Transcript: Disrupting Ourselves in the Built Environment: Wuji Foundation

This concept where putting a value on the living ecosystems has actually been looked at for around 30 years from the UN and the world banks and a lot of universities. Putting these value systems on taking care of the earth. This study that the UN and the world bank put on puts a value system on the oxygen that gets created from trees. It also puts a value on the carbon that's sequestered, the water that's purified, the soil retention that's built up, the biodiversity that's created, the cooling of the planet.

And then besides that, trees also provide us with building materials and medicine and food. So we're just putting a high value on all the trees that give us. The average tree lives 100 years and the average tree's total natural capital asset value it produces is around $350. And that's not including the carbon credits. When you look at a tree's cost is roughly 10 cents to 50 cents depending on the type of tree you plant.

I'd say that's a pretty good return. Hello and welcome to the Constructor Podcast, the best way to build it, episode number 87. I'm your host, Brittany Campbell Turner. And this podcast is dedicated to helping property owners have certainty in their decisions about their construction projects. We talk about fostering trusting relationships, help you to understand how to lower risk, be under budget and on schedule, and most importantly, exceed your end users desires.

Over the past couple of weeks, we've been talking about how we should be able to support our industry by working on it from within. We've been talking with companies who are doing just that. They're disrupting this industry by taking the way we want to interact with each other and aligning that with technological solutions that can support that process. So today we're talking with our last company speaking about how to disrupt from within. But before we get into who our guest is for today, I wanna just make sure to mention the topic that we discussed last week.

Last week we spoke with Bassem Hamdi, CEO and co-founder of Bricks Chain. He has 19 years of construction technology experience and he says that 95% of project data gets lost. The complexity of budgeting, planning and managing a construction project leave major gaps in recording transactions in a permanent and coordinated manner. He has been serving this industry by providing tech solutions and is passionate about providing owners with more information about their bill assets, increasing value in the long-term for resale, providing key information about operations and maintenance in order to take that info and make it a easy transition into managing your real estate.

If you haven't listened to that episode yet, check it out at constructor.com slash EP86. Today we'll be speaking with Stephen Cutter of the Wuji Foundation. While Stephen was at the World Economic Forum, he participated in a hackathon and spoke about how blockchain can be used to help generate quantifiable rewards for the regenerative earth action. In this episode, we talk about the benefits to building awareness of natural habitats for humans and how contributing to it can help businesses and individuals be more successful in their contributions to work and performance.

We talk about incentivizing behavior to encouraging a new standard to value our built environments and the humans in it. The new standard that Stephen is working on is a blockchain platform that tracks trees being planted and issues rewards for the regenerative earth action. With that, let's get into the interview. So today we are speaking with Chief Visionary Officer of the Wuji Foundation and the founder of the Landing Eco Institute. Wuji is in the process of launching an initiative that leverages blockchain to track the planting of trees worldwide and create rewards for planting trees.

While Stephen was at the World Economic Forum, he participated in an associated hackathon and spoke about how blockchain can be used to help generate quantifiable results for various elements associated with the planting with trees using a cryptocurrency to develop a new green standard. With that, Stephen, welcome to the Constructor Podcast. Thanks for having me. Awesome to have you on today. So tell me, how did you become interested in ecological sustainability?

It's been a journey. I haven't always been this way. I actually used to have a pipeline supply business. Back in 2008, I started that. I sold it off in 2011 and I moved back to Chicago.

I had some time for the first time in my life to figure out what I really wanted to do. And I started making my kids watch a nature documentary before they could watch any cartoons. Then I started watching adult nature documentaries and realized that if we all didn't make some dramatic changes in this world, then there wasn't gonna be that much of a future, be happy to leave my kids. So right away I got into gardening. I figured I couldn't rebel against the system if I couldn't provide for myself.

Got into permaculture, started an LED light business. Here I am today. Wow, so it happened from watching kids' nature programs and then adult nature programs. That is very cool. Yeah, I had my kids in curiosity inspire me to learn more about not just the environment but the causes of all of their environmental issues.

It wasn't the environment's problem, it was the humans that were contributing to destroying their environment, whether for economic needs or greed. Just lack of foresight then, creating products and services that weren't detrimental to our environment. We've built out these systems to be convenient short term but not always the long term. What were some of the biggest areas that caused the most problems from what you observed? Well, when you really look at it, the fossil fuel industry has a lot to do with the state of the world, whether it be just our carbon emissions from the gasoline but the mining process, the plastics that are created, the herbicides and pesticides that go on our plants that eventually run off into our oceans, create ocean acidification.

But I mean, it really goes back to voting with your dollar on everything. And I think consumers today are starting to become more and more aware that these products that we're buying are harming the entire planet and what more responsible initiatives to be taken. How did that lead you to wanting to plant trees? I've been an entrepreneur since I was like 21, started in real estate, did some rehabbing of homes and some land projects. And I only got into the tech sector probably around three years ago being an entrepreneur.

And I've been working on, it was initially called G-Ride which is a green ride share program. We renamed it to Wooji. I wanted to create a give back system with the ride share. So the idea was that every ride that you take we would plant a tree, offset our carbon footprint. Basically 5% of every ride would go back to global and community environmental initiatives.

So been wanting to plant trees, a lot of trees for at least three years with the ride share program. And then when we got invited to participate at the hackathon at the World Economic Forum we didn't really know what we were gonna do. We had about five weeks to prepare for the hackathon put together a team. And initially we started off with a video game idea that would similar to SimCity but you'd be building out a forest. And as you built out the forest you'd be educated on the different benefits and the natural habitat and the biodiversity you're creating.

And by playing the game, the time you'd spend on there go towards planting a real forest. So it started from there. And then we got to ask them the question, well, can we just plant trees and record them as long as we have a proof of action, we called it. Then we can start issuing rewards and they form these natural capital assets. And that's kind of how it was birthed.

That's how I was born. Tell us, is it something that people can participate in now or is it something that's still in development? So yeah, we just started working with the AVA Foundation. It's a community group focused on social environmental impact that uses blockchain. And we are actually going diving into the tech development next week.

Looks like about an eight week period where we'll have a beta phase up and ready to be started testing. In September, the second weekend in September, around six, seventh, eighth and ninth, we're gonna be hosting a hackathon out at the Eco Institute we're building in Indiana. Does that then now contribute to how Wooji will work? I just wanna understand exactly what people can anticipate. We're looking to build out the beta version and there's about three phases we see with the platform.

The first phase is nonprofit, the Wooji Foundation. And the way we see the platform working, we'll have businesses and organizations and people looking to contribute to planting trees with the cost of their goods and services sold. For instance, if Starbucks wanted to plant a tree, which can cost anywhere from 10 cents to 50 cents, depending on the tree, with their purchases, they would one, get a tax write-off for planting the tree. Two, they would boost their social and environmental impact. And then three, their members would get a reward system to create loyalty.

This loyalty system will be based upon this blockchain technology that you're developing right now, right? Correct. Okay, and so essentially people will be gaining tokens based upon how many trees they're planting? Yeah, we're calling them seeds, that's the principle. Okay, so the cryptocurrency would be called?

We don't wanna call it a coin or a token. We're planting seeds, so we're gonna call it a seed. Okay, sweet, awesome. So once they build their seeds, right, how could they be used after they accumulated them? Like I said, there's around three phases we look to see.

So the first phase is to build out this reward system for businesses. So this is basically a plug and play platform for any business, but we see a lot of businesses that are targeting the social enterprise route, B Corps, et cetera, that can use this. So one of my partners is with the Good Karma Movement and she specializes in partnerships and PR for Good Karma brands. So we're gonna be pitching it to Patagonia, we're gonna be pitching it to Whole Foods, we're gonna be pitching it to a lot of organizations that we can have these micro contributions towards planting trees with, and then it can be exchanged through that network, similar to like credit card reward points.

So say for instance, I'm an organization, I have a lot of seeds and I want to see what the opportunities are to work with Whole Foods to do something great. There's an opportunity there because I've accumulated seeds. Is that your mindset of how it could work? Yeah, that's correct. So yeah, as long as the partner organizations accept the value and I think what Bitcoin has really proved without a doubt is that all currency is is perceived value.

And what we're doing is putting that perceived value on regenerating the earth. Trees provide a lot of value for all life on the earth. So yeah, let's talk about that. Let's talk about what planting trees can actually help with. You already mentioned the tax credits.

What does that look like now? And how will that change with Wuji as well? This concept we're putting a value on the living ecosystems has actually been looked at for around 30 years from the UN and the world banks and a lot of universities that have putting these value systems on taking care of the earth. Because for instance, with mangroves alone, when you destroy the mangrove forest, it doesn't just destroy the trees, it destroys the biodiversity, food sources, building resources, soil retention, creates more storms that come in from not having that as a barrier, cause ton of damage.

I think the last study I've seen from 1978 to now in Madrascar, there's been about $30 billion in loss of economic gains that could have been had if the forest were there. But quite simply, the study that the UN and the world bank have put on, puts a value system on the oxygen that gets created from trees. It also puts a value on the carbon that's sequestered, the water that's purified, the soil retention that's built up, the biodiversity that's created, cooling of the planet. And then besides that, trees also provide us with building materials and medicine and food.

So we're just putting high value on all the trees that give us. So there's already carbon markets, carbon credit markets. So we're essentially creating new markets that are based on oxygen and biodiversity being created and water purified. Another thing that you mentioned to me previously is the potential for fuel production. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, so there's been a lot of advancements in technology, especially in the last 10 years or so in energy production. And one of the groups I met at the world economic forum, BNLCE, they have these biomass generators that can create fuel from either plant matter or waste products from humans or plastics. And essentially one of the concepts we're looking to do to make this a zero loop cycle system is that we're looking to gain some property that has forest on it, use some of the dead plant matter that's on there to generate the power for the community.

And then also regenerate the forest. So we can be planting new forest as we're using some of the reclaimed wood from the dying forest. This is called the dead wood from the forest. By planting the trees, we're creating the new currency and then also we're creating future, either energy production or resources that communities can use. There are people who are passionate about sustainability.

They would be happy to jump into planting trees right now who are part of this audience. But then there are also the people on the other side of the spectrum who could care less and they wanna know what the return of investment might be. Just the truth of the batter. I'm curious as to how the direct implications that people in real estate and choosing of materials for construction, how can we start thinking a little bit differently and figure out how this might help our organizations within those processes?

I think there's a couple of questions in there. There are, so take whichever one you wanna start with. The one I'll start with is how do you get the people to care or to contribute towards these sustainability initiatives if it doesn't benefit their wallet? My goal is to do both, is to benefit everyone's wallet but also create systems where they don't have to care. You don't have to think about it.

The way this platform or work is if you're buying products already and we can create these micro transactions to planting trees, they don't have to do anything different within their day. And I think that's what, especially Americans really like is convenience. I think most people wanna live a sustainable lifestyle but it's not easy. They've made it hard. I'm trying not to buy plastic in any form but it's next to impossible to not buy any forms of plastic in today's world.

So my goal is to create systems that you don't have to think about the regenerative principles that they're just there. And I'm a firm believer that taking care of our home, the earth will actually provide abundance, lasting abundance. So these are average numbers, mind you. We'll talk about kind of the returns is the average tree lives a hundred years and the average tree's total natural capital asset value it produces is around $350. And that's not including the carbon credits.

When you look at a tree's cost is roughly 10 cents to 50 cents depending on the type of tree you plant. I'd say that's a pretty good return. You're right, that is a pretty good return. The other question I was alluding to, I suppose before how can we start thinking about incorporating now things into the design of our building as it relates to trees? I know that I've interviewed people about cross-laminated timber.

And in addition to that, just incorporating biofilia into their environment and it actually helps the productivity of the people who are working in their environment, living, whatever they're doing in those environments. Is that something that you're thinking about thus far and how it can impact design of buildings or even the construction industry? Definitely, I've been a carpenter since I was probably 16 and building has always been kind of a passion of mine. And so what this platform does is it doesn't just only contract trees, it can track other plants or crops that are being planted to generate these rewards.

So one of the ones we're gonna be looking to get into is hemp production. Hemp is an incredible crop, the most sustainable crop on the planet that I know of. Takes less water, 30% less water, no chemicals to grow. Can make the number one fuel, plastic, food, medicine, paper, clothing, concrete, et cetera. So it's way more regenerative than trees.

Produces 10 times the amount of oxygen and sequesters 10 times the amount of carbon in a three month to four month life cycle rather than 30 to 100 years. So we probably will look into some sort of building material component to what we're doing down the road. I would wanna focus more towards the hemp side. I feel like it's a way more valuable product than trees, especially since it grows so fast, takes less water and regenerates the soil. I'd like to push towards the new innovations, kinda not the old ones.

I know cross laminated timber is relatively newer process, but the reason I wanna plant trees is to take care of them, not to cut them down. I feel like the hemp production has a way more lasting value for building materials than trees do. I've heard the argument for bamboo as a really great material for regeneration. I'm thinking construction of course. It takes a long time to set a foundation for the roots to grow.

Once the bamboo actually grows, it grows long and fast. So I've heard of that, but I haven't heard of the hemp before. As a great material to think about for construction. So that's news to me. Hempcrete is one that's been around for a little while now.

And it actually is a carbon negative process compared to concrete now is one of the largest carbon emitters on the planet. So they can also make a plastic that's twice as strong as normal plastics. It's a pretty incredible material. So I've been passionate about hemp. When I got into sustainability, one of the first things I realized is that there's a crop out there that has no THC value that takes no chemicals, less water, can regenerate soils and produce all these different things and it's illegal.

I thought there was always something wrong with that. And even all my promotional materials I make for my business are done on hemp paper and hemp stickers. That's so interesting. We all have this stigma of what hemp is, right? And it's so valuable from a building material standpoint.

That's incredible. Yeah, and actually Illinois got approved for industrial hemp agriculture. So did Wisconsin. I mean, there's a handful that had been for about four or five years, but I think there's about 13 total states that are legal to grow industrial hemp now. So it's starting to actually show a lot of promise and come back.

Let's talk about this Costa Rica development that you guys are partnering to develop. Well, we're looking to partner. My partner with the Good Karma Movement, Sarah Maxwell, her good friends have been building eco-villages for 20 some years now in Costa Rica. They have a new project. We talked with them about some collaborating on the development phase.

So they have some forests that already need to be reforested and they're building a whole green education hub down there and we're looking to create kind of like a co-work space, a co-work slash live space in nature that also fosters entrepreneurship. Like an accelerator, we work in the rainforest is what we're looking to build with the group and they're called Punta Mona, that is the name. We have some tech partners and some drones and 3D printers and essentially we're looking to create these maker tech impact hubs, a place where people can come visit.

Essentially, Brittany, if you wanted to come stay there for six months to a year and go through all the training programs on permaculture and sustainability and waste and reforestation, we'd be able to set you up with the tools and resources that you need to be able to build one of your own anywhere in the world is the goal. I gotta figure out how to take off a work for that. Well, with our tree planting platform, if you planted trees on the property, it would be able to provide enough abundance for you where your job would be just to plant and maintain your own forest.

That's a really cool alternative. I love the idea. So you guys will be partnering for- Simona.org and Steven Brooks has been a leader in permaculture for about 20 years now. So they're reforestation and helping create these tech impact hubs. They already have plans to build schools for elementary, middle and high school, but we're looking to create more skill building, job training, tech impact hubs.

So one of the things we're really looking to do, drone technologies, even agro drones. There's a handful of companies out there doing it now. Actually one of our partners with the ABA Foundation has a drone business and another partner of mine is also a pilot and has an emergency response drone business. But we're ideally looking to use these drones and you can monitor the forest with the drones. You can identify the type of plant species that are there, which ones are in danger or need some assistance, which other plants we could plant there that would benefit all the whole ecosystem.

And then essentially you have one drone that can fly over with a handful of different radar systems and identify all these things. And then you can have another one fly over with seed bombs and you can plant roughly 60,000 trees and plants a day with these drone systems. So we talked about one of the large opportunities that a community can be impacted. Can you share with us a little bit more about your vision for communities here, maybe in the US? I mean, Costa Rica is kind of like the eco village Mecca.

The same thing that they're doing in Costa Rica, we can do anywhere. Plenty of forest that need to be planted throughout the world. I think we've done a good number on our forest over the years. And so at the landing, what we're doing, we have 15 acres and there's actually already been 22,000 trees planted by the previous owner, all of the positive affirmations of children. But we're looking to foster the same type of innovation and creativity.

We don't really have the land to plant the trees there. We could probably buy additional land, but the whole goal with the partnering with Punta Mona is to prove out the model and then we can replicate it anywhere. The goal would be to work with them since this will be their third village they've developed. I'm a big believer in not having to be an expert in everything yourself, but partner with the experts and learn from them. So the general idea is we would go to Costa Rica and do that for a year and then bring these principles and train people to be able to go do this anywhere.

I think a lot of the millennials, we were told to go to college, get a job and work a nine to five and do that for 35 years until you retire in less life. And I think a lot of us are waking up to the fact that that's not an existence that we wanna be in. I don't wanna do the same task every day for 35 years and call it a career. I mean, the career is a manmade concept that we ran with, but I think it's dying.

I think we're way more creative as a species than to do the same menial tasks every day. And I might be jaded a little bit, but I think the majority of jobs that are created now don't provide value to anyone besides stakeholders. And so my goal is to create systems and jobs around regenerating the earth, building communities, living in harmony with their planet. There's an opportunity for children, students, as you're working with different communities. I know that you said you had your kids specifically watch the nature channels, but it seems like there's another organization you're partnering with, is it called Give?

The children will steer the ship as the generations fade. And so children more and more are becoming more environmentally conscious. I think we all are, but I think it's affecting kids more because it's gonna affect them the most. So Give teaches children the power of giving, a spiritual sense as well. Even in Buddhism, it all starts with giving, but also that when you give, you get a return.

And they have a financial education system, tech education system with these kids. And they have 5 million kids that are in their network all over the world. And they want the Wooji platform to be one of the first platforms that the children can give to. They're gonna be giving to a platform. The Wooji platform is not just for B Corps or corporations to build their tokens, but you can do this on an individual basis as well?

Yes, definitely. So we can start with a handful of different ways. Give tokens, definitely one of them. Another one I've been talking with is IamAliveInAwake.org. And they give children tree planting kits and music kits.

And they have 10 million kids in their network. But those are kind of our two main kids initiatives right now, but even on a peer to peer level. So Brittany, if you wanted to say, hey, I wanna give microcontributions towards planting trees with every time I make a transaction using my debit card. You can set it up for 10 cents for every transaction you make would get charged to your card to planting trees. Right away, it would go to plant the seed.

You would get a tax write-off and then you would start generating rewards. So it can be on a peer to peer level or on a foundation level or on a business level. The third phase with that would be to, were you looking to create a pension fund down the road? And we have to look into all the different securities and legalities in this crypto space. But imagine if a hedge fund, a pension fund could put in a hundred million dollars towards planting trees.

And then every year that those trees are in the ground, the fund would get a return. So I think that's an avenue that's not really been tapped into in the crypto market, the kind of the larger funds. So we're looking to create these, the sustainable regenerative pension mutual funds we can call them that we can get large buy-ins to plant trees quickly. I am alive and awake. Where are these children located?

I know I am alive and awake has at least 2 million states side, but they have some in Australia, some in other parts of the world. I know Give Token is in the Philippines where a lot of their network is. So it's kind of an international community that they're tapped into. That's awesome. What I'll make sure to do is include their websites in the show notes as well.

So if people wanna go ahead and check them out, you'll have the opportunity to. Okay, well with that, you have a hackathon coming up. What are the goals and who's getting involved and how can we learn more about that? The hackathon is in September. It's gonna be a four day event and we are having it gonna be a retreat slash hackathon.

So the first two days we'll have games, we'll be doing yoga, we'll have team building exercises, we'll have gardening classes, we'll have music. The idea is that before we get into any of the coding, everyone will be in a really zen state. So we'll have conscious coders and we really wanna foster the community aspect as well. So first two days are gonna be games and meditation and getting to know each other and then identifying all the things we wanna be hacked towards. We're gonna focus primarily on the natural capital accounting principles and how we can use blockchain to track those.

And we might come up with a couple other sustainability initiatives that we can hack around. We already have about five teams lined up and some of the groups that we're working with is the Blockchain for Good Association. They're one of my partners, Cecil Bard is one of the founders there. The Good Karma Movement I've already mentioned will be involved, the Give Token will be involved. I got some partners in Chicago I'm working with as well, UrbanArray.org, community development group focusing on urban agriculture and skill building and tech training.

I'm also talking with the Chicago Blockchain Project and we got the Duke Blockchain Lab will be participating as well. And it sounds like they're gonna be assisting in our technology build out in accordance with working with us and AVA. And then we're looking to tap into some more universities. The organization that we're running this with is from one of my good friends, Amber Bradner. She just threw a hackathon in San Diego called Absolutesum.co.

And she did it with the University of San Diego and TEDx and got an XYO network and bunch of sponsors. It was a very similar hackathon, how can we use blockchain to solve social environmental issues. So I'm working with her for the coordination and the facilitating of the event. Did you say where it was gonna be located, Steven? The event is gonna be located in Indiana, San Pierre, Indiana at the Landy Eco Institute.

Very interesting initiative that you guys are moving forward with. I think we have a lot of room, many of us have a lot of room for learning about different opportunities that we can have on impact in the environment and really taking care of our earth, taking care of where we live. And I think that you're well on your way with spreading that message and vision. So yeah, thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for having me, it's been fun.

Good, so let me ask you this, what's the best way to get in touch with you and learn more about you and Wooji Foundation? Yeah, there's a handful of ways. The woojifoundation.org website will be up by June 21st. There we also are on Twitter and Facebook, the Wooji Foundation on Lowe's and you can also look at ridewooji.com for the ride share. Let's look into launch in Minnesota in September with a community development group that focuses on shared equity called oneminnesota.org.

That's probably the best way is to find me. All right, with that, thanks so much, Steven. This has been fun. All right, peace. If you want to learn more about Steven and Wooji, check out the show notes at constructor.com slash EP87.

If you learned something valuable today in this episode, share it with your friends and colleagues. You can also let me know if you enjoyed this episode by connecting with me on Twitter at britney underscore CT or find me on LinkedIn. Or you can just email me too at britney at constructor.com. That's B-R-I-T-T-N-I-E at constructsrr.com. Next week, I've invited Thomas Wendling to join us.

He is an advisor to the Integrated Engineering Blockchain Consortium, a professional systems engineer at Jacobs Engineering, and a co-founder at Co-Engineers, a blockchain engineering platform cooperative. We talk about the current state of infrastructure and the notion of obsolescence of physical or capital property or assets. We talk about what happens when a property exists for longer than its intended life and less maintenance has been done on it than what's ideal. We also talk about the economic value model that can help to reduce risk by understanding the intrinsic value of a person.

If you've ever heard of the movie called Moneyball, it's a similar concept. We talk about influencing organizations to do the thing that helps to build their human resources differently, really valuing them for what they can provide. We talk about how Jacobs is investigating this idea and subsequently how Co-Engineers is building a blockchain solution to build a network to measure that intrinsic value, thus reducing risk for engineering solutions by the engineering resources within that network. It's really building a network of reliable engineers. Very interesting stuff.

So interesting, in fact, I've been participating in the project through the IEBC for the past five months. So with that, I am pretty excited to share this interview with you next week. If you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, what are you waiting for? You can do so at your preferred podcast player. Please leave a review to show your support and let me know you're enjoying the podcast.

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