S1E2: Daniel Stewart - Carbon Utilisation

hello and thanks for joining us for this episode of the people place and nature podcast in this episode we have award-winning scientist dr dan stewart but first we have to say a big thank you to our sponsor vectorworks make sustainability a priority throughout the design process with a suite of tools built specifically for landscape architecture and design vector works gives you the freedom to follow your imagination wherever it may lead with remarkably flexible software that integrates bim for landscape and gis workflows sketch model and document in a single tool with the world's most design-centric bim solution discover vectorworks landmark and design without limits visit vectorworks.net to learn more so i'm really excited to be here today it's a podcast i've been looking forward to doing for a long time with um dr dan um me and dan go go way back we went to school together we do yeah dan was um was my head boy [Laughter] yeah i think we had a very different approach to school at the time and we went to quite an interesting school it's quite surprising thinking back as to where we both sat now actually our school wasn't particularly great i would say in terms of um some of the education we had and um our behavior so it's interesting to see how we both sort of developed and you know sort of wow i don't want to speak i was speaking for you mainly but flourished you know some of the things you're doing absolutely incredible um it's really interesting to see and would love to know more and i'm sure other people would so really really happy to have you on yeah very happy to be here and like as you say it's amazing that we've kind of gone in our separate directions after school and um i'm actually really pleased that we've sort of come full circle and now we're we're able to sit here and talk about what we're doing with our lives how we're trying to tackle issues that we perceive in the world in our own different ways in our different industries so i'm really pleased to be here and thank you for inviting me yeah well you're very welcome you're very welcome so tell us a bit more about what you do because you're working in um carbon dioxide utilization i am yeah which is not something i'd ever heard of before catching up with you the other day so i don't know a great deal about this subject area but it seems really really interesting and very topical so yeah absolutely so all of this work stemmed from my phd actually so from school i went and did a master's degree in chemistry at the university of southampton i then uh shamefully didn't apply for any jobs when i came out over uni and i worked in recruitment for just short of a year and during that time i applied to go back to southampton to start phd and that at the time didn't necessarily focus on carbon dioxide but when i sat down with my supervisor and sort of my interview as such he's a professor of catalysis so he designs structures use solid state structures most uh notably in order to make industrial processes more sustainable so the design synthesis manipulation and we sat down and we decided that we were going to have a crack at making something which can turn carbon dioxide into something useful and this is really where it all stemmed from so at the moment i am a research fellow having completed my phd in june last year and i am focusing on specific processes which turn carbon dioxide into something useful so at the moment we're focusing on the production of plastic feedstocks and now i know everyone hears plastics and they go why would you want to turn carbon dioxide into that but actually plastics represent a vast vast industry and actually by utilizing co2 in this way we can make plastics more sustainable greener biodegradable um so yeah that's kind of like a real whirlwind tour of sort of the last eight nine years and how i've managed to find myself in carbon dioxide utilization ah interesting so what and you spent a lot of time in america as well didn't you i spent six months in america i lived in atlanta in the fourth year of university that was part of my placement study i went to georgia institute of technology georgia tech and yeah that actually has nothing to do with what i do now i was focusing on materials that shrink when you heat them up in a nutshell but yeah i lived out there uh that was an awesome six months um i learned a lot i did i was doing essentially phd work in my undergrad so that has actually set me up quite nicely for the uh for the phd i just didn't quite know at the time yeah but that was that was great fun absolutely amazing so how have you been so is this a user worker follow on from the phd then or is it is it quite separate um what you're doing now yeah so everything we're doing now is in the build-up to our imminent spin-out um for idi co2 we found out sort of six months into my phd that we'd found a catalyst that is able to transform carbon dioxide um very very efficiently compared to everything else that is on the market at the moment we realized this realized its potential to provide a bit of a game changer to the chemical industry and we ran with it it's not something you get to do very often um even for the professors out there i'd say yeah they don't get to necessarily see their research legacy turn into an applied process within industry and i had that opportunity sort of a year into my phd so we we took it we developed it over the next three years um it was sort of my baby um and we filed patents to protect it and now we're in the process of turning it into a commercial proposition um and we are imminently spinning within the next month or two oh wow it's a very quick turnaround then yeah it's it's it's been crazy how quick we've moved actually um i mean there's three and a half years worth of work behind it i have so many lab books with so much data in um which proves that we are we're doing what we say we can do but actually the recognition and the interest we're getting from the chemical industry from investors from key stakeholders has been phenomenal and it's really been a driver behind how quickly we're able to bring this to to market we were selected to be part of the royal society of chemistry's emerging technology competition last year very prestigious a prestigious competition um and we won oh wow we were named finalist and me and my supervisor i call him my supervisor professor robert raja he's my co-founder now he was my phd supervisor he's a colleague um we've founded the company together i just find it hard to get out of the he's my supervisor kind of lingo as such but uh we were gobsmacked when we were named as a finalist and then when we were announced winner oh it's amazing and that's done wonders for us recognition from the royal society of chemistry who is an international body has really promoted us and then we won a key bit of funding from the uk government from ukri innovate uk have given us 300 000 pounds to develop the technology and develop the commercial potential of viridi co2 and that is what's supporting us over the next 12 months to bring this to market oh wow that's amazing so even again it's such a short time to achieve so many things it's pretty impressive i didn't know any of that congratulations deserve it thank you so much um and yeah i mean we've had immense support throughout all of this i've actually been quite blown away um with one the team that i have around me that we've built but also the support from people like the royal society of chemistry from ukri i was selected to do a innovation commercialization of university research program which is called iqr they take university research and essentially give you three months of funding to validate the technology um in the wider industry essentially three months of calling anybody who will talk to me under the guise of being a university researcher rather than a salesman yeah but that was key to our developing of a business model and how we're actually going to bring this to market and everyone has sort of weighed in given us little bits of advice it's amazing the ecosystem that i've sort of found myself in people just willing to help um so young entrepreneurs which i still find difficult to call myself i still consider myself to be like a science nerd science nerd that's trying to just make a little bit of a difference in the world yeah um and yeah so to have finished my phd less than 12 months ago and be diving into a spin-out as the ceo is a crazy fast journey every day is really hands-on especially as i'm sort of at the moment kind of doing everything we do research we've got other projects as well we're trying to sort out funding we're trying to sort out hiring people um yeah but it's it's great fun and i wouldn't change anything yeah no it sounds it yeah it's really impressive um how so i wanted to ask you as well about this because i don't understand this subject particularly well so what is the difference between carbon capture and utilization so because i you see that it's slightly two different things but essentially i guess capturing the carbon and utilizing it is a form of carbon capture is that yeah correct yes two degrees so really um carbon dioxide is usually considered in two different uh sort of forms the technology so you have carbon capture storage and you have carbon capture utilization so carbon capture storage are the techniques that people probably know most about so sequestration usually pumping all the co2 back in under the north sea somewhere and filling depleted oil fields um and actually the uk government has spent 168 million on sequestration and storage techniques but the problem with them is it's finite so what happens once we filled all the oil fields so really all of the impetus now is to develop utilization technologies and something that can turn carbon dioxide into something useful because we have so much of it it's cheap non-toxic it's a fantastic chemical feedstock but the processors just aren't quite there to use it at scale yeah but with that there's also as you've identified the utilization stage but there's also the capture stage so carbon capture utilization now greedy co2 is very much the latter we are the utilization step we're not going to be sort of flailing anything around in the air to capture the carbon dioxide and bring it in direct air capture is a really hot topic at the moment personally i think direct air capture is a little way off yet but what is fantastic to see is the big business people the world the big ceos elon musk sort of getting behind it and really trying to bring attention and funding towards it [Music] but if you're capturing it you've got to do something with it yeah so that's where we come in the company um is going to focus primarily on avoiding co2 being released in the first place so what we want to do is ready co2 is going to deliver a solution where chemical manufacturers can sort of redirect their co2 emissions from a chemical process from a power plant whatever and re-direct it into their chemical reactor where you directly replace fossil fuels so we're reducing fossil fuel reliance in this step as well and that will mix with our technology and we will produce chemical products which are direct replacements for some of the ones we see today and i mean they're everywhere so that's kind of the idea it's a point source redirection rather than a capture technology but ultimately um the goal is the same is to reduce co2 emissions and really try and make sure that we hit global climate targets so it's really a range of different services it's offering because when you think of so carbon capture is kind of the umbrella term i guess isn't it for both both systems as you've explained but when i think of carbon capture i think primarily of you know concrete like there's these new sort of concrete options where they store carbon cutting trees down and using timber because obviously they're absorbing carbon as they grow and those sort of things you don't really think of it being used in some sort of process because i think there's kind of this view that is especially to layman like me you know it's kind of just something that's there that's not really usable um so it's interesting that it is usable and and how it can be used so so what sort of products do you think it will be used to create is it primarily plastics are there other things that will be used for too yeah so there's a lot of amazing technology um coming out now where people are using carbon dioxide in to make products like cement that people are able to sequester co2 into the cement there are people who are turning carbon dioxide into the materials that go into pet so into clothing into clothing fibers and they use water and electricity to do that whereas what we're trying to do is just use really low temperatures and pressures um we add in our our powder which is really the heart of the technology and you just add the co2 and the reduced amount of fossil fuel to produce generally plastics and to start with um however we have scope to start making other kind of materials so there's an opportunity for us to make the electrolytes for batteries so um every battery will have an electrolyte and we were able to make them and the battery industry is always getting bigger electric cars but we're also able to start moving into other um important chemicals as well so those that go into clothing like nylons there are a number of monomers that end up in different types of plastics so there's actually a lot of areas that we're able to impact with this and actually another aspect for us that's really important is there are two ways we can apply our technology there is the providing a process to manufacturers who make chemicals and what we do is we are enabling them to produce chemicals using co2 but also we're able to impact those founding industries like steel and cement the the guys who are usually the worst for co2 emissions steel cement iron and what we can do is uh use their waste co2 so they produce steel or cement they produce a load of emissions in doing that they can't get around it in some of those processes so what we do is redirect that co2 that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere and we make products from them so it's a way of reducing their co2 emissions but to make something which is has value and can benefit um sorry you and i mm-hmm so these things that are being produced let's say plastics so early you were saying are they biodegradable as well potentially yes there's still a long way to go where some you know is it one of these because some of the biodegradable plastics they are biodegradable which is better than most plastic but actually they don't meet the time frames for things like composting and these other systems so whilst they kind of come across as and they definitely are a better option there's still a lot of problems where actually they're still going to landfill or still being incinerated yeah um so you know do you know anything about sort of time frames on things like that i couldn't comment on the time frames behind it but what's really interesting about the co2 versions of these plastics is by inserting carbon dioxide you introduce a chemical unit in the backbone of the polymer that enables the plastic at the end of its life to be either biodegraded or by chemically recycling techniques so it actually opens up a way to recycle the plastics later on so you can break them down into their constituent parts and then reform them later into something else now it's really important to highlight here that actually there's loads of different levels and definitions of biodegradability and that's probably a whole other podcast on its own with someone who's a greater expert than i um but really what we're allowing is a process to recycle these um [Music] these plastics later in its life where at the moment it simply isn't possible so the plastics at the moment that are used generally um are either burnt for energy recovery which obviously you're creating co2 doing that or they just end up in a landfill and taking up space yeah so how does that work with things because obviously again laymen here a lot of plastics are recycled and are reused and broken down but obviously i know some of those degrade over time so you can only reuse them in x amount of times and then essentially they end up having to go to landfills so is this going to open up the opportunity for more of these plastics that typically go to landfill to avoid landfill completely is it kind of removing that kind of group of plastics or passes that reach the end of their lives so the kind of plastics you're referring to are sort of your classic polypropylenes polyethylenes and they are widely recycled um and they will go through certain recycling processes but as you say as soon as you begin to move away from the virgin plastic as they're described that is a fresh plastic made from fossil fuels from oil then you begin to lose the physical properties which are so uh advantageous for plastics um now what we're trying to do is we're starting off with the feedstock materials for polyurethanes now polyurethanes are not recycled at the moment um they find themselves in landfill or burn um so we're improving that plastic first and then it is our hope to be able to either replace those very common plastics like polypropylene polyethylene um with the co2 based versions so we reduce the amount of fossil fuels required for those and we also design into the plastic a way of chemically recycling it now i mean there's no saying that um the after so many iterations of recycling we're going to be able to get back to the perfect virgin plastic again but it is certainly a more sustainable process that we're exploring and we're very keen to explore yeah no it's yeah definitely so polyurethanes what type of sort of home products do you find them in at the moment everything everything absolutely everything so basically nothing is particularly recyclable um so yeah honestly polyurethanes can range from like soft foams that's one of the classic things stuff is it um so building insulation the stuff you find in like the roofing spaces or the expanding foams they are typically polyurethanes you also get coatings uh they're polyurethane based you get some paints adhesives um elastomers they're polyurethane based um so yeah lip everything i was when i went into uh really trying to understand fully the um the extent to which we could impact the plastics industry it was honestly mind-blowing yeah yeah um polyurethanes 40 million tonnes a year are used and that's 40 million tons that are then not recycled and as a percentage that's there are approximately i think 380 million tons of plastics made every year globally um so it represents sort of nearly 10 of all of the plastics in the world wow so if we were able to have an impact on that um then we're doing well yeah definitely definitely so with going back to carbon capture again why the question i have is obviously around cost and things like that and whilst there's a really important technical aspect to this a lot of people i think will look at this and go well actually surely we should have more trees or we should just use less plastic and you know from my perspective being more involved in that world of um you know trees in the environment is i totally would be drawn by peacock at some point um is that actually there's not the space to put a lot of these things you know the world has changed significantly from when it was all you know virgin forest and you know heavily wooded landscapes there is don't get me wrong there's massive opportunity to improve things but actually there's so many systems that are in conflict now um you know look at urban areas look at um agriculture unless we can shift massively to more agroforestry systems you know increased tree cover is going to be quite difficult um you know a massive scale at least in a short period of time that we kind of need to make these changes so do you have any idea on again about time frames as well what's your opinion on this stacking up compared to other systems and what do you think about it and cost wise is it do you think it's going to be you know economically viable i mean obviously this is what you're looking at at the moment and it sounds like it is but how much have you looked into that yeah so i'll touch on the trees things first that i'm a big advocate for sort of planting trees unfortunately as you've identified there are so many other pressures on the globe regarding space population increasing having land to grow crops on to feed that growing population so as much as i'd love to see trees replanted everywhere it's not that easy and this is why it's really important to have other carbon dioxide utilization methods that we can use there's plenty of co2 out there to use up so it needs to be a really good balance across the board for all the technologies and obviously the agriculture side as well that's it i think that's a really really important point and to be clear we're you know we're not talking about not planting trees it's just that we need so many solutions and we have to tackle so many challenges we have to have as many tools in our belt as we can to be able to do so and you know and there's a diverse solution we can get everything we can resolve and tackle is you know is a huge step forward absolutely and something at the heart of our next 12 months is analyzing the full sustainability extent of our technology which extends beyond carbon dioxide so we'll be using certain analyses to make sure that ultimately the whole solution we're providing is not only carbon negative because it would be otherwise a completely pointless business proposition but ultimately um is sustainable um and going back to what you were saying um earlier about the sort of economic side of things that plays really heavily into that so we want to make sure that we have a technology that is not only bringing value to the manufacturers that adopt it and the company as well so that we're able to continually develop this technology and keep providing solutions which ultimately is my hope will play a pivotal role in the entire globe achieving their net zero emission targets but we'll also be highly considerate of the sustainability aspects as well i think that is one of the things that's so nice about us being able to come back together and discuss what we're doing um because i am no expert at all in sort of the agriculture side of things and it's really important that there is this synergetic relationship between all of the branches of science um to make sure we have a solution that is the best case for for everything and it's not one so heavily weighted uh compared to another yeah great way of putting it so is there anything in terms of funding obviously you're going to sponsors and things um not sponsored sorry investors um we're looking at sponsors um so how are you finding that process is it very difficult obviously i think anyone who knows anything about you know the environment and the way things are going and sustainability we've got to start tackling this you know just in terms of a lack of resources amongst anything else as much as economics and i know some things like being talked about very loosely i don't think they're going to happen anytime soon at least around carbon taxes is there anything else that you think well firstly how are you getting on with it with investors what's the sort of landscape there like are there a lot of people interested um and what else could be done by the government or otherwise to kind of help get these systems moving more quickly getting installed more rapidly because obviously money's great but there's always a lot of policy and other type of things going on in the background that actually hang up more than money and cause things to take a long time to get through all the bureaucracy yeah it's it's a very interesting space to be in because what's really encouraging is i think we're moving in the right direction um the fact that a lot of countries are committing to emission targets and there is positive direction and the other thing that's great to see is companies are very keen on sustainability i would say from the experience that i've had in the last six months of reaching out to these big chemical companies is that sustainability is really high on the agenda the corporate bottom line and the price is sort of the key driver but second to that is sustainability and that's great to see from a spin-out and an sme sort of viewpoint i think there can always be more funding i am very aware that a lot of my time is spent trying to make sure we have funds going forward and that's not just me that's every sort of business owner what's encouraging is ukri the uk's research and innovation sort of funding body um they have now put into their funding criteria that all of their decisions have to consider sustainability so that's really encouraging to see and i think it's by 2025 um i might need to double check that but by 2025 all of the decisions will have a sustainability focus in mind as well um but equally until the government tell chemical manufacturers that they need to stop producing x amount of emissions a year um and really have um consequences to that i don't think we're going to see as quick a change as we want to see yeah you just have people dragging their heels and yeah doing things this technology um is really trying to bring about a paradigm change in the way chemicals are made um these are established processes that have been used for decades and we are trying to tell chemical manufacturers that they need to stop using them now obviously it's a business they have to make money and that poses a risk to them so i mean what i'd like to do is be able to discuss those risks understand those risks and build projects around chemical manufacturers requirements in order to prove to them that this is viable yeah and everything i do at the moment is making sure i've got data which supports what i'm trying to say we're going through a really big scaling process at the moment trying to prove that we make it um on higher numbers of grams rather than the really small amounts you classically see in research and using that being able to prove that we can do this and there are companies that are very open to that and i'm really encouraged by some of the guys we're working with already who can't name at the moment but they are very keen to make the changes um and really make their products more sustainable because ultimately it has to happen yeah it has to happen it does companies need to invest in innovation in order to make this happen otherwise they're going to get stuck behind yeah but i mean the thing is it seems to make be a no-brainer you know because because of the sustainability aspect if they are able to store carbon and we do start funding that and there are there are there are going to be funding models coming out soon for that and a lot of people are investing in carbon capture you know to emit their own co2 you know that one of some of the organizations i'm involved with they're looking at emitting all of their carbon now various companies are doing it this podcast will do it at some point when we have funds but at the moment we don't so um you know please do invest in the podcast um but you know it's it's one of those where it's not that easy at the moment for people especially starting up or with new businesses no matter how you know green the ambitions are but for some of these bigger companies on the sustainability side if they're able to make use of this and recycle things and use less fossil fuels because fossil fuels are becoming more expensive you know it is clearly an investment in the future and cost saving down the line yeah absolutely and there's a lot of economic drivers behind it so as you say fossil fuels cost a lot of money yeah and carbon dioxide is cheap yeah um so when i last looked one of the fossil fuels that are used in our processes costs about 1500 euros per tonne and i think at the moment um carbon dioxide costs probably at worst 300 euros per tonne don't quote me on that but it's it's uh it's a lot cheaper so if they're able to implement processes which may have an initial capital expenditure um the economic uh value later on will it will pay off um so i do think that with the right technologies and i'm hoping we are one of them yeah um we will be able to provide not only sustainability value but also economic value um to to the big chemical manufacturers yeah it seems seems like you will seems like you're on the right side let's hope so yeah i think we all hope so i think yeah no it's really it's really great space to be in at the moment um i really believe in it um when we started off this journey we all identified that we have a really cool promising bit of technology but unless you can make it cost effective you can produce it on scale it does what you think it's going to do at the tons rather than the grams there's no certainty behind it but the more and more work we do on this i do a lot of lab validation still when i have time and every day i believe in it more and more and more yeah that we have the technology we can do this i've got the team around me to bring it in and the interest ultimately you mentioned earlier about how our sort of fundraising is going we are just closing our seed round so we have a lot of investors who are very interested i've been very fortunate that i've been able to select the investors that i think will bring most value to the company um and they believe in us and they provide the expertise that i don't have so i can bring all the science i can bring the uh the know-how for the technology but i don't know how to build a business i'm sure when you made your first company it's a bit of a minefield uh trying to understand everything and you can probably get yourself in trouble if you don't uh comply with certain things that aren't immediately obvious but uh the team i've got helps me handle that side and yeah i think we really have an opportunity and we've been supported so far very well from the royal society of chemistry from uh innovate uk from our investors um and everything right now is looking really promising we just have to keep keep pushing keep pushing the innovation keep plowing away at making this a reality oh yeah yeah again do um how did you find so how did you find setting up the business you know you said it was obviously challenging not knowing what you're doing and you know when you do well actually it's partly why we set up our business you know me and my business partner um for the landscape business we were um we were both working for companies and we kind of decided that actually part of the reason we wanted to set the business up was to you know make those mistakes learn what we could quicker opposed to doing the more traditional route where you know you work at a company for a long time you get experience and then you set up on your own we wanted to be able to sort of just take that jump figure i have to figure it out quickly and we've been really lucky that we landed on our feet and we actually you know we're both pretty competent i like to think um with what we're doing and we're now working with a huge range of other companies to help them deliver their projects and things as well we bring a different dynamic to what's been done in the past we've been very fortunate there but obviously well i set mine up just before lockdown and covert hit and we were very lucky again because we sort of sat there and we thought to ourselves so actually do we need an office neither of us could really afford it we had no money um you know we we literally had no money um so for months um so we just sort of had to you know muddle through as best we could and we couldn't afford a lot of things we decided to think okay how do we become as modern as we can our office is really the future i don't know so we invested in a lot of things like teams and zoom and servers and all this type of thing prior to covid so we were completely prepared yeah and we actually want effect which was brilliant because we actually haven't been affected at all by covid really and a lot of our everything we were doing was basically online or virtual based um so we were very fortunate there but but we still had that kind of six month i think about yeah about six months window before covered here um to do a lot of the in-person meeting and things you still have to do whereas you've had none of that yeah um i'm really pleased that you were set up beforehand um i've i think i've been very fortunate so when when covert first sort of shut everything down i was actually writing on my thesis so i'd already been working from home for about a month and a half so when everyone was told that they had to work from home it's like i've been here i've sat on my desk for the last month and a half so timing wasn't awful in that respect but in terms of the process to set the company up it was a case of we were getting a lot of um sort of recognition so we won the royal society of chemistry's emerging technology competition and that gave us a real kind of foot in the door um i was speaking to a lot of people i think by that point we decided on the company name um so i was telling people that we are very co2 but we haven't actually incorporated yet so the actual incorporation process was very easy for the 12 pounds on company's house but everything around that now is just an area that i don't really know about um i've had an awful lot of assistance from the on campus accelerator unit uh the university of southampton future worlds and the guys there are amazing is you're sort of hand-picked to um come onto their cohort they give you training around sort of finances all of that i got it also with the iqr scheme um and they help you and through that we actually got our business advisor chris spacman and uh chris is amazing i've been working for chris with chris for about 12 13 months now never met everything has been over teams um the market validation phase that we did all on teams well normally the way that that program works is we get a budget and we fly all around the world and we do all of it face-to-face meetings and the goal of it is to have 100 meaningful conversations um and i honestly don't know how people do that without video technology because i was sat at my desk for 14 hours a day talking to people about our our promising technology and i'm thinking how do people do this when they've got to fly across the world so i actually think it really helped having the video platforms there's a lot of people who haven't met yet i haven't met our investors we've brought in a veteran of the chemical industry as our chairman i've not met him yet [Music] but i guess what we are very fortunate in is that the labs at southampton have always remained open um to some degree under very tight restrictions and precautions due to covid but we've managed to motor on in the background so it's been an interesting time but i don't really know how i would have done it in person yeah honestly i mean i don't i have no reference point though yeah i've never this is my first company i said well it's it is interesting because when we yeah when we started we as i said we were lucky we managed to meet a lot of people but you lose an inordinate amount of time yes and there's a huge carbon impact traveling around all these places absolutely so there is a huge benefit to being able to do it on zoom the big problem is you can end up wasting equally as much time because everybody wants a zoom you know every time someone wants a conversation they want to have a zoom and whereas before you would have been at a conference and you've maybe had a bit of a catch up but it's a bit more business-like um but again that's also one of the benefits it's a lot more human i think things have become much more human with zoom and teams because you actually see into people's homes and their lives a bit more you get a dog you know running through the background and barking at the door you get the kid come crying for something you know and it kind of takes that edge off that i think it used to have yeah which is really nice i think the one thing from uh sort of research perspective for myself is um i miss the the coffee conversation so actually i never realized how much in the past i was able to sort of strike a conversation with people in different fields different companies whilst you're getting a coffee yeah um and that's difficult to replicate with some of the teams i've been a part of multiple sort of webinars where they have tried to replicate it we have kind of like a a breakout room everyone can just drop into but it's not the same but um i think you're right everyone's a bit zoomed out yeah but i still think it's going to play quite a big role in how we communicate um if you can save a flight uh across the pond to go see a potential client which um you've saved yourself 20 hours of flying i think it's a it's a good thing yeah definitely i'd agree it's i mean there are some things you can't really replicate um as you said you know there is a i think there is a really important part of human contact i think the big thing that's missed is conferences um but a lot of people would say i just bloody have the conference online um which is which you can of course but actually i've been to conferences all over the world and the most important bit is between the sessions like the sessions themselves a lot of the time they're good they're interesting but actually you could have just stayed at home and watched it but the people you meet in between tend to be where you make your connections where things actually go forward and you lose all of that and that is the vital bit that's where you meet your you know people for new projects and your clients you find out what's kind of really going on behind the scenes um and that definitely has suffered a really big blow i mean a lot of my things i was doing lately have been a lot of international work and that's obviously taken a big hit and you you miss a lot of the collaborative discussion because we would for example um with our professional body you know are we going to talk about what the uk is up to and where we're kind of going and how we're approaching these challenges and we quite often speak to a lot of developing nations where they're going actually we really need to do this but we don't have the resources um is there a way we can tie in with you guys can we collaborate and if we hadn't have been to these events that never would have happened because they come to you afterwards or in the break and you might think oh they'll drop you an email but people don't they don't drop you an email they come and tell you and that you need to talk to them to be aware of it to be able to plan for it so a lot of the work we've done lately has been planning these systems that can be used for training or otherwise to reach this wider audience and make a bit more of a an impact there yeah yeah absolutely i think yeah moving forward i think everyone's gonna be really keen for that uh that first conference yeah we're all gonna jump on it uh um yeah some normality well we're heading towards norway now definitely i think uh it's in the uk at least in the yes sorry yeah um yeah but yeah i mean the other thing is as well how did you how did you take this route because we talked to the start we both we both went to school together um we've both taken different routes we've come full circle so how do you end up taking the route you have them what kind of inspired you to do that and what led you down that path that's a really good question um i guess i've always had a love for science um i think through school we grew up in the uh sort of the climate change era it was always um in the public eye um i remember it being in quite a few of our subjects at school so we've grown up knowing about it it's not like it's a new thing for us so i think i've been somewhat inspired with that and with the phd i had the opportunity to try and make a bit of a difference with that i had no idea it's going to end up where it is now and nor did i have any ideas that this is the way sort of life would take me um but the slowly the opportunities have come up where we can start really trying to make a difference and taking it to a company is the way that we can do that um the quickest i believe unfortunately there's a lot of great technology out there but if it's not scalable or not cost effective it never comes to light so that is the position that we decided to put ourselves in like can we make this scalable can we make it cost effective and when we decided we could and we had a real opportunity here um it was go go go it was obvious and really scary at the same time when you do a phd there's always this sort of monkey on your back as to whether you're going to have a crack at staying in academia um you've got to publish papers you've got to generate novel research proposals you build your reputation but it's really hard really really hard to do so um to get all the way to being a tenured professor of all the phds in the world the percentage of who make it is tiny and i think i decided fairly early on that i didn't fancy that um so it was then you look into industry and then actually this opportunity to let's just make our own kind of company um so yeah i'm very fortunate um we hit the right thing the timing is right we've had the right team around us my co-founder robert who's professor at university of southampton has been amazing at inspiring me to one be a better scientist and really push the quality of our work but also in making sure i develop professionally he's always provided opportunities robert hasn't founded a company himself um until this one so he where he can't add value necessarily on the commercial side um he's always directed me to people who can yeah and we've made sure that we have a good balance in the team to achieve what we want to achieve so i think that is uh what's kind of driven me to be here i'm very thankful for everyone who's given time advice mentorship throughout this entire process and it undoubtedly is how we've got here yeah because looking badly i think if you ask any phd student um [Music] is it an easy ride and a lot of people think are phd students are you just a student you just want to stay at university a bit longer and i mean you do reap the benefits of being at university don't get me wrong but it's a slog it is four years of battling novel innovative technology that a lot of the time doesn't work a lot of a phd is failing and that can take its toll um physically and mentally when you're driving your own work uh as i'm sure you know you're trying to drive your own company and there being so much uncertainty around things it can really kind of weigh you down yeah um no i've had a i had a good ride in my phd a lot of the things that i did worked hence being in the position that i'm in but in our group um there are guys who put in 12-hour days because it's their work and they're passionate about it and sometimes to the detriment of their own health i think it's quite important to highlight that phds aren't just larkin about um it's a it's a tough ride but it gives you a lot of skills which set you up for whatever you want to do yeah it's interesting as well to hear how you know you kind of just had that i'll just do it kind of attitude which is kind of the attitude i have um you know the part of the reason why we're doing the podcast and some of the other projects i'm working on is i just kind of got reached a point where i thought actually if i don't do this no one's going to do it or it's going to take too long so we kind of just bit the bullet like like with this again you know we invested quite a lot in this you know funds wise and time wise because we thought actually it's better to just go for it instead of you know waiting around because you can wait around for years and things never happen and you always regret it as well if you don't if you don't try um again so with our business we thought let's give it a go see how it works out and so far you know we're going for strength the strength which is perfect what you want um but it's again interesting the routes we took so i i am i actually dropped out of college after school because i hated school i actually pretty much hated i've always hated education and i was never we're quite different you were much more well behaved than i was um sure if you are some of the teachers that's it um but yeah so i i left school and then i dropped out um and then from there i kind of didn't really know what to do you know i didn't really have there was no particular area i had interest in i wasn't interested in any of the subjects really all i knew was i liked sort of chopping firewood and cutting trees down really so i ended up doing a youth program for naughty children basically um which got me back into kind of conservation and i did a lot with the wildlife trust and i really enjoyed it you know i did a lot of teamwork i actually worked interestingly i worked with a lot of university students that come out of uni and didn't really know what to do or wanted to get some different skills and i ended up kind of running teams when i was about 16 with with uni students so i managed to learn a lot from them as well which was interesting and then i went back to college and did forestry which was great really enjoyed forestry uh cut down chainsaws machines cut down trees bigger trees quicker you know all that stuff um destruction really was what i liked more than anything but but through the course i kind of really enjoyed the management side and then i kind of went i always wanted to do as much as i could to make a difference was kind of was i supposed the thing that drove me and i was always thinking okay right conservation great really nice but actually someone's got to create these forests someone's got to plant new trees so that sort of led me to forestry then from there i thought well actually someone's got a we need farmland we need land to do it and i worked on a farm for maybe six months um looking at that and found all the challenges and issues there and started looking at food production and things then i thought well actually someone's got to come in and manage all of this again so i went into project management and did a stint there and got did an internship in project management and during that time i was running some and working on some big projects like flood remediation schemes and things and i found out about landscape architecture and i thought well actually that is probably what i'm most interested in it's that high level design figuring all these solutions for urban and rural and kind of merging the two so i went down that route and studied there and then while studying that i realized actually i've kind of got this rural kind of background actually what i really need is is more on the urban side so i did a masters in landscape and urban design so i've kind of got this myriad of i'm definitely not an expert in any particular area but it's given me a really interesting overview of what's going on in the environmental world so that's that's what i've kind of you know taken with me to all these various places i've been and things i've done and it's provided quite a unique reference point as you said before and i think i think what's lacking now is at least my observation is we've become too specialized in a lot of areas you know obviously we have to have specialisms and we have to have people focusing and doing phds and researching on specific topics but there's definitely a link that's been lost in that short strategic overview and there has to be people now there needs to be a profession and i think you know the landscape urban design kind of area is where that that sits you know traditionally it would have been more architecture but i think and planning but i think it's probably changed slightly and someone needs to sit in between all of these professions and sort of tie everything together and there's a big emphasis on community engagement and all that type of thing which is where you know there's a huge opportunity for an emerging profession to kind of you know pull a lot of these resources and host that kind of discussion of how we actually integrate all of these things because if we don't we end up in a very difficult position where we have really nice fluffy bits and lots of utilitarian stuff and actually it's how we merge the two that's really important and where we're going to see massive massive change that's kind of the route i've taken i think you're all i think you're far too humble uh actually um describing yourself as essentially as a jack-of-all-trades master of none but i i've watched your career with great admiration um especially we sort of took very different routes after school but sort of kept in touch sort of kept an eye on each other on social media and i've been blown away with sort of what you've achieved um speaking very honestly and am i right i'm thinking you've spoken in european parliament um it wasn't really parliament it was although there was i can't remember their names there were some people from the commission there i think so yeah so i've been very very lucky i put a lot more down to luck and frustration like um a lot of people ask what what drives you and at one point i was thinking you know maybe fear of the future you know i wanted to try and make a better future i've got a kid on the way um just got married you know i want to build as good a future for my family as possible and you know in general people as well i want humanity to thrive you know um which is obviously a driver but um actually a lot of i get very very frustrated and i use my my rage to kind of to drive me forward and that's got me to a lot of interesting discussions and places because again as we said earlier my attitude is well i'll just do it you know if things are not being done why are they not being done they can't be that difficult let's just get on with get on with it and basically i started complaining about stuff um i completed an awful lot of university and i complained of various things and in the end i decided that actually one of the best ways to make a difference is actually as i say just do it so i um started i joined various organizations actually i was i started um i joined the woodland trust put together a huge project called the tree charter it brought together over 80 organizations and i joined that as on their student council and there were a few things i thought were not being done quite right and i didn't quite agree with and they sort of upgraded me from the student council to the um professional steering group and i ended up representing landscape and the environment on it alongside all these other organizations that were specialists um just to provide an alternative view really um and that was where it really kind of dawned on me that we need this kind of broader view because a lot of people are so focused on their subject they miss the bigger context and you can't just have one thing it's how do we knit all of these things together and i always say you know the biggest value in landscape is how you know our job is to articulate the narratives of other professions yeah that's and it's so important at the moment that we do start doing that and we do start going forward together um and then from there i was appointed as one of the directors of the project um you know in the space of about a year or so so i was sort of involved with the legacy and how we sort of see it forward and i've stepped down from that now to focus on on other things but alongside this um i joined my local branch of the landscape institute which is a professional body for landscape architects i then was elected as the first non-chartered member of the board of the profession and i've been there for four years now and whilst on the board i was appointed as the uk delegate to the world and european councils for landscape architecture so i've been really fortunate enough to be able to go to some of these world and european council meetings in singapore norway turkey there was one in london obviously the most recent ones have been cancelled but they would have been in malaysia and iceland and all these places so i've taken place you know a place at all of these discussions and because of these various roles i've invited to i've been to westminster a few times i've had breakfast at westminster once on the terrace with that's awesome all these various people and that was to talk about forestry and the future of forestry i've been to someone the future of the common agricultural policy and how do we approach how do we approach that and i've been to some others with planners and how do we you know how do we plan the cities of the future you know what are the challenges and one of the big things that came to me there was actually a lot of the the plans and the policies are not really being implemented and the big problem is there's there's not this again i to me it seems there's a link missing which falls down to the landscape profession to kind of fall into this gap and oversee a lot of what needs to be done and bring a lot of these things together to try and tie all of this stuff up because a lot of it gets missed or it becomes fragmented between lots of different professions and the point gets missed and you sort of tick boxes but you don't actually develop this cohesive kind of strategy especially when there's larger developments or complex developments and a lot of what we can be doing can really improve you know the environment and the planet and living conditions for people and public health and all this type of thing yeah i think that that sums up really nicely that this is a joint effort from everyone yeah um yeah you're absolutely right there are sort of the people who are doing really hardcore research in phd groups but unless you're able to have the people and the teams around you and the expertise from all these different areas in order to implement it for the wider good then that research goes nowhere yeah so i this is why i i think it's amazing what you're achieving as well and why i've kept an eye on sort of what you're up to because what you're the same age as me yeah 27 i'm 28. you're 28. same school yeah yeah yeah it's uh it's remarkable that we sort of i think it's remarkable that we're sort of doing things and we're able to do these things yeah with relatively uh less life experience in the grand scheme of things but no it's it's so cool and it is going to be a team effort um with everyone it is it is and i think this is the thing there's a i mean you know to be critical of a lot of um the industries and people i've met there's a very much a um [Music] there's a lot of egos i think you know across all the professions and i think the advantage of of youth whilst i do have quite a bit of an ego i think that you know i am humble enough to look at these things and go well actually is this the best way we approach this and i think that is something that's starting to change the barriers that kind of created these silos in the past really are starting to you know become much more permeable and i think it's becoming much clearer because it's we're sort of realizing the complexities that there are and there isn't really anyone to kind of no one can tackle all of them and we have to work together and you know i talk a lot about landscape being key i'm not saying it's the most important i'm just saying it has there is a place that's missing for someone to come in and design a solution and it's it's just not being done at a large enough scale um and incorporating things like ecology um hydrology you know landscape characte

2022-04-06 21:18

Other news