesses to always be growing. So we've got a set of expectations which are actually fundamentally in conflict with the finite planet that we live on. On the one hand, humans have always been at the frontiers.
They've always been expanding, conquering territories. And generally, it's been a path of increased consumption, increased utilization of land and of energy. That's been the story of human evolution.
On the other hand, it's only fairly recently that we have been so wealthy that we haven't had to think about reusing or recycling. It wasn't that long ago when whether it was the milkman bringing milk bottles back for us to reuse or darning our socks when they had holes in them this was this was normal and it was because it was too expensive to do something else. I think one of the changes that's happened is we've lost sight of what makes us happy you know. Our fundamental human needs hasn't changed, but the way that we satisfy those needs has changed.
In a way we could say rather facetiously we invented advertising, we invented consumption to say that you can't be happy unless you have more stuff. Whereas of course for thousands of years we were happy without stuff. That's one of the elements of the take, make, waste, throwaway society that we bought into. We need to really question that.
We need to teach our kids that it's not okay just to want more. It's not necessarily going to make them happier. There is something about human psychology where we want to feel that we're growing. We have to just think about what growth means.
Does growth always mean more? Or does it mean development? Does it mean we're increasing our satisfaction?
That we're evolving, that we're learning more as a society, as a city, as a family? Well, I think the linear economy... is the prevailing model because simply the world is just not in tune or necessarily aware of the circular model and its economic and societal benefits. It seems to us that part of the challenge is that the circular stakeholders are still working in silos.
So the community isn't one community yet and our purpose of forming this... accelerating the Circular Economy Programme is in fact to bring all these stakeholders into the space so that they can form partnerships that will help speed up the scale and of course you know this includes technology and new innovations, this includes policymakers who can create regulatory frameworks that enable circular business models to flourish and this of course includes investors. What needs to happen, companies need to make these products. well they need to make more of them more affordable so they need to scale these ideas need to scale and become commercially feasible in a way that's also affordable they all carry a premium and if you want circular solutions to to basically take off they need to be made more affordable we could enter maybe ten years time we could see a circular economy that's just built for the elite and actually what happens then about access you know If ordinary people can't access these products, then they're not going to benefit from them.
And that's a real problem. If we over-engineered the circular economy, we'll never get it off the drawing board. Certainly not to hundreds, if not thousands of companies. So take Marks & Spencer for example. We sell 35,000 different product lines.
That's a big challenge to think circular. But if I look at it another way and say, well, 28,000 items are clothing. How do we sell clothing in a fundamentally different way?
How do we ensure that customers get a great product that lasts as long as possible? long as it possibly can but when you finish with it there is an easy way to return it to Marks & Spencer and that's what we've done with our swapping campaign with Oxfam. Return your used M&S clothing to us or to Oxfam. We donate it to Oxfam, they reuse it, they resell it. There's 99.9% of the fibre they get back is reused to create value for Oxfam and their overseas development work.
That's fantastic, it's done with real scale and real authority. Now we get back three to four million items a year, that's not 100% of what we sell, it's 1%. So again we're challenging ourselves to how we get that to scale but that's still a fairly significant number three or four million items a year so we've got a challenge there about simplification make it as easy as possible the second challenge we've got is to actually get businesses working together on this particularly competitors we will not create a sustainable economy simply because little old Marks and Spencer decides it wants to do it on its own we need to show as many different participants in the UK and global economy are doing it partly because everybody's raw material is somebody else's waste is somebody else's opportunity for resource as well So the more people are participating the more that materials can be used. The more we can create the synergies and the efficiencies of scale collection of materials and bring them back as well.
So only by doing those two things, simplification and scaling it across many different businesses, will we create a truly circular economy. I think it really does come down to cost. There's a lot of local authorities who are doing the right thing.
I think what we need is some support from the government to try and push that forward. And don't forget it's not just householders. You've got retail organisations, you've got commercial organisations.
How do we support those guys? How do we make them think more about their food waste? There's an awful lot going on, don't get me wrong, people are really focused on it, but I think there's another push we could make to try and get another slice of that food waste out of the residual stream into plants like these. The trouble is, with the circular economy, you can't just design a circular product or service in isolation.
The whole system has to change with it. You know, that circular product will only go so far if you've still got a linear economic system supporting it. We can now use 30 years of blame and shame as a true innovation engine. We can reinvent all our materials to be good for biological or technical systems and we need the support of the people because if they just sit back and relax, we will be too slow. And I say, let's celebrate life.
Let's welcome people to this planet. Then we could even be 20 billion people on this planet and be good for the other species as well. So it's up to us.
We now have the expertise together. It's now time to act. Right off the bat it's increased revenues, it's reduced cost, it's reduced risk, increased tangible values.
In other words, it could be brand recognition. And there's also the positive impact on society and the environment. So I think this is a clear solution for a triple bottom line. If you think about starting a business today, designing a business around a service...
circular economy philosophy ultimately is going to give you better returns in the long run because it's going to be it's going to Use your sources more efficiently. It's going to use more efficient energy. It's going to treat customers I believe in a way that over the next five or ten years customers will want to be treated.
So I think commercially it's a savvy way to progress. Why would you throw something away that's valuable? Why would you do that?
And I hope, I think it's the West who are perhaps lagging behind. We are in such a flow away economy. Whilst in the places where there is less stuff, then I think we're seeing that they are using it more efficiently. We've embarked on a journey towards sustainability.
sustainability a number of years ago in many of our other companies and we've realized that sustainability in the environment provides us with opportunities and we don't see environmental legislation or environmental mandates as a threat. We see it as an opportunity from a cost perspective, from a brand perspective, from developing products that utilize a high content of recycled materials. So essentially it's created a platform for us to innovate.
There are a lot of customers that value sustainability and doing good for the environment. They choose for interface on behalf of that but still a lot of customers For a lot of customers sustainability is only a secondary consideration. They primarily choose for us the prime function that they expect from our product.
It's design, it's low cost of ownership, it's functionality. And what is fantastic is that a lot of these design features and a lot of these functionality features have their... Origin in a sustainable development.
In that sense I'm pretty optimistic because you see that more and more companies are getting that and are realizing that. I think it's also pretty clear that companies with a strong sustainability vision are often the more successful companies. So that is an inspiration.
in itself and look at interface we are with the distance the market leader in our industry we are forming also financially very very well and yeah we are ...inspiration source for the industry in general and certainly for the carpet industry. If you're using material which is otherwise waste material, if you're getting very significant reductions in pollution and waste... using waste materials as your fundamental building blocks then you ought to be able to reduce costs and also improve output from the same resource base. Last year we gave a check back to our CFO 180 million pounds saved less energy less waste less packaging, less carry bags, it all saved money for the business. Fantastic, she can open new stores to help us grow into the future.
Also brought us more than that, we're one of the most trusted brands in the UK. We've got high levels of trust and confidence for our employee base, which drives them to go the extra mile through a lot of change in the retail marketplace. It's created more resilience in our supply chains as they're increasingly affected by social challenge and extreme weather events as well.
So Marks & Spencer is a fundamentally better business today for doing Plano over the last decade. But... It is not enough and we need to redouble our efforts into the future.
And equally the business case will be many times larger in the future if we land this model properly for our customers. Renault is able to produce from 30 to 50 percent cheaper for the customer because they've been able to optimize this process and about 80 percent of their cost of production, so energy, water and so on and so forth, has been reduced drastically as well. So if we take Renault as a case study, it definitely shows that that's the...
economy not only is good for us but is also financially very strong to generate competitive advantage in this case because of cost reduction and the attractivity of the same process for the same product actually in the market. Certainly if you talk to the likes of the World Economic Forum, if you talk to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, if you talk to McKinsey they will say yes without a doubt. They've done a lot of detailed modeling work that suggests suggests massive opportunities for companies who work towards a circular economy. And recently, I think a report came out by Accenture, who are a consultancy very much engaged in this agenda, and they said for companies that basically move towards circular business models by 2030, there's a US$4.5 trillion reward just waiting for them. For the manufacturer, it's great because it helps them, I think, in terms of their...
supply chains in terms of safeguarding raw materials going forward. So companies now are being faced with kind of price volatility in their supply chains with regards to how they source certain materials needed for their products and services. And if they can actually take back these materials again and again and reuse them again and again in their own supply chains, it just creates, it future proofs if you like, their business model going forward. It gives them security of supply.
Thank you. Adopting a new model, an economic model, requires probably new innovation approaches to things. It could be a product innovation, it could be a process innovation. So in essence, a great positive impact of a model like the survey economy would be innovation. It is, then we have, and this could be a disruptive innovation, in a positive way of course.
We can never underestimate. the power of the social impact that you're achieving through the circular economy. I think the world is facing a number of challenges.
I mean we have a challenge of environmental impacts, but we also have a challenge of the divide between rich and poor. And through the circular economy you're able to address this problem because there's a place for everybody in the circular economy. So as I travel and I see many beautiful parts of the world, beautiful people, beautiful places, nature and...
amazing bounty, whether it's the jungles of Ecuador and Costa Rica or the beaches of Sri Lanka. You know, a lot of those are in danger. They're under threat. It could very well be that one or two generations from now they don't get to see those.
And that makes me quite sad. We're better than this. We're smarter than this.
You know, we've created the problem. We can solve it. We just have to be more conscious about how we live, about our impacts, and I think we are getting smarter.
It's one of the things that with our connected world today, with our high tech world, we're getting much, much better. better at. What's emerging is a collective consciousness. The idea of a living planet is coming alive. You know, it's really a choice about whether we want to coexist with the planet, whether we want to live in harmony with the planet, or whether we're somehow like a parasite.
And we know what happens to parasites. If their host dies, they die too. The only way that this works is if sustainability, circular thinking, closing the loop is applicable to everyone. This is not some luxury for the rich and wealthy and privileged.
It has to be a solution. for people who are on lower incomes, perhaps people in developing countries. This must be an option where they can make choices about how they consume, how they produce, that bring them a direct benefit.
And it's not impossible, because a lot of that circular thinking goes back to a time when resources were scarce. Whether it be during the world wars or the Great Depression, that's when we were forced to think about frugality. To say, well, how do we reuse things?
How do we recycle things? So no matter where you are in society, no matter who you are, you can make those choices, you can educate your children not to just throw things away, not to just leave the lights on, to think about whether you really need something. to think about where it goes when you throw it away. These are all things that we can all do. It's not the privilege of the few, but rather the responsibility of us all.
To see a world emerging all around us in which landfills grow taller than skyscrapers and in which rivers run dry, in which forests are burning, you know, these things make me sad. And I don't want to be melodramatic, but if you look at the numbers, if you look at the trends, it's not good news. What I want us to focus on is what's possible, because I've seen that change can happen really fast, and that that dystopian world, that world of our nightmares, is not inevitable.
We need to think about this revolution that we're going through as a way in which we can make our mark on this earth. A positive footprint. It's up to us to be part of the solution. And actually we're all looking for meaning in life.
Or what could be more meaningful than making life flourish rather than destroying life. We can buy into this mission. We can make it our personal mission to be part of the solution. At the end of the day, what do you want to tell your grandchildren? Were you part of the problem or were you part of the solution?
Do you want to be part of the decline of civilization or do you want to be on the side of hope, of reinvention, of recreation, of the kind of life and the kind of earth that we were really meant to enjoy? The choice is always yours.