Episode 1 – with Ollie Taylor: How to create Circular Value Ecosystems

[Music] When I of our ideas at Kulu La was to build a boat as sustainable as possible with the lowest footprint we can produce a boat. And then we thought is it another racing machine or something else? And we decided to build a boat which is dedicated to kids because for them we have to save the ocean and the planet. [Music] It comes back to the basic principles of you know we live on a finite planet. There's kind of only a certain amount of materials available with currently in a period of exponential growth in kind of global warming. We can't keep operating with the same model and system. We have to change it if we want to keep this going long term. [Music] So we started with high performance racing boats, we moved into more leisure boats and now we're looking towards the big ships and what we can do there to help them optimize and reduce. [Music] Kulu La circular voices building a circular value ecosystem. In this podcast we are talking about why we need a new understanding of value creation in today's world and urgently too. And what makes sense to start thinking about all that from the ocean. Holger Ambroselli is here with me who's the founder of Kulu La. So before we dive into the details and also welcome our first guest in this podcast. Holger can you remember what the first image of feeling was that you had when Kulu La started to take shape? Or is there a realization that hit you why and how this idea of creating circular value ecosystems should grow? Can you explain circular value systems a bit? First image was the ocean to be honest. The blue, the blue ocean and this fantastic nature. And it inspired me because we have to keep this in good shape. And when you are on a sailing boat and you don't see any fish anymore, you start thinking what's wrong here in this environment. So that was the moment where I started. Even if we are on a sailing boat which sounds always very sustainable and good, it isn't if you go into the details. So then you start thinking can we change something in this world? The initial idea of Kulu La to first bring in circular value systems in the economy. Meaning we have to think about different way of design, product design, but also of different materials we can reuse. And what can we do with a lot of waste we are producing every day? So is there anything we can use for the things we built? So that was the idea to create this idea of the ecosystem which is dedicated to ocean health, but also helping companies and support companies in the transition to a more circular business value into the blue economy. That's the idea. And yeah, that's what we are trying to establish at the moment. Okay, super, thank you very much. Today we're joined by Oli Taylor who works at the intersection of sailing, sustainability and systems change with 11 hour racing and even more so marine shift 360. Oli, it's great to have you here. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, really thrilled to be here and talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is obviously circularity in the marine industry. Super, that's great. And you two know each other and you're not meeting for the first time today. Can you explain how you know each other and what the eco optimist has to do with it and how all of these ideas could be role models for the boat building business world. Or that actually you mentioned already the eco optimist. So one of our ideas, a collula was to build a boat as sustainable as possible with the lowest footprint we can produce a boat. So we use the most popular dinghy in the in the kids sailing world, which is the optimist. And we started to build this boat with flex fibers and thermal plus the residents to be able to recycle the boat after the use. And for that we were desperately looking for data how much we save in terms of CO2 footprint which materials are interesting for us. And that's where marine shift 360 came into place where we had a lot of discussions how we could measure the boat and getting more details about it. Because Oli and his team has a great experience in this they set it up with 11 hours of racing or you can correct me later. To measure a racing machine and the footprint of the racing machine that was where we built nice connection and I think even in the future we will have a lot of possibilities to cooperate on this. So Oli you were approached by Holga to help create this eco optimist. It wasn't your first sustainable sailing board or like how did it how does that all happen. No I suppose it's probably worth going back into the history of how marine shift 360 came to life. So as a project it started about 10 years ago now where 11th hour racing were one of the main sponsors of Ben Ainsley's America Cup campaign. This is kind of back in 2015 2016. And as part of the sponsorship engagement they wanted to understand what is the impact of running an America Cup campaign. Where does impact occur, is it materials, is it processes, is it all of the travel. So they started to create this very basic framework to measure impact using an Excel tool using publicly available emissions factors. And they came out with some numbers and they kind of started to understand where that impact was. But during that process they realized actually there's some really valuable information in conducting this process that perhaps the rest of the industry could benefit from. Because us just measuring one America Cup campaign is a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the impact that's happening across the wide America maritime space. So that's where the project then grew into using this methodology to help other boat builders and supply chain partners understand where impact occurs. So yeah, it wasn't our first racing boat. We've kind of worked in the America Cup. We've done lots with the Amokka offshore class, who actually they were one of the early pioneers really in the project and today they've conducted about 16 LCA's across 16 different Amokka open 60's. That's then moved into how do you optimize cell construction, not just boat construction. And from there we've across the last seven or eight years worked with a whole range of different players and stakeholders across the marine industry from power boat builders, cell boat builders, engine manufacturers, mass builders. Because what we're looking to do is give the entire industry access to the tools and the data that allow them to make lower impact smarter decisions. Because prior to kind of having these tools available sustainability was often very opinion based. It wasn't based in facts or data or insights that could really tell you. Making this material change or this propulsion system changes the right choice, not the wrong choice. So yeah, we now exist as a project to really give the whole industry access to that data set that enables kind of smart decisions in the design stage of a product's life. It is so interesting that you are explaining something here that as a like myself as a non-sailing person. Well, I've done a sailing course years ago, but I'm not, you know, I'm not familiar with the with the details of it all. And to me, it seemed always that this is biologic and environmentally friendly sport and it's fascinating how many things there are possible to be changed to make this actually sustainable. And I'd love to hear more about the whole kind of business behind all of this and how like this is a huge scale like America's Cup and all these like big regattas and big, big names. But for everybody who has like me not been involved in detail in this, we have to explain you just casually slipped in the expression LCA's. So these are life cycle assessments. Can we explain a little bit more what they are and what that actually means. Yeah, so in a very basic sense, life cycle assessment is a process why whereby you measure the environmental impact of any product system or service offering. So LCA is a discipline that's been around for 40, 50 years. But in the marine space, if we think of when we build about we're obviously taking lots of raw materials, perhaps glass fibers, carbon fibers, resin, epoxy systems. We're pulling them together. We're combining all of this stuff together using it, perhaps for 10 years, 20 years, 50 years depending on how long the product lasts and then it will reach its end of life stage. So life cycle assessment is a process of measuring each of those distinct life cycle stages and the impact that occurs there. So during production, we've obviously got the impact of raw materials. But you've also got the impact of shipping those materials from your supplier, perhaps in China to your production facility in Europe. You're then combining those materials and if you think of a composite material like glass fiber, you're using a resin infusion or a rotational transfer modding we've got. these manufacturing processes that all consume energy at the point of production. So, the production stage often can be quite high impact because you're talking about some quite big, big products that we're making here. And then the use phase, we're looking at what are the energy inputs during that 20 year lifespan? So, it's things like fuel. Because obviously, even if you're on a sailing boat, you're still generally got an engine and a generator on board and those are consuming fossil-based fuels. But also, the refit, you know, these products need constant maintenance and upkeep to keep them in good condition. Anyone who owns a boat knows that it's not just a static asset. You've actually got to invest lots of time money in making sure it's in good condition. So, we measure all of those inputs. And then obviously, in the end of life phase, what do we do with this product? Is it just disassembled and incinerated? Is it land-filled? Does it actually go through a recycling process where we're reclaiming some of the materials that are embedded within this product? So, LCA enables you to understand where does impact occur in this full lifespan of a product? But the most important thing with LCA, just measuring it is useful information, but there doesn't really change anything because you're measuring it kind of after the fact. So, what we're doing is shifting LCA from this post-production measurement process to actually, why don't we use it to simulate all of the possible options we have for producing this product? So, rather than using glass fiber, like Holger did, could we use Flax fiber, a natural based fiber that's lower impact? It's potentially got CO2 sequestered and locked into the structure. So, you use it to simulate all of the variables within the design system to hopefully come up with this really optimized low impact design. So, you're using data to make design decisions at the very first start to optimize low impact rather than just create a product, measure it afterwards and go, "Oh, yeah, okay, it's X, Y, Z, impact on the world, but there's nothing we can do now." In the design phase, obviously, you've got the opportunity to make lots of choices. And that's the key value in LCA that people often misunderstand as it's a decision to support all fundamentally to do the right thing, not the wrong thing. To add to this, because that's, I mean, Ollie mentioned the boat or explaining a boat, which is a very complex and heavy requirements to the boat itself and it goes for 50 years. But you can learn from this and you can use it for skis, for tennis records, for surfboards. So you can always use this data and experience and put it into other fun sport products. And I think that's the huge, huge benefit we can take off boat building because there are similarities in how we build products. And that's very cool if you have the data and you can put it into the design. It seems to me like a concept of using the look at products to actually create a systemic difference and a change industry wide and actually across industries, like different kinds of sports, different kinds of fields you can actually expand into. Do you work together with other industries? Or are you focusing on sailing first and foremost and kind of offering your information, your research, your changes that you are working on to others? Yeah, I mean, our focus for the last eight, ten years has purely been on the marine space. Our backer, our kind of funder, which is the eleventh hour racing, who are North American, ocean conservation charity. They are completely passionate about the marine industry. So that's where our energy has been placed to date. That's not to say though that we haven't worked with other sports. So we have done similar kind of projects in the cycling industry. There was the carbon fiber circular alliance, which was looking at everyone who uses carbon fibers because as Holger mentions, there's a lot of crossover between the way you make a composite boat to the way you make a composite ski, a tennis racket, lots of other sporting equipment actually. So we have worked in those spaces as well to support them in trying to set up similar projects that are bespoke to the individual sport, kind of under consideration. But yeah, our passion, if I'm honest, is very much in the marine space. That's kind of where we came from and that's, there's enough impact that needs to be reduced in the marine space without getting too distracted with other industries for now. Thank you very much. How do you see the current state of the world? I mean, the political approach to climate change. I don't want this to turn into like a pointing fingers kind of conversation, but there is a sense of, we're not looking at this as urgent as you are working on in your, for the last year, you said almost 10 years now. How do you feel about this at the moment? Do you see in your world, in the business that there is still like a power and an energy working towards sustainability? Or do you feel like an impact from the political kind of shift in the world? Yeah, I mean, we definitely feel the impact. Sustainability, let's call it a bit of a buzz word. It was very much in vogue probably four, three or four years ago. And then since I would say January 25, obviously, Trump coming in second administration, they have set the tone at a global level for a general cooldown on this topic. So it's disappointing. But what we have done and what we kind of see is that ultimately we have to combine the commercial opportunity with impact reduction. Just doing impact reduction on its own, you know, isn't enough. And as I'm buying based just on a more sustainable product, very frequently, they're unwilling to pay a price premium for a greener product despite what some of the data will show. I think we see it in our day to day lives. So what we're focused on is actually positioning sustainability as long term business prosperity. So understanding that at a very basic level, we're using a lot of finite materials in the products that we make across all industries. And we treat this as if there's an infinite supply of these materials. But of course, we live on a finite planet where we will reach a point where there's scarcity of certain key inputs. You know, one example I'd give that people don't really understand is sand as an example. Sand. So silica sand, which we're using to produce glass fibers, but we're also using to produce kind of semi-conduct chips. The quality of silica sand that you need for these materials that they turn into glass fiber or semiconductor is very scarce. It's not as available as people think. So if you've got a scarce material and there's increasing demand because we're trying to create more products, consumers and kind of demands that price is going to go up. And if price goes up, that potentially erodes your profit margin as a business. So how have you factored that into your longer term investment cycles, capital expenditure, all that sort of stuff. So we have shifted a lot of our messaging to make it clear that sustainability is not just being doing things that are right for the environment. It's actually about building a business that will be fit for the future and that's going to be prosperous in kind of 5, 10, 15, 20 year time horizons. So yeah, it's not as popular as it was, but I think most people are still very focused on their bottom line and kind of shareholder return, all of that sort of stuff. So we position it entirely now as kind of long term business success. If you're not looking at your supply chains and the way you're using raw materials and looking for alternatives, more circular models, for instance, where you could create a finite supply into an infinite supply, you're being very short-sighted and you will have challenges. So what we've also seen there is that the smart operators are still very focused on this topic because they feel in their day to day. If we go back to kind of the COVID crisis in 2020 where all of the global supply chains were massively disrupted in a very short time window, people realize they had this risk factor within their business. They hadn't really paid attention to. So I think that planted the seed that everyone goes, okay, we need to rethink how we do this long term. And a lot of that does go hand in hand with lower impact solutions as well. So it's challenging right now, but I also believe political cycles are short term right, the kind of three to four years, generally at global level. And you know, won't be around forever, yeah, fingers crossed. And that's where climate change continues, unabated. It's kind of an exponential problem that's getting worse and worse. So it will very much come back into public opinion as the political headwinds change direction. This was a great example about the sand all the way, but there's another very simple example is about oil. So if you look at resins, for example, you need a lot of oil to produce resin, you need a lot of oil to produce plastic. So I think when we talk about becoming more independent in the world, so we also have to get rid of the oil. And that means we have a lot of plastic in the ocean and everywhere. We can recycle plastic. We don't need oil for the new production of new plastic based on recycled materials. So this is where we can create through circularity in very interesting and more independent business stream. And that's what we have to aim. And that's also for resins. We have to look for new materials, new mix, mix and there already some of the companies who using recycled materials. And then you are more independent towards the oil, which we all know, looking at the the crisis we are facing, all price will go up. And it makes everything more expensive. And we are depending on the crisis and how they develop. So this thinking is something we have to develop in the next years to get in the mindset of all the companies. - Yeah, you have both mentioned the short-sightedness of the business world in inverted commas, now to generalize it a little bit. And I mean, we're talking about water shortages as well. There will be great difficulties and wars over the lack of water. That's all connected, obviously. And that's, I mean, that's your business, essentially, actually explaining to people how this is all connected. And if you don't look beyond your horizon that you can actually see when you look out the window, you are missing essential information about our future. And Olga, at the start of our conversation, you said we are doing this for our children for the next generations that are still hoping to live on this planet. And, you know, like one of my questions has to do with the rapid spread of fake news and manipulation and populism. And so many people using AI and not understanding that they are, when they are using something like open AI systems that they are using water all the time and they're using up resources, is this something that you actually are kind of looking at as well? - Yeah, I mean, I can go first on that one, perhaps. I think it comes down to a trade-off, doesn't it? Because AI offers the opportunity to improve efficiency at a very, very dramatic scale. And when we think of the efficiency we're creating, our entire business model is focused on reducing impact at large. So if we can use a tool that enables us to process data more efficiently, gain access to research more efficiency, efficiently, that then allows us to advise our clients in a key way that is going to reduce impact. It's trying to understand, you know, impact of AI usage versus reduction potential within the advice we're giving to a client. We always need to make sure we're like a net positive balance that the reduction we're using. But I mean, we use it a lot. One another example is in the process of lifecycle assessment, it's quite data-heavy, you need to collect a lot of data, you need to spend time putting it into this software to calculate the impact and then look at the insights. So one of the reasons people don't more widely use LCA is they're like, "Wow, it's just so time consuming, it's so difficult to do, we don't have access to this data." So AI does for us offer an opportunity to massively reduce the time input factor to get to the point where you've got insights to make choices to reduce impact. But completely agree with you. I mean, you look at a lot of the investment that's going into data centers and then those data centers have got their own energy plants. But if those energy plants coming from renewable sources, you know, potentially we're moving in a positive direction. But it's definitely a trade off that we have to consider, at least, to make sure we're not positive. - Super, thank you. How are you going to work? - I fully agree with what all you said. And I know that, I mean, you should see it as a supporter at the moment. And I know from a lot of designers who using this in the first phase of the design of a new product, either a boat or it's also on textiles or whatever, where they start the process very often now with AI and it's about the materials. Because there's a lot of data around the materials available. That means also AI can use it. And I think it's a good starting point to create a new product, but there's still the human creativity left where you can make it really special and top. But so it's helping at the fastened the process. What you see, and that's maybe interesting in the boat building industry that you see more and more rendering boats in a very good level. So it's for them easier to present a new model first in a sort of rendering phase to see how the market reacts on it before you start investing heavily in such a product. So it helps in the product design phase. - So, thank you very much. Circling back to connecting different kinds of outdoor sports, we've all just watched the Olympic winter games. And that leads us straight into quite a big new story that I'm not sure if everybody who's listening is aware of how big a deal this is, because just a few weeks ago, something quite unprecedented happened in the sailing world, world sailing, which for everybody who doesn't know, is the official world governing body for the sport of sailing. And it's recognized by the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee. And they have launched the first Olympic-wide project to measure the environmental impact of sailing equipment, the Olympic LCA project. That is a pretty huge deal, right? - Yeah, yeah, I mean, you were absolutely thrilled to get this one over the line, 'cause it had been probably 18 months in development to get this project going. But yeah, world sailing, they were actually very progressive. Probably in about 2018, they released this kind of world sailing 2030 agenda, which had many elements to it, but a large part of it was environmental. You know, how do we reduce the impact of the sport of sailing on competitive sailing? Within that, there was lots of technical regulations around using LCA to calculate impact, to increase the recycled content in their boats. But one of the key pieces of missing information is kind of what's the baseline impact? What are the impacts of these 10 classes today? Where does it occur? Is it the materials? Is it actually the athletes flying around the world, transporting their boats, all of that sort of stuff? No one knows. So that's where this project came from, was to measure where we are today, to fundamentally work out. What can we do tomorrow to change the impact of this sport? So the output results from this study, which you will be running, is running essentially the whole of this year. We're hoping to communicate some initial results at the end of the year. It will shape the rules that are in place around what Olympic class sailing boats will look like, probably towards 2032 and beyond. But also maybe looking at the way we put large-scale sailing events on, and athlete travel could be changed somewhat to reduce the impact of flying everyone around the world to their world championships or the European Championships. So it's a really pivotal kind of line in the sand. And what's interesting, as I know, the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, are paying very close attention to the product project and how this could then be applied in the other equipment, heavy Olympic sports, the think of rowing, skiing, cycling, to kind of have these standardized rules and regulations? Cosport is brilliant. It communicates across all cultures, societies, people, it inspires the next generation, but it does come with an impact. So everything we can do to reduce that impact is critical in our eyes. And world sailing have kind of seen that and they're very, very positively moving forward. So yeah, it's a multi-year project. The majority of the work will be done this year, but it really will look to shape regulations moving forward into the long term. It sounds as if this is, you know, you said you worked 18 months on this and it's a multi-year project, but 2030 is quite soon. That's four years from now. So that's quite a major change in this. And everybody has to follow this. And as you said, there will be an impact on other competitions, other regattas, other sports. Do you, like, how, actually, have to ask this differently? How on earth is everybody going to be able to do this? This is incredible, but how is this going to work? Yeah. So there's kind of two main components to it. And we think back to the lifecycle stages I mentioned earlier. So you've got your production phase, your use phase and your end of life. So the production phase is really looking at the equipment that's used, the hundreds of new 49ers, Ilkaz, four 70s that get built every year. So measuring the impact with all the individual builders. So creating GALCA models, they're supplying the data we're building the models and giving them the insight of where the impact occurs. And then so that's really the technical focus is with the equipment manufacturers. And then you've got the use phase, which is predominantly made up of the athletes travel, the replacement equipment, the coachboats operating to support the sailors. And that is being conducted in alignment with lots of the upcoming regattas, so the standard Olympic class regattas, your here, parmer, the world championships. And we're using quite detailed surveys to capture all of the use phase inputs. So how many trips does this sailor make who's currently based in the UK? But we know they fly around the world. How do they fly? What type of aeroplane are they getting on? Are they using rail to move between events? Are they using their van? Are they using a lorry? So you have to capture the data at a very granular level, which is time consuming. But we're looking to mandate the data collection for the use phase within the notice of races. So the notice of race is kind of the how a sailing event takes place, it's kind of rules and regulations. So all of the athletes will be mandated within the notice of race to fill in the survey data. So we get this really big data set back, which we can then cleanse and work out. Then you bring those two pieces of information together. So we're looking at how impactful is the production of the boat versus how impactful is a four-year Olympic campaign. From that, you can then then look at what are the levers we can pull within the system? Because fundamentally we need to understand where's the biggest impact happening? Is it the materials, the production processes, or is it people traveling around the world? And from that you can then set rules and regulations that change how those systems are working. So yeah, it's a lot of, I keep talking about data. It's a lot of data that comes together and then we're using our kind of tools and software to really pull insights from the data that guide decision-making to reduce impacts. - I think it's great if you mentioned lots of data because this is what people who want to spend money in this and who have to spend money in this, that's what they're gonna need. They need to have facts, obviously. - I think this is such a very important project because it will influence the racing, sail racing on the lowest level, on the club level two. Because we started our eco-optimist project with eco-team race, so we created a new format for it. And a lot of people were talking against us. This is not fast enough, this is not good enough. Nobody will accept this in the rules. So but when you now get it into the Olympic sports and the measurement into it, you get a new platform for it and that will push into all the clubs and to all sailing races. Is it a big one? Is it a small one? Doesn't matter. So people would start thinking about it. This is the great thing of this project. We need to change something in the mindset of the race sailors. - Yeah, you were mentioning feedback from people who use your products. What kind of feedback are you getting usually? Ali, what's your overall, is it a big mix or is it mainly positive? Or how is the communication with customers and clients? - Yeah, it's gone through phases, I would say. And it links back to the global opinion on sustainability. So probably five years ago, we had a huge amount of demand for what we were doing and lots of people want to be involved, create their LCA models, work out what they could do with their products because it came back to the point that consumers were much more invested in sustainability. So they wanted to buy a lot of impact boats. They were pushing the manufacturers to say, what are you doing to actually reduce impact and give me the opportunity to purchase? I'd say that has changed somewhat in the last few years. But in general, LCA is just a really misunderstood concept, but it sits at the heart of sustainability of making products in a greener way because if you don't know the impact of what you're doing today, how could you possibly make a change that you can guarantee is better than what you're currently making? So once people understand how the process works, how it is actually accessible, the tool we produce as well, so Marine Shift 360 is free to access to anyone and everyone. There is then paid license models on top of that for additional functionality within the software. But once they understand the value that it can drive and the information it gives them, people generally have a very positive experience. And what I'm trying to do, I think if I go back to my background, I prior to doing this role, I did 15 years in the marine industry, working for lots of different boat builders across commercial sales marketing, product development, and then the latter is more towards the engineering end of it. And I just didn't know how to create these greener boats. I'd gone in with a hypothesis that, oh, we just need to do what the automotive industry's doing. So if you've got a powerboat, you put an electric drivetrain in it and you've got a greener boat. What we realized though, in the process of trying to create these products, is that the way a boat gets used is so different to the way a car gets used. The average car will probably do 300 hours per year on the road driving. The average recreational boat, kind of below 24 meters, is doing maybe 50 engine hours. So it's actually used very infrequently. So then when you look at it from an LCA angle, when you put an electric drivetrain in a boat, it comes with very high impacts because you're using lots of rare earth materials, your lithium, your coal bolts, your nickels. So producing that battery cell and that motor is quite high impact. So in the car industry, when you do that, and then you use your car for 300 hours per year, there's a break-even point where the electric system is better than the petrol or diesel system because of this high utilization. But in the marine industry, not on sailboats, it's slightly different here, but if you're looking at powerboats, you often don't reach this break-even point at all as quickly as people realize. So putting an electric in some applications, putting an electric drivetrain in a boat could produce a higher impact boat than the incumbent fossil or diesel solution. And for me, that was this crazy epiphany moment I had kind of seven or eight years ago. I was like, "Christ, we're doing the wrong thing here. We've gone on this journey trying to do the right thing, like with our hypothesis." And then we've realized in the process, "Crikey, no, guys, we need to rethink our entire model here. Maybe we actually, it's about the materials, it's about hull efficiency, et cetera." And what I'm trying to do with this project is give everyone else who operates in this space that same epiphany moments that you really do need to understand the impact of the decisions you make before making them. Otherwise, you could be doing things worse than you were doing before. - Ollie, I have a question for you. Say, you worked a lot of in the boat building industry. Say, how is the reaction of the boat builder if you come up with an LCA and if you propose them to use different materials and what's their reaction on it in the daily business? - Hesitation is probably the single word I'd use to sum it up. They're interested, but they are in business to make money at the end of the day and anything that is a risk to the product's longevity, performance, the ability to manufacture it, they're hesitant to embrace. So you can give them all the information, you can give them the baseline LCA, you can give them a reduction's roadmap and say if you make XYZ change, you are going to reduce your impact. But then they go, okay, that's great, Ollie. Love the theory, but the real world application of a new composite material, an electric drive train, a new hull design, that feels super risky for us. We're not sure we're willing to make that commitment. So that's where normally these projects are quite long term because you can't just flip a switch. There is no silver bullet. It's back to the sky cycling teams. The David Brelsford approach of marginal gain. So it's stacking lots of solutions together that come towards this kind of cumulative large impact reduction. And it's supporting them through it from a technical perspective as well. And bringing in the right experts, we do the LCA environmental piece, but you need someone who's an expert in natural fiber composite. You need an expert in electric drive trains. You need a systems engineer to pull all of this together. And they are out there and there's lots of passionate people. But at the minute, we are probably in a period where people are hesitant to really make these big changes. And then you see things like in probably two weeks ago, it was I think three weeks ago, X-Shall, who were the sweetest, the Scandinavian-based electric boat manufacturing company have now gone into liquidation. They were one of those companies who were like, "No, we're going for it. We're pioneers. We're going to make this happen. We believe in it. It's the right thing to do." They've invested a lot of time and money and it hasn't worked. And that's where the rest of the wider industry kind of look at those guys and get scared. They're like, "Oh, we're not sure." But it comes back to the basic principles of, we live on a finite planet. There's only a certain amount of materials available. We're currently in a period of exponential growth in global warming. As Holger says, for our children, to be able to enjoy the experiences on the water that we've all enjoyed. So it does feel challenging. You need a high level of resilience to work in this space to keep going. But long term, the science is undeniable. The physics is undeniable. We will have to change the way we build products. And that's where we sit, poison ready to help anyone and everyone who's willing to take that jump and kind of do the proper innovation that's required to make the change. That's really good to hear as an outsider, but obviously as a person who lives on this planet as a mother, as somebody who lives near the sea, and who's interested in seeing all your work happening. And as you said, it is an economical prospect and a far-sightedness that's required. If you don't just want to make money in the next three years, but in the next 30 years, ideally, because without making these changes, as you just said, this is not going to happen. This kind of business will literally dry up if there's no fundamental change in it. And both of you are coming across as very resilient and very optimistic and obviously having great connections as well. How many people are working with you, Ali, and how many people are working with you, Hagar, on all this? Yeah, so on the platform on the software, we've got about 1,000 users. So that's kind of a really broad spectrum of boat builders, OEM, engine manufacturers, mass builders. But the really exciting bit from that user base is we actually have a very large percentage of students. So probably 30% are students who are currently in university in academia doing research into how do we make this change. And to be honest, that's where a lot of my hope lies. is that the generational shift we'll see, we are doing everything we can to upskill that next generation of naval architects, designers, engineers. So when they enter the workforce, they've got the skills to go, OK, maybe there's a different way of doing things here, guys. Maybe we could look at this material. And we've got the experience in LCA to run the numbers, do the calculations, and show that it stacks up the business case works. So yeah, we're currently about 1,000 people. We've got a few other projects that we run. We've got an impact accelerator where we work with three companies per year to really help accelerate whatever novel solution, technology or service offering they have. But 1,000 is still not the number I want. I want 10,000, 50,000 active users on the platform, an embedding LCA in the design process, just like people use 3D CAD, CFD, FIA, and LCA. LCA has to be that fourth digital tool that's always used in the design phase. And I'm jumping to what you're just saying about the university, because we had a student, I think, three, four months ago, who made a digital product past for a dinghy boat. And that was the project we created. And he used a lot of data from your database. And so this is a great tool to measure the journey of a boat, let's say. But now this student is working for green boats in Bremen, with the front runners of natural fiber constructions. So you can see exactly the shift from the university into the industry with a new thinking. And it's exactly what should happen in that way. And we are happy to support this, this, this, thanks. Because I agree with you, I think, university are the key where we can change something. And there's a new mindset. And what we do compared to Oli, Oli, is that we have a great community. We bring companies together. So we can't say how many people we have, because then you have to count all the companies. But it's more important that we are working on a co-creation level. Because I think Oli mentioned the risk of creating new products, building new products in a different way, for one company is maybe too big. So if you do things together, then you create a chance to change something. You share the risk, you create more resilience. And that's what circular business models coming in place, where you say, we share what we do. That means also we share the profit maybe at the end of the day. But it could be much more effective to start in co-creation, this huge project, this huge changes. And that needs a new mindset. So people should be able to think out of their own company and work together and create something together. This is the most important aspect we will force with our ecosystem thinking. Since all about connecting people, connecting ideas and trace back obstacles to how to actually get around them or over them together with different parts of the industry and different companies who can actually change the world. And you just mentioned that the next generation, so everybody who's at the moment studying and working to towards this kind of business is your hope, is your belief that there is a possibility. So if you could dream of a real climate leadership in sport, how would that look like in say five or 10 years? How would you dream of something like this? Good question, big question. I think one of the key-- what is good? I mean, it comes back to leadership traits, perhaps, and coming back to that next generation, where what I'm always looking for, what I'm trying to do myself, actually, is apply a couple of key personality traits to the way I approach problems and thinking. So systems thinking is probably number one on there. It's about understanding the unintended consequences of the choices we make. We feel we live within this kind of small system that we're trying to influence just within the marine industry. But a lot of the choices we make will have unintended consequences on other industries or other people. So it's really applying this broad systems thinking. Connected to systems thinking, then, is the sort of people you want. Is it's expert generalists? Is what I often describe it as? So I describe myself, maybe not an expert generalist. A generalist. I've had exposure to lots of different parts of the way you make products, the way you design products, the way you sell them, the way you use them, the way you dispose of them. So we need people who apply systems thinking. They need to really be expert generalists and kind of understand all the parts of this system we operate in. And it's about long-term orientation as well. So it's about thinking, getting away from five-year private equity investment cycles and two to three-year product development cycles and thinking, what is the impact of this product or this decision in two, three, five, 10, 20 years time? And that's really hard to do because the way most people receive investment into their businesses is across like a five to seven-year time horizon. And they need to give a return within that time horizon. But that does not incentivize making long-term investments into lower-impact materials product solutions. So you kind of need-- yeah, systems think as expert generalists and long-term vision. They're the key traits that I see across the next five to 10 years that we want to see more of. And those people-- it comes back to this generational shift that I often talk about where if you look at the incumbent people in a lot of these large businesses in the marine industry, particularly thereof a certain social class, a certain education background, and a certain age profile. And what we have to see is a transition to these next generation of people who have these different personality traits. Until that happens, we're probably going to be in a period of stasis where not a huge amount is going to change. Because if you're a 60-year-old and not being ages here at all, they are at a lot of value. But the way you're going to make decisions, you're going to think, well, I'm retiring in 10 years. This isn't my problem. I don't need to solve this sustainability thing. It's actually people of who are 20, 25, 30 now, who are going to have to solve that problem. And when they're in that management position, they're going to make a very different decision to the 60-year-old executive, because they have to deal with the consequences of that decision. So that's kind of, I guess, the leadership and personality traits. Maybe on more of what does climate leadership look like five to 10 years, we have to solve this financial problem, where low impact at the minute means higher cost, more difficult to do. We have to reverse that. And it has to be the financially sensible choice. If you look at the energy industry and the transition away from fossil fuels to solar and wind, that happened because it became economically beneficial for everyone to do. We have to have the same thing happen within the way we make products and use products. And then again, it comes back to my really boring point around data. So we need better access to kind of aligned, fair, transparent, repeatable data that enables better decisions to be made at the front end of a project, no after the fact. Sorry, slightly woolly answer that question. No, that's perfect. What about you, Holger? Do you have something to add here? I just will add to it because I think that you mentioned already crucial things. But my dream would be that this linear business thinking is over at that time. That means for me today, you're working from, this is what we want to build. You build it and you sell it. And we have to start thinking circular. And I hope that circular business models are mainstream in five years time. And that we skip the idea that everything at the end will be measured by growth. And it will be changed into something like food print return or whatever. So that sustainability is not a question of price anymore. It's a given in every product we create, every service we have. It's just part of it, like things today in logistic to calculate into it. So you have to calculate sustainability as a given in your product. So make it a mainstream thing. And that will require absolutely new leadership. And I think that's maybe the biggest challenge because, as I mentioned before, co-creation is a completely different leadership than you build in your company and everything is yours. So to be open-minded to other people, to other ideas, accept them, implement them. Even if you are against it, this is a big thing. And that will change a lot in leadership, no ego approaches anymore. And I hope that the younger generation has a different view on this leadership. So that's my hope for the next five years. It probably requires a shift in political attitudes across many states and many, many continents actually. Before we finish up for today, because it's so fascinating, I could be talking to you for hours. But before we finish up, there are several projects only that you're working on that have a direct impact on people who are not sailing necessarily, but are affected by your work and they don't even know it yet. So could you explain a little bit more what those projects are, please? Yeah, so I mentioned earlier, we run something called the Impact Accelerator Program, where we help up to three companies per year accelerate delivery of their solutions that benefit the wider marine ecosystem. So last year we did two really good projects, one of which was with the R&LI, so the kind of the life-saving, the lifeboats that operate within UK waters, where they obviously have a critical mandate that their sole purpose is to help distressed kind of see fairers in situations where they need support. So sustainability for them is kind of like, well, I'm not really sure, you know, how does that fit within our mission statement? But actually as an organisation, they're aware that the environment they operate within, you know, on the sea is kind of becoming more volatile, but because of climate change, you know, more frequent extreme weather events, title surge, etc. So we did a project with them to look at how would they decarbonise their existing fleet? So they have about 450 vessels just in the UK across lots of different size brackets from larger lifeboats to the smaller insure life craft. So we did a study on something a boat called the Atlantic 85, which is one of the most frequently used lifeboats kind of an insure, it's about five to six, I think it's five to eight metre rigid inflatable boat. So we did a big study there to look at where does impact occur and what could you do to change it? So some really interesting insights came from that study that there's a huge variability of use depending on where the asset is based, which then means just making one big switch to a different propulsion system that works for all of the boats wouldn't necessarily reduce impact. You actually needed to look at it at a station by station basis, but also then in the raw materials, the production phase where they're using a mixture of carbon fibre and glass fibre. There was lots of optimisation that could move towards natural fibres, for instance, or replacing a carbon fibre with an isomatics 10-ron fibre. So similar material properties, but lower impact. So that was one that probably touches people day to day if you're using or you live near the coast in the UK, you know, we're working with those guys to help decarbonise their fleet. And the other really interesting one was working with a company called BAR Technologies, who are focused on decarbonising the shipping industry by putting fixed wing sales on board large bulk carriers containing ships, those sorts of vessels. So we work with them to optimise the design of their new 24 metre windwing, where obviously the solution they're creating reduces impact, massive scale, you know, because you're putting it on board a big ship, you're using less fuel because you're using the wind to move forward. But what they hadn't necessarily accounted for was what was the impact in the production phase of creating one of these wings. So if you're thinking, I can't remember the way off to them, I think it was about a 50 ton structure per wing, and you'd often fit three wings on board a ship. That's a lot of steel, aluminium, glass fibre, resin to create product. So we then worked with them to look at how could you increase the input of recycled feedstocks into the raw materials, and then how would that affect the environmental payback period of fitting one of these wings on board a ship. And what was fascinating is that actually you're talking about something like a six month payback. So all of the emissions you release in the production phase, you're paying back within six months of fitting on board a ship because the amount of fuel it's reducing that ship burning in its main engines. I think credible. Yeah, so again, that's, you know, addressing maritime emissions, so shipping, and that sort of is about 3% of annual global emissions. So it's a really quite a big contributor. It's actually more than the whole aviation industry, which is about 2.8%. So looking at technologies that can really alter the way that maritime space operates is a big focus area for us over the next few years as well. So we started with high performance racing boats, we moved into more leisure boats, and now we're looking towards the big ships, and what we can do there to help them optimize and reduce. I think the last example is it's really great in terms of how important data is because that could make a different sense to your business model. And then you see the data, you rethink your business model, and then you say we have to do it. And therefore data is so important and so important what marine ship is doing. Really, really cool. A cool example like it. Thanks. It's going to be fascinating to talk to you again. Maybe next year, we'll actually keep checking in with you, Ali, and keep re-inviting you to hear how all these projects are continuing and what's happening there. Thank you both so much for talking to me and explaining all of this. It really does fill me with a lot of positivity and optimism, and I really like watching what you do. And this is, yeah, thank you very much. This has been great. Thank you. Thank you, Myraika. That's great. Thank you. Production, Kulula. Concept and editorial, Maraika Clape and Olga Ambroselli. Music and sound design, Epidemic sound. A production by Kulula. For more information, visit kulula.eco. Music.