The NatureBacked Podcast

Industries have too often left the control over the end of the product lifecycle to individuals at a time when it could open many opportunities for the reuse of materials, said Joe Macleod, founder of andend, the world’s first customer-ending business. “There’s a massive gap at the end of the consumer lifecycle that holds circularity,” Macleod said.Learn more about: Solutions for better off-boarding experiences Concept of Death and the world’s largest graveyard Business opportunities around death When will Facebook have more dead customers than live ones Joe Macleod is the author of:Ends.: Why we overlook endings for humans, products, services and digital. And why we shouldn’tEndineering: Designing consumption lifecycles that end as well as they beginIn the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with our guests about their vision of the new green economy.Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Climate investing and the climate, in general, is the biggest opportunity we’ve ever had, said Matt Ward from early-stage climate investment syndicate 4WARD.VC.“Either we pull it off and succeed or pretty much we all effing die and go to war, and the world goes to absolute s-h-i-t. So what would you rather bet on? Would you rather bet on humanity being creative, coming up with solutions, and doing the hard thing? Or would you rather bet against humanity?”“Will we stop climate change? No. Will we fight climate change and try to make the best of worlds that we can and still have something livable? Yes,” Ward said. “My goal with this is, I’m going to make as big of a dent as I can. Whether that is enough or not, I don’t know. But I’m going to aim towards it being enough and being positive on a climate from a world perspective.” In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with our guests about their vision of the new green economy.Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A universal basic dividend that would distribute some of the profits generated by corporates in industrialized countries to the citizens in low-income countries would be a step forward in the current troubled situation, said Anders Wijkman, Honorary President of the global think tank Club of Rome.“If you look at the world at large, we are moving in the wrong direction. Almost every possible environment indicator is pointing downwards, not upwards. So I’m not happy. I am quite pessimistic,” Wijkman said in the episode recorded at the GreenEST Summit in Tallinn.Learn more about: The Limits of Growth: looking back at the 1972 report What kind of carrots do European farmers need for change? How to change course for the world’s energy systems ”If you look at history, major transformations were always happening in the context of crises, wars, pandemics. We are not good at changing course, we are resistant to change as long as we think life is relatively good,” Wijkman said.Anders Wijkman is a former Member of the European Parliament, Assistant Secretary-General of the UN, and Policy Director of UNDP, among many other climate-linked tasks over his long career.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with our guests about their vision of the new green economy.Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Action and information sharing are keys for fighting climate anxiety, said Itamar Weizman, the head of climate investments at Israeli investment firm Firstime who suffers from self-diagnosed climate anxiety. He said the five stages of climate anxiety are similar to the five stages of grief."A lot of people are stuck in denial, especially in America, right? People are just: I don’t want to hear about it. There is nothing going on. I can continue business as usual. Everything is fine. The world isn’t burning, the world isn’t dying, and the world isn’t crashing,” he said.“My goal is to bring as many people as I can through these stages to acceptance, so they can restart with action. If we don’t go through all of these stages, from denial to anger to bargaining, depression, and acceptance, we don’t go into action,” Weizman said.Learn more about: How to travel to COP27, and what to expect Language requirements for Firstime investments Beehero's unique insight into hives How First Airborne drones inspect wind farms autonomously Recommended documentaries:  David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet John Chester: The Biggest Little Farm In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green economy.Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Industrial agriculture, one of the most significant contributors to climate change, is facing a revolution that will move meat production to factories from farms, said Daan Luining, a co-founder and CTO at cultivated meat startup Meatable.The 2018-founded Dutch startup Meatable - one of the frontrunners in the new field of cultivated meat - has raised $60 million so far. It aims to sell its first lab-grown meats to consumers in 2024-2025.“We replicate what nature is doing without the entire animal attached to it. So we give the cells food, what they usually would consume if it were still attached to the animal. So these are sugars, proteins, and salts,” Luining said.While there are still some two years to industrial production, the founders gave tasted the first results of their work.“It almost brought me to tears. It was a huge moment for me. Huge,” Luining remembered the first bite of Meatable’s cultivated meat.“Every time, it’s flabbergasting.”Learn more about: Why Singapore first? Vegan meat vs. no-cruelty meat Is there a difference in taste? Early signs of recovery in the investment market In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, Tarmo Virki talks with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green economy.Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rules of capitalism need changing to move the needle in the fight against climate change, said Yoann Berno, a partner at the Nordic investment firm Climentum.“Unfortunately, our leaders, political leaders, are too short-sighted. They’re just responding to this crisis as they responded to COVID. As they will respond to the next crisis, I think it would be a great moment to pause, reflect, and then choose the course - to be a bit more visionary looking 10, 15, 20 years out, now is an opportunity to do it. Unfortunately, they’re just losing this opportunity,” he said. Learn more about: How to move to Capitalism 2.0 Is the carbon price too low? When will people wake up? investing in heat pumps, geothermal, and hydrogen how to manage graveyards of wind turbine blades Climentum launched in July 2022 a 150 million euro fund for investments in climate startups. It has invested in Continuum and one.five so far. You can hear more of Berno in his Climate Insiders podcast.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, Tarmo Virki talks with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green economy.Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oslo-headquartered Norselab looks for startups transforming resource-intensive industries like food, transport, and construction, said Maria de Perlinghi, a partner at the Norwegian impact investment firm.“We believe that the next frontier or the code that we have to crack now is in the major global industries, where we know that there are huge challenges,” she said. “We’re not at all shy of going into those industries and supporting companies that contribute to transforming those industries.” Learn more about: Doing good: with the product or corporate functions? Robots collecting seashells The future role of ESG Challenges of launching a high-yield impact fund “The first principle that we always look for is what we call product-driven impact. So we will not focus so much on how a company is run or the operations of a company, which would be more typical for the ESG approach - we will really look at the core products of the company, the way the company makes money, and whether that can contribute to one of the Sustainable Development Goals," de Perlinghi said.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, Tarmo Virki talks with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green world.Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Climate tech is booming thanks to troubles in the European energy sector. Still, the proportion of investments in climate tech has to grow from very low levels, said Sebastian Heitmann, co-founder, and partner at Extantia Capital.“The goal is to significantly increase this over the coming years,” Heitmann said. “In our world, the current situation is an acceleration. And we see more interest than before.”Berlin-headquartered Extantia Capital invests primarily in startups developing technology for renewable baseload power sources or carbon capture.Learn more about: Conviction and frustration behind founding Extantia Why energy is crucial for climate change Will nuclear/fusion solve climate change Why carbon is in focus for the fund  “At the end of the day, CO2 is a molecule. We cannot blockchain it away,” Heitmann said.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, Tarmo Virki talks with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green world.Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Making great cheese is the holy grail of plant-based milk products. This company is certain it has found the solution."The product is identical to what the cow is producing," Sheriff Will Van den Tweel said in an interview on the sidelines of the Startup Day Festival in Tartu, Estonia.Those Vegan Cowboys is a Dutch-founded Belgian startup where some 25 people are working on replacing cows in the dairy industry. The company's founders sold their previous startup Vegetarian Butcher to Unilever in 2018. Learn more about: How a farmer and a politician founded the two companies Can cowboys switch to farming herbs? How can cheese be like cheese when the cow is removed from the production  How much of the milk is replaced by plant-based alternatives already When will they launch? "We, as people, need to have some pain to change. And I think if you also look at what is happening in the environment, you ask yourself - going further like we are doing now probably doesn't make it easier for children, and we need some changes. And that's what we want to contribute to," Van den Tweel said."There are a lot of investments going into this area and also venture capital going into these types of businesses," he said.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, Tarmo Virki talks with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green world.Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's a good hype around climate tech, and some related sectors, like food tech, remain hot despite the downturn, said Helen Lin, a partner at Silicon Valley-based At One Ventures."When there is an economic downturn, investors typically take a flight to safety. So the more you look ... like a brick of gold to an investor, that is, a stable store of value that is not going to be hugely volatile, the more they will actually flock to you," she said.At One Ventures is backing early-stage disruptive deep tech companies that have the potential to upend the unit economics of established industries while dramatically reducing their footprint on the planet or pioneering industries that are actively regenerative. Since its 2020 launch, the firm has made 28 investments.Learn more about: How dying Hawai coral reef created the fund How startups could revamp old, massive industries Cows methane emissions When will carbon capture become interesting for investing "Carbon is important. It's also not the only variable in a very complex equation of fixing all the problems the planet has right now," Lin said.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, Tarmo Virki talks with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green world.Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices