This is the English version of Frank van Beuzekom’s latest publication in MIT Technology Review Arabia with special thanks to our Knowledge Hub lead Josh Entsminger

The agreement at COP27 each year is to bring forward the day when demand for energy and production resources moves beyond oil.

Awareness of how our behaviour affects the planet is higher than ever. Yet the steady and mass exporting of waste suggests there is more to be done.

These experiments are hedges by these firms against broader shifts, allowing them to explore and understand how consumers understand these shifts in order to improve how they scale.

The air conditioner stands out as a way of reshaping humanity's relationship to temperature, and by extension, to the concept of what is liveable and under what conditions.

Its unclear whether circularity is uninteresting, or like many other areas of sustainability considered by the public to be niche, it will matter when it is more unavoidably present in how consumer decisions are made.