The ultimate test for these innovators will come at scale. We maintain the firm position that a technology is not successfully commercialised if its business model relies on transferring occupational risk to poorly protected or underpaid workers. Livelihood dignity and operational safety must be built into the core economics of the enterprise, ensuring that the technology's success is inseparable from the well-being of its workforce.
The industry is reaching a reckoning around the global challenge of waste that results from the current take-make-waste model. But biologically, the answer to this problem is already there. Every material that has ever existed in a functioning ecosystem was broken down and reassembled into something else. Decomposition is not an endpoint. It is the mechanism through which matter becomes available for the next cycle.