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A Passport Is Not Proof: Why Textile Traceability Matters

Europe is building the paperwork for a circular economy. Under the EU’s Digital Product Passport, textile products sold there will carry a scannable digital record of what they’re made of, where they came from and how they can be dealt with at the end of their life. The European Commission plans to adopt the textile rules in late 2027. Each set of passport rules can only take effect at least 18 months after it’s adopted. Separately, since July 2026, large companies there have been banned f...

Is it noise or signal?

How do you decipher whether what you are creating is noise or a signal that people may not have yet realised, and you are too early to show them the importance of it? Do you and others really need to align right away, or are you just noise trying to broadcast a signal and make people believe you have something important to contribute?They say be clear on the vision, be flexible on how to achieve it, and know that 70-90% of startups actually fail. Failure is inevitable, and that’s not something...

Sustainable Procurement Starts Before We Buy: Turning Waste into OpportunityNew post

A few years ago, I had the privilege of representing New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region on the Sustainable Health in Procurement Project (SHiPP), led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in collaboration with Health Care Without Harm and funded by Sida.Aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goal 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), the project aimed to reduce the environmental and social impacts of manufacturing, using, and disposing of medical products. A key outcome...

The 30-90 Window: Don't Put a Deadline on the Vision. Put One on the Assumption.

While many attribute this to lack of money, investors, team dynamics, product fit, customer interest, and cost, the business idea worth pursuing and the model that survives the math are often the most critical factors a founder must navigate from the time they decide to build a startup.For a startup like ēkot, many say we have a very long way to go, and we’re not even scratching the surface. I agree. ēkot has heard its share of no's — from funding applications, conversations and assumption...

Traceability Over Paperwork: Keeping Our Circular Supply Chains Honest

But as we work to transition these diverted waste streams into high-spec, mainstream industries like construction and infrastructure, we face a shared technical challenge: How do we verify the physical journey of a recycled material in a way that the market instantly trusts? Currently, the global industry relies almost entirely on paper-based chains of custody, PDFs, and transaction receipts. But as regulations tighten, relying on administrative paperwork alone leaves well-meaning loca...

Beyond the Bin: Bringing Earthshot Ambition to Recycling

For many businesses, recycling is treated as a necessary part of operations: sort the materials, empty the bins, meet compliance requirements, and move on. But that mindset only takes us so far. If we want to make meaningful progress toward a circular economy, we need to look beyond waste management and start seeing every material stream as an opportunity.That is where the Earthshot mindset offers powerful inspiration. The Earthshot Prize challenges the world to repair the planet through bold, p...

Waste Stream Priorities: The Real Question Is — How Do We Bring Everyone Along?

At the recent WasteMINZ Conference 2026 in Wellington, one thing became clear: New Zealand is beginning to sharpen its focus on priority waste streams. That is promising. It signals movement, intention, and acknowledgement that some materials are causing deeper environmental and economic strain than others.But I left the conference carrying mixed feelings.Not because the conversations lacked passion. In fact, the opposite. There were innovators, councils, policymakers, recyclers, educators, and ...

From Marginal Fills to Circular Raw Materials

In a traditional linear mindset, silty or clay-heavy soils are liabilities—expensive to excavate and even more expensive to dump. But to an engineer, "unsuitable" is simply a material that hasn't been properly designed for. My sustainability journey didn't start with a moral epiphany; it started with a technical challenge to eliminate waste from the project balance sheet.The "aha" moment came with the 2017 ICE Brassey Award. We successfully used draining geogrids to stabilise 17-metre slopes u...

The 5-second Rule of our Waste Problem

Of that, approximately 70–75% ends up in landfill. While kerbside recycling and food scrap collections are helping, they haven’t yet achieved the full reduction we need. Recent government policies aligned with the Zero Carbon Act have seen success in recycling plastics, glass, metals, and paper—the "obvious" materials that dominate our daily lives. However, another material is largely missing from the conversation.The Missing Link: Textile WasteTextile waste sent to landfill...

Second-hand Clothing and their Circular Value

Late one afternoon, after work in the CBD, I took a familiar detour through the little town centre I once called home. The streets were alive - crowded alleyways, food stalls sizzling, people brushing past each other with that end-of-day fatigue we all know. Then I noticed it. A shabby shop that looked more like a dusty warehouse than a clothing store. Curious, I peeked inside. Rows and rows of clothes - no single brand, no clear order. Cotton beside linen, jeans next to skirts, tees m...