I recently had the opportunity to participate in a fascinating panel at Colorado Climate Week titled “Full Circle: Transforming Waste into Worth.” The session explored how innovations in the circular economy are transforming what we traditionally consider waste into valuable resources – a critical component of our climate solution toolkit.
The Scale of Our Materials Challenge
When asked about the importance of circularity in sustainability, I shared some eye-opening statistics about our current materials economy:
We currently have approximately 32 billion tons of steel in use globally – enough to wrap Earth in I-beams 33 times or build high-speed rail tracks that could stretch to the sun and back 4 times. That’s roughly 4 tons of steel for every person on the planet, and we’re adding nearly 2 billion more tons annually.
The problem isn’t just scale – it’s that producing conventional materials like metals is inherently extractive, inefficient, and wasteful. We’re facing increasing supply constraints with materials like copper ore, making legacy approaches to materials increasingly unsustainable.
Galvorn: A Circular Carbon Material
At DexMat, we’re addressing these challenges through our advanced nanomaterial, Galvorn. What makes Galvorn unique in the materials landscape:
- It’s produced from captured carbon rather than extracted resources.
- It’s infinitely recyclable without degradation of properties.
- We’ve designed a truly circular supply chain by paying customers for Galvorn once they’re done with it, allowing us to recycle it over and over again.
This approach aligns with what I believe is needed most for circular economy success: techno-economic scalability. The most successful circular systems are those where the cost to recycle is the same or less than the cost to produce virgin material.
Breaking Down Industry Roadblocks
During our Colorado Climate Week discussion about obstacles to circularity, I highlighted the significant fragmentation across value chains as a primary challenge. While industrial policy could theoretically address this, I’m more optimistic about industry consortia like the Rice Carbon Hub, which brings together academia, startups, and public companies to create collaborative solutions.
An important point I emphasized is that effective circularity isn’t necessarily one big circle but many smaller, interconnected cycles – similar to how the carbon cycle itself operates in nature. Free market capitalism can be quite efficient at optimizing these cycles, but artificial barriers like tariffs across arbitrary geographic boundaries disrupt these natural efficiencies.
Beyond Sustainability: Resilience and Independence
Perhaps my most important message at Colorado Climate Week was that we need to reframe how we talk about circularity. While sustainability remains critical, we can also make compelling arguments for circular economy based on supply chain resilience and energy/materials independence – concerns that resonate across the political spectrum.
Our Biggest Climate Challenge
When asked about our biggest climate challenge today, my answer was simple: being artificially constrained by the status quo. Too often, we limit our thinking to incremental improvements of existing systems rather than reimagining what’s possible.
As an example, took the opportunity to highlight Syzygy Plasmonics, an innovative company (and fellow spin-out from Rice University!) producing hydrogen and ammonia using light rather than electricity to energize chemical reactions – a perfect example of the kind of transformative thinking we need.
Looking Forward: The Future of Circular Economy
The Colorado Climate Week panel, which I shared with Henry Ines of Chainparency abd Sudeshna Mohanty of RMI, and moderated by Gordon Ho of Cooley LLP, demonstrated that circular economy innovations aren’t just environmental necessities – they’re becoming business imperatives.
As we continue to scale up Galvorn production exponentially, we’re excited about expanding beyond our current focus on conductive applications into structural applications, creating even more opportunities to replace traditional materials with circular alternatives.
Connecting the Circular Dots
What circular economy innovations are you most excited about? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
For more insights on climatetech entrepreneurship, check out my recent article on lessons learned from four climatetech entrepreneurs or read about DexMat’s epic progress during a challenging year.
This post is based on my participation in the “Full Circle: Transforming Waste into Worth” panel at Colorado Climate Week on March 25, 2025, at INDUSTRY RiNo.