Jayden Klinac: A new model to make the existing one obsolete

The opportunity to create virtuous cycles

What are the most important problems we need to address in the next 10 years?

Our food systems, including regenerating our soil.

We currently operate in a manner that creates vicious cycles. We use synthetic fertilisers which kill biodiversity, emit carbon, contribute to the mass amounts of soil we lose every year, are harmful to our health and inhibit the soil's ability to store water and produce nutrient dense food. We then ship this around in fossil fuelled vehicles. All of this emitting C02 and creating a spiral of negative impacts

If we were to start farming locally and regeneratively, using compost for example. We have the opportunity to create virtuous cycles. The way we grow food would build biodiversity, build soil and help it heal, sequester carbon, and increase the soil's water holding capacity by up to 1000%, mitigating droughts, run off and the chance of wildfires. Not to mention producing more nutrient dense food and less need for transport and packaging.

An experiment done by Berkeley university found that when they spread a half-inch layer of compost on rangeland and found that it boosted the soil  carbon sequestration capacity from one-half ton to three tons of carbon per hectare per year for each of the eight  years they had been testing. If this onetime thin application of compost were applied to a quarter of  California’s rangeland, the soil would absorb three-quarters of California’s greenhouse gas emissions.

This is a simple yet powerful solution we have to climate change that we can take action right now, at home. Creating virtuous cycles and unforeseen positive impacts for people and the planet.

Plastic is also a huge one for me and I feel grateful to have found a way to integrate the two through realising how interconnected everything is.

Fighting the existing reality

Can tell us about the challenge in the impact space, standing in Jayden’s way of providing solutions faster?

Waste is valuable when we design it that way

What is your vision of your work in the long-term and how do you measure & quantify your impact?

To design waste out of the system. Waste will always be created, it's inevitable, however it does not need to exist if we design from end to end, within systems that are in harmony with nature and how nature deals with its waste (think a leaf at the end of Autumn). Waste is a valuable resource when we design in this way. I measure through how much traditional plastic we replace, how much 'waste' we divert from landfill and help it to re-enter the cycle.

The best of our ability

What is the misconception you have noticed regarding what “impact” is all about?

Trying to make your company look good on the outside, without carrying the culture and way of life through everything you do, to the best of your ability.