Welcome to this mini season of the Bamboo U Podcast!
In this episode, I sit down with Gunter Pauli, the mind behind the concept of the Blue Economy to talk about Gunter's journey and the life experiences that shaped his optimistic, action-driven worldview. We also discuss how Gunter got involved with bamboo and how Bali was the starting point of his journey with the material.
In this podcast, we discuss the following topics:
Orin: Welcome everybody to a wonderful conversation that we're gonna be having today. I'm really, really excited because we have Gunter Pauli here who is a really exceptional person who has basically redefined how we think about sustainability with his work, creating the Blue Economy concept, you should definitely check out his book.
Anyway, thank you for joining us here in Bali today, Gunter, it's a real pleasure to have you. I really wanna talk about, your work, and you just have a really incredible mind and a way of approaching problems, that gives me personally a lot of hope, and I also want to talk about your thoughts on bamboo.
Both… I know that you created the pavilion, before anybody was doing bamboo. So like, you were like the pioneer of the pioneer, with your work, I believe with Simone Velez, which is a major inspiration for all of our work here in Bali. So I wanna talk a little bit about that and also about where you think Bamboo's going.
So maybe to start with, if you could tell me a little bit about what inspires you or what's, what keeps you going? Like, you have so many projects going on, all in so many places, and you've transformed and proven so many people wrong who were naysayers. What really led you down this path, personally?
What made you feel like this is what you're gonna dedicate your life to and what really inspired you to make it happen?
Gunter: Well, first of all, thanks for having me, Orin. And, first of all again, bamboo started… my bamboo life started in Bali.
Orin: Oh really?
Gunter: And we can go back to that in 1995.
Orin: Oh my God!
Gunter: So it is Bali that started my bamboo life.
Orin: It’s all full circle.
Gunter: Yeah. It's, it's, it really is extraordinary. And that story should be told and retold. Second, I think we can never understand the person without going back to early life. And, as you framed it so correctly, I'm not there to really prove people wrong. I'm there to prove that it can be so much better that no one could have imagined it.
Orin: Yeah.
Gunter: And, it started with one sad experience in my own life, that at some point in time my father decided to leave the family and go and live in Iran with another woman, adopt her son, and I ended up being with my mother and he wouldn't pay for my education.
Orin: Mm.
Gunter: So I had basically a very simple choice to be made. Am I the victim and I'm gonna be sad for the rest of my life and being against my father for what he did? Or, as I had the opportunity, I don't know how it was possible but I came up with the idea that I got the opportunity of my life to take care of my mom for the rest of her life.
Orin: That's so sweet.
Gunter: And you know, and it's that shift. I had it like this, you know, when my mom was crying and I was face-to-face with the reality that I'm gonna have to pay for my own education, I'm gonna have to pay for my own dreams, I'm gonna have to pay for, my mom was on a tiny pension that was like, wow, I got an opportunity to take care of mom.
And I think that is really what transpires throughout my whole life. You know, you see opportunities where everyone else would say, this is the end. Are you not suicidal by now? And I'm… why would I be suicidal? …Your dad left you no money even… We'll figure it out. And I think this attitude, is only possible because my mom gave me so much love.
Orin: Hmm.
Gunter: It’s the only way, I mean, if she would've treated me like a little boy or a grown up, you know, it would’ve been different… But I was always immersed by her love. And so having this, this cocoon of love and having this big challenge… And then in a couple weeks I was starting already to earn money as a barman.
I was serving in restaurant.
Orin: How old were you?
Gunter: 16. Oh wow. And then I became a disc jockey. And I was so proud. I was even making more money than my dad was making and he had to be an expatriate for that! As a DJ! I had never imagined I could be a DJ. It was not one of my plans. I didn't say one of these days I will be a be a DJ.
No. It just happened that I was good with the music. I love the rhythm and the jives. I was good in dancing and I thought, well, I can put the music as well, and I got the opportunity to do it. And so that… That incredible experience to actually… my mom passed away 25 years ago. To be able to take care of mom and to demonstrate that against all odds, you can do better than you thought you could, brought me to this attitude in life that the best I can do in my life is not realize my dreams. The best I can do is go beyond my dreams.
Orin: That's beautiful and I mean… I can't help but draw the comparison between, you know, taking care of mom and taking care of mom. You know, when you said that, it's really, it really, it really hit me because I was like, wow, like you really have translated that onto like a massive scale, right? Like you do that. It feels like you've taken that attitude and that perspective into everything you do, in terms of taking care also of our kind of archetypal or collective mother, which is nature. Which as you said, at the end of the day, is infinitely generous.
But somehow, we like to pigeonhole that generosity and then also basically make it so that, that we manufacture the scarcity. By thinking in the way that we think and, and basically abusing nature. Right. So, tell me a little bit about how you got into Bamboo, and maybe that story in 1995… Is that when it was?
Gunter: Well, look, I am at the United Nations University. I'm in charge of preparing COP 3… Now it's COP 30… And there is this lady who was recommended to me by Fritjof Capra -- Fritjof Capra who wrote the incredible book the Web of Life, The Tao of Physics… And I've been teaching together with Fritjof in Schumacher College in England, in Devon.
And he says there's a lady coming to, to your office the day after tomorrow. And please make all the time available you can. And her name is Linda Garland.
Orin: Yeah, okay.
Gunter: And so 1995, I said, well, you know Fritjof, it's my birthday. I really do need to go home on time… because I lived about an hour and 40 minutes from my office.
But I will do what I can. And so the appointment was at four o'clock and she finally comes in, rushing into the office at six o'clock, and I'm like, Mrs. Garland, I'm very sorry, but I think I need to go very soon… And I'm living very far and she now, she did her magic and I spend the rest of the night with her.
Orin: Did you go home together?
Gunter: No, no, no, no, no. We were talking and discussing. Not in bed. No, no, no. We were talking and discussing and she opened up this whole flow of good news about bamboo, that I had no idea about, and she said, Gunter, I'll invite you to come to the World Bamboo Conference, which will be held at my estate.
So, she invited me. I went with my whole family. And then, you know, here the first person I meet in this big gathering, where I knew no one of the bamboo world, was Simon Velez, from Manizales. Now I had already a coffee farm in Manizales, and we connected like this, but I had no clue about this bamboo architect.
To make a long story short, within three days of the Congress, we had determined we would build the most imposing bamboo structure in modern history. We had decided to do it -- for the World Expo.
Orin: And that was the Zeri Pavilion
Gunter: And that's the Zeri Pavilion. I mean… it was no previous planning, no previous consideration. It was pure passion.
Simon had this passion, and Linda had this beauty all around, and you had all these bamboo people who were very serious at the time. Oh my God, they were serious. They took themselves so serious that, you know -- they thought that I was a crazy guy, knowing nothing about bamboo, going with a great architect, but having an impossible plan.
Orin: And there's no way you can build it.
Gunter: Well, the thing was not about the building... First worry is financing. And since we don't worry about budgets, we figured it out later. That was not my worry. The big worry was the permit.
And so I said what I can do for the bamboo world is to get the first permit for a public use of a grand bamboo structure and we'll have the country that's the worst to try -- Germany. And that's what happened.
Orin: Oh my gosh. And I mean, that's really interesting you say that because one of the major limitations with round pole bamboo construction is still the permits. Right. So would you mind… I don't wanna spend like too much time on it, but would you mind just telling us a little bit more, what was it like to try and get the Germans to agree to build this massive, beautiful, imposing bamboo building in Hanover, right?
Gunter: In Hanover, the World Expo in Hanover. So, you have a building that is a circular building with incredible acoustics inside. You could *clap* and the acoustics would go everywhere, as a concert hall.
Orin: Mm-hmm.
Gunter: And 4,200 bamboos joined together. 4,200 9-meter poles. You can just imagine the complexity in terms of traction, compression, flexibility, you know… Fire!
Orin: And no software yet!
Gunter: And zero software. No CAD/CAM would work. So, we had the whole stability tests done on a software for wood. And then we had to correct it for the space of air inside the bamboo because it wasn't solid.
In short, we were very lucky that there was Sir Norman Foster, who had just gotten the building permit for the dome on the Reichstag, the German Parliament. And the Soviets had destroyed all plans. There was nothing. But the Germans were determined to have the building without plans reused as a parliament with a dome on top of it. And no one could calculate stability, compression, tensile, nothing could be calculated.
So they decided to do an experimental test, but it couldn't be a destructive test cause otherwise the whole thing would've gone down. And so they had a special regulation set up for the Reichstag and Sir Norman Foster, and there was a professor in Bremen who developed this unique software to sense the, the vibrations and when the pressure was too high, it would move with one centimeter. That was no problem as long as it came back afterwards. So, we were asked by the Germans to build the pavilion in Colombia.
Orin: Mm-hmm.
Gunter: One-on-one.
Orin: The same. Exactly same.
Gunter: Exact the same… Bring over a whole team from Germany, do all the stability tests, then build a second building in Hanover, completely ready, do the tests again. And statistically there was no difference between the two.
Orin: Even though it's different bamboo?
Gunter: They're 4,200 bamboo, so on average you have the same performance.
Orin: Understood. Okay.
Gunter: The DAY before the opening of the World Expo, we got our permit. We had billed two times. We spent four times more money on the permit than on the building. But the bus got out. And so we got fire certification, we got flexibility certification -- The building was so good that the term that everyone uses today, vegetable steel, was termed by Professor Stephens who was the one who did all the tests and who was the confidant of Sir Norman Foster
Orin: Ah…
Gunter: So Stephens said when he filed his final report to the German government to give us the permit, he said, “This is vegetable steel and here are all the results.” And everyone has been using the term vegetable steel ever since.
Orin: Yeah, that's so interesting. It's interesting you bring up that 1995 conference because I was five. And so to see that, like the… just realizing that you never underestimate the vision. And the dream, and the charisma of one lady, to transform and inspire so many other people. Because I went to that conference as a 7-year-old. And was really my earliest memory, like learning about bamboo and they had all the different things going on.
And then, to hear that also inspired the Zeri pavilion and led to really bringing bamboo into the modern context, which is something that we really care about, right? It's like, okay, how do we balance, uh that, like, okay, everybody wants to make it into like a plank, right? Which is kind of one thing, and then how do you actually use it in its natural form, which is actually much more efficient, right?
So it was super beautiful to hear that story and see how, how it unfolded in such a beautiful way. So, based on that experience and like maybe based on what you've seen with Bamboo evolve, since then in its… and, the fun thing about Bamboo is that there's so many different ways it's been used, and each context has like a different gift for it.
What are, like from your point of view and with your understanding of kind of looking at the future of business through the Blue Economy lens, like what do you think is the future of Bamboo? Where should we be in your opinion? Where should we be focusing our time and energy to really move the needle and take it beyond a beautiful little Airbnb or hotels or even pavilions for conferences for that matter… What's the next step? How do we scale this a little bit further?
Gunter: So my, my most beautiful experience in bamboo is for me, not the pavilion. In the end, the pavilion… The Germans decided to destroy the pavilion. I had become… I had become a symbol against the greens because I was talking about regeneration and they were talking about recycling.
They were talking about thermal recycling of organic materials. And I pronounced myself very openly. And with the visibility I had with the pavilion… I mean the pavilion became the most popular, one of the whole Expo -- 6.4 million visitors. So I still meet Germans and then I tell them about my experience with Bamboo, they say, oh, I was there!
6.4 million Germans came there… It was an amazing feedback we had. But it ended up in a really drama for me because the pavilion was in the end, put in the landfill after destroying it with dynamite. And it was the German reaction of some people who really didn't like the message that was underneath.
But my most beautiful experience, it was in Ecuador with Hogares de Cristo. Social housing made with bamboo. So we did a 2000-hectare regeneration of land, depleted land, where we had by then all learned that you can get bamboo back into depleted land and the bamboo will rejuvenate and refill that soil with it’s rhizomes, we know this.
But then if you have 2000 hectares, you can build 40 prefabricated bamboo houses a day. Now to me, that's it.
Orin: Wait, 3000 hectares?
Gunter: 2000 hectares. 40 houses prefab.
Orin: 40 houses per day.
Gunter: Per day. That is the future.
Unfortunately, we don't know why, President Rafael Correa, he stopped us from doing it. Probably because we're putting a too big of a dent into the commissions for cement. I don't know…
But we were so successful. The houses were costing $1,000 per house. Simple. People could come with a small light truck and just bring the piece of the house and they would put it together themselves.
We had loan systems set up through the church. We had the loan system set up so the people came with $50 and with $950 that they would pay back over five years, they would not only pay back the 950, but they would have saved money to build the bigger bamboo house.
And in that way, they would not only have the functionality of a house coming out of a shanty house and getting out of extreme poverty into “light poverty”, if we can call it that way.
That project to me was the sum of what I've been able to do. We have a total… we operated for three and a half years…Till Rafael Correa came. And we do not know why --we were never explained. The military came in and shut down our operations.
Orin: And are they still living in those houses?
Gunter: Yes. The houses were designed for about five years of life. As you know, when you're exposed to the sum, you have a five-year life.
So, what we wanted to do is we wanted to have a stepping version for housing. Get out of your shanty towns. Get into something that is safe. Cause number one priority in a shanty town is safety.
You want to be safe, you want to protect your girls, you want to have your boys at home. You want to be able to close the door and these houses, which were on stilts, all had the opportunity and the entrance was from the bottom. You enter from the bottom. So once people were on the floor and closed up, everything was closed.
To me, that was a project about soil regeneration. That was a project about water production because the water -- the drinking water came from the bamboo fields because we know bamboo gives you drinking water. We know bamboo regenerates the soil. We know it gave the social housing, but most importantly -- I remember one of the first things that Linda had told me is that there's a billion people living in a bamboo house and they all think it's symbol of their poverty.
Orin: Yeah. I was just gonna ask you like, how did…because you're, you're taking them from a shanty town… to like a… it's basically like a stepping stone, right? That where it's a little bit better, but it's made… So how did they respond to that sense of is it… You know, being a material… cause one of the big criticisms of bamboo is “Oh, it's not permanent or it's not strong, it's not durable.”
They, everybody says it's strong actually, but they say that it's not durable. Like it's not strong in the long-term. And so how did you address that with like the inhabitants and with the... And what happens after the next five years? Like, because I mean, that's still like $200 a year, right? Roughly, if it's a thousand dollars to build… But it sounds like it's being subsidized…
Gunter: So, very good question. We're not selling a bamboo house --we're selling safety. You know, you have to change the discourse. If you have this branding problem, you change the discourse. Everyone wants safety. And this house gives the safety cheap. And that was the way we got it.
Orin: And five years is a good period of time in any economic cycle.
Gunter: And you know five years. And then we have designed with Simon Velez, the $25,000 home, the two-story house -- earthquake resistant. Actually, Simon always said it's not earthquake resistant, it dances with the rhythm of the earth.
And he is right. I mean, he designed it in such a way that these two-story houses, which we build a whole series in Colombia, was gonna be the next stepping stone. You get people into $1000 dollars home and then they can move on to a $25,000. And then the mortgage, if they have proven the capacity to pay back over 5 years, then the bank will give the confidence they can pay back over 25 years.
Orin: Yeah. And so that $25,000 house is then a much more durable, long-term solution.
Gunter: That's forever.They still stand 50 years later
Orin: Amazing. And I wanna kind of shift a little bit towards how we stay optimistic, right?
Because I mean, it sounds like it was super successful. You're solving multiple problems, like you're doing everything right. From an environmental, social, improving civilization point of view. But then, you had a political climate where it was not supported, right? So, how do you maintain a sense of optimism and like in your mind, like how do we get to the next step with that kind of project?
Because I can totally see that if we had the right government in Indonesia, for example, making that possible. They need lots of houses. We might even be able to skip the $1000 and go straight to the $10,000 or $25,000 home. What do you think is the missing ingredient or what do you think was missing for us to move forward and replicate that more?
Gunter: You know, you always have windows of opportunities in life. There's a window. Stars are aligned. This is the moment. Go.
Don't analyze, move. And I think this is where WE are the problem because we want to, when we see the opportunity, we wanna analyze, overanalyze, assess, verify, look at the risks factors involved.
Forget about that. You know, we need to be well organized opportunists. There's so much knowledge of bamboo around, when you see the opportunity just move. Just go.
And this is what we did. We had the church at the time, having major funding available to do social housing. They were studying concrete/cement prefab options, and it didn't work.
We saw the opportunity, we provided designs. We showed how with a chisel and a hammer, you could start doing this. It means was hardly any capital cost to go. Yes, and the bamboo reforestation gives you results quite quickly. So, what happened is that we have to be well- organized opportunists. When the window of opportunity is *clap*, go. Don't say I need to influence this government. I need to convince them.
Orin: I need to wait for the permits, or the budget, or the money… There's so many internal roadblocks we can put that are maybe real challenges to face, but we create them as imagined obstacles before they're even there.
Gunter: We are limiting ourselves. That's the obstacle. Because we are not ready to let go. And so why?
Orin: And trust.
Gunter: And trust… And so when, when the work is not possible in Ecuador and it has its limitations in Colombia, well, I'm in Vietnam. And in Vietnam, today we estimate 300,000 people are working with bamboo in Vietnam. 300,000 people, way beyond dreams in Colombia. Maybe 7,000 people.
Orin: And they don't have Guadua…
Gunter: and they don't have the best…
Orin: And they don’t have asper either
Gunter: So you know, you have to go. Where the time is right. And this is where, with my permanent traveling with my incredible network around the world, having coordinated COP 3 in its reparations, I know scientists and I know people everywhere, and that allows me to visit, to go, to listen, to hear, and say, oh, if this the situation, let's do this.
For example, the biggest use of bamboo that I see in the future is the padding for diapers.
Orin: Ah! Totally. I mean, diapers… on finding disposable diaper is impossible.
Gunter: I mean, come on. You know, this is where you really can make a difference. We should have bamboo forests turned into bamboo diaper pad. I mean, padding for a bamboo-based diaper.
The absorption capacity of water of bamboo is extraordinary. And you can make it soft. So you can make it a very nice, you do not need all the chemicals inside… So to me, when I see in Germany, Ayumi, a Japanese designer, when she listened to it, she said, I will make it for you.
Orin: The diaper.
Gunter: The diaper. And she does it in Europe with hemp. And in Asia she can, in Latin America and Africa, she can do it bamboo. Because bamboo is available everywhere.
Orin: Yeah.
Gunter: And the only thing you need to do is shred the bamboo. You don't have to learn an awful lot. But what I think…
Orin: You don't have to turn it into Rayon.
Gunter: No, but what I think is key, we need to learn how to seize the moments. And take care of the opportunity. And I think that if we were able to substitute all the bamboo, all the fluff in these synthetic diapers with bamboo fluff, I mean we are regenerating millions of hectares of bamboo forests and we're saving millions of hectares of forests that now is planted with a sole purpose to be shredded to little fluffs to be put into diapers.
Orin: I'm just trying to imagine the reaction of my students at Bamboo U when I tell them we're gonna be having a diaper making workshop.
Gunter: Why not? You know, I am convinced you will have, if Ayumi would come and do a two week workshop, every mother who gone through the massive frustration of having to deal with this waste…
Orin: I mean, me too. I mean, we started with the cloth diapers and then it's just like… the washing machine we needed, you know… we would've had to buy another washing machine. I was like, what do we do? Yeah it’s…
Gunter: Enough people are frustrated in order to turn that around. But you know, you asked me where we see the opportunities…
Orin: I mean, yeah…
Gunter: These are the surprising ones. We don't expect, and that's the beauty of bamboo.
Orin: It reminds me of the chopstick, which I'm involved in a very similar – a chopstick, you know, diaper… It's like, who would've thought because people… and I think it's really important to think about it in that scope as a fiber, and as something that really has much more potential than I think a lot of people have given it credit for.
And I'm curious, so you see the opportunity… So, I guess the last two questions I have for you is and also for our listeners to kind of think about how they can move forward and find whatever window of opportunity they might have in front of them.
What are the main ways of identifying like the window of opportunity, and then how do you actually take that action? What is your strategy for getting into okay, I'm not just gonna turn all these crazy problems into a solution. And then goes back to that story about your mom -- It's like, this is an opportunity, you know… I don't have to deal with my changing my kids' diaper. I get to change my kids' diaper.
Like that whole mentality, I think it's really beautiful and I think it's something that we forget on a regular basis… Most people don't live in that, right? Let's just be honest.
And so I'm curious, how do you identify a window of opportunity and how do you take that step or that action, and how do you know you're taking the right step?
Gunter: Advice number one, analysis leads to paralysis.
Orin: Analysis leads to paralysis. Okay, got it.
Gunter: We don't go that way. If your gut, your heart, can convince your brain, go to action. Make your first prototype, whatever you imagined could be done. Find the opportunity that with your own hands, you can actually do something.
That's the key. Because the only way to convince your brain is with your hands, and with the little tools and with a team, because maybe you're not so good with the tools.
I mean, put a hammer and a chisel in my hands and my fingers are chopped off. So, make certain you have a little team that can make that first little idea a reality, as soon as you can. To me, this is the key.
We are too much Cartesian. We wanna analyze, we wanna verify, we wanna compare. No, no, no. Just if your guts and your heart tell you this is the way to go, go!
And your hands and your concrete experience with a little team around you, we'll convince the brain this is a go or no-go. It doesn't mean everything is a go, but it means you will come to a go /no-go with your hands, your guts, and your heart aligned.
Orin: I love that because basically what you're saying is don't ask the question, what do I need to do to make this happen? You ask yourself, what do I already have? That I can do…
Gunter: Now
Orin: To make this happen.
Gunter: Now. The word is now, Orin
Orin: But, but that's so beautiful, cause so I just see it all the time… People are like, well, you know, I need to get this degree. Or like, oh, well someday my dream… So someday, my dream is to do this thing, but I need to get these multiple things right. So, it really takes you out of the powerful moment of that window of opportunity.
Gunter: But this is where you with Bamboo U is critical. You create an environment where actually people have a lot of tools, but also a lot of guts and hearts around. And this is what you need. Because when you make a step forward in the unknown, you're innovating.
You’re innovating -- You're doing something that you haven't done, but others haven't done yet. So, when you take that step into the void, then you need to be aligned with your friends and you need to use what you have. That's Blue Economy. So Blue Economy core principle has always been you use what you have, generate value.
Respond to immediate needs. Anyone I spend time a lot of time in Guayaquil and in Quito, in Ecuador. And when you see people living in shanty towns, you know there is no patience. You know they want solutions NOW. They don't want you to make a calculation and a verification. They want the house now.
Orin: They don't want to know about the house in five years.
Gunter: And if it's $50, they will figure out how to get the $50. Now when you see this “nowness” of people who are in need, so much needs. Then how can you say, oh, well let me do a calculation…
Orin: Lemme go petition my government
Gunter: …And let me meditate about what is the best way to go forward… No! Get your guts together and move.
Orin: I love it. Amazing. Thank you, Gunter for joining us. Thank you.
On that note, if you love this podcast and if you are interested in learning more about bamboo, please do it now.
Either with us or with whoever you know, who is interested in bamboo. We've got some great courses both online and offline.
So, it's been a pleasure to be here with you and thank you so much, Gunter. It was a super exceptional talk and it's a real honor to have you, so thanks for joining.
Gunter: It's my pleasure to always come back. Thank you.