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Ep 34. From Wetlands to Wardrobes: What If Fashion Could Help Heal the Planet? with Julian Ellis-Brown
188 Plays7 days ago
In this episode, we step into very different territory. We leave the factory floor and the chemistry lab behind, pull on our wellies, and head into the wetlands. Our guest is Julian Ellis-Brown, CEO and Co-founder of Ponda — the biomaterials company turning wetland restoration into one of fashion's most exciting new fibres. We explore why wetlands are one of the most carbon-rich and biodiverse ecosystems on earth, why centuries of drainage have turned them from the planet's greatest carbon store into a significant carbon emitter, and how a farming practice called paludiculture is now allowing farmers across the UK and Europe to bring degraded wetlands back to life — while still earning a living from the land.
At the heart of Ponda's work is BioPuff — a plant-based insulation made from the seed fibres of the bulrush, designed to replace the goose down and synthetic polyester fills found in the puffer jackets and winter coats hanging in most of our wardrobes. Down raises animal welfare and traceability concerns, while synthetic fills are fossil-fuel derived — and BioPuff offers a genuinely carbon-negative alternative, traceable from plant to puffer, and landing in jackets on the market this autumn winter. Julian also shares details of Ponda's newly opened crowdfunding round — a rare opportunity to invest directly in a company regenerating real wetlands and reshaping one of fashion's most overlooked material categories.
What We Cover
- Why wetlands matter - Wetlands store 550 gigatons of carbon
- Paludiculture — the farming model you've never heard of, and why governments across Europe are now backing it with billions
- BioPuff — the plant-based insulation made from bulrush, grown on regenerated wetlands, that is set to land in jackets on the market this autumn
- The carbon story — how BioPuff achieves a carbon footprint of -42.76 kg of CO2e per kilogram of product, making it genuinely carbon negative
- From pilot plant to fashion runways — how Ponda went from a university challenge competition to collaborations with Stella McCartney, Berghaus and Parley for the Oceans
- The crowdfunding round — why Ponda is inviting the public to invest in their mission, and how you can get involved
- Julian's personal story — the moment curiosity about nature became a company, and what keeps him going
About our guest:
Julian Ellis-Brown is the CEO and Co-founder of Ponda, formerly known as Saltyco. Julian studied Innovation Design Engineering at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art, where he and his three co-founders began developing what would become BioPuff. Ponda closed a $2.4 million seed round in 2025 and is now commercialising BioPuff for the global fashion market.
Ponda: Website I Insta I BioPuff sample
Crowdfunding round — register your interest
Mili Tharakan: LinkedIn I Insta I Buy me a coffee
Subscribe and leave a review, I love to hear your feedback.
Recommended listening: Ep 29. Cotton, Soil & Solar: Re-imagining the “Quiet King” of Textiles
Cover art: Photo by Siora, Photography on Unsplash
Music: Inspired Ambient, Orchestraman
Recommended
Transcript
Mud to Material: A New Fashion Frontier
00:00:05
Speaker
What if the next great material innovation in fashion wasn't invented in a lab, but found in muddy wetlands? Today's guests set out to answer one of the most compelling questions I've heard in this industry.
00:00:19
Speaker
How do we create a material that is inherently healing to the planet? The answer he and his co-founders found will surprise you. It's a story about ecology, agriculture, climate and fashion. And why the most radical thing a materials company can do right now might be to put the land first and let the material follow.
Meet Julian Ellis Brown: Ponda's Visionary
00:00:41
Speaker
My guest today is Julian Ellis Brown, CEO and co-founder of Ponda. Welcome to the No Ordinary Cloth podcast, where we stitch together a rich tapestry of textile innovations, one episode at a time. I'm your host, Millie Tharakin, a textile researcher and innovator.
00:00:59
Speaker
And in this podcast, I give you a glimpse into the future, shedding light on innovations bubbling up at the intersection of textiles, emerging technology, craft, and sustainability.
Textiles and Tech: A Thoughtful Intersection
00:01:09
Speaker
Join me as I sit down with pioneers who are radically reimagining the way we make, use and remake the things we wear. In episode 29, we explored regenerative cotton farming in India and the US and how the way we grow a fiber can either restore or deplete the land.
00:01:28
Speaker
Today, we move to a very different geography, the regenerated wetlands of UK and Europe.
Ecosystem Restoration: Rethinking Fashion's Roots
00:01:35
Speaker
Ponder didn't start by asking how to grow a better material.
00:01:39
Speaker
They started by asking how to bring a broken ecosystem back to life. The material is what comes with it. Restoration first and fashion second. It turns the entire model on its head.
00:01:52
Speaker
The materials we wear are never just materials. They're connected to land, to ecosystems, to livelihoods of farmers and to the health of the planet. And this is what we're going to explore today.
00:02:03
Speaker
What I love most about the story is its simplicity. This isn't biotech and green chemistry, robotics or AI. It's about going back to nature, observing it, understanding it and trusting that it can help us answer our questions.
Innovating Nature into Fashion Products
00:02:21
Speaker
Of course, turning that observation into a scalable product for the fashion and industry requires real innovation and complex processes. And we'll hear all about that today.
00:02:32
Speaker
But the starting point is beautifully, almost disarmingly simple. I find it deeply inspiring and I hope you do too.
00:02:45
Speaker
Julian, welcome to No Ordinary Cloth. It's lovely to have you with us and we're going to be discussing a topic today that we haven't quite covered before on this podcast. So I'm really, really looking forward to it. For me, Ponder is one of those companies that made me stop and think not just about what we make things from, but about what making things could actually do for the planet as well. And we're going to be talking a bit about farming today, but unlike previous conversations we've had here, you're not farming to produce a material for the fashion sector. You're farming to regenerate a broken geographical ecosystem. The sustainable material produced is almost just a byproduct of that farming, and that's pretty radical. So that's The idea that a jacket filling could restore a wetland rather than drain it is one that completely, i think, reframes the farm to fashion discussion as
Wetlands: Climate Champions and Fashion's Future
00:03:36
Speaker
well.
00:03:36
Speaker
All right, everyone, let's ah put on some wellies, step into muddy waters and discover the hidden powers of the wetlands and why they matter more to fashion than we might expect.
00:03:47
Speaker
Julian, give us a little bit of an intro to yourself and Ponder and the one thing that really, really gets under your skin or annoys you about the fashion industry these days.
00:03:58
Speaker
Thank you so much for that kind introduction. Really appreciate it. And yeah, my name is Julian. I'm one of the co-founders and CEO of Ponder. We are a biomaterials company, but as you so eloquently put as well, our mission is really around ah regenerating
Biopuff: Insulation Revolution from Nature
00:04:18
Speaker
wetlands. So we've developed a technology which allows us to extract fibers from plants grown on regenerated wetlands and transform them into materials for the fashion industry, starting with Biopuff, which is our plant-based insulation material used to replace goose down or synthetic fillers and things like that.
00:04:38
Speaker
And the one thing that really gets under my skin for the industry, like i guess it's simply the, um it's how it's how small so many innovative solutions and potential changes have really made in terms of like a difference in when you consider the entire fashion industry, organic cotton, for example, maybe a few percentage points of market share,
00:05:06
Speaker
And then you know this next wave, this next these next generation textiles that are coming into fashion, really around 0.1% of current market share. So the thing that kind of gets under my skin and I focus a lot of my time thinking about is how do we get that number up to a much, much more significant proportion?
00:05:30
Speaker
Absolutely. I love that. And I completely agree with you. I feel the pain. So before we talk more about fashion, let's start where you started, which is the wetlands. So in the UK, you know, if we walk along the wetlands, we see sort of tall reeds dancing in the wind, there's cranes and ducks splashing about. land and water merge into each other. It's quite spectacular, ah but there's a lot more to wetlands than its beauty. It is critical to our planet and they've been described as some of the most carbon rich and biodiverse environments on Earth.
00:06:04
Speaker
Can you help listeners understand what healthy wetlands actually do for the planet?
Peatlands and Carbon: A UK Project
00:06:10
Speaker
why so many of them are being drained or degraded over the past century, and also why restoring them is now being talked about as one of the most powerful climate interventions we have.
00:06:22
Speaker
So wetlands are incredibly important ecosystems and they are our best land-based store of carbon. They hold something like 550 gigatons of carbon, which is extraordinary. the sort of i think the global sort of emissions of carbon each year is about 40 gigatons. So they are these incredible this incredible carbon store, specifically in peatlands. where all of this organic matter is held within these the soils underneath the surface of the water of these wetlands. And a healthy, functioning wetland is able to store that carbon, but but also sequester more carbon on top of that.
00:07:05
Speaker
There are really key environments for, as you mentioned, biodiversity, migratory birds. I think something ah like well over...
00:07:17
Speaker
50 or 60% of all species on Earth rely on wetlands in some way for their survival, of course, including humans within that as well. But unfortunately, we wetlands have been ah really under threat and attacked, especially over the past sort of few hundred years where we have drained hundreds of millions of hectares of wetlands around the world.
00:07:41
Speaker
And that's leading this amazing carbon store to become a massive carbon emitter. So as you drain pelands and wetlands, um which is mainly done for agricultural purposes, you then begin to release a lot of that carbon, which is locked up.
00:07:56
Speaker
Have I missed one of your three questions so far? The last one, and why restoring them is now really talked about one of the most, I guess, powerful climate interventions we have.
00:08:07
Speaker
These environments that are emitting a huge amount of carbon, a healthy wetland isn't just a carbon store, and it's not even just a biodiversity hub as well.
00:08:18
Speaker
It's also a really important piece within, you know, a very complex kind of global ecosystem, which enable things like water storage, flood mitigation.
00:08:32
Speaker
And these are really key, what we call ecosystem services, which are really valuable, not just um in sort of natural wetlands, but as we think more about resilience as societies, especially as the effects of climate change happen.
00:08:51
Speaker
how these environments can actually help us survive and thrive better in a in ah in a warmer world and a warmer planet as well. So really, these environments are amazing amazingly potent ways to combat climate change, improve biodiversity, help us increase more resources, ah around things like water and builds resilience for um communities of in the future as well. So really it's that kind of full package which makes them such an amazing um environment to focus on.
00:09:28
Speaker
Incredible. Do you know what the area coverage of wetlands we have here in the UK is? Yeah, in the UK, we have around a million hectares of peatlands.
00:09:40
Speaker
Peatlands specifically only cover about 3% of global land mass whilst whilst representing you know a larger carbon store with over twice the carbon of all the trees in the world combined.
00:09:53
Speaker
So they are also very sort of dense and specific environments as well, which which is also a really good reason to focus on them. I came across a word while doing research for this podcast. It's polluted culture. i hope I said that right, because I love that word. And like me, I think most listeners probably wouldn't have heard of that before. What is it and why is it so significant as both a farming model and a climate solution?
00:10:20
Speaker
Absolutely. yeah you You nailed it. Polluticulture. It's a word that was originally coined by some German researchers in a place called Greisfeld, which is in the northeast of Germany.
00:10:34
Speaker
And what polluticulture means is really just wet farming or wet agriculture. And this is the idea that you have these hundreds of millions of hectares of drained wetlands, of drained peatlands around the world, but they're currently being stewarded by farmers primarily, right? These are productive lands which are providing an economic a resource for individuals, for communities, for nations.
00:11:04
Speaker
So polluticulture is the idea that, OK, maybe we don't fully rewild these environments, but perhaps we regenerate them from the drained, dry state that they've been in, where they're being farmed, back into a wet state, but find a way to still grow plants which can be harvested each year, that can therefore earn an income for the farmer.
00:11:30
Speaker
and provide more value for society. And this is really where wetlands and Ponda really sort of coincide and connect. I love your make wetland wet again caps. So if anyone's interested to buy those, they are available on Ponda's website, right? They certainly are. here are Brilliant.
00:11:51
Speaker
So wetlands weren't traditionally used as farming land, but Through polluticulture, we're kind of trying encourage farmers to turn their these areas, which were initially wetlands to start off with, which were depleted to kind of regenerate them and recover them, but still continue to be a source of income for them.
00:12:10
Speaker
ah So we've brought life back to the wetlands through polluticulture. Before we dive into biopuff and what that is, help us understand the problem with existing insulation that we find probably in our puffer jacket, winter jackets. And why should we be concerned about the goose down or synthetic fills that we currently have in in our jackets, both in terms where they come from and what they leave behind?
00:12:34
Speaker
but One thing you actually just mentioned there is that wetlands haven't typically been used as as farmland before. And to an extent that's true, but I do also want to just note that there are, you know, very large sort of historical indigenous uses of plants grown in wetlands as well, whether that be for thatch for roofs or um utilizing reeds for the use of, you know,
00:13:04
Speaker
weaving baskets or in many other situations as as well. And so there is definitely a sense of, you know, going back to your other practices there.
00:13:16
Speaker
But on the note of current insulation sort of incumbents and and what are used at the moment, the industry is essentially dominated by either goose down or synthetic insulation. Yeah.
00:13:30
Speaker
To start with perhaps synthetic insulation, obviously there are the challenges of the fact that most of this is polyester or recycled polyester, and most of recycled polyester is coming from a from a different resource, say,
00:13:46
Speaker
recycled plastic bottles, which I think as we as we know now is a sort of its own circular system, which the kind of the fashion industry is kind of leaching off in order to be able to provide their own kind of recycled feedstock of products, which can be argued it is making some challenges worse.
00:14:05
Speaker
And so on on the one hand, yeah you have this fossil-based products. And then on the other hand, you obviously have like an animal-based product
Fashion's Traceability and Animal Welfare Challenges
00:14:14
Speaker
through down. And this is a very, very large industry. And...
00:14:19
Speaker
Often there there are welfare concerns when it comes to the treatment of animals. It can be, even with you know modern standards, really difficult to get full traceability and transparency back to farm from where these products these products originally come from.
00:14:36
Speaker
know We believe that there are better material platforms, material solutions out there, which we should be searching for in order to be able to replace some of these materials as well.
00:14:48
Speaker
And can you also touch on what is left behind once these jackets filled with goose down or synthetic fills are discarded? Yeah, definitely. Obviously, there is challenges around things like biodegradability, but I wouldn't put that problem 100% in the hands of the material suppliers of necessarily just insulation. As we have a structural challenge within the fashion industry around end of life, especially when you think of outerwear. The amount of different materials that goes into a winter jacket or coat or even like even a gilet is numerous when you think of you know the everything from tips, buttons, trims.
00:15:32
Speaker
Therefore, we really believe we have to be working towards solutions of how do we yeah how do we design for how do we design for end use? How do we look at companies like Resortex and and the solutions they have for their dissolving thread to then take the elements of a jacket and put them back into material feedstocks again?
00:15:56
Speaker
Let's connect the dots now between wetlands and puffer jackets. Tell us about Biopuff.
Bulrush: The Global Insulation Solution
00:16:02
Speaker
What is this material and why is it better than our current use of feather and synthetic fillers?
00:16:08
Speaker
Biopuff is a plant-based insulation used that you use reliance on or replace these insulations that we're using at the moment.
00:16:19
Speaker
Of course, what makes it really unique is its origins and it specifically comes from a plant which here in the UK we call the bulrush. In America, they call it cattail or it's sometimes called reed mace. The Latin name is typha and it's found all over the world. this is ah It's is sort of globally endemic and you often see it growing on the sides of ponds and it sort of looks like a kind of corn dog. On the continent in Europe, they sort of refer to them as cigars.
00:16:49
Speaker
I think we it little bit like that as well. But what's incredible about these plants is they have these seed heads at the top of the reeds. And each one of these seed heads holds about 200,000 seed clusters of fiber.
00:17:04
Speaker
And you often see these sort of exploding and blowing away in the wind. And it's very beautiful. And that's because each one of those kind of clusters has a seed attached to it. And that is one of the reproduction methods of the plant.
00:17:19
Speaker
Thank What we've sort of identified is that's an amazing source of fiber. And one of the reasons it's such a great source of fiber for insulation is because of the both the macro structure of these kind of fiber clusters, but also the kind of microstructure of of the way these fibers are made up, which made them very, very effective at capturing little air pockets, just what makes fantastic insulators. So Biopuff is a primarily cellulosic material, therefore.
00:17:50
Speaker
And that also an added benefit of sort of moisture management, which you can which you can get from from these kinds of materials. So there's there's so many different reasons why this fiber is really critical and a really strong alternative to that the current materials used Our challenge is how do you turn it from a plant grown in ah in in a wetland all the way through to something which can be used in garment manufacturers' factories?
00:18:22
Speaker
It can be you know a turnkey solution and just drop in as an alternative to the current materials that we're replacing. So you have a pilot plant in Bristol where you are starting to do that. You're sort of starting to scale the solution up. Can you tell us what happens there? Whatever you can show us behind the curtains? Yeah.
00:18:41
Speaker
Sure. so um we do have a pilot plan in Bristol where we've created a series of proprietary machines. Essentially, as I mentioned, in each of those seed heads, you have a lot of fiber, but you also have a lot of seeds and a lot of other things which you don't want in your in in your end product.
00:19:04
Speaker
And our job is how do we sustain the quality of this fiber? whilst removing all of the kind of bits which we don't want as but ah as part of that as well.
00:19:17
Speaker
And so with that's what our our technology really enables us to do is take all the best bits of typho, of bulrushes, and remove the bits which are just making the end material heavier, or less able to wash or, you know, these these other sort of performance attributes, which are really, really key for our clients as well. and you turn that into wadding or what leaves your factory?
00:19:46
Speaker
So in Bristol, what leaves our factory is actually just sort of fiber. And we then plug back into ah the kind of existing textile supply chain.
00:19:57
Speaker
um where we're able to then work with textile manufacturers and utilize their technology, sometimes with some alterations in order to make exactly, as you say, a kind of wadding-like material. So the way that we supply Biopath is as a kind of sheet roll of insulation that can be cut and sewn into quilted garments.
00:20:21
Speaker
Amazing. Anyone's interested in buying a sample of Biopuff? Again, it's available on Ponda's website. I mean, there's nothing like kind of getting a feel of what these materials are about, isn't it? Biopuff is described as traceable from plant to puffer. How does that traceability sort of look like end to end? Are you using any technology or, you know, how do you enable that? And why does it matter for the brands that you're working with that it is traceable?
Ensuring Traceability: From Plant to Product
00:20:47
Speaker
Traceability is really critical, obviously, from a quality assurance perspective, from an ESG perspective. Knowing where our materials comes from allows us to make wiser decisions about where they should go and and to and whether we should use them or not.
00:21:04
Speaker
At the moment, we source from wetlands across Europe and into Canada as well, including many in the UK. And at the moment, our supply chain is sort of, you know, focused enough that we're able to do a lot of the traceability process.
00:21:23
Speaker
like actually quite manually. And that's been really important to us in the early days as well, because we really want to make sure that we have a really good understanding of our supply chain, a really good understanding of the agriculture, the agronomy, because ultimately it's down to a certain extent us to like expand this supply chain as well, right?
00:21:43
Speaker
No one's done this before. No one's created a ah kind of scaled bulwars insulation product. And so... we are having to go out to some extent persuade farmers this is an an alternative at least that's what we had to do right at the start now it's sort of growing and as a kind of kind of life of its own and therefore we have really strong touch bit touch points i was just on the phone to one of our one of our farmers before this call you know We want to learn everything that we can about how do we make pollute culture ah viable, so like cost effective, how we make it feasible, so how what are you actually doing on the ground, and and and scalable as well. So how do we make sure that there's mechanisms or machinery in in place that can enable us to do this on a much larger scale than we are today?
00:22:38
Speaker
Are they sort of new machines or hacking existing machines or do they do they already exist? A bit of both. So we we have to look at the entire process. So let's say you've got a drained wetland at the moment.
00:22:52
Speaker
What do we need to do to this wetland in order to be able to raise the water table level high enough to be able to grow these plants? good sort of environmental indicator that our polluticulture is working and night you know is a wetland is ah is simply the fact that our plants won't grow if it's not wet enough. And so that provides quite a useful solution. in order to be able to see whether we're doing well or not.
00:23:20
Speaker
So there's a few there's a few components to this, but obviously, so you've got to re-weather the land, okay, and this might be reversing the direction of a pump, which is currently pumping water out of this environment, so pumping it back in.
00:23:32
Speaker
ah Maybe it's blocking some ditches, which have been dug in order be able to drain water out of the land. And then you've got to think about, okay, so how are we going to grow these plants? And, you know, you're it's a completely saturated field. You can't get on your tractor and, you know, drive your tractor with a drill attachment on the back to seed all of them. Your tractor will be left in the wetlands and it will be very difficult to get it back. Yeah.
00:23:58
Speaker
I mentioned earlier that one of our jobs at our facility is to remove all of the bits which we don't want from the fiber. One of the products of that is actually the seeds themselves. So day by day when we're processing, we're also capturing billions upon billions of these seeds. Wow. And so we're now the sort of world's largest, i imagine by a fair margin, supplier of these seeds as well.
00:24:23
Speaker
And we've also developed technology to encapsulate them into pellets, which can then be placed into drones to sow over new wetlands. And then that's drastically reduced the cost of wetland establishment of these plants as well. And so these are the sorts of innovations which are going to enable this scalability that I mentioned to ah to really take off.
00:24:44
Speaker
Fascinating. That is so interesting. So on one hand, you're dealing with farmers and sort of encouraging them to try something very new. On the other hand, you're dealing with some major fashion brands. Tell us a bit about some of the brands you've worked with, what that experience was like, and what was the convincing that you needed to do on that side of the table?
Collaboration with Giants: Ponda and Stella McCartney
00:25:04
Speaker
We've been lucky enough to work with lots of amazing brands, including doing some collaborations with Stella McCartney, Berghaus, Parley for the Oceans, She Pink quite recently, and also working with some more up-and-coming designers as well, where we've showcased Biopuff on the runway at London and Paris Fashion Week. So loads of um really exciting opportunities that we've been able to engage and really learn about how brands and companies think about new materials, think about how how they work as well.
00:25:41
Speaker
What I would say is and in terms of engagement, some of the kind of biggest lessons so that that we've learned is that often fashion has some very long sales cycles. And so, um and this can be really challenging as a, you know, venture backed business, you're looking to grow and grow and income and revenue and hit targets and KPIs. as well.
00:26:04
Speaker
Often you have these really long development period times with with brands and they're what obviously for good reason wanting to test for all sorts of different criteria.
00:26:14
Speaker
And the other thing that we found is often looking to take an existing design they have and see how works. new material will work inside a sort of kind of old design.
00:26:26
Speaker
And, you know, that's led to some fantastic like developments and product developments that we've done. But it's also led to some insights that we've found is to think about, okay, how can we make this process faster? How can we accelerate Biopath's route to market as well?
00:26:43
Speaker
Which has been some really like deep learning, which we've done over the past 12 months, especially. You mentioned about the timeline with brands, you know, it takes time to really get them to adopt something new like this. But if we come back to the farm again, you talked about sort of bringing water back to the farm and you put the seeds in there. How long does it take for it to grow and produce pods that you need? And what is that whole regeneration process? What's the timeline on that look like?
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah, so it's about 18 months before you get your first harvest. so you might so let's say So we've just finished spring, but let's say we've sown some seeds in the past couple of months.
00:27:28
Speaker
By next August, you'll you'll get your first harvest, so we'll August 2027. And then that, the and then after that ah These plants are perennial, so they'll grow back year on year. You don't need to re-sow them or re-seed them, right? Anything like that.
00:27:43
Speaker
so you ah So you'll actually then get a consistent supply. So in terms of management, it's actually quite a low input requirement from an agricultural perspective, which is also really useful.
00:27:56
Speaker
Maybe an odd question, but we'll will we face a problem with over-farming one particular type of plant in a wetland area, especially when we start thinking about scaling up and are there any negative impacts that we need to keep in mind as well? Yeah, that's a good question. i think our philosophy on this is sort of twofold. One is that In most of the environments that we grow and harvest from, um it's a pretty sort of permacultural space, as in, you know, our plants are growing alongside many other plants. One of our connections and collaborations is with...
00:28:31
Speaker
Lancashire Wildlife Trust and we're working together with ah with a farmer in Lancashire to, ah we've rewested some land and we're growing and they're looking at how bulrushes and typha might be grown alongside ah mosses and sphagnum mosses on the the ground level as well so so there is biodiversity that is being thought about on the kind of flora perspective as well the other thing i would say is that it's really important that we think about generally across the board when it comes to agriculture sort of a mosaic approach not just think about intense monocultural agriculture but thinking okay so if we're going to do some polluted culture here Maybe we'll do actually some full wetland rewilding next to it.
00:29:18
Speaker
Maybe there'll then be some really intense agriculture as well, which will which is really important for food production. And that sort of mosaic approach is what we're seeing has the potential to build the most resilience into agricultural industries in the future as well.
00:29:34
Speaker
Fabulous. So you said the the plant that you have in Bristol is is a pilot facility and you're really looking to now scale things up. What are some of the challenges that you face or that you foresee when you scale this up to industrial level production? Right.
00:29:51
Speaker
Yeah, all sorts of challenges definitely face in with growth. I think i think there's this challenges that all material manufacturing companies face when they go from one scale to another. And I'm sure we'll hit all sorts of those technical challenges.
00:30:07
Speaker
Then there's one I've already mentioned before, which is the fact that Our supply chain doesn't really exist. So we've got to build that alongside but building our manufacturing scale up.
00:30:17
Speaker
And then I think there's, I guess, the commercial risk, which, you know, we've seen other next-gen materials companies get to certain scales, certain stages, and then not be able to thrive beyond that.
00:30:32
Speaker
And I think what I also spend quite lot of my time thinking about is what are the lessons that we can learn from these companies? Because we get to see like a real blueprint for success when it comes to sustainable novel materials, gaining a really like massive, like industry, like share and and large market penetration.
00:30:54
Speaker
That's something that I'm really thinking about. One of the ways, just one of the ways we're thinking about that is how can we ensure as we scale that as many people, you know, know how to use Biopath, ah stocking Biopath, that Biopath is an option like within the supply chain. So sort of forgetting the kind of han customers for now, how do we ensure that Biopath is a Yeah, it has a widespread understanding and knowledge. It's say it's a oh, it's down, it's synthetic or it's biopath. That's really sort of how yeah we want people to be able to think about it as an option and and a choice as well. And I think that's really big educational part to what we do as Parfum.
00:31:40
Speaker
Interesting. So you're clearly on a mission there to scale and educate people.
Momentum in Motion: Ponda's Funding Success
00:31:46
Speaker
Ponda recently closed a $2.4 million dollars seed round to commercialize Biopuff. So there's good momentum there. And you're about to open a crowdfunding round as well, which is a very different conversation to your typical investor pitches. What made you decide to bring the public in as an investor at this stage? And what kind of community are you hoping to build through that process?
00:32:09
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. i think, well, but one, we've, we, we, so we opened for pre-registration about WeGo. We've been really overwhelmed by the number of responses and sort of signups we've had, which is really exciting.
00:32:23
Speaker
And the sort of rationale behind this is sort of on the back of a lot of what I've been saying. It's that like, you know, we're not building what we're building in a silo in isolation. We're building it in connection you a very wide range of stakeholders and collaborators that we're working with.
00:32:44
Speaker
And a community has already started to form around Ponda, around polluti culture. And this is an opportunity for people within that community and and and beyond to start engaging with, you know, the...
00:33:00
Speaker
success of of what ponder has the potential to be as well which is what really excites us and so yeah i think depending of course on what when you're listening to this under it is currently fundraising and and there's a yeah really exciting opportunity there to be a part of our mission where can people find out some information about this what is there a website where can they go Yeah, the best place to go is just to go to our website, ponder.bio or find us on Instagram. were We're fundraising through Republic ah Europe, who are a yeah one of the very reputable crowdfunding platforms who sort of manage all of the kind of legal side of of it for you as well.
00:33:47
Speaker
And what will this additional money allow you to achieve in the next phase? So we've spent six years now developing our supply chain, building it from this. we you know This has been the the zero to one, as people say. And then what we are currently doing is commercializing. So it's about...
00:34:10
Speaker
how do we take Biopuff as a product and make it all the things that I've been talking about, you know, we want it to be. And so it is about scaling. It is about, you know, ah a bigger machine to be able to process more material. It's about, yeah, the sort of the structural requirements of of building more, but it's also about having, you know, all of the assets necessary for us to be able to sell a really strong story, to be able to bring Biopuff to our customers as well. And so a lot of this is looking at our our kind of go-to-market teams.
00:34:49
Speaker
Nice. Do you think we might spot a Biopuff jacket in the market soon? Autumn, winter, 26, it you able to give us a hint? Yeah. Yeah, you'll definitely see some some jackets in Awesome Winter 26. Oh, exciting. we did we We did one launch with She Pink at the very start of the year, so last winter.
00:35:13
Speaker
But yeah, this this year will be our our our key move to market. And one of the ways we're going to market, which has been novel for Pondo as well, is that we have also started developing fully factored garments powered by Biopuff as well. So we are going to mission lines companies and we can provide of obviously all of the benefits that come with Biopath, but also the ability to create sort of custom garments as well for their brands.
00:35:43
Speaker
And this is one of the things i was sort of talking about when it comes to how do we build understanding of how to use Biopath within the supply chain? before you have like the top pull through of some of these brands as well when, you know, they they do take quite a bit of time to think to to develop new products. And this is our route to doing that. And we've been really excited with how that's gone. And we've got some very exciting collaborations and announcements coming up in the next few months for this as well.
00:36:13
Speaker
Excellent. We'll keep an eye out. And well, hopefully there'll be sort of Biopuff tags as well on these jackets because we're never going to know what's inside of it. So hopefully the marketing side is you've trademarked Biopuff and market that as well.
00:36:29
Speaker
Fortunately, that was one of the first things that we did when we first named Biopuff. There was a lot of things we didn't know. So at at the time when we founded Ponder, so so I'm glad we managed to carve out that one.
00:36:42
Speaker
Biopuff inside. That's what I see. All right, brilliant. So if you look sort of 10 years ahead and Ponda has succeeded in the way you hope, what does the wetland landscape in UK and Europe look like? And what is the insulation category look like? And how has it changed?
00:37:02
Speaker
When we think about the kind of wetland landscape, it's really about in 10 years, this not being like that, like surprising or perhaps perhaps it interesting to to an extent of like, this is going to become.
00:37:20
Speaker
Peatland drainage is quite a unique issue in the sense that you can't just do a little bit less than it less of it you've either regenerated it or you haven't. And so it's kind of a unique problem in that way, in the sense that it's kind of on or off. And so governments have to find a solution for this if they're if they're pushing towards net zero.
00:37:43
Speaker
And the solution, the best solution economically for them is polluticulture. And so we are going to see a massive uptick of wetland farming in the UK, in the europe and Europe, and beyond as well. And I'm really excited for Ponder to be, you know, a large part of that process and being able to be an enabler for more of these environments to to be regenerated. Another big enabler is going to be like government support on a kind of
00:38:14
Speaker
financial and regulatory level. A couple of weeks ago, Germany announced a 1.3 billion euro fund for funding drained agricultural peel and to be turned into polluticultural solutions or otherwise as well, which is an insane support mechanism when polluticulture, as a word, like barely existed like five years ago. it's It really is all going in in that direction, which is super exciting.
00:38:43
Speaker
And then on the insulation level, it's like I said, you know the options should be down synthetic or bulrush. It's the more and more market share that you know is able to be made from these amazing materials and these amazing feedstocks, the more impact we're going to be able to create. And the way that we do that is by creating a product that's people love, people like to wear, this design that is great for people to design with. And that has been and remains our mission.
00:39:12
Speaker
And do you see this go beyond just clothing? Can it be for bedding? There's all kinds of other areas where we need insulation. So have you kind of considered that in the future?
00:39:24
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. it's There's so many different like yeah and interiors, embedding in in all sorts of different industries, you know and they represent such a huge market.
00:39:36
Speaker
I think even just like insulation for medicinal purposes, it's like a $10 billion dollar industry or something because of the importance of like keeping vaccines cool and things like that, transportation. And so there's there's so much potential if there's a product that performs well in order to be able to engage with large amounts of the market.
00:39:58
Speaker
Wow. I mean, it's regenerating and transforming landscape. It's just incredible work that you're doing, honestly. And I love that just the whole fashion side of it almost is a byproduct. I know that it's, you know, that is where you're going to sort of build a business and and create your market and all that. But for me, it is sort of working with a byproduct of regenerating our land.
Nature Risk in Fashion: A New Consideration
00:40:21
Speaker
What's an important conversation the fashion industry desperately needs to have, but it isn't? I think something that really needs to get like fixed, and I have no idea how that's going to happen, is I think we've, you know, to a great extent, we've sort of gotten our head around carbon emissions and carbon budgets and things like that.
00:40:43
Speaker
And we're starting to get our heads around, and this is more what I do see dominate conversations more and more, is around nature risk. I manufacture all of my leather goods in northern Italy.
00:40:56
Speaker
the The Orno Basin is running out of water. are all my tannery is going to get enough water in order to be able to operate? That is a massive, obviously, like financial risk to a lot of businesses, and that's just one example of it.
00:41:11
Speaker
And incidentally, that specific example is something where wetland regeneration would help. but um But I think the challenge is also that it's not fungible in the sense that is something that is very specific to a region and to a specific company.
00:41:29
Speaker
And so... regenerating a wetland on the other side of the planet is not going to help with their risk problem. And that makes things harder to scale. Like, you know, for all of its problems, you know, that the carbon markets have decided on a fungibility of ah of a type of carbon when that's much harder to do with nature.
00:41:54
Speaker
And so that's something which i think not just fashion, but in general, we need to have a conversation about and to be able to solve. Yeah. Wow. I do feel the weight of that question. All right. So Julian, I want to step back from the company now and look at things a bit lighter for a moment and get to know you a bit. So tell us where you're from. and Where did you grow up? I grew up in Hampshire, near a place called Winchester. And it's interesting, actually.
00:42:25
Speaker
I grew up on the edge of the of the South Downs. And now we're starting to source from some of the the kind of wetlands there as well. So there's a lovely kind of full circle happening there. And that area is like from an ecological perspective, like but like astonishing as well. I mean, in terms of like wetland systems, I mean, the chalk streams, which you find around that region, i think it's like the highest density of chalk streams in the world.
00:42:55
Speaker
It's an astonishing asset that we have and desperately needs protection from things like, you know, nutrients the wetlands can help with. So yeah, delighted to to have that kind of, yeah, full circle as well.
00:43:09
Speaker
Well, clearly you had a bit of the wild in you growing up as well. ah So what shaped your interest and curiosity when you, when you growing up as a young lad in Winchester?
00:43:21
Speaker
What were you into? Well, we're we're talking on the 100th birthday of David Attenborough. And I was thinking earlier about those sort of early lessons of, ah you know, sat at school and they put a David Attenborough documentary on and things like that. Yeah. And just from a very early age, having a real understanding that nature was very precious, but also a real urgency of something is deeply wrong and like things have gone like very wrong.
00:43:57
Speaker
And so... I think by the time I got to my postgraduate degree, I think, you know, i don't think I ever saw it as kind of an option to not work in some way in the space of nature and sustainability. And I feel very lucky and privileged that I've managed to find myself into a position where, you know, we can make a difference and and do something differently as well.
00:44:24
Speaker
Yeah, when when when the when the days are tough is something that's important to yeah remind myself of. Yeah, absolutely. Ponda really sits at that intersection of agriculture, climate, ecology and fashion. And of course, how many, many, many hundreds, even thousands of us have been inspired by the beautiful documentaries by David Attenborough. That sets us out in our different careers and in our quest to to change things and and to to leave a better place. So beyond the science and startup, what are your passions, interests that are outside of Ponder that people might not know about?
Julian’s Creative Endeavors Beyond Fashion
00:45:04
Speaker
um I get a bit kind of ridiculed for this at work, but I have like lots of kind of like projects and like knickknacks and things. And i like to sort of set myself challenges and and projects. So like last Christmas, my girlfriend bought this like nineteen sixty s ski gondola toy thing which she found on Facebook marketplace and made me drive for like 40 minutes to go pick up from this random house I think it cost her like seven pounds or something um and then it was my task to motorize it and turn it into something which can then be used as a essay as a way to transport things around room as a Christmas decoration um I love that um
00:45:57
Speaker
That was quite few of my weekends. Yeah. You did mechanical engineering, right? I did. You've always enjoyed making and breaking and remaking things, I guess. Yeah, definitely. I think there was a lot of my, yeah, a lot of my childhood was spent, yeah, trying to make and manufacture and sort of design things. and And that was what I was actually thinking about, the other big part of, you know, my youth and childhood, which I think, and,
00:46:24
Speaker
has inspired me for today. I mean, my my parents are both like creatives as well. And I think, you know, fashion, obviously, and materials are completely entwined with design. And I think that's the other thing that really attracts and inspires me about what we do day in, day out as well.
00:46:44
Speaker
Absolutely. That's a question I ask all my guests. You know, textiles, they're far beyond just being functional. ah For us, they they're very powerful and they can hold some very personal meanings for us and um something that we can hold on to for a very, very long time. um Are there any pieces of textiles or garments, articles of clothing that you have kind of held on to that has deep memories connected to it? Is there a personal story that you can share with us?
00:47:13
Speaker
I was meant to be thinking about this question and and and I completely forgot. So but but fortunately, i've I've just moved house. So I've had to miss all of my stuff and my wardrobe and things.
00:47:24
Speaker
And I think, I mean, this is sort of kind of like unintentionally relevant. One thing is my my dad gave me when I was about 11, this kind of like Timberland parka.
00:47:38
Speaker
And it's definitely not something I would choose now. It's actually a kind of like raw hide filled with sort filled with polyester. So not the most sort of like sustainable garment in the world.
00:47:54
Speaker
But when he gave it to me, i was like 11 years old and this thing is like a duvet. And so, but I insisted on wearing it like, And I remember wearing it on a snow day and just being absolutely dwarfed. And also it weighs a ton. So having to drag it through the snow, getting so getting soaking wet.
00:48:13
Speaker
but i but i But I still have it. Oh, lovely. to Today. and But what's quite interesting is it it is a sort of also indication of also how far technology...
00:48:27
Speaker
has come as well. It is incredibly, it it is still very warm. And I and i think yeah that is a perhaps an indication that well-made things are well-made as well. And you know this is from the late 80s or something like that.
00:48:41
Speaker
But the other thing is, it you know it still weighs an absolute ton. I mean, that's the other thing is in technology has moved forward and there are better alternatives these days for choosing for choosing different different products. And I think, yeah, it's that kind of It's that kind of duality, I think, on it within fashion that is, which, you know, I think a lot of people grapple with. It's one, it's sort of like, we obviously don't need more clothes in the world. There's so many, there's so many clothes. but But on the other hand, like technology is also developing and there are better ways for us to make things as well.
00:49:17
Speaker
and Somehow, somewhere we need to make a balance between those those that sort of dichotomy between those two things. And yeah, and I guess our muddling sort of through that is what hopefully it will will create a kind of stronger, more sustainable industry in the future as well.
00:49:34
Speaker
Absolutely. That's a beautiful story, Julian. Thank you.
Ponda's Origin Story: An Imperial College Project
00:49:37
Speaker
I understand that Ponda was born out of a project during your innovation design engineering masters at Imperial College in London. And you ended up founding the company together with three other friends. So take us back to the beginning and tell us what the original spark was or what but the problem is that captured your curiosity and you thought, this is what I want to do. This is the problem I want to solve. Yeah.
00:50:01
Speaker
So I was at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. It's this very cool program, which is interdisciplinary, brings like third designers, a third engineers, and then a third anything else onto this program. And you're all taught through the same sort of lens. And in our second year, I came together with sort of three of my friends.
00:50:21
Speaker
Not just friends. You have for essentially the whole years who essentially sort of like scope each other out in the first year to see who's like who who you want to work with on your group project in your second year.
00:50:33
Speaker
It's actually like an absolutely brutal process because one day they just say, okay, time to for you to self-select your groups for second year now. And it's very much sort of like class, like school PE, don't want last The pressure of that. Oh my goodness.
00:50:51
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, it was also quite an sort of interesting anthropological kind of experiment. um I mean, whatever they're doing is working because there's so many of you passed out of there with a startup at the other end. So, you know. It's true. And it's got some, yeah, amazing alumni.
00:51:11
Speaker
Like some of the, of, Yeah, forget, like comet come from it. But yeah, fantastic program. I'd really encourage people. if people are interested in a disciplinary design, would really recommend them to go to it we We sort of came came together you know and it's completely blank canvas. You can literally do whatever.
00:51:31
Speaker
whatever you want, there's no real brief on on what you're meant to do. But as four kind of, well, co-founders now, we were really bound by a question which we which we came to, or what you might call a how might we statement.
00:51:48
Speaker
And for us, that was sort of how might we create a material that was inherently healing to the planet. And that's something which, you know, we've come back to year after year that it is a sort of central line on our journey over the past six years.
00:52:08
Speaker
And so the way we sort of, it took quite an undulating route where we are today, but right at the start, what it was, was we were like, okay, what are some really powerful ecosystems which we which we think are very environmentally healing?
00:52:24
Speaker
And marshland was one of them. And so we literally took the train from London out to the nearest marshland we could find and sort of walked around and looked at plants and thought they look like they might have some fiber in them and then took them back to the lab and try to extract fibers from them.
00:52:41
Speaker
And then it took us about three years from that initial point to to sort of settle on um of what we were doing. But yeah, we're very sort of hands-on design led kind of process in order to be able to get there.
00:52:53
Speaker
Lovely. What have you learned about yourself over the last six years and from setting up a company and running it? That's a really good question.
00:53:03
Speaker
And one that I don't, I perhaps should think about more, but I don't ah think about. I think you learn about the things you're not very good at very quickly.
00:53:14
Speaker
And I guess to an extent what your strengths are. We decided quite early on, the four of us, what our roles were going to be within the company. And those have pretty much well sustained throughout. And so we clearly did have like, a you know, a gut feeling of where our strengths might be.
00:53:31
Speaker
I've learned that the most important asset is resilience. I think by like a really long way, it's your ability to kind of withstand like challenges and pain. And, you know, I'm someone who comes generally from an incredibly like privileged position. And I think it's like,
00:53:51
Speaker
it is an extraordinarily difficult journey. I also have like, you know, the statistical odds on my side when it comes to sort of raising money finance.
00:54:02
Speaker
Like a ah ah white man is far more likely to be able to raise venture capital funding than than many other people who are wanting to start businesses. And, you know, still, you know, with all of those privileges, it's still such an in it immense roller coaster of highs and lows. um And so having that kind of resilience to sort of push through all of that, I think is, I wouldn't necessarily describe myself as like, you know completely successful, but perhaps on the way to success.
00:54:35
Speaker
I think that's one of the the important ways that we've gotten here. And you're right, it is such a tough journey. And I think a lot of people say that, you know, if they knew what it was going to be like, they might not have even started down that road.
00:54:50
Speaker
But part of that journey also sometimes involves ah something we call as founder burnout. You know, it's it's a common problem that founders encounter along the way. It's such a long journey, but you're kind of sprinting through this marathon in a way. How do you take care of yourself physically and mentally ah to ensure you remain effective and efficient as the company ceo and visionary, you know, inspiring everyone to keep going?
00:55:18
Speaker
ah i Oh yeah, I do sort of group coaching and i was talking to my co-coachees on this. ah It's really difficult. I've gone, as has every man and his dog, I've gone into running. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. I'm running for Bristol half on Sunday.
00:55:39
Speaker
Oh, wow. Cheering you on. Exciting. And I find that a good solution to keeping myself fit and healthy, partly because it's a it's something which you can do anywhere with very little equipment. And so i find that very practical, especially if I have to do lots of traveling, there's something that I can just keep going with.
00:56:05
Speaker
The other thing i have to manage is ive i suffer from like an autoimmune disease, an arthritic autoimmune disease, which makes, but it which to cut a long story short, essentially it's like...
00:56:21
Speaker
fusing my spine and my pelvis together. And so, and that causes lots of pain and and challenges sort of day in, day out. And so that can also contribute to fatigue, to exhaustion, and that makes burnout more likely as well.
00:56:37
Speaker
And so it is really important that I'm in, and I would say most of the time to a very poor job of it, but that's another reason why it's really important to, as founders, make sure that you're getting rest and yeah, that your health comes first because without it, then you can't do anything for anybody.
00:56:56
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And it's so important for people to realize that health is the most important thing. And we don't tend to realize it until we have a problem. sure and I also think it's like a especially symptomatic amongst earlier founders, so people who are in their like first, second year of of founding a business.
Founder's Wisdom: Endurance and Mentorship
00:57:20
Speaker
It is overwhelming the feeling of like, I'm running out of time and I need to do everything right now. yeah And i think no matter how what you say to like some people, I just don't think that it's very difficult to persuade someone that that's not the case.
00:57:37
Speaker
in that position, even though it's really not. And I think it is, it's almost this kind of self-discovery journey that kind of everyone has to go to through in order to be able to realize that, yeah that you you know, you have to be able to create space in order to be able to um have the endurance order to able to keep going as well.
00:57:57
Speaker
Yeah, actually that brings us on to nicely to the next question, which was, you know, you've gone from winning like a university challenge competition to raising 2.4 million and ah commercializing a product this year. are two or three very practical things you wish someone had told you at the very beginning?
00:58:19
Speaker
You know, it could be about raising money or finding your first customer. so many So many things come to mind. i think one one good piece of advice is for people who are starting out is find people who are just a little bit further ahead of you on your je journey and get them to like help and mentor you because they've just solved the problems which you're trying to solve.
00:58:42
Speaker
think i yeah I think the other one, it sounds sort of vague, but I think you have to really find a way to make sure that you believe that you're the valuable asset in negotiations and and conversations. Like it's so easy to think as an early stage startup, maybe think,
00:59:07
Speaker
you know, my technology actually, you know, it's not like that incredible or or maybe like haven't raised quite enough money or I don't have quite the right experience or maybe the team's not quite right or maybe, you know, we haven't made quite as much progress as we wanted to. I think all of those things can be true and it'd still be really important for you to like really like back yourself in conversations because at the end of the day you are also a scarce asset which people are after and and so therefore there there is a power that comes with that which i think is really important to hold on to
00:59:44
Speaker
Yeah. And to really step into that and own it. Yeah, definitely. What has been the hardest part of the journey so
A Personal Insight: World Economic Forum Experience
00:59:52
Speaker
far? I think you've touched upon it, but if you could specifically talk about maybe a favorite failure that ended up opening a door you hadn't expected.
01:00:01
Speaker
This is more like a kind of personal one, but it we yeah we were invited, I think, in 2022 to to go and speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos. And so we went, me, Nelly, and Thin, my co-fants, and I went to Davos and For anyone who doesn't know, it's like this conference in like a Swiss ski resort in the mountains.
01:00:31
Speaker
And it's like, it's so bizarre. It's almost's kind of like Disneyland for like cryptocurrencies. And yeah.
01:00:43
Speaker
and ah But it's a bit because it's such a small place and like the entire world is trying to get there. I think average room rates for the night go to like five or six thousand like pounds for like some really not very nice rooms.
01:01:00
Speaker
And so I was, and obviously it's like in the early stage our company, were like but obviously we're not going to spend that money. And so I got us an Airbnb, maybe like an hour away by train. And then on the day of being at World Economic Forum, we were like, oh, we'll go to some of the, you know, after parties after the day.
01:01:19
Speaker
We went to some of them and then I failed to realize when the last train was. And so trapped up me, Nelly and Finn in Davos. in the mountains, very cold ah my um and at night. And obviously everything's like covered in like super high security. There's like snipers on the roofs and things. So yeah we tried to go and like sort of linger in the five-star hotel's lobby and then they kicked us out. yeah um So i've met this I'd met this guy that day who's another founder from Imperial, it's company called Economy.
01:01:57
Speaker
And I just text and gave him my my predicament. And this very, very nice man who we'd met that day, invited three of us into his like single hotel room to sleep.
01:02:11
Speaker
But we weren't allowed in, so had to like sneak us off through those like back exits, like now to get in. And we slept on like sun lounges. well yeah that's yes um wouldn't necessarily say that's like, it's not been like a massive opportunity, but it what it was a failure that led to ah a very nice friendship. Absolutely. Oh, that's wonderful. That's the funniest Davos story I've ever and heard. Oh, my word. Oh, thank you so much, Julian. I'm aware of time. So, i mean, I could ask you another hundred questions, but you have been fantastic. Thank you for sharing with us about your incredible journey with Ponder.
01:02:56
Speaker
and and the vision that you have and how you're hoping to transform the landscape with the work that you're doing, not just the metaphorical landscape of fashion, but the actual literal landscape of the UK as well through your regeneration work of wetlands. We will be looking out for your jackets in the shops later this year.
01:03:16
Speaker
But more importantly, hopefully we can encourage everyone listening to check out ponda.bio and ah find out more about the crowdfunding that's just opened up. So if you're interested, do register, do support this incredible company who are really on a mission to change our landscape.
01:03:33
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me on I really appreciate that. It's been a really fun conversation. And I look forward to running into you somewhere in London or Bristol or wherever. Come to one of the wetlands. I would love that. I would love I'm going to take you up on that.
01:03:53
Speaker
Firstly, a very happy birthday to Sir David Attenborough, the man who opened all of our eyes to the power, richness and diversity of our natural world, while also showing us the fragility of this complex ecosystem, especially when humans interfere and drain its richness for our profits.
01:04:13
Speaker
He has inspired so many of us and I want to thank him personally and wish him on this very special day. And I think he'd find a great deal of hope in what Ponda is building. So I'm thrilled that we got to record this episode on his birthday.
01:04:28
Speaker
Back to that inspiring conversation. It's just, there's so much that i I have taken away from it. And I think if I had to pick two key points, the first would be that wetlands store 550 gigatons of carbon. That's more than twice the carbon of every tree in the world combined. So although peatlands only cover a roughly, i think Julian said, 3% of the earth's um land surfaces, they store nearly 30% of all land-based carbon.
01:04:58
Speaker
That is mind-blowing. And yet we have spent decades draining them, largely to farmland that was never meant to be farmed in these conditions. And what Ponda is doing is not just reversing that damage, they're finding a way for farmers to earn a living from the land that is alive again.
01:05:15
Speaker
Now that is a beautiful, beautiful story. The second is the simplicity of the starting point. I love that Julian and his co-founder friends took a train from London to the nearest ah wetland they could find, walked around, looked at plants and thought, there might be some interesting fibers in here. and six years later, that instinct has become a carbon negative insulation material grown from bulrush seed heads on regenerated wetlands traceable from plant to puffer and landing in jackets in the market this autumn.
01:05:50
Speaker
Nature had the answer all along. They just had the curiosity to go and look for it. So if you're interested in supporting this wonderful company in their crowdfunding campaign that's currently open, please check out ponder.bio. The link is in the show notes below.
01:06:07
Speaker
This is a genuinely exciting opportunity to become part of their mission, not just as a supporter, but as an investor. So whether you put in a little bit of money or a lot, you would be backing a company that is regenerating wetlands right here in the UK and across Europe and Canada.
01:06:25
Speaker
If you're interested to learn more about farm to fashion and the complex interconnected relationship that there is, check out episode 29, where we dive into regenerative cotton farming. Again, another very inspiring story. You can find the link below in the show notes.
01:06:43
Speaker
Please share this episode with anyone who might find it inspiring or valuable. Your support to spread the word about this podcast is deeply appreciated. If you enjoyed this episode, consider buying me a coffee using the link in the show notes. It helps fuel those late night editing sessions as I bring you these stories.
01:07:00
Speaker
A review from you would mean the world to me and it would help others to discover this podcast. Thank you for joining me today. Stay tuned for more episodes. And don't forget to subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of textiles, technology, craft and sustainability.
01:07:16
Speaker
Until next time, I'm Millie Thurakin reminding you that there's no such thing as ordinary cloth. Every thread tells a story.