Trillion-dollar commits and "blah blah blah" from the COP26 climate conference
Small Steps Vol. 44: Dollars and deals of COP26 🌎, cleaning up a Texas-sized trash mass 🌊 and; piggy organ transplants 🐖
“No more exploitation of people and nature and the planet. No more exploitation. No more blah blah blah. No more whatever the f*** they are doing inside there.”
- Greta Thunberg, Climate Activist (who when criticised about the swearing, posted this clapback)
Kick start
🌎 The COP26 climate change conference is in swing, with some hopeful highlights of the last few days including new net zero commitments from big emitters like India set to reduce global emissions to 11% of current output. In addition, over 100 countries committed to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030, backed by a $19 billion commitment from both governments and companies. The private sector continued pushing the envelope, with wealth managers covering $130T in assets under management (40% of global assets) committing to divestment from emitting sectors.
🛣️ While these are positive developments, there’s a long-road ahead of acting on commitments, which will require strong, ambitious leadership (at home, Morrison’s plan looks more like “blah blah blah” than a real roadmap) and unlocking over $100tn in new investment to finance transitions.
🤔 With the goings on (and probably some climate anxiety) front of mind, it’s a good time to re-arm yourself on where you can focus your energy. This 15 minute video from Kurzgesact delves into the systems causing climate change and puts personal responsibility into perspective.
🗳️ Yes, you can do your part (great resource from Eytan Lenko, Chairman of Beyond Zero Emissions, here). But voting for leaders committed to addressing Climate Change and (if you can) supporting early-stage climate tech initiatives will do much more than never flying again.
What we’re thinking about
🌊 The Pacific Ocean hosts a mass of plastic the size of Texas -- three times larger than Victoria -- and it's growing. While the scale is substantial, we’re amazed and encouraged by the founders seeing an opportunity. Take “Jenny”, a funnel shaped net aimed at catching ocean waste that is aiming to extract 90% of ocean plastic by 2040. Closer to shore, BeachBot is building drones to pick up beach trash before it gets washed out to sea. And more recently in Australia, Zero Co raised $5 million via crowdfunding for closed loop home care products that both stop new plastic waste and pull plastic from the ocean for its reusable containers.
🐷 In Australia, 2% of those who die in hospital are eligible for organ donation -- that’s around 1600 people per year. With our aging population, that’s quite the bottleneck for those in need of a life-saving transplant. But science and gene editing may have the answer: For the first time in history, a pig kidney has been transplanted into a human. It’s usually rejected immediately due to a special sugar cell in the pig’s organs, but gene editing can remove this cell. While there’s still more testing to be done, it’s a potential viable source of organs. But just because we can do this, should we?
Giant Leaps
🌈 We released our inaugural Portfolio Impact Highlights, showcasing the amazing work our portfolio companies did in FY21. This includes generating $47.3m in healthcare savings, improving workplace policies for almost 250k women, and taking the equivalent of 1,351 cars off the road in CO2-e emissions avoided. Check out the full doc here.
💊 Congratulations to Scott and Hugo from Perx, who have bagged a $3 million seed round to help them launch in the US.
🩺 Coviu has been named a winner at this year’s Australian Technologies competition. We’re also thrilled to see that over half the winners were companies led by women.
New paths
👨⚕️ Coviu is hiring a full stack engineer
🚽 Who Gives A Crap is seeking a videographer
💌 Sendle is hiring a data analyst
👩🎓 Academy Xi is hiring instructor roles
🤸♀️ WORK180 is hiring multiple data, software, and sales roles
🔥 There’s now 100+ more jobs on the Giant Leap Fund jobs board and more jobs at ethical companies on the global B-Work job board.
Connect with us
😎 Our Partner Rachel Yang is a judge for the Wade Insitutes Pitch Night Showcase on November 9.
🤲 Our Partner Will Richardson is a mentor for the Upside Founders Program, a workshop that centres around a thriving self at the heart of a thriving business.
For the road
🙌 Missed our Impact Pitch Night with Startup Vic? You can catch all the action on Youtube.
🌳 Congratulations to Mike and Annie Cannon-Brookes, who have just turned Grok Ventures in Australia’s biggest climate tech fund, with a whopping $1.5B. Meanwhile, Australia’s Regen Ventures is well on track to raise a US$50m fund specifically for cleantech investing and Fifty Years, a pioneering US-based impact fund, raised US$90m from an investor group including 10s of “unicorn founders”.
👍 Small Giants’ Danny Alagmor spoke with John Treadgold’s Good Future Podcast about how he pivoted his aspirations to be an astronaut to become one of the driving forces behind the impact investing movement. Amongst many things, Small Giants is currently running the Masters of Business and Empathy to build the next gen of impact leaders (taking applications here).
😲 Music for the mind. Researchers found that listening to "Weightless" led to 65% reduction in participants' overall anxiety, and a 35 percent reduction in their usual physiological resting rates. Here’s a Spotify playlist of 10 songs that were also found to have this effect. Quick caveat: Researchers warn to not play this while driving!
👏 Change Catalyst has released its annual Allyship report -- research detailing the importance of giving your team allies in the workplace. There’s plenty of detail here, but in a sentence: Allies help employees feel heard in the workplace and encouraging allyship can lead to better retention and performance from your team.
🐕 And the real Secret Life of Pets.