The NatureBacked Podcast

Next year, 100 Thousand Million aims to start building the world’s first truly sustainable city in northern Chile, and several countries are keen to see the next project’s on their soil, said founders Alberto Scherb and Jaime Alvarez.“In the short term, our vision or mission is to create a lifestyle that is truly human-centred, nature-focused, and of course, sustainable,” Scherb said. “So in a matter of two or three generations, people won’t have to have conversations like the ones we have today: How do we become sustainable? What it is to be sustainable? What’s the 1.5 lifestyle?” Learn more about: How the first sustainable city is being born What are the next countries after Chile? Process of permits and studies to build a town from scratch Role of web3 in building a new tow Where will the people come from? “The critical aspect of building the city is not building the city, but building the community. And that is really hard and exciting because nobody has the answer. And it’s not like somebody’s trying to be the cowboy and save the day. Because there is no cowboy for this one,” Scherb said.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green world.Subscribe to the NatureBacked newsletter on LinkedIn. **Advertisers in this episode:Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sam Kamani, VP of Growth at web3 tools maker Cookbook, said he was looking ahead optimistically despite crypto winter in the episode where we delved deep into the world of Web3 and decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs).“I’m not too worried, not too worried at all, even though I work in this space. I’ve seen, and I’ve lived through, at least three or four of these upswings and downturns. Every time in the downturn, the price is the same or higher than the previous high of the previous cycle,” Kamani said.“There is one thing that is very different that has happened this time, that has never happened before -- in all previous downturns, the number of developers building in this space would reduce. In this downturn, the number of developers building in this space went up. That was very interesting that it had a critical mass in the number of people creating solutions, and it has gone up significantly,” he said.Cookbook aggregates and indexes smart contracts, providing building blocks for anything in Web3 using technologies developers are familiar with."Say someone wants to create their own token or a voting DAO, or any type of NFT, they can source a template and just copy from that and deploy in a few seconds instead of spending weeks," said Kamani, who also hosts “Web3 with Sam Kamani” podcast.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with investors and entrepreneurs about the new green world.Subscribe to the NatureBacked newsletter on LinkedIn. Advertisers in this episode:Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It will be a long road to broad adoption of new currency BEACH, but living well should not cost us the planet, said Robert Cobbold, head of operations at Beach Collective, a blue circular economy platform behind the token.“A beach token is a currency which internalizes the health of the planet into every single transaction,” Cobbold said. Most of every transaction cost goes to funding ocean regeneration and climate action.Learn more about: how to replace Visa and Mastercard in every transaction how to earn BEACH tokens does the creator of money worry over the exchange rate challenges of being a cryptocurrency “The fact that we’re crypto is more or less irrelevant. We’re just a currency. We’re just another type of money in that same way. It’s all about creating opportunities for people to earn and spend the currency like you’d earn and spend any other currency,” Cobbold said.“It’s a long journey to gain generalized adoption of a new currency, right? So we have to be honest about how tall the mountain is here.”In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green world.Subscribe to the NatureBacked newsletter on LinkedIn. Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transparency and trust built into Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) should be an example for any corporation, said founders of Internet Native Organisation (INO)."The future of organisations is digital - we have seen that in Estonia, but the rest of the world is not yet there," said Astra Tikas.Internet Native Organisation said it seeks to bring tools and solutions of DAOs to the mainstream, starting from Estonia., where it holds its first DAO Day on March 28.“Our vision is to help Estonia become the first country in Europe to offer legal entity status for DAOs,” said Polina Brottier.Learn more about: What makes DAOs special What benefits blockchain brings to organisations How could the proliferation of DAOs impact charity Is democracy an example of DAO or vice versa “DAO is an example of democracy, and DAO is what is bringing democracy to everything, not just to the government. It’s transparent and truly decentralised or neutral because the base, the technology, is allowing it,” said Javier Ortin. “Blockchain technology offers a transparent, neutral way for governments.”In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green world.Subscribe to the NatureBacked newsletter on LinkedIn. Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reneum seeks to boost solar and wind farm investments by tokenizing renewable energy certificates.“It’s a vehicle to bypass traditional capital market failures or inefficiencies to reach the corners of the world that struggle to access funding and deploy more renewable energy,” said Chief Executive Brianna Welsh.“I see legacy market providers shifting into blockchain quite quickly because they recognize this opportunity with the technology architecture that blockchain enables,” Welsh said.Reneum promises to revolutionize legacy markets for renewable energy certificates, which are based on anachronistic models that render them inefficient, undersupplied, and unfit for purpose. Reneum’s blockchain-based marketplace leverages a digitally-native token instrument instead of a paper-based certificate to provide capital to pre-approved renewable projects. Buyers retire these certificates by burning the tokens and receive Eisbaer NFTs containing provenance data to show they’ve greened their energy footprint.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green world.Subscribe to the NatureBacked newsletter on LinkedIn. Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To solve the challenge of increasing plastic waste in oceans, we need to go to the source and find alternative materials to the plastics, said John Felts, CEO and co-founder of California-headquartered materials startup Cruz Foam."It’s nearly impossible to play catch up on an increasingly flowing faucet of trash. We, obviously, need to try to get out what’s already in there. But the greater avenues of change and impact will come from addressing it on the front end, stopping it from reaching the ocean or even being produced," Felts said.Learn more about: how did steel moulds for surfboards work are there venture-backed surfboards dream jobs at drop-testing  new products for e-commerce In February 2023, Cruz Foam launched a range of packaging products, from its compostable foam to replace plastic bubble wraps, and partnered with Atlantic Packaging to sell the packages.“When we looked at the opportunity here, the e-commerce space is just exploding,” Felts said.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green world.Subscribe to the NatureBacked newsletter on LinkedIn. Advertisers in this episode:Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Barcelona-based TAPP Water seeks to change consumers’ habits and fights against billions of dollars spent on marketing bottled water through its filter systems for tap water, said Magnus Jern, founder and Chief Executive of TAPP Water.The consumption of plastic water bottles has increased over the last few years, when knowledge of the health problems of bottled water and knowledge of plastic waste has increased. “Bottled water consumption has continued to increase, which is crazy. It’s crazy, like with all the media we’re getting, with everything we’re getting told about how bad plastic pollution is and how bad it is. People just buy more," Jern said.Learn more about: how to change consumers' behavior why do people like to carry tons of water to the fifth floor how much does the average consumer spend on bottled water how space technology cleans water breakthroughs in expanding tap filters offering “In a nutshell, bottled water is really bad for the planet and just completely unnecessary,” Jern said.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green world.Subscribe to the NatureBacked newsletter on LinkedIn. Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

U.S.-based green investment platform Raise Green is looking to drive more capital into climate solutions, boosting entrepreneurship in the sector, said founder and CEO Franz Hochstrasser.“We take a grassroots approach to climate action -- we want more people involved in investing and innovating in this space,” Hochstrasser said.Millennials’ interest in sustainable investment has continued to increase in the United States despite COVID and reached 99% in a recent Morgan Stanley survey.“They want real, sustainable investment options that aren’t some greenwash version of the same public equities that their parents had traded. That makes me hopeful: there’s capital going into the hands of younger generations that want to put that capital to work to create an inclusive and accelerated clean energy transition,” Hochstrasser said.Learn more about: the largest wealth transfer in the United States Impacts of the new U.S. legislation younger investors interested in green investing the upcoming launch of Raise Green crowdfunding Raise Green’s growth plans to 2025 The equity crowdfunding platform will launch this week its own crowdfunding campaign to tap into the growing demand.“There are more than 10,000 cities and towns across the US, and every one of them needs 10 or 20, or 100 distributed energy resources installed between now and the next seven years to get to 100% clean energy by 2035,” Hochstrasser said.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green world.Subscribe to the NatureBacked newsletter on LinkedIn. Advertisers in this episode:Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Teaming up with other investors to push for a change towards greener and healthier products from global firms is gaining traction, and industry behemoths like Unilever and Nestle are listening, said Alejandro Jimenez, head of investments at Estonian green investment platform Grünfin.“Part of our goal is to make you feel you have the power; this is democratized. You have accessibility, and your money is doing something good and helping make this change. So more of these coalitions are indeed popping up," Jimenez said.Learn more about: how investors push change in behemoths like Unilever, Nestle benefits of investing through exchange-traded funds (ETFs) why Grünfin focuses on Paris Agreement  “In the New World, activism needs to think about a lot more broadly than just shareholders and think about consumers, employees, the supply chain, what governments are saying, and all that kind of stuff,” Jimenez said.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green world.Subscribe to the NatureBacked newsletter on LinkedIn. Advertisers in this episode:Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mushrooms will open a new nature-backed market for turning construction waste into new raw materials, said Joanne Rodriguez, founder of MycoCycle.“There is no waste in nature - that’s a manmade construct. And so, looking for solutions in nature to solve these problems is critical to how we battle this climate change,” Rodriguez said.Learn more about: Where mushrooms and cannabis meet The opportunities of biomimicry The beginning of the mycelium rush In the United States alone, 660 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste is added to landfills annually. That’s twice the amount of municipal solid waste, she said.“I see us as the only ones doing this with the nature-backed solution. We are seeing others work in recycling construction and demolition debris or hard-to-recycle industrial waste streams. That’s usually coming through chemical recycling,” Rodriguez said.In the NatureBacked podcast of Single.Earth, we talk with investors and entrepreneurs about their vision of the new green world.Subscribe to the NatureBacked newsletter on LinkedIn. Follow NatureBacked across platforms:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsTwitter | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices