"There is no such thing as "away" when someone throws something away." Justin Koehl, Co-Founder Last ... [+]
Like many other tourists in the summer of 2010, Neha Upadhyaya was travelling through Leh in Ladakh, India, when she found herself in the midst of a flash flood. The town, which sits approximately 11,000 feet above sea level and typically receives very little rainfall, was ill-equipped to withstand the sudden and unusually heavy rains. The impact was devastating. More than 600 people lost their lives and, in the days that followed, officials estimated that 80% of Ladakh’s infrastructure was either partially damaged or totally destroyed – a disaster zone that spanned 60 towns. Those that escaped with their lives lost everything else. It would take many years for the region to recover.
Neha was one of the fortunate ones. But, after witnessing the struggles of the local apricot farmers attempting to recover their livelihoods she was inspired to take action. Equipped with an MSc in Human Resource Management and Organisation Analysis from Kings College London, she got to work. “I decided to help them to switch to organic farming,” she recalls. “I started with awareness workshops on organic farming and met many tribal leaders, government officials, local organisations and renewable energy agencies”.
Her aim was to enable the farmers to withstand future unpredictable natural disasters - something which is, unfortunately, becoming all the more common. “In India, we are witnessing one extreme weather event every day from January to October - whether it is heavy rain or unseasonal hail storms,” Neha explains. “Weather related displacement is more frequent than war related displacement, and the coping abilities of poorer people to withstand crisis after crisis is getting weaker.” As a result of her efforts, in 2014, her eco-focused start-up Guna Organics was born.
"King's Business School gave me confidence to continue the enterprise no matter what happens.” Neha ... [+]
Neha isn’t alone in her activism. As humankind becomes increasingly aware of how much damage our existence is doing to the world we live in, and with the 2030 deadline for accomplishing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) drawing ever closer, popular attitudes on how we live, work, and contribute to our society are shifting. It is no longer enough for governments to bang the drum for sustainability or to impose sanctions on industries to encourage greener ways of doing business. And despite the eagerness of world leaders to gather at annual events to drive environmental efforts forwards, there is a significant lack of progress being made. Increasingly, entrepreneurs like Neha are realising that, to actually create change, they need to take matters into their own hands.
For the institutions responsible for shaping and launching the next generation of business minds, the pressure is on to not only preach the right values, but to practice them also, and equip their students to do the same. No longer are business school applicants content to apply to the schools which offer the best bang for their buck or the most prestige for their CVs. Instead, greater focus is being placed upon institutions’ moral compass, and their ability to build the necessary capabilities and platforms from which to propel an aspiring entrepreneur into a position to effectively combat climate change.
Neha is something of an early adopter of this attitude using her previous education, and then the support of the Entrepreneurship Institute at Kings Business School, to make her entrepreneurial ambitions a reality. “The business school gave me confidence to continue the enterprise no matter what happens and equipped me with better terminology,” Neha explains. “The Entrepreneurship Institute helped me with presentation and pitch skills to a great extent. Working in remote areas where we hardly get internet access, I was not aware of many tools and techniques.”
Guna Organics speaks to a very specific problem faced by the communities in rural India – an over-reliance on natural resources, and seeks to find ways to enable businesses and households to utilise the environment in a greener, more beneficial way. And her work is providing results, Neha estimates that the switch to solar is reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 536kgs per household over a period of eight months.
"It took a village - fellow Booth MBAs, alums, professors, industry experts- for the first pilot to ... [+]
Reducing greenhouse gases to mitigate climate change has also been a focus for Driko Ducasse, who graduated with an MBA from Chicago Booth in 2021. Driko was born in Haiti, but raised in the U.S. He would visit Haiti every summer, and noticed a big difference in the standard of living between Haitians and those living just two hours away in Miami.
“While the comparison of Haiti to the US is like comparing apples to oranges, we must not forget that apples and oranges are both fruits, so we should see some similarities between the two,” he contends. “However, even when we look at the country that shares an island with Haiti, Dominican Republic (DR), the disparity in the standard of living between the two countries is massive. Haiti has been developing much slower than the DR for a very long time.” The disparity inspired him to start a company that would support the development of Haiti one community at a time.”
The company had to be environmentally focused because although Driko appreciated the beautiful mountain ranges, the rainforest, and the beaches of Haiti, he also witnessed the excavation of those mountains, the depletion of those rainforests, and the pollution in an ocean that was once so blue.
After a successful early career in the insurance industry before heading to business school, Driko decided to invest his energy and ideas into Alina Eneji, a solar energy developer that is redesigning how to provide energy to customers in rural areas. The companies objectives are to increase the electrification of Haiti using clean and renewable sources of energy, to boost economic activity through the supply of a reliable source of energy, and to reduce Haiti’s dependence on external sources of energy.
The two years at Chicago Booth were invaluable to launch the venture. “We got started by testing the idea through the equivalent of an incubator at the University of Chicago. We received open and honest feedback from a group of smart people, while simultaneously piloting the idea with 30 households.”
“It took a village,” Driko says. “It was with the guidance of fellow MBA candidates, as well as Alums and professors at the university, industry experts, and many others that the first pilot was executed successfully and exceeded expectation in the KPIs measured; speed and cost of deployment and reliability.”
The goal for Aline Eneji is to supply 100,000 households in the poorer parts of Haiti with electricity within the next 5 years. “This will help bring many of those households out of poverty, explains Driko Ducasse. “We plan to do this by focusing on what has made us successful so far; focusing on optimizing returns for all stakeholder and building a good business with sound fundamentals.”
“There is plenty of money available, it is just not being put to work in areas that are needed, such ... [+]
Finding new ways to create a profit from nature without contributing to its destruction is an ethos that Harry Grocott, shares. His venture, Treeconomy provides a way for landowners to protect, and even grow their forests by making trees profitable without resorting to deforestation. How? Through carbon offsetting, and the use of start-of-the-art 3D land mapping and data analytics.
Harry exemplifies the growing wave of eco-conscious aspiring business leaders who are specifically seeking a business education that educates them to use their newfound skills to leave the world in a better state than they found it in. “I was originally a geography student,” Harry reflects, “so studying the science of climate change was something I had direct exposure to.” Like Neha and Driko, the inspiration for his start-up was fuelled by what he saw around him. “I was very fortunate to do a field study in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil where I had first-hand exposure to the damaging impacts of deforestation & degraded ecosystems.” The experience drove his desire to find another way for nature to be valuable.
It was his years spent working in wealth management that provided the spark. “I think it is true to say Treeconomy was really born out of frustration and anger as much as passion,” he says. “There is plenty of money available, it is just not being put to work in areas that are needed, such as carbon dioxide removal. I found this incredibly frustrating – it seemed obvious that there was a problem, and that the solution was also obvious; solar powered machines that grow themselves – trees.” Treeconomy’s model helps businesses meet their net-zero ambitions by confidently investing in carbon-offsetting packages, enabling both organisations and landowners to protect themselves and the planet and gain from doing so.
To see his vision to fruition he needed a more robust education. “I was accepted into Imperial College Business School’s MSc Climate Change, Management & Finance,” he says. “The course had everything I felt I wanted to learn academically, a large focus on business & finance, and modules on cleantech entrepreneurship.” The time spent studying gave Harry the space to take a deeper dive into the sector, build a supportive network of climate enthusiasts and business gurus, and produce the blueprint for what Treeconomy would become.
Today, Treeconomy has planting projects open in Abergavenny and The Scottish Highlands, and influences forest management in Canada, Ecuador and, soon, Africa. “By better quantifying carbon removal volumes we have a goal to remove 1Gt of carbon dioxide in the next decade, that’s 1 billion tonnes,” Harry says. “It’s big and ambitious, but the exciting – and slightly sad – thing is that we have to think big because we emit more than 50Gt every year. It’s a huge problem, but a big opportunity for us too.”
“McKinsey estimated that buildings are responsible for 50% of CO2 emissions, which means the ... [+]
The opportunity is one not missed by Franco Vietti and Furio Barzon, the duo behind ZEB Technologies, which looks at ways to reduce the carbon footprint of growing towns and cities. “McKinsey estimated that buildings are responsible for 50% of CO2 emissions, which means the construction industry has a big responsibility for climate change, and lots of buildings need a deep energy retrofit to get rid of those emissions,” says Franco, highlighting the significant challenge this poses for many countries in meeting the agreements of the European Green Deal – which stipulates a target of zero green house gases by 2050, with an intermediate milestone of -55% CO2 in 2030. “For example, there are at least five million dwellings to renovate only in Spain, where we are now focusing our activities”.
Industrializing this process, they believe, is the only solution that can make the European goals doable at the required pace. This is where ZEB Technologies makes its impact. “For this reason, a group of us at MBA Esade have put together an innovative product to retrofit the envelope of the buildings with new insulation coating and new windows produced offsite with industrial precision,” Furio shares. “The building envelope alone can reduce energy needs by 70% and enable electrical heating pump systems that make the building 100% carbon neutral.”
With a need for speed in mind, Franco and Furio found support through the G-Accelerator competition at GBSB Global Business School in Barcelona. The incubator provided their project with the pace and prospects it needed in order to succeed through mentorship, infrastructure facilities and funding support. Looking internationally, through the G-Accelerator, the founders were also able to connect with similar pioneering initiatives in The Netherlands, Germany, and northern European countries. “Thanks to Accelerator we have been able to have an idea of the articulated business ecosystem in Spain and to be introduced to key stakeholders,” Furio explains. Their growing network provides a wealth of promise for the future.
READ FRANCO AND FURIO’S STORY HERE
“My studies at Aalto introduced me to the world of tech entrepreneurship and distilled in me a ... [+]
Also at the forefront of the carbon reduction scene is Henrietta Moon – whose credentials in sustainability are nothing to be sniffed at. An alumna of Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program and Stanford’s founder community StartX, as well as being recognized as a Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst 2021, and a Young European Leader 2023, Henrietta is a posterchild for developing technology solutions to help the planet.
Her start-up, Carbo Culture harnesses new technologies to remove carbon from the earth’s atmosphere in an effort to curb global warming. “We’re developing a scalable, quickly deployable carbon removal solution that both safely sequesters carbon from the atmosphere using the age-old technology of photosynthesis, and generates clean energy as a by-process,” Henrietta explains. “Unlike other technological carbon removal methods, Carbo Culture’s solution creates excess energy while safely sequestering CO2, rather than requiring energy. In addition, we produce functional carbon material called biochar, that we use to replace fossil-fuel based carbon products.”
For Henrietta, her business education provided both the basis for nurturing her entrepreneurial aspirations, studying first at Vienna University of Economics and Business before enrolling at Aalto University and the community which has remained an influential part of her professional life even a decade later. “During my studies, I was deeply involved in the Aalto student entrepreneurial community Aalto Entrepreneurship Society (AaltoES) and startup conference Slush,” she shares, “which introduced me to the world of tech entrepreneurship and distilled in me a growth mindset and global outlook. As the community, its founders and the start-ups have matured, it has been an invaluable source of peer-support in running Carbo Culture.”
This, along with meeting co-founder Christopher Carstens at Singularity University provided Henrietta with the community she needed to help make Carbo Culture a success. In 2021, company was able to raise $6.1M in seed investment.
"The IMPM makes you think and reflect, it makes you fundamentally listen better. That can have a ... [+]
It’s not just increasing carbon emissions that needs to be addressed, but the other greenhouse gases which contribute to the rising temperatures of our planet. “Methane is a greenhouse gas that the EPA says is 25 times more potent that carbon dioxide,” says Lee Krywitsky, who has ran his company Safe Effective Technologies, Inc from Calgary since 2013. “The most current scientific studies are telling us that the overall amount of methane that is being emitted by us humans is greatly underestimated.”
It’s a problem he’s committed to helping industry to solve. Having started his entrepreneurial journey in manufacturing, servicing the aerospace, nuclear, petro-chemical and oil & gas industries, he has witnessed for many years how despite a willingness to clean up their practices, many companies struggle in knowing how to get started. “The more I was deeply involved in safety, the more I found that the industry leaders in each respective market were also truly committed to polluting less,” he reflects. “I sold my manufacturing business to a Fortune 500 company, and found myself getting more focused on quarterly profits as seemingly the sustainability metric that mattered most. I left that corporate life and started a consulting company that was focused on more of the why rather that the how.”
His desire to answer those questions led him to the International Masters Programme for Managers – perhaps one of the most progressive and radical business education programmes on the market. Founded by management icon and McGill professor Henry Mintzberg, the programme encourages business leaders to question their pre-existing attitudes by exploring five managerial mindsets. “The program makes you consider what your effect may be beyond just improving shareholder value,” he explains. “I reflected on how my legacy trajectory of enhancing safety and efficiency could change to better the local community, society and try to make the planet better for our children and grandchildren.” The programme’s values resonated with his own upbringing. “My late father was a nuclear engineer that instilled in me a ‘ZeroMax’ mindset, zero harm to people and maximum safety. That was my goal throughout my career. But after taking the program, ZeroMax now deepened to focus on zero leaks or emissions and maximum pipeline integrity, zero discrimination, and maximum inclusion.”
Coming back to methane, Lee’s company provides an expansive toolkit for companies to explore, in the quest for zero harm. “Our Sentinel Project is a full spectrum of offerings that help end users survey, detect, quantify and mitigate leaks with hydrocarbon infrastructure especially flow control equipment. It’s from an engineering perspective that looks at the legacy assets and offers a new perspectives to end users to keep their assets in service longer, perform better and emit less.” His tools are put into practice across four continents, targeting the specific economic, social, environmental priorities of each.
"Last Bottle was incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation, so that we are also accountable for ... [+]
A major focus of Earth Day is to change attitudes and behaviour toward plastics, and reducing plastic pollution. Virtually every piece of plastic that was ever made still exists in some shape or form, and earthday.org estimates that the amount of plastic produced in a year is roughly the same as the entire weight of humanity. At least 14 million tons of plastic ends up in our oceans every year.
Justin Koehn, wanted to tackle plastic pollution by taking plastic out of the environment and keeping it out. He graduated from Emory’s Goizueta Business School with an MBA in Social Enterprise, and within a year had co-founded Last Bottle Clothing, a sustainable apparel company with products made from 100-percent recycled plastic bottles. More importantly, each piece of apparel is also 100-percent “recyclable,” meaning the company closes the loop at the end of the product’s life by taking it back and recycling it yet again.
“We needed to find a circular solution. Once we saw that apparel companies were using some recycled plastics in clothing, we challenged ourselves to develop a garment made entirely out of recycled material and more importantly, to make it recyclable back into our process. Helping clean up one of the most polluting industries in the process, the textile industry, is a great added bonus.”
Justin and his co-founder Stuart Wood both had supply chain backgrounds, so once the idea of sustainable apparel surfaced, they went straight to the source: textile manufacturers in the US. “We started with companies recycling plastic bottles into fiber. Then we moved on to yarn spinners, fabric knitters, dye houses, cut & sew shops, and finally printers. We worked with all of these partners to develop a prototype that at the end of its useful life could be recycled back into the same process as the plastic bottles were going into.”
During his MBA at Emory Goizueta, Justin received plenty of great advice from my professors about not only having a great story to tell, but making a great product as well. “I was referred to a start-up accelerator by one of my professors that proved to be extremely helpful in our early stages.”
And what about classroom discussions that looked at maximising shareholder returns? “There are certain non-negotiables when it comes to sustainability,” Justin insists. Sure, you can make the decision to source from Central America instead of the Southeastern US to help drive costs down, but when it comes down to our core mission of taking plastic pollution out of the environment and keeping it out, there's no compromise.”
Justin’s long-term goal is to help other brands become circular. “I don't think it was ever our intent to create a massive brand of our own. We wanted to prove that a truly circular apparel line could be done. Now that we have, in order to make the greatest impact, we would like to help other brands bring their own circular apparel lines to market."
"ReFunk works with over 100 upcyclers around the country who give furniture a new lease of life, ... [+]
From recycling plastics in fashion to upcycling old furniture into something of value, this is about more than creating a prettily-posed Instagram reels. The core idea of reusing old goods in a better way carries a significant environmental benefit.
Anna Sheehan and her classmates at Trinity College Dublin quickly spotted the potential in upcycling, and built their start-up ReFunk Upcycling, around it. “We discovered that a shocking 10 million tonnes of furniture is discarded annually in the EU, while many consumers opt for cheap, poor-quality fast furniture as their first port-of-call,” explains Anna. “ReFunk works with over 100 upcyclers around the country who give furniture a new lease of life, extending its lifespan and reducing the amount that ends up in landfills.”
The story of ReFunk’s development is the perfect example of what can be possible for entrepreneurs who, through their studies, are exposed to the right environment. By enrolling on the MSc Marketing programme at Trinity Business School, Anna found the catalyst and partners for the company they now leads. “The idea for ReFunk came from participating in The Provost's Innovation Challenge - a weekend hackathon which, that year, tasked us with coming up with a sustainable business idea. As a group, the four of us; myself, Meredith Davis, Ellen Ryall, and Ellie Walters, all fellow MSc Marketing graduates, were already quite environmentally-aware but, as consumers, found it hard to match our behaviours with our beliefs, due to a lack of options. We wanted to make it simple for consumers to make the sustainable choices.” After research revealed the harmful impact of the fast furniture industry, the idea for ReFunk Upcycling was born.
ReFunk also seeks to solve more than landfill issues, but supporting job creation. “We discovered that 9/10 upcyclers want to turn their passion into business but don't know how,” Anne says. “When they create a profile on our site, we help them find customers, elevate their visibility and brand, and give them the opportunity to capitalise on their skillsets.”
Anna and her co-founders went on to win the Provost’s Innovation Challenge, and secure a coveted spot in the Launchbox Accelerator ran by the college. For Anna, The support has been invaluable. “The business school gave us the opportunity to tap into the national start-up ecosystem, connecting with fellow founders, as well as mentors,” she says. “Through the various competitions we won almost 20k in prize money, without which we would never have been able to get the business off the ground.”
