 You're a funnel a Week ago those were completely foreign words to me and I Have to say after a week of immersion in the culture of the Iwi thank you people and through the good support of this incredible fellowship I Feel completely now immersed in a culture that feels a lot like home to me and And I'm super grateful to be here right now and share share what we're doing here, so Thank you My name is Isaac Nicholson I'm an activist I'm an entrepreneur. I'm seeking to propel a circular and regenerative economy and This is a really unique opportunity here in New Zealand because of the culture So You know, why are we staring at this upside-down backwards? impact This world gone awry You know, it's it's a good question And am I the only one that finds it ironic that we're having this powerful meeting here on a racetrack? Because this is a race against time if we are to Keep this habitat supporting us. We've got a lot of work to do and so with that thought Some old friends of mine and I got together and created a company called circular systems And I'm working with guys that are much smarter than me You know PhD material scientists Plastics engineers sustainable agriculture veterans permaculture experts and with the systems thinking that comes out of that kind of training and Each of us with 25 years in the respective space we think that we've come up with some potential solutions and What we're working on here is really redefining what sustainable materials are We had the incredible fortune this year to receive the global change award for one of our technologies Another huge honor and it's really helped us propel and even to be in the position here to offer up some technologies That can be game-changing in this space in near term So we're looking at this nexus of economic environmental and social Truly circular and regenerative systems development. This is Absolutely possible right now and we've got a technology that I'm about to tell you about that really touches all 17 of the UN SDGs And I want to inspire all of you to start to innovate and really strive for these kinds of goals It's a lofty goal. We're after it The first of our technologies is text loop and this is really state of the art textile to textile recycling and You know here in New Zealand like everywhere you got a lot of garment waste a lot of textile waste Needs to be managed it can turn into really valuable materials and what we're talking about with each of these technologies is a fundamental shift from Looking at what we call waste right now and looking at it instead as resource and as soon as you shift your perspective You're you're ready to really start changing the game. So text loop is already up and running We're recycling materials for the likes of H&M and adidas We're moving, you know to scale this throughout Southeast Asia where the biggest supply chains are right now And it's something that can happen right here And I hope to meet some people from the local Wellington area later today to talk about how we can take it to another level So we're really focused on this lightest touch approach And that means preserving the embedded energy and the materials that we're recycling That's making sure that rather than going for a big chemical Intensive energy intensive approach we strive to really put the lightest touch there preserve the color Preserve the polymer take it forward into subsequent life cycles without breaking it all the way down and rebuilding it all the way back up We can do that later a few life cycles out. This is just smart systems thinking We take these really short staple fibers that are considered low value and a lot of times make really crappy Textiles if you just use them as is and conventional spinning and we put them into a new Proprietary spinning technology called orbital and with orbital we can safely contain these short fibers and create super high performance materials In fact, we've got some fabrics that beat Nike dry fit for wicking and fast-drive performance But with no chemical finishing and from recycled inputs It's really exciting But it's also curing the quality problems These are stronger yarns and it prevents the pilling that's inherent to using these recycled fibers normally So we're taking what would be really low value inputs and putting into high value constructs And this means that it can last a long time durability is also another factor in sustainable materials So really creating high performance from low value recycled inputs and now finally The agro loop now this is probably our most game-changing technology by far and what we're doing here with this is converting food crop waste into cottonized textile fiber that can go directly into conventional yarn spinning and materials and You know, this is a system that's designed to be regenerative by nature And what that means it's a closed-loop bio refinery That's actually generating the biochemicals we need to upgrade the fiber intrinsically from the plant waste The leftovers of which happens to be perfect organic fertilizer We're also converting the the leftover biomass into energy that runs the mill and in this way We're also producing biochar as the only effluent there So you combine these things and put them back in the land and you're supporting that fertility cycle And along the way, we're getting a host of co-products including all these great fun biochemicals that can be applied into all types of plastics and cool building materials and Then this really valuable textile fiber that could go into the uniforms that the little yellow bird is making over there And so We're really excited because here you've got an opportunity. You have you have an emerging hemp economy Things like flax oil seed flax can grow really well Without the means to process that stuff really effectively. We can't maximize value and we have a system here that we want to bring to New Zealand and Set up some scaled pilots and really prove as a means of giving farmers more income and Producing some really high-value materials here. So, you know with this kind of systems thinking and with collaboration we can really move the needle and This week we've had the chance to talk about a new form of collaboration. We call constructive interference and This is this idea that it came out of a discussion around surfing and why are the waves so big in this one spot? That's because these wavelengths are channeled and line up with one another and we're all these wavelengths and When we get in sync we create exponentially larger swells and This is the ground swell that we can push together So this collaboration factor Thank you guys for being this deep underwater channel that's bringing these wavelengths together Edmund Hillary Fellowship you guys Wow, so, you know through this work together We can write the impact and We can really regenerate our world and that's that's the work we've got to do So let's let's think about that and go have some great lunch