My 2 cents on Paris ChangeNOW 2020 summit
By: Bruno Jean
Tags: Change Now, Paris, Impact, Sustainability, Impact Investing

Impact Initiatives are “all over the place”

Pampers collecting diapers in Amsterdam for recycling (diapers ranking in the top 10 source domestic waste — so sizeable topic indeed). It is worth noting that these bin accept all diaper brands, not just Pampers.

Diapers recycling bin in Amsterdam

Tokyo Olympic medals made out of garbage (= actual gold, silver and bronze recovered from old mobile phone). Story here

Incredibly, Japan managed to extract 32kg of Gold, 3,500kg of Silver and 2200kg of Bronze from used electronics

Houses made of recycled PET “plug and play” structure :

Check out the work of business man and philantropist Ustinov to recycle PET into “ready-to-assemble” and highest-industry-standards housing structure

3D objects printed on the spot out of a seaweed bath

Courtesy of the southern city of Arles, this process can live-print anything from beautiful decoration item to functional fabrics :

International Protocols starting to emerge :

Impact companies need Scale to actually have an impact. Protocols enable Scale. Here are 2 convincing signs on the market :

Loop : retailers and brands coming together to organize a -large enough- platform of reusable containers.

Even though some claim this is more marketing and green washing than actual viable logistics, this projet has the merit of pushing the experiment much further than ever before, and taking a good first step toward the scale effect required to make these products economically viable.

A first batch of loop products is getting off the ground thanks to some of the world’s largest brand operators (unilever, P&G…) and retailers (Tesco, Carrefour…)

B-Corporation certification is an independent, standardized way to assess social, environmental and public impact.

Notably endorsed by the United Nations, The certification process is thorough and specific to each area of activity of a company. As an example, Danone has been able to B-certify 17 BUs of the Group (or 30% of Group’s revenue) over the past years, one at the time…

Last but not least on Protocols — this punchline by Andrew Morlet, CEO of the Ellen Mac Arthur Foundation :

Economic model is an absolute MUST: no impact company will emerge at scale otherwise

As Igor USTINOV put it, there are 3 steps to scale an impact company:

* Start small / find your audience * Develop a robust enough model * Continuously adapt as you grow

Contrary to a some belief, Emerging Countries are at the frontline of the fight against plastic

Those colorful scultures below, though adorable, are sadly made of flip-flops washed away on indonesian beaches — not thrown away or abandonned there, but litterally carried in by the sea…

The end of international garbage trade, the keynote from Malaysan princess Zatasha against plastic pollution and food waste, were many clues that Emerging countries are not waiting too long to claim their turn

Food and agriculture account for 8 out of 20 most important levers to fight global warming

Below is a table by drawdown.org (an internationally crowdsourced impact website — which I didn’t know until then), of the top CO2 reduction initiatives by impact. In particular see how “reduced food waste”, and “moving to plant -rich diet” are taking the front row seats.

check-out drawdown.org for all 80 initiatives

Paris Olympics 2024 : Paris won the gig thanks to a promise on sustainability

Interesting talk by Tony Estanguet, multiple gold medalist in Kayak and now lead organizer of the Paris 2024 olympics, on how these olympics will be the 38th in History, but really the 1st being carbon neutral — aiming for 50% reduction of CO2 impact versus previous events.

Among the measures enabling this objective, the fact that all sites will be accessible by public transportation, but perhaps even more notably the fact that the majority of sports events will take place in Versailles, the Grand Palais, the Eiffel Tower… thus preventing new sites construction — Cool!