 Over 30 years, the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership has worked with leaders in business, government and finance to provide leadership and solutions to global sustainability challenges. Now we're opening the canopy, which is a community of impact-driven start-ups, entrepreneurs and innovators who are building ventures that have potential to tackle those global challenges at scale. As members of the canopy, they will find the connections, knowledge, support and workspace here in the heart of the Cambridge cluster. They will join CRCELL's global network of over 27,000 leaders working on sustainability issues. Since 2020, we've been running focused accelerator cohorts on sector issues such as the built environment, on net zero, women in sustainability innovation and now circular economy disruptors. These programmes provide focus support they need in their organisations. Cambridge is now being recognised as the leading innovation hub in Europe for deep tech and life sciences. My view is that the next big area for Cambridge to win in is sustainability. And when you think of sustainability, that is about the convergence of multiple technologies coming together and creating world-changing innovations and what's been lacking is a hub to achieve this. And so with CISL launching and having a meaningful presence in Cambridge, that really should be the facilitator for Cambridge to be globally leading in the sustainability space. Many people enter the space of a circular economy with the intentions around resource efficiency and focused on waste reduction. But once you start unpacking what the circular economy means, it's so much richer than that and it has many different implications which can be societal, cultural, even political. A lot of businesses think that this is a question just really of efficiency, of reducing resource use or perhaps some recycling in the mix. Let's see what we can do with these materials at the end of the pipe. That's okay but that's really just a linear economy which is less bad than it was. But thinking through a circular economy always starts with the design of the product and service and making that fit the system which then allows it to be a positive cycle. It's not do less harm, it's create positive multiple benefits. Actually the system functionality we see in forest systems which are these amazing circular economies where you see all the things that forest produce, all the nutrients they produce being able to travel around the system with amazing interoperability. And so it's that kind of thinking when we're developing a circular venture we need to keep in mind how are the things we're producing available to the wider system and in making them available, how does that increase our own value to the system? If we want change, we need people who can create that change. And if we want economic change or business change, they're entrepreneurs. It's not necessarily in the traditional Silicon Valley entrepreneur that we're talking about but the same behaviours and a lot of the same skills are utilized across a range of business types. So we'd love to be helping companies like this with financial support. We're an investor so we invest between 5 and 15 million pounds into businesses but also supporting them, helping them grow, partnering with them over time so we can build a fantastic community of circular and sustainable startups. So today we're very excited to bring together 22 the most prominent and innovative UK startups as well as scale labs to see as they also circular disruptors accelerator. We have seen a lot of ambitions stated by the policy makers but ambition on its own is not enough. We need to transition from ambition to action. That's where those innovators come in so in different sectors they all demonstrate how their solution could possibly accelerate the transition to a circular economy. Some of the greatest value of the CISL and its pedigree is the amount of experts and the incredible network and also the broad-based experience that comes together. Different sectors and different knowledge bases really help to complement your perception of the circular economy. Arm with the tools, the network and the backing and the expertise I think you stand yourself in the best possible stead to have the highest chance of success. I think it's really useful to network with like-minded people. I built my business during lockdown. That's when I decided to go for it and a lot of what I've had to do is to reach out on email digitally, be on Zoom calls with lots of other people in tiny little squares and this sort of programme allows me to have those kind of conversations at scale and to have human interaction which makes a much bigger difference. So it's been great to network with people in similar positions. Also it's good to just have a bit of a breather from the everyday business like doing the Lego play and stuff like that just really helps to build your creativity back in. It's just been really great to just look at all the different issues that people are trying to tackle and how that may or may not fit into the business that you're trying to create. Being a founder can be lonely sometimes so I really appreciate it when I can get together with other people, other like-minded people and this is very specific here of course because I'm not only working and getting to know people from the fashion industry but it's across all of the industries and it's so interesting to see the similarities you have because we all work in sustainability but also the range of challenges we have. I love it, I think it's a really great process for personal growth and obviously an entrepreneurial journey. One of the great things about being in this group of people is the enthusiasm and passion and energy and exciting innovation in a space that quite often we're talking about no one else really gets and I think that's been one of the things that I've loved the most about the last couple of days and just speaking to founders who get it, who believe in the mission and who are tackling it in different ways has been just really brilliant and I've really enjoyed it.