Live from San Diego, California, it's theCUBE. Covering Cisco Live US 2019. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to San Diego, everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. This is day one of our coverage of Cisco Live 2019 from San Diego. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host, Stu Miniman. Lisa Martin is also here. Kip Compton is the senior vice president of Cisco's cloud platform and solutions. And he's joined by Fabio Gore. He's the senior director of cloud solutions marketing. Gentlemen, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Thanks, great to be here. Thank you for having us. You're very welcome, Fabio. So, Kip, let's start with you. I want to start with a customer perspective. People are transforming cloud as part of that innovation cocktail, if you will. Absolutely. How would you summarize your customers' cloud strategies? Well, I mean, in one word, I'd say multi-cloud. And it's what we've been seeing for some time is customers are really expanding into the cloud and they're really expanding into multiple clouds. And what's driving that is the need to take advantage of the innovation and the economics that are offered in the various clouds. And we like to say that they're expanding into the cloud because for the vast majority of our customers, they have data centers. They're going to continue to have data centers and are things going to keep running in those data centers. Now, what's happening is they thought it would be easy to start with. Everyone, our CEO Chuck likes to talk about how everyone thought they just moved to the cloud, like moving to another neighborhood. Everything would be great. Well, when there are multiple clouds and you're leaving some stuff on-prem all of a sudden, what was supposed to be simple and easy becomes quite complex. Yeah, and I've often said, well, multi-cloud is kind of a symptom of multi-vendor, but what you're saying is essentially it's becoming horses for courses. The workload, matching the workload with the best cloud to solve that problem. I think it's a feature, not a bug. I think it's here to stay. So how is that informing your strategy, Cisco? Well, you know, we're very customer responsive and we see this problem and we look at how we can solve it and what customers have told us is that they want access to the different innovation in these different clouds and the different economic offers in each of these clouds, but they want to do it with less complexity and they want to do it with less friction and there's a bunch of areas where they're not looking for innovation. They don't need things to work differently in networking. They want one way for networking to work across the multiple clouds and frankly, to integrate with their on-prem as well. Likewise for security, a lot of customers are a little freaked out by the idea that there'd be different security regimes in every cloud that they use and maybe even different than what they already have on-prem so they want that to be connected and to work. Management, an application lifecycle, they're worried about that. They're like, they don't want it to be different in every single cloud. AppDynamics is a great example of an asset here. We got strong feedback from our customers that they needed to be able to measure the application performance in a common way across the environments. I mean, imagine going to your CEO and talking about the performance of applications and having different metrics depending on where it's hosted. It doesn't make any sense in terms of getting business insights. So AppDynamics is another example of something that customers want to cross all of that and so we really see Cisco's role as bringing all of those common capabilities and really reducing the complexity and friction of multi-cloud enabling our customers to really take the most advantage possible of multiple clouds. So Fabio Kip talked about how moving to cloud is a little bit more complex than moving house from one neighborhood to the other. What are some of the key challenges that you guys are seeing and how specifically is Cisco helping to ameliorate some of those challenges? Well, there are some challenges that are squarely in the camp where we can help. Others are related and probably they are the toughest in cloud to fundamentally acquisition of talent, right? We can help with our customer, of course, with our partner ecosystem in this case, but a lot of that is really the culture of the company needs to change, right? We keep talking about DevOps and we keep talking about what does it mean operating this infrastructure in the cloud? It's a whole different ball game, right? It's a continuous integration, continuous development is actually moving to agile kind of software development model. And I very often do the analogy of what we've seen a few years ago in the data center space where we saw actually the end of the super specialization, like people only knowing storage, only networking, only computing, and then we saw the rise of people fundamentally expert in the entire stack. We're seeing the same in the cloud, with the rise of the cloud architect. These guys now are the ones that are behind building cloud center of excellence, the issue, if you want guidance, whereas the control remains into the other teams, right? But this is very, very important. So it's overcoming the talent gap and knowing how to deal with that. On the bottom of that, on the other side, sorry, the other flip to the economy is technology challenges. For instance, embracing Kubernetes becomes an embracing open source is a big, big challenge, right? You got to be able to master this kind of science if you want and trust in partners like, for instance, ourselves and others that will give you curated versions of the software. Imagine like, very often I do customer meetings and I ask how many tools do you use in production for your Kubernetes implementation and the answer ranges from 20 to 25. It's crazy, right? So imagine if one, two or three of these tools go away, what are you going to do? So it's a whole different ball game, really, going to this kind of world. So, Kip, we understand today, customers are multi-cloud and in the future, it's going to be multi-cloud. I think so. How do we make sure that multi-cloud doesn't become least denominator cloud or you really say all I have is this combination of a bunch of pieces like the old multi-vendor. How does multi-cloud become more powerful than just the sum of its components? That's a great question and we've really, I mean, we support a lot of different ways of accessing a cloud from Cisco because we have such a broad customer base and our goal is really to support our customers however they want to work. But we have made a bet in terms of avoiding the lowest common denominator. And some people look at accessing multiple clouds as sort of laying down one software platform and writing their software to one set of APIs that they then somehow implement in every cloud. And I think that does tend to get you to the lowest common denominator because if you want to be on a Alexa smart speaker, you have to be on the Lambda service at AWS. That's it. It doesn't exist anywhere else.  So we actually see it as more taking the functions that are not points of innovation, reducing the friction and leaving our customers with the time and energy to focus on taking advantage of those unique capabilities. And Fabio, you're partnering at Cisco with a number of the providers out there. Where are we with the maturity of all this? We were at the KubeCon show and as you're right, there's a lot of different tools. Simple is not what we're discussing mostly at that show. So what have we solved today and what kind of things does Cisco and its partners look to be solving kind of in the next six to 12 months? Oh, partnering with these big players is absolutely a company priority for us, for Cisco. And one thing that's important is you said multivander at the beginning, that was an interesting comment because if you think about it, multi-cloud is really a business need, right? You want to harness innovation wherever it comes from. But then when you work with a specific provider and you reach critical mass, you want to have integrations with these different providers. And that is the hybrid world. So hybrid is more of a technology need to streamline things like networking or security or the way you do storage across the board, things of this nature. So that clearly is a big need and we'll continue, of course, adding more and more from the standpoint of partnerships. Every one of the environments that our customers want to use is of interest for us, right? To extend our policies, to extend our reach. So just following up on that partnership, you guys are cloud agnostic, you don't own your own clouds, you're not selling that. So you were at Google Cloud Next, you were up on stage, David Geckler, you got a relationship with Azure, you got a relationship with AWS, obviously. So talk about the importance of partnerships and the specific strategy there in terms of your go-to market. Well, you know, first of all, the partnerships are critical. I mean, as you said, we're not trying to move the workloads to our cloud. And by the way, a lot of our customers have said that's something that they value. They see us as one of the biggest, most capable IT companies on the planet that still is somewhat agnostic and able to work with them on what's the right answer for their business, not trying to move everything to one place. And those partnerships are critical. So you're going to see us continue to build on those partnerships. In fact, it's only day one here. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw some news this week on that. Yeah, we were wondering if we were going to see somebody parachute in. That would be exciting. So why Cisco? I'd ask each of you guys. Maybe, Kip, you could give us the answer from your perspective and then I'll ask you the same question. Well, from my perspective, it's based on what our customers tell us. And again, the things that we're very good at, things like networking and security are some of the biggest problems that our customers face in taking advantage of clouds and are some of the things that they most want common across clouds. So we have a very natural role in this. I actually think back to the founding of Cisco. I don't know if you know the story, but it was Sandy Lerner and Lynn Bozak at Stanford. Their networks couldn't talk to each other. Good to remember back to the days like DeckNet and Apple Talk and all these things. It's hard to even recall because this new thing called TCPIP obviously took over. That was the beginning of Cisco is building the multi-protocol router that let those different islands talk to each other. In many ways, customers see us doing sort of the same thing or want us to do the same thing in a multi-cloud world. Well, just an aside before I ask you, Fabio, a lot of people think that the microprocessor revolution killed many computers. IP, Cisco kind of killed many computers to your point. But Fabio, anything you would add to the sort of why Cisco story? Yeah, I would say if you want my three seconds elevator pitch is we make multi-cloud easier and more secure. Multi-cloud is complex. So we definitely make it easier through our software. And we have three big buckets if you want that are really compelling for our customers. The first one is all of our software arsenal around web dynamics, cloud center, workload optimization manager that helps customer in building a unified application management kind of software suite across on-prem and any of the public clouds that we've been talking about. The second one is, as you said, we build on our DNA, which is, if you want, and you heard Dave Geckler today, our multi-domain kind of architecture, right? Which is incredibly relevant in this case. So our networking and security fabric really is important there. And the third is our ability, because we don't compete with any of the big players to partner with them and solve problems for our customers. So these three buckets are really, really important. That deliver a high business value to our customers. Kim, I want to come back to something you were talking about as the customer. You said the customers don't want a different security regime for each cloud. Right. So it's complicated because first of all, they're trying to struggle with their own security regime anyway. Right. So what is the right security regime in this cloud era? How is it evolving? Well, what we're doing is we're bringing tools like Tetration, which now runs on-prem and in the cloud. Things like StealthWatch, which runs on-prem in the cloud. And simply bringing them security frameworks that are very effective. We're, I think, a very capable, well-known security vendor. But bringing them the capability to run the same capabilities in their on-prem environments and their data centers, as well as in multiple public clouds. And that just eliminates the seams that hackers could maybe get into. It makes common policy possible so they can define policy around an application once and have that apply across multiple environments, which not only is easier for them, but eliminates potential mistakes that they might make that might leave things open to a hacker. So for us, it's that simple. Bringing very effective common frameworks for security across all these environments. You certainly see the awareness of the security imperative moving beyond the SecOps team. Oh, yeah. It's now board level. Lines of business are worried about for their digital transformation, who's the data? But are organizations at the point where they're operationalizing the security practices and the like, to the extent that they should be? Well, I mean, I think when you say they should be, there's always room for improvement. Okay. But we're seeing just about all of our customers. I mean, as you said, security is a C-level if not a board-level discussion and just about all of our customers. It's routinely the top first or second concern on a survey when customers talk about what's concerning them with the cloud. And so we're seeing them really view, security is foundational to what they're doing.  Somebody cracks through, you're fired, and so nobody talked about it. Now I think people realize, look, bad guys are going to get through. It's how you respond to them. How you think about, how you're using analytics. Sorry, just a quick comment. We're moving quickly towards, well, more or less quickly to a zero-trust kind of world. If you look at the action of Cisco in this area, for instance, the acquisition of Duo is performing exceptionally well. And if you want, at the top of the security ecosystem in a multi-cloud world, you find identity. Because if you don't know who the user or the thing is that's trying to use a certain application, you're in trouble. Because perimeter security, of course, is important, but you know that you're going to be penetrated. So it boils down to understanding who's doing what and remediating as soon as possible. So it's a whole different paradigm. I mean, security is a huge tailwind for Cisco. It's a business growing 21% a year. It's more than three times the growth of the company overall, which is actually still pretty good at five or six percent. So security, rocket ship. Yeah, Fabio, just, I noticed before we did the interview here that everybody's wearing the T-shirts. The cloud takeover is happening here at the DevNet zone. So give those of us that aren't among the 28,000 here at the show a little bit of what's happening from your time.  I'm going to turn that question to Keith because he was actually on stage the second SIGGOM. I had to just kick that off. I think it links back to what Fabio was talking about with talent. I mean, obviously the most important thing we bring our customers is the technology. We are a technology company, but so many of our customers are asking us to help them with this talent gap. And I think the growth of DevNet, I mean, we're actually sitting here in the DevNet zone. It's got its own area here at Cisco Live. It's gotten bigger every single year here at Cisco Live. The growth of DevNet is a sign of how important its talent issue is, as well as the new certifications that we announced. We expanded our certification program to include software conjunction with DevNet. So now people will be able to get professional certifications from Cisco, not just on networking, but on software capabilities and skills. And this is something both our partners and our customers have told us they're really looking for. Now, in terms of the takeover, it's something fun that the DevNet crew does. I think they're doing five of them during this week. I was really excited. Susie, we asked us to be the first. So we had the opportunity to kick it off. It does include beer. So that's one of the nice things. It includes t-shirts. Both things that I think are prevalent in the developer community, I'll say. And we just have an hour where the focus is on cloud technology.  We had some special presentations. We're just spending an hour focused on cloud. Well, and I love that you're doing that. The DevNet zone, we've always been super impressed with this whole notion of infrastructure as code. I think I've said many times of all the traditional enterprise companies, computer companies, if you will, IT companies. Cisco has done a better job of anybody than making its infrastructure programmable. We're talking about security before it's critical. If you're still tossing stuff over to the operations team, you're going to have exposures, whereas you guys are in a position now, and you talk talent, you're transitioning the role of the CCIE, and now it's becoming essentially a developer of infrastructure as code. I mean, it's a very powerful concept. I think we're helping our partners and our customers transform just as we're transforming. I think it's kind of a symbiotic relationship that's super important to us. It's also important. You think about the balancing act between agility, cost, call it security, or even data assurance. There are trade-offs involved. There's knobs that you have to turn, but can you achieve all three to optimize your business? Look, there may always be trade-offs, but it's not sort of a zero-sum game. In other words, we've seen customers who've automated that through things like CICD move to a different place in a much better place where they're not necessarily making trade-offs on security to get better agility. If they fully automated their deployment chain, so they know that there are no mistakes there, they know that they have the ability to roll out fixes if they need to, they know that their containers, for instance, are being scanned from a security perspective every time they deploy them, they're actually able to build automated infrastructures that are more agile and more secure. So it's pretty exciting. So that involves automated change management. Absolutely. And data assurance. Talking about containers, that's interesting. Spinning up containers. You want to spin them down frequently, so the bad guys, it makes it harder for them to get through. You're talking about VM sprawling, right? Yeah, right. That's one of the containers sprawling, right? The biggest issues out there. And by the way, as you automate this infrastructure, rightly so you mentioned infrastructure as code, then you can do the other magic, which is introducing machine learning, artificial intelligence, and today, they get to learn such in Gupta, gave, and as Scott Harrell, they gave a terrific demonstration of finding real-cause analysis for very, very complex kind of problems that will take forever in the old-fashioned world. Now, all of a sudden, you have the management system, in this case, DNA center, that tells you actually what the problem is. And if you validate it, you click a button, and instantaneously you deploy new policies and configuration. That's a dream come true, literally. You may say probably we are the last ones to the party in terms of infrastructure players, the industry I mean. But we're getting there very quickly, and this is a whole new set of possibilities now. We talk on theCUBE a lot, and I think it's really relevant for what I'm hearing about your strategies, is cloud is about bringing the cloud operating model to your data, wherever your data lives. And that seems to be kind of underscore your strategy. Absolutely. And so edge, cloud, on-prem, hybrid, you guys, your strategy is really to enable customers to bring that operating model wherever they need to. Absolutely. Great. Yeah, data transparency is a big deal. I mean, application anywhere, eating data anywhere, that's the world where we're going to. Guys, thoughts, final thoughts on Cisco Live this year. I know it's only day one. Probably got some customer meetings tonight. But initial impressions, San Diego, cool voice. Well, it's always great to be in San Diego, and it's a great facility, and we know our customers really enjoy San Diego as well. I think we're going to have a great customer appreciation event on Wednesday night.  I mean, there seems to be, there's always a lot of energy at Cisco Live, but somehow, so far, there seems to be maybe even a little bit more energy. I know we've got a number of announcements coming this week across a bunch of different areas, including cloud, so we're excited for the next few days. Well, you got the double whammy. The first half, we were in February, we were in Barcelona. You guys don't waste any time. You come right back in June. Your final thoughts, Fabio. Oh, it's just so exciting to speak with customers and partners over here, and you can touch their excitement. I mean, people love to come together and get all the news, you know, in one place. It's just a tremendous amount of energy here. All right, Kip Compton, Fabio Gorey, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for having us. You're welcome, all right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest, Dave Vellante, Stu Miniman, Lisa Martin. We're live from Cisco Live in 2019 in San Diego. Right back.


All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome. Welcome colleagues from wherever you are joining us today. Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon, depending on which part of the world you are in. My name is Yana Aranda and I'm the director of the engineering global development team from ASME. And I also serve as the president of engineering for change. It is my privilege today to welcome you to this very special webinar in celebration of World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development. World Engineering Day was established to highlight and consider the role that engineers and engineering and technology play in sustainable development, particularly as defined by the United Nations, 17 sustainable development goals which you see pictured here. The SDGs as they're short called for short represent a unified framework by which the global community is addressing humanity's greatest challenges simultaneously technical and social in nature. These goals require high impact solutions, a technical talent pipeline prepared to engage effectively, as well as infrastructure and public leadership to drive implementation at scale. We are now less than a decade away from the deadline set to achieving the SDGs and the need for cross regional and cross cultural solutions and the strengthening of global cooperation for the common good has never been greater, particularly at tumultuous times like these. On the second World Engineering Day, we recognize the vital role of engineering technology and innovation in achieving the SDGs. The theme for World Engineering Day this year is build back wiser engineering future. Although the topic of engineering a circular economy in the built environment could not be more pertinent. Today's webinar is going to touch on the critical SDGs of SDG nine industry innovation and infrastructure as number 11 sustainable cities and communities. Number 12 responsible consumption and production, and the most critical of all 13 climate action, which is all enabled through what is represented on this webinar today, full number 17 partnerships for the goals themselves. So let's find the conversation today with our partners at Habitat for Humanity Internationals to have a go center for innovation in his shelter, and have assembled an incredible group of experts and champions around the world, who are advocating for the change toward engineering a cleaner, healthier and more sustainable global community. I will be serving as one of your moderators, and we will be introducing our esteemed colleague shortly. In short terms, this webinar will be archived on engineering for changes site and our YouTube channel. Both of these URLs are listed on the slide you see now in front of you. Information upcoming webinars is available on the first site and you for C members will receive invitations directly. If you have any questions comments or recommendations for future topics and speakers, please don't hesitate to contact the first team at webinars at engineering for change. And if you're following us on Twitter today to join us with our dedicated hashtag hashtag before C webinars. Now, some very important housekeeping items and I see that everybody is very chatting in our chat. We would like to take a moment to see where you all are joining us from today. So do you use the chat window to type in your location. I saw some earlier so I'm going to try to scroll back up but hello from Oregon and Minnesota. Hello from Houston. Hello from India and Ghana. Scroll back up to see who I've missed there as I saw Uganda and South Carolina Sri Lanka and Toronto my hometown Atlanta and Costa Rica. I see Nepal and that's why welcome everybody welcome from from Kansas and Ghana to the Netherlands, you are all very welcome here today. Thank you so much for that point of administration do kindly write any comments in the chat. Those are comments that will be for our, your, your fellow attendees and perhaps for our panelists but any questions should go into the q amp a so we can keep track of them and as you can see the chat is moving very quickly. So we don't want to bypass your questions welcome from Rhode Island to Mexico to Turkey. Welcome everyone. So before we move to our presenters, let's tell you a bit about engineering for change and ASME for those of you who may not know us very well, or maybe meeting us for the very first time. ASME is a nonprofit membership organization which was founded in 1880 on enabling collaboration, knowledge sharing and skills development across all engineering disciplines. Today, ASME has nearly 100,000 members in over 140 countries, and has the mission to advance engineering for the benefit of humanity, which is a core mission that has been part of ASMEs DNA since the 1880s. And what compelled and propelled ASME to be a core founder of E4C engineering for change over a decade ago. To meet the United Nations sustainable development goals ASME is fiercely focused on building the workforce of the future, ensuring improved engineering engagement and technological stewardship. We are leveraging an ecosystem of platforms and programs to prepare and mobilize this growing community with our leading digital platform and knowledge organization being engineering for change. E4C has been breaking down information silos and democratizing knowledge since 2010 and has grown into a global community of more than 1 million engineers, designers, development practitioners and social scientists who are leveraging technology to solve quality of life challenges faced by vulnerable communities. Our perspectives cut across geographies and sectors including information and communication technology, energy, water, sanitation, transport, health, habitat and agriculture. We are providing pathways to connect, learn, explore and freely access critical knowledge and networks to advance the social sector. E4C members get a systems perspective of the inextricably interlinked SDGs through access to news and thought leaders and insights on research and hundreds of essential technologies and E4C solutions library. Members also benefit from professional development resources and unique training opportunities such as our E4C fellowship. As I mentioned, E4C is powered by ASME and that would not be possible without visionary leaders and champions like our president-elect Karen Olin, who is joining us today to share a few remarks. Karen is the 141st president of ASME for the 2022-2023 term and has a really tremendous bio. Right now she is the associate director for finance and operations at Princeton University Art Museum, where she provides strategic leadership, strengthening, sustaining the process for planning and management. As you can see, she has worked as a biomedical engineer in industry, academia and government, and most recently as a research manager for home medical ink and orthopedic implant manufacturer. Karen has a storied history with ASME and has been a true friend and incredible collaborators so Karen over to you. Welcome. Donna and hello everyone. I'm delighted to welcome you to our E4C webinar, Engineering a Circular Economy in the Built Environment, and to participate in what promises to be a vitally important conversation. Our conversation is one of many taking place around the world today in recognition of World Engineering Day. The leaders have recognized that our profession is the cornerstone in solutions to the climate crisis and achieving the sustainable development goals you ought to mention. And through events like this today, we are deepening our awareness and taking the lead in the work that we have all come together to undertake. This really can't be higher and I'm so proud to be part of an organization that is leading the effort to meet what is ultimately the existential challenge of our time. Of all the ways that ASME serves our mission to advance engineering for the benefit of humanity. None does so more directly, nor with more tangible and immediate impact than our engineering for change community. I want to thank Yana Aranda and her outstanding E4C team, as well as the team from Habitat for Humanities, Ter Williger Center for Innovation and Shelter for organizing this event and assembling such a distinguished and insightful panel of speakers. And of course, I'd like to thank all of our partner organizations and featured speakers for sharing their time and knowledge with us today. On a personal note, these kinds of events are exactly why I am so honored to serve as ASME's president elect, because the only way we will address the imperative of creating a more equitable and sustainable built environment is by working together. Industry, academia, government and professional societies, all pooling their talent and resources to address this critical problem that threatens the very survival of our species. Finally, I want to give a shout out to the ASME Foundation, which helps support programs like this and E4C's fellowship and impact projects. Your involvement in the foundation ensures that we will continue to advance the conversation on this topic and grow our E4C program portfolio. Again, thank you for participating today, and for all you do to advance sustainability in the built environment. Thank you very much. Karen, we are so honored that you are joining us. So Karen mentioned impact projects and I want to take a moment to speak with you a little bit about what that means. E4C is advancing sustainable development by leveraging our unique community, digital platform and expertise to enable global engineering workforce to contribute their unique talents and service of the SDGs. One of the key pathways by which we do this is our impact projects. This annual program brings together our ecosystem of pragmatic optimists as we call them, with organizations worldwide to advance shared sustainability objectives across three work streams, impact research, design for good and advancing workflows. E4C's impact projects are co-designed with diverse organizations ranging from multilateral, academic institutions, nonprofits, social enterprises, private sector and more. To achieve the objectives determined together with our partners, we assemble and cultivate diverse talent around the globe. Moving on the insights and strategic guidance of our global network of more than a thousand multidisciplinary experts and integrate our E4C fellows whom we expose to these urgent issues to train and execute the mix of scholarly work, private sector market research and human-centered design required to propel the sector forward. For those of you who are not familiar, the E4C Fellowship Program is our distinctive workforce development program in social innovation. As a six-month tenure, fellows benefit from structured online engagement, bespoke training and program support to ensure that they achieve the key objective determined with our partners in getting valuable soft and technical skills required for the contemporary working world. The global pandemic has impacted all aspects of our lives and grounded in many development programs. Engineers around the world, particularly early career engineers, were working from home and seeking opportunities to contribute their skills for the betterment of humanity. The digital native E4C Fellowship Program that we've been running since 2014 provided a vital lifeline to engineers, scientists and architects worldwide. At the height of the pandemic, our program attracted 650 applications from 80 countries. The 50 fellows that made our 2021 cohort came from 24 countries and nearly 40 nationalities to date have engaged with the program. This year, our application pool has tripled. We closed our applications in early February with over 1,800 applicants from nearly 80 countries once more. To date, we've hosted nearly 150 fellows, 50% of whom are women, from around the globe. This approach allows us to simultaneously train exceptional rising professionals worldwide, provide a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration and cooperation, and connect a community of thought leaders and peers from every continent. This human infrastructure is critical for realizing the STGs and more. And with that, I'm very pleased to introduce you to one of our incredible fellows from last year's cohort who will give us insight into the circular economy sector. And Alpino is an industrial engineer of the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, where he's joining us from today with a master master's in Sestino technology and he is going to give us an insight into some of his journey and what circular economy means right now. Martin. Thank you, Yana, for your presentation and hello everyone. I'm very happy to be here. So, yes, as Yana said, my name is Martin, I'm from Argentina. I have an undergrad in industrial engineering and I recently finished a European master in sustainable development. I was part of the E4C Fellowship in 2021, where I worked on an impact research project with the Eter Williger Center of Innovation Inserter. Before their fellowship I had experience working in the affordable housing sector in Latin America, and because of my passion for sustainability, I worked always closely to sustainable affordable housing initiatives, in business models and on field implementations. The fellowship for me with E4C and Habitat for Humanity was a great opportunity to merge these two passions in one single project. I had the chance to study and understand with a global perspective, both the housing deficit and the waste crisis. During this project I had the opportunity to work in a multicultural environment with fellows from 22 countries and partners from four different regions. This diversity brought me amazing learnings from all the world. Currently I'm working at McKinsey.org, a McKinsey and company initiative to develop and incubate innovative approaches to the world's most complex and environmental and social challenges. I am working as a consultant in circular economy and sustainability, so for me the fellowship helped me a lot to continue and expand my career in this path, in this pathway. During the impact research project with Habitat for Humanity we investigate the major trends and opportunities of circularity in affordable housing in Mexico and Kenya. Next slide please. So one of the greatest takeaways of the investigation was that the transition to a circular economy is urgent globally, but it is of significant importance to make this transition faster in the global south. It is estimated that more than 3 billion tons of waste will be generated in 2050, that is 70% more than current generation. This will be mainly in developing countries due to the projected growth in the population and to the necessary economic growth. Developing countries have the opportunity to design their development in a sustainable path, skipping the mistakes done before by developed countries. These regions are also the ones that suffer the impacts of the waste crisis with many informal settlements around open downfields, soil, water and air pollution due to the lack of regulation, low recovery rates of materials and very high contaminations, and a very big number of informal waste speakers working in poor conditions and salaries. Next please. The building environment has a protagonist paper in this sense, although sometimes we tend to relate the waste crisis with plastic pollution, the challenge is actually broader. The building environment makes an intensive use of extractive materials being responsible of 40% of global resources and 30% of greenhouse gases emissions. Approximately. In Mexico, to use as an example our research project, the housing sector is responsible of one third of national emissions producing almost 40% of the country's waste. Nationally construction and demolition produces 6 million tons of waste each year. In Mexico City only they produce more than 7,000 tons of waste per day only of construction and demolition that they end up in landfills or open dumpsates. Fortunately, there are a lot of private and public efforts and projects to process and recover more than 90% of these materials and reinsert them into the industrial sector. The challenge will be bigger in the future because of the need to still construct houses and infrastructure to tackle this big existing deficit. So there are big opportunities in reshaping the building environment for engineering towards a secret economy. So with this introduction, I give the word to the rest of the panelists, and thank you a lot for our attention. Hope you enjoy the webinar. Thank you so much Martín for those insights and with that I want to transition to reducing my co-moderator and also another past fellow, Carolina Rojas, who will kick us up with a panel. Just to give you a little bit of background Carolina, she is pursuing her Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering and works now with us as a fellowship program coordinator and as a research and administrative assistant at the Fab Lab at Universidad Tecnológica de Panama. She has been working volunteer in global development sector and is currently involved in projects that aim to create bridges between people and manufacturing technologies to strengthen the capacity of vulnerable communities in Panama to develop local solutions to waste challenges by creating eco products and green entrepreneurship initiatives. In that capacity she also co-founded Reinventa, an NGO led by young professionals who are working with local communities in Panama to promote citizen participation in the circular economy through local waste transformation efforts. She also, in her spare time, which you can see is probably very limited, serves as a technology focal point for the United Nations major group for children and youth, and as a public policy liaison for archipelago entrepreneurship. Carolina, I'm so thrilled to be co-moderating with you and turn the floor to you. Thank you for that introduction. It's a pleasure to be on today's webinar, Celebrating World Indianian Day. For me, circular economy is a topic I'm very passionate about because of its relevance to achieving agenda 2030. So I'm very excited to be here in company with an excellent panel of experts. But without further ado, I would like to ask our guests today to take a few minutes to introduce themselves. And I will ask Patrick to go first. Sure. Great to be with everyone today. That was a fantastic launch. And by the way, I'm on a lot of widely international calls and I think this one is even better. It's a lot of work from, from everywhere and it's fantastic to see that. But I lead the Trawiller Center for Innovation and Shelter housed at Habitat for Humanity International. And we focus on market based innovations for sustainable and affordable housing and just gratitude also to Martin for the work that he's done to advance our mission. So, thanks. Glad to have you here. And now I would like to ask Nisambi to introduce herself. Hi, my name is Nisambi, Nisambibh Mate. Founder of Djenga Makers, located here in Nairobi, Kenya. And I've been working in the built environment now for plus, plus minus about five years. Targeting affordable housing with emphasis in affordable materials. This is due to the fact that about 60 to 65 plus minus percent of the cost implication of a construction project going entirely to materials. And as, as the previous, two previous presenters said, as far as the impact of built environment when it comes to CGS, CHG and emissions as far as the extractive space is concerned in this case cement. I'm really honored to work in the space of recycling plastic waste into affordable building materials. And so looking forward to, to contribute to this panel. Nisambi, excited to have you here and sharing your experiences working with Djenga Makers. Now I would like to give the floor to Christina to introduce herself. Hello everyone. My name is Christina Contreras. Well, I will say first of all, thank you so much for the invitation to as we already hear very necessary conversation that is happening around circular economy and how to move forward really. In the final file, I'm a technical architect and a building engineer and during the last 15 years they have been very much focused in how to make sure the sustainable infrastructure projects which at the end of the day are one of the most polluting investments and assets that we have are a little bit more green. I have two different hats. I'm the founder and managing director of Simfra Nova, a consulting company working on the sustainable infrastructure space, as well as an instructor at Harvard University, what I teach on a regular basis. In terms of the work that I do through Simfra Nova, so we provide a strategic advisory to governments and to companies into very much how to make this transition. We know now that many people want to make sure that they do with the project, but sometimes they don't know how. So, besides of that capacity building has been one of my very much passions for many years now. And that takes me to my work as an instructor at Harvard University where I was research associate for eight years and now I teach a class in sustainable infrastructure. I based in Washington, EC, after living for over a decade in Boston so I'm very happy about enjoying a little bit of a more warmer weather over here. So thank you so much. Over to you. Thank you, Christina. You're excited to hear your different perspectives in the panel. And last but not least, I would like to ask Rick to introduce himself. Hi, thank you and thank big thank you to engineering for change and as me. My name is Rick Bohan I'm the senior vice president of sustainability at the Portland cement association. And I'm our lead on our roadmap to carbon neutrality we're targeting reaching carbon neutrality by the year 2050 throughout our entire value chain. We call it the five C approach. It starts with clinker, which is the active ingredient and cement cement, which is the key ingredient in concrete. And for folks to that might confuse cement and concrete, you walk on a concrete sidewalk, your flight lands on a concrete runway. Concrete of course is a universal building materials used in almost every construction project worldwide, regardless of what type of other materials use. And then finally, our fifth C in our value chain is carbonation. Most people are shocked to learn that concrete over its lifetime actually absorbs about 10% of the CO2 emissions that were generated during the manufacturer and transportation of both cement and concrete. So our value chain. Sorry about that. Our value chain is the five C's clinker cement concrete construction and carbonation. And I'm really excited because we rolled out our roadmap in October and we're in the full implementation phase moving full speed ahead. So thank you again to ASME and engineering for change. I'm happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you, Eric and thank you Christina, Patrick and the Sambi for participating in today's discussion. We are grateful to have you as guests and bring such insightful perspectives to the subject of a circular economy in the built environment. And now that all the participants have had the chance to get to know you better will transition to our round table. And as first topic for a round table, we would like to discuss about opportunities for the sector. So the Ellen MacArthur Foundation proposes that we can reduce CO2 emissions, but over 3 billion tons by 2050, if we prioritize the key areas for the build environment and these are making better use of existing buildings, designing spaces in waste that eliminate waste and three you're using and recycling materials. So all of these areas are necessary to a circular system, but from each of your unique positions in the sector, which should be the greatest priority. So is it different between high and low income countries, or rural and urban environments. I will leave the floor open to whoever wants to start the conversation and we'll go around the table. Well, I'll be happy to start if that's okay. I think I think people might be surprised, but in my opinion, really the highest priority has to be a mindset, as opposed to looking at a particular option, and the mindset has to be intentionality. So as we look at the built environment, I think it's critical to decide what we build, when we build, where we build, how we build, what's the purpose of that building, who is going to occupy it, who is going to build it. Those are all key issues that we can focus on today. And by being intentional about the built environment, that alone can address a lot of the carbon footprint. Because now you're taking away the emphasis on whether it's the building materials, the life cycle, all these other things and now you're taking a whole societal approach. So in my mind, I think intentionality has to be brought into the equation of the built environment. And too often that becomes second class to all these other options about cost and other issues. So that's, that's my opinion. Thank you. Yeah, so if I can add to what Rick just mentioned, I fully agree, I think that's something that is very much necessary to have this overview of the system. I think that so often we have been just focusing on one thing and one thing at a time, precisely because the integration is not easy, and precisely because the groups of people make decisions in one part might not be the same one that make decisions on another part. But if we talk, for example, and from my point of view, I work in infrastructure, right, and infrastructure today is one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions. Around 70% of all the emissions are generated by infrastructure projects, either directly or indirectly. And what does this mean? Well, indirectly is the materials that we use for construction. And as we know, we already hear about cement and steel are one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gas emissions, but those are creators precisely because we need to use them for infrastructure development, but also transportation. Where are we bringing these these materials from, and then the construction and the operation for the 3040 or 50 years. So I think that it's very important to fully understand the system to fully understand where are the consequences of making a decision in a given point. And maybe not just narrow in one thing at a time because at the end of the day, even the built environment and the design of spaces and all the things are an integrated strategy that needs to be taken as a whole. Thank you. I'm just to add on what Christina has said. Also, in addition to both the factors that Christine and Rick has said, there's also the element of the social economic status where this narrows down to the point where how do we define sustainability in the context of built environment. Of course, understanding the social economic status and the geography of the places we are operating in. So I think for me, just to kind of add on to what Rick said, as far as mindset is concerned, I think it will be also in addition to having the shift also define what it is that change we want because something I've realized when it comes to matters. Sustainability within the built environment. It's very accusatory, like people accuse, okay, well, the built environment is producing X amount of gas greenhouse emissions, the built environment is producing X amount of emissions or climate change effects, negative effects for climate change. But we actually don't sit down and and say okay fine, this is the problem. How do we create the solution because I get the feeling this is one way in addition to doing the mind change to actually define that all in the context of social economic status environments of course. Thank you. Thank you Christina and Rick. I see your mic offering again Christina is right. Yeah, just a very, very short. A comment. So I believe that it's also matter of providing alternatives, right, because it's very hard to tell people okay you cannot drive anymore. But then people see me to commune right so where is the alternative that we are providing those people to be able to shift like a low carbon economy and low carbon decision. So I think that we see this in Europe I'm originally from Spain so when it comes to for example transportation. People they probably transportation because it's safe because it's efficient because it's cheap and because it's very hard to drive in certain cities because the is there is no parking available, right. So we cannot transfer the model to some other countries like the US because the cities are different and the model is different and we cannot just say okay cars or we need to change certain things a certain way we don't provide those alternatives that are going to help people made the transition within without accusing them for not doing something right when they cannot really. Carolina maybe just real quick to go ahead.  I mean I feel like there is an opportunity even for sort of technology leapfrogging. For example, Kenya, I mean Kenya has led the way and mobile banking, I mean they have got innovations that are vastly beyond mobile banking options that are available and industrialized countries and a lot of that is just because there had not been sort of existing stakeholders that are embedded in existing technologies so Kenya was able to race password or leapfrog those and I think in some ways when you think kind of more macro about the challenge before us. I think there's an opportunity for emerging markets to in some ways lead on this. Thank you for Patrick and everyone for your contributions. As a second topic. I know we were discussing about this phallistic view and looking at pillars. I would like to ask now questions from your particular experiences. And so, talking about, for example, green cement and plastics. Recently, we've seen a big upswing in the number of natural material based products in the market, such as bamboo for structures and mushroom, mycelium for insulation and roofing. So Rick and the sun be both of your work focuses on improving or rethinking materials that have not historically been considered green or sustainable. So what would you say to the argument that we need to move away from these materials like cement and plastics completely. Well, so the reason why cement and concrete are used almost well almost universally in the built environment is pretty simple. Cement the key ingredient is calcium carbonate and folks you've all you've already, you know what calcium carbonate is if you've cracked an egg shell, that's calcium carbonate. It is the most common mineral in the crust of the earth. So that's why it's so universally available. I think though that what we have to do is, if we're looking at the built environment, look at the materials that are being used because whatever material we use. It has to be both sustainable part of the circular economy. And it also has to be resilient. A lot of people look at concrete as a problem. I look at it as a solution, especially when you get into areas for example of where the impact of global warming is prevalent, where you have fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, storm surge, all these types of things. You need a very sustainable material. Now, again, concrete can be the solution provided we're very intentional about, again, how we use it, where we use it, when we use it. There are available solutions today that can address the carbon footprint of both cement and concrete, and both the cement and concrete industries are always working toward reducing that carbon footprint. And if you look over the last 30 to 40 years, we've made terrific progress and given the technologies available today will continue to make progress. We won't eliminate the use of concrete. It's critical to the built environment. There is no readily available substitute, at least not for the next 30 or 40 years. So that means we have to be judicious about how we use it and we have to be intentional about how we use it. Thank you. Thank you, Rick. I would like to now pass the word to Nesami. Thanks so much. Yes. Just to echo and add on to what Rick said, yes, we currently don't have a practical alternative to the concrete, the Portland concrete that we currently have. Especially not within the vertical building space, just because the dynamics there vary when you go vertically when it comes to building. And it's with that school of thought that made us think, okay, fine, while we do more research and development and figure out what alternatives we can put to supplement in where we can concrete. We are currently working on what we popularly call and it's scientifically called polymer concrete, which ideally speaking is now using other binding elements or other polymer elements that can ideally speaking act as a binding agent for the concrete element of the binding. And that said and done that we now make papers popular here in Kenya they're used for road side work, sidewalks, footpaths, drivers, made out of recycled plastic and this is because the thought process was the degree or that the extent to which we can have an alternative for concrete, especially Portland concrete within the land, the horizontal space is immense. And so with that said and done we started making these papers just to try and see okay fine what dynamics can we borrow that can act as an alternative, because at the end of the day we need an alternative in one way shape for more size. And so that's what we started making the papers and what we found out is that the dynamics vary, but the output doesn't differ that much. In the context of being in the horizontal space the papers the biggest cost, the biggest factor is in the expansion and contraction and the compression strength. If they virtue of using polymer then you're able to reduce the air pockets, therefore increasing the, the density of the product and the compression strength. However, I cannot say that for horizontal space because we have not yet, we have not yet done a test to make a natural building. But I think maybe by the end of this year when we do a natural building block.  But right now theoretically what you found out is, there are few dynamics that as Rick said you cannot yet fully supplement concrete that is mostly in the element of the expansion and contraction because you know plastic expands rapidly way faster than than cement. And also in the element of it being polymer signature it reduces the air pockets which help in the house to breathe. And so those are some of the dynamics that we need to figure out, but at this point in time we have not yet figured it out. When you come to making an actual building block, but needless to say, we're constantly thinking of what other solutions can we use because one thing is for sure that the build environment is here to stay because it's a basic human need that that we cannot cannot work without. But what we can work is finding alternatives that are not only sustainable but also affordable, especially within the global south context because we have a very high like a big population of the, of the, the biggest percentage of the population is young people. And there's a continuous demand because of the economy, there's the growth the scale at which the economy is growing this increasing demand of housing. So this only translates to more demand in cement and concrete space. And so finding alternatives that can supplement in one or another will be something to watch out for. But until now, I can say what Rick said, we are yet to reach there. And Carolina, if I may just add on to in zombies comments concrete provides a tremendous opportunity to use recycled materials. So as we look at concrete, not just the fact that it's an important and a critical part of the built environment, but it's also an opportunity for other materials outside of the built environment. So there is a solution there that goes beyond the built environment. And that's what I mean by we take the whole of society approach and be intentional. The built environment can be part of the solution as we progress toward getting to carbon neutrality and addressing global climate change. Thank you both every can as I'm before the contributions and innovations and materials. I would like to reach now the conversation to infrastructure to 75% of the infrastructure that will be in place in 2015 doesn't even exist today. It's just to the point of what Nassami was mentioning. So most of that infrastructure will be built in low and middle income countries, but the construction industry and construction models look different in those markets compared to high income countries. Tell us more about the unique opportunities you see for sustainable infrastructure in emerging economies and how might we need to change our focus and approaches to meet these markets needs. I would like to ask Patrick and Christina to contribute. Sure, I can start us out Christina. You know, one thing that we think about so at the tour will ever center we're obviously thinking about residential infrastructure and housing that is our focus. And, you know, a dynamic that is really sometimes mind boggling to some is the extent to which it is is a very homeowner led process. So if sustainability is a take just in the United States where some of us are. You know you could look at some top builders of residential homes, and really kind of push kind of a sustainability agenda with a few corporates you know think of toll brothers or poultry or Lenard. And you're covering a lot of the residential built environment with a few of those those large companies, and it's a much more fragmented markets and most emerging economies. And in fact, so fragmented that it is usually a homeowner led process. And so that you know in some ways there's there's challenges in that. I think there's also a lot of opportunity, but but I've been both those challenges and opportunities, it does become a really important kind of consumer centric process right. So the homeowner is going to be making a lot of choices in a lot of the future construction that is going to be happening in the residential landscape. So you know I mean there, I mentioned sort of this whole leapfrogging technology idea, you know that really does present itself as an opportunity in Rwanda, you know we see for example flooring alternative. We're supporting an entrepreneur earth enable that is creating sort of a compressed earthen floor that has a sealant on it that creates, you know, a hard floor that can be washed with soap and water and creates a clean environment for children to grow up you know and that is a fraction of the cost of cement but you know dirt floors are are not often sort of the first preference for an aspiring person. I mean so in some sense earth enable is is needing to to not only create the engineering technology for these floors to last which they're, you know are doing the R&D for that, but they kind of need to make earthen floors. I mean they need consumers to want those and to choose those. And I think they're on their way and there's business model innovation and that too, for their kind of creating these micro franchises where they're going to be able to spread that model. So, so that's a big opportunity there the other thing it just related to sustainability, actually Rick mentioned this just kind of climate change and weather adaptation. I mean this whole building more resilient housing is going to be led by homeowners. So the opportunity is there for retrofitting recycling existing homes, you know in a retrofitting process to make those more storm and rather weather resistant as as we face climate change as society. Stop there. So I can add a little bit more to what Patrick already mentioned. Also, I think that it's important to recognize that when we talk about the emerging economies we have huge disparities right so we have very sophisticated countries that they already been like very well when it comes to defining the policy frameworks to very sophisticated guidelines to to users and to contractors and to concessioners. And then we have some others that are now just starting and getting a little bit more familiar with that. In any case, and within that range, I think that what we just hear about the problem is going to be something critical, because we already see countries, I have worked particularly in Latin America and as a region that I'm more familiar with. But they are doing very well in that regard. And if I can share a couple of examples with you, for example something a period that I was working on with the Panama government, they are now defining a methodology to make sure that the public private ownership of the country and the projects that are structured under that model is aligned with the national digital mind contributions agreed by the government and agree under the Paris agreement. So they say okay any investment that we are going to make in the country, we want to make sure that they take us a little bit closer to what we are already going. In Colombia, Colombia has released their new policy for the fifth generation of concessions and their modality PPP, and they already have 35 indicators, looking at climate climate climate climate change greenhouse gas emission reduction, social inclusion, gender equality, materials, and so on, that is going to be a requirement to all the concessioners that are going to be operating that infrastructure project for the 20 or 30 or 40 years to come. And I think that it's also tempting to look at the emerging world and say how can they improve, but I think that we shouldn't forget that also the developing world, the developed world, sorry, the US, Europe, we have so much work to do. Probably many of you might be familiar with the American society and the scorecard that they released every four years. They rank all the infrastructure projects in the country. And last year they say that the infrastructure in the US is a C minus. Sorry, if you as your students for some of your kids will come home with a C minus you will not be very happy. So I think that, of course, we need to look at what is happening in other contexts but certainly we should not forget all the work that needs to be done in maintenance of the infrastructure that already exists and how we guarantee that that infrastructure can transition to a low carbon and more efficient one. Thank you Christina and Patrick for your contributions. And there are some questions coming in, but we will be covering a Q&A at the end. I would like to now pass the word to me Anna, who has more exciting questions. Thank you Carolina and I think Christina you set us up really nicely with some of the examples that you shared. As we're going to transition to talking a little bit about greenhouse gases so cleaner cities and lower greenhouse gas emissions rank along the priorities of the new open agenda for 2030. But as of January 1, if on January 21, 2030 we see that greenhouse gas emissions have not been reduced in the built environment in a meaningful way. What will be the most likely cause of that failure or to put it another way, where do you think our sector should be double efforts to ensure we reach these targets. So I might just pick up on the thread from you Christina given the fact that you just kind of ended on that, and then we can go to Rick, Zambi and Patrick. Thank you so much. Yeah, so at the end of the day, we look at what are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions we will have, be the vitamins for sure we have industry will have transportation, all these are heavy or industries that produce a lot of emissions. So I will talk specifically about transportation, and I think that there are representatives about housing and about industry that can talk much better than me about those topics. And I think that we still have a very narrow view. For example, we don't have a transportation we believe that one thing is going to solve it all and now they have to be like the boom of electric vehicles, and that's great. But we need to make sure that electric vehicles or any other technology as are as good as the power, or as the energy that powers those vehicles that energy is renewable the electric vehicles is going to be great. But energy is created with traditional fossil fuels we are just moving the pollution from the cities to the areas with that energy is being produced. So I think that we need to have a little bit more of an ambitious approach because at the end of the day, we are not doing very well. So, so we need to see what are the reductions that we can have in any different kind of solution that we have access to. So I think that when we come to how we move electric vehicles certainly is a solution. We need to start looking at public transportation how we provide public transportation to everyone who needed. How can we provide not motorized transportation, or even how we design or redesign our cities so people can walk on them. Maybe we don't need a vehicles or any transportation to go from one place to another one in the cities are designed in a ways that are enablers for people to go to places. And from that, I will pass it to my colleagues. Thank you Christine that's an excellent zoom out, Rick. These are such complex problems and they they touch on so many different areas. So, I want to point out two examples for example, in our industry. A lot of people look at carbon capture is kind of a silver bullet. And I hate that because there is no such thing as a silver bullet. I like to say there is silver buckshot but not a silver bullet. But even carbon capture as much as much as that may may reduce the CO2 footprint of any industry. The question then becomes, well, what do you do with that CO2. And that's a really important question that we haven't really addressed yet. But even today, if we could install CC us carbon capture at industrial facilities worldwide. People forget there is an enormous amount of energy required to operate carbon capture. So then the question becomes, well, where does this, where does this energy come from. And in most parts of the US, and in most parts of the world, the electric grids that are set up don't have the capacity to provide that energy. Otherwise, if we want to install renewable energy at our plants or at any industrial facility, when we don't need that renewable electricity, we then have to send that back into the grid. And that's an issue, because again, most grid doesn't most grids don't have that capacity. So that's with carbon capture. Another technological solution that people like to look at is hydrogen. So hydrogen fuel is a game changing fuel. It's by far the most energy per unit mass than coal, coke or any other traditional fuel, or a transitional fuel like natural gas. So hydrogen looks very attractive in our industry, we really are excited about it because potentially our CO2 footprint, 40% of it comes from combustion. If we could replace our other fuels with hydrogen, that would be a game changer. But again, the amount of hydrogen we would require needs pipelines. And it needs, you know, if we don't have pipelines and we're going to get it from an electrolyzer that needs a lot of electricity. Again, the issue becomes much like Christina talked about, where does this energy come from. So you can't just look at one product in isolation or one industry in isolation. This is a societal problem that requires a societal approach. So in a systems perspective, certainly on zombie. And to just follow up on that I think then that begs the question of what is the, what is the role that each individual each stakeholder has to play, as far as creating a holistic solution. Because, as Rick and Christina stated, this is not just one thing, like you cannot look at it as a one way we have to look at it as a systematic change. But then if you look at it the components in the system, both within the built environment and outside the built environment and the intricacies with their intertwined with other sectors in the transportation and the energy sector. So the question of, should we all together just holistically start rethinking our lifestyle, our life choices, our life culture, and then kind of walk backwards. This is just because based on on what the two have said, if if I want to, for example, to be a home owner, then I have to think okay fine where is the place located. What is the work, what is the transportation element to it, what is the emissions, as far as the CO2 is concerned, and then with that said and done what, how can I get the materials to build the house. And then with that said and done how we like power the house or how we like gets the energy is it through renewables if it's renewables then how do I harness that. If it's through grid then how is that sustainable especially for the case scenario that it's powered from the fossil fuels. So I think for me as just as an individual I would believe and I would want to hope that the solution will only start from a man shift, and then having the will and the good will to actually implement from all states, because we cannot currently right now say we have the eat solution, but we have we have a saying in my country, Habanahabu Jazakibaba so what that means is like small small small small actions will create like a big a big effect like the greater effect. And so I think it's time we start fighting this problem of slowly by slowly because it's definitely an intergenerational solution. So let's buckle up. Yeah, zombie I love that existential call to action that's great. And I wish I spoke Swahili so I can repeat what you said but that's not going to happen. Patrick. That's not going to be buckle up is probably the right word. You know I've heard multiple mentions of just the importance of systemic thinking and it may you know I always think in some ways of finance is sort of the oil in the system sort of the oil in the engine, and residential alone not to mention some of the infrastructure that Christina is referencing. And it's a need for $16 trillion of residential investment. So at infrastructure that's got to be more than double Christina. And so I do think the finance equation is is a big part of how to make the system talk to it better. And that's going to stop sort of the retail finance the business finance right the infrastructure finance the public finance. I mean that really is a lever to systems change that needs to be thought about more to for effectiveness in this space I think this is actually a great bridge to a question that we have specifically for you Patrick and the role that you've been playing through the organization that you lead so a lot of emphasis has been on high income countries and meeting med zero goals or targets. There's also persistent assumption or perception that sustainable technologies inherently expensive technology and therefore hard to bring to market and low resource settings. Can circular sustainable solutions be accessible and affordable and emerging economies, and what we need to change to make this happen at scale. Yeah I mean I think those are real problems. But I don't think there's a pat answer to that. I do think sometimes that is a false choice. Right, I, you know if you look at some of the conversation about being boo. In a way cement companies are innovating I Rick I agree with you I see a lot of them driving some of the innovation in this space. You know, even I think of the cement part in the aggregate components, you know a huge problem is just the sand shortage New York Times had this huge front page article on the global sand shortage and we see in India. The commercial real estate projects are courier in the market on river sand, leaving the homeowner to really low quality stuff and their homes are crumbling right. So, so I mean there's solutions to those crushed granite can create a great alternative to river sand as an input. I do think a lot of it is coming to engineering solutions this is the right crowd. You know there's a ton of design that needs to happen to, you know design and consumer preference thinking. Sometimes I think the engineered solution kind of goes after the technical problem and it doesn't kind of include the consumer in that equation. And lastly, you know the reference to just kind of business model innovation. I mean I think one of the last mile efforts that a lot of entrepreneurs are taking is bringing things to market in a way that makes them appealing. Right, and gets a consumer to select and choose that product or service and that's what we need young bright entrepreneurs to be creating those opportunities. So again I would not be impeded by sort of that expensive false choice I think as a society we need to kind of reject that in some ways. So today we are joined by one such exciting entrepreneur who you speak of as the promise of the future and that is in zombie and zombie, maybe you could speak to how, how would you get started with game makers and what opportunity or need did you see, and why did you choose to focus on recycling waste plastic for construction materials versus your previous job that was in a more let's say traditional factor. So for me, I think having having having had a faster like a fast front row seat into the whole source of plastic from literally it's also the crude showed me like what it is we stand to both gain and lose in the both short term and long term. In the context of at this point in time I can with confidence say there is absolutely no sector that plastic has not impacted with a positive or negative, but every sector has plastic impacted to it. It's only unfortunate that mostly especially within the packaging sector that it is really redefined everything and transportation and logistics as far as consumer product is concerned. But then the challenge we as the engineers and the solution creators and the scientists didn't think about was the afterlife. Now on this other end of the spectrum we have this huge need to find an alternative for housing because the demand is ever growing here in Kenya we have a demand of affordable housing units, about 2 million units, and this number increases about 200,000 units every single year. So then this begs the question okay so how do we use this one problem to find to act as a solution to this other problem. With that said and done that we started thinking because our goal is to impact to convert plastic to impact the basic needs because it will have to make sense number one. Second of all it will have to make not just on like a structural sense but an economic sense and just to add on to what Patrick was saying earlier it's, we all need to understand that sustainability yes there is a cost to the application to it and they try to be relatively high, especially when it comes to things sustainable, but then we also need to realize that when it comes to crude and electricity oil 100 years ago 200 years ago. They were in literally the same position that we are in now because they were then the cutting edge technologies. And so that is just a cost that we all have to pay as people to build the solutions for the future. With that said and done for us it posed the challenge how do we make it affordable. If you move fast forward then a few steps into the discussion you realize that casting question is actually not expensive. What's expensive is the logistic cost that then is expensive. So then we thought okay fine how do we narrow down the logistic cost so that you can be able to make a product that makes economic sense. So that's literally the dance that we do every day, but how I started was just to me a passion concern and just having faith that the future will be bright. We need more of that certainly in zombie and it's interesting to hear your journey right so you know kind of on the job observations your own intuition and insight understanding of the past. And I'm going to turn now to Christina because you work closely with and practicing engineers and future engineers in your capacity as an instructor at Harvard and Patrick noted kind of the engineering mindset as I did, I think work touched on it so how can engineers prepare to work in sectors that are changing and becoming more sustainable using different materials and designs and what resources are available to them to train and how to engage in the circular economy. Thank you so much. So today at the end of the day as we mentioned engineering is a mindset right so you have problems and you never learn how to solve them and that become very part of second nature. But at the end of the engineering is still like taught in silos so different discipline, like this is what you work this is what you learn and this is the place you have on the chain. And still today engineers have these broad view of how the whole system works. So not until we are start training engineers like okay this is what you are on the chain, but you could also, you can also take another position within the chain and you need to learn what's happening before and after I think that it's going to be very hard to streamline the circular economy mindset. And there is another element that I don't think we have touched very much today and I believe that is extremely important that is regulations. At the end of the day when it comes to circular economy does very much tie to innovation, right so and we are promoting different ways to solve existing problems. But oftentimes regulation is the barrier that we hit again and again and again. And I think the regulation need to keep up with all this innovation because we can have wonderful materials that we cannot use because I mean we know we're not cement, we have been using cement for centuries and we know what to expect. But when we need to replace a cement with something different is not as easy, even if we all want. So when it comes to new materials I think that regulation is something to keep in mind. And that also allows to have the same playing field for everybody, because now there are a lot of engineers and even companies that want to do certain things well, but it's like okay what's the incentive, if I'm going to invest money out front. And somebody is going to keep we in business as usual. Why should I do this so we all kind. We everyone kind of like get comfortable in what we know, unless we are pushed to do things differently. So I will say those two things, stop thinking inside us and making sure that regulation catch up to all this wonderful innovations that we have ahead of us. So I want to take that and ask quick a question that's kind of related so one of the challenges and piloting these new technologies that even if they perform well or better as existing technologies they don't always fit with an existing building codes and standards. Can you tell us more about how performance of low carbon concrete and carbon sink concrete products, compared to traditional concrete, and the role of material and constructions dimes and pushing forward with greener solutions. That's a low carbon concrete. Today, what we're saying is a very rapid evolution towards what's called Portland limestone cements that have 10% less carbon footprint than a traditional Portland cement. These have been around and this goes really into the issue of standards and specifications. These materials have been around for decades and have been used in Europe for decades. They've been available in the United States for decades, but they really haven't been having caught on I would say, and it's not that they're any different than than the other materials they have similar, similar properties of strength and durability, except they have 10% less carbon footprint. Well, why aren't they, why aren't they in widespread use well until recently they weren't. But it took a lot of effort among PCA and others to convince state departments of transportation and others that these materials are great and they should be used. So with the integration that I have, there are a lot of solutions today that are available today, but aren't being used today, either because there are regulatory disincentives, or code related disincentives, or standards and specifications. The standard and specification process that we go through to make sure that we have products that can meet standards and specifications. It's a very long and tedious process. What we're trying to do as part of our roadmap is accelerate that process. And really, this comes down to and I keep going back to intentionality, but what you've also here heard over the last hours, taking a holistic approach. What we're trying to do is accelerate that process. And by doing that, what we want to do is incentivize innovation, because right now, unfortunately, what we've done over the years is created this huge institutional inertia. And that's really our biggest obstacle in terms of the built environment. So breaking through the institutional inertia, incentivizing the innovation. And that really looks at these really innovative products that are available today, like Portland limestone cements. And by the way, we'll need new standards and new specifications for materials that are being developed right now. But they don't have that framework. And if they don't have that framework, they won't be included in the building codes. And if they're not included in the building codes, design professionals won't choose them. And if design professionals don't choose them, we don't have the opportunity to reduce that carbon footprint. And we have problems all linked together, which is why we need a whole society approach. I keep telling when I talk to the government and others, help us help you. And that's where we're coming from. Thank you so much, Rick. And I love it. I love the conversation about innovation and new solutions and maybe Christina we can come back to you again and might you be able to bubble up some of the solutions available now, particularly in resource constrained environments for climate and climate resilient infrastructure. What would you put into that building code, if you had the choice. Yeah, that's an interesting question. And also, and I don't know if all of you may be aware of this but at the moment the US is has drafted as standard for sustainable infrastructure. It was developed by the American Society of Civil Engineers, and has been in commentary for the last year and a half that's going to be pushing the next month so this is like good news right so we are finally changing those frameworks that somehow doesn't allow us to incorporate all the good innovations that we are seeing. In any case, and back to the question. I think that is still today that is a very real green premium that at some point will need to disappear, because if we have the perception that to do things sustainably and resilient is way more expensive that to do the traditional way of business. It's very hard to say like okay we are constraining resources but you still need to pay the expensive option. So I think that we need to make sure that we scale up solutions in a way that at some point it's business as usual. I always extrapolate these would, what happened to, for example, safety in the construction site. 30 years ago it was like okay. It's like the extra thing right why do I need to wear like a helmet on the contract. Now there is no question every construction site need to have the standards for safety in the workplace, this is the same. Once sustainability becomes at this scale that every project is sustainable then we are not going to be even having this conversation because they, the other solution, it won't be feasible anymore. If I could just add on just one more point, and it's a little specific but you know one really simple thing that we could do would be to allow the shift from prescriptive specifications to performance based specifications. So prescriptive specifications talk about it's a recipe, you need this type of chemistry, this type of material properties, whereas performance specifications focus on what is the desired result you want, what is the strength you want, what is the durability you want. Those performance based specifications again have been around for decades, shifting to those allows us to actually reduce carbon footprint today, and still have the strength and durability we need in the built environment. That's one really critical thing that we've, we've been lobbying for for, again, for decades. Thank you. That was a really great insight Rick thank you for sharing that. So, as Christine also noted, you know this green premium that the challenge about scaling solution to something that we have to be mindful. So I'm going to turn to you Patrick and in your work with Habitat for Humanity and the Toronto Centre, you're helping bring affordable circular solutions to the housing market by supporting entrepreneurs with connections knowledge visibility and capital to bring solutions to scale. Can you tell us more about the gap in the entrepreneurship ecosystem that your team is working to address through shelter tech, and specifically the shelter venture fund. Sure, happily. You know, actually in zombies a great, a great profile, she is one of the entrepreneurs that we are quite proud of. But essentially the story on this is, you know the emergence of the social entrepreneur has become somewhat important to the world right over the last 10 years or so, and, you know, there has been a lot of support for a number of social issues to be met with entrepreneurship and there's, you know, reference to food tech, health tech, ed tech, you know, egg tech those are all almost commonplace now. So when we were out there and really the Toronto Center began working you know with construction companies and banks and you know those that we saw sort of honestly more important systemically to the residential construction environment and we, we kept encountering almost by chance kind of these entrepreneurs who are really just kind of working it and developing new innovations and solutions and. And so we kind of eventually we're like isn't there an accelerator you can go to or who's helping you. And basically we we sort of saw this issue being overlooked by the innovation and entrepreneurship space. And it took it upon ourselves like who's who's going to do this who's going to kind of drive this. So we started shelter tech which is an accelerator for entrepreneurs in the residential built environment space. And we created a venture capital fund as well to finance those companies. I think one thing really important to all of that work though is honestly if habitat for humanity is the largest accelerator investor in this. We're in trouble. I've really dedicated all of this work to being as catalytic as possible, you know, even hoping someday that we can make an exit that that other large acceleration platforms, take on housing and the built environment as an issue and begin to even look for some of these entrepreneurs themselves. So we've actually we started with an accelerator shelter tech which we were doing one in Africa this year. It's a pan African version of that accelerator, but maybe more importantly in the long term, we're creating these shelter tech tracks that other companies can take on so you know if it's another existing village capital of Metaprop or, you know, brigade reap in India, we can help them take shelter and housing as a track that they would do within their own accelerator. As well as within our shelter venture fund. We tried not to be the sole investor, we like to lead rounds and bring other VCs in so that these entrepreneurs in the built environment space are, are not just getting access to our capital but to a range of VCs that need them to get another round. So we're pretty excited about that space and, and we think the entrepreneurs that we are finding are fantastic and deserve more attention and capital for their ideas. Thank you Patrick as we lead also on hardware led social innovation exciting me or I show so similar feelings about the incredible promise of social entrepreneurs like zombie who are really breaking the mold and pushing the envelope and challenging our mindsets. So I know there's so much chatter and so many amazing questions that poured in and we want to now turn to the audience Q amp a I, I'm going to tell you a friend I think we're going to get through all of them because there's so many, but I'm going to have Carolina share a few questions that we've selected. Thank you, Yana. So looking at the questions for some of them there's a trend on interest on answering questions on social justice and critical inclusion. I have a question from Tomeka Carol, and she says, because of, because most of the impact of global warming and built environment issues present challenges to the global majority, which are people of color in the US and worldwide. So how should we approach finding a solution while listening to their voices. So often those who are not impacted directly are at the forefront of finding a solution. I know Rick you provided a question but would you like to add something live for the rest of the process. So, one of the, the answer that I gave regards the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States. They have a program called environmental justice. And you can actually go on their website and there is an interactive map that I believe there are 16 criteria for what an environmentally justice, what that looks like, and to show a disadvantage community in terms of environmental I would encourage folks to go there because there's not one single definition but rather a spectrum of a spectrum of choices there that include things like the access to public education, the, the education level of that community, whether that community has access to clean water, etc. That's really a very good starting point. My point though, is that both EPA and local communities have, have used the environmental justice tool to screen to make sure that people aren't disadvantaged by the industries within their communities, or that communities don't get disadvantaged when an industry wants to move into their geographic area. So this is a critical issue, and for too long it's been neglected but again, this really deals with the concept of environmental justice and I would encourage people to go to EPA's website because I think they're the leaders in that particular area here in the US. Thank you, Rick. Anything anyone else would like to add to that. I think that I, I have to go through you because at the end of the day infrastructure is one of the biggest disruptors of social environments around the world right so we know that infrastructure is necessary, but unfortunately we have had so many different failures in the past from building hydro power plants in the Amazon that is disrupting local communities and indigenous groups to well all around the world very much. I will say that in the last years they have been a huge movement in order to say okay how since infrastructure is necessary how can we do it more equitable and more gender inclusive. And now there is like even as Patrick mentioned before financing is the oil that makes the system run. So even today for many investors in infrastructure the fact that projects ensure that they have gender plans into their projects is one of the first kind to be able to access finance and I will give you just one example. I would agree in climate fund, many of you might be aware of it, this is the fund that was set up after the Paris agreement to kind of like raise money to invest in sustainable and sustainable infrastructure in low developed countries. One out of the five things that they asked for the institution that this fund is going to give money to this is a $10 billion fund need to have a gender policy in place no questions. You cannot even apply for funding you don't have that as a first step. So I think that we are going to see more and more kind of attention being drawn to these topics, as well as social justice. And one last thing before I give it back to Carolina. So based on my study that I had the opportunity to work a couple of years ago. And we analyzed 200 projects that have gone wrong. So trying to understand what were the consequences of conflict associated to infrastructure projects. The first driver is poorly done as they hold an engagement process. So once the machines move to the land and it's like okay now we have the communities protesting on the side that's precisely because nobody has explained them properly what are the consequences of the project or what is going to be done there. So that's why we are here to have topics that probably we can organize another, another whole webinar on it. Thank you. Thank you very much, Christine and I think on the same topic there's a question here that maybe in the sun be I think you are, you could, you can answer it. I think what's important is including social justice in circular economy and engineering education frameworks for future innovators and engineers in order to help change mindsets. I think that should be and will be the new normal. That is in the context of, it is obvious the way we've been operating it is, it's creating an imbalance to the point where it is almost like the human existence is mutually exclusive to having harmonious engagement to the environment. And those two things need not to be mutually exclusive. And for us to make sure that they are mutually inclusive. We will need to engage social justice elements in every sector, and in every spectrum, whether within the social spectrum, whether within the economic spectrum, or even the political and governance spectrum. And one thing that is really common and it's very often and I think Patrick was the one who said it, the finance is the oil of this system. So if we can have, if we can have a cost implication that is of pro social justice and it's pro economic justice, as far as the environmental matters is concerned then it incentivizes people, they need to include this elements in the system. And speaking within the context in Kenya, we have we have we have seen in the case in the case scenario where we have governments. So when it comes to matters environment, the government has used two strategies. One, it's either one of punitive measures, or the other one is of rewarding measures. So punitive measures in the context of when the government wanted to plan things to burn single use plastic. We had fines of almost six months just for carrying six months in jail just for carrying a plastic bag. And then on this other spectrum you find that, well, if you're in the environmental impact space and the sustainability space, you get some sort of incentives. And what you've realized is both systems you need both the elements, but the rewarding element is more fulfilling, and it's more long term. And so my hope and prayer is, if we can follow that so good then we can input such elements because it's the new normal. So you're coming to some beyond the new normal. And on that note, I'll pass on the word to me and add to close and maybe what could be your new normal moving forward after this question. I find that so inspiring as well and zombie and I think incentivizing changes in mindsets is absolutely where we need to go. I'm personally hopeful that this conversation today is in fact doing just that that we are inspiring and and engaging this global audience that we're going to assemble today to rethink our approaches to the built environment and shifting mindsets for a more sustainable practice and a more sustainable engineering at large. With that I know we are a time I do apologize for anyone whose questions we did not address. We will try to tackle them in follow up news but with that I want to thank each of our panelists you have been each of you tremendous and your insights such gems here that I'm just really genuinely excited I'd like to thank my team for kicking us off with laying the foundation and of course Karen for welcoming you all. And I wish you all a good afternoon a good evening a good morning rubber you may be. And again, happy World Engineering Day. The future is bright with all of you meeting the way. Thank you everyone. Goodbye.