Future Economy Report

“There is a growing ecosystem of mission-aligned investors and founders who are serious about decarbonisation, circularity, and equity. At the same time, extractive incentives persist: cheap externalities still outperform regenerative practices, and care work remains undervalued and unevenly borne. Supply chains are optimised for legacy materials and path-dependent infrastructure, which slows adoption of new biomaterials. We need stronger pricing of externalities, public procurement that rewards true sustainability, and social policies that treat period health as basic infrastructure rather than a private burden.

However, we’re innovating in a sector that historically underinvested in R&D and is dominated by supply chains built around viscose and cotton. That creates technical and commercial friction: our fiber must integrate seamlessly into conventional tampon machinery and meet stringent performance and safety expectations. We address this through deep R&D, close collaboration with a German contract manufacturer, and iterative user testing. Societally, menstruation is still stigmatised, which suppresses candid feedback and slows policy progress. We counter this by normalising the conversation, publishing clear science, and partnering with educators and employers. As a steward-owned company, fundraising can be harder because some investors expect control or uncapped returns. We navigate that by being transparent about our structure, finding values-aligned capital, and demonstrating traction and defensible IP.”

“Strong policy frameworks are in place, such as just transition plans, anti-poverty measures, and social protections, and these have produced measurable improvements. The main challenge, however, lies in implementation, which varies widely across countries and even between regions within them. This fragmentation creates gaps, leaving communities and countries with fewer resources or weaker institutions at risk of being left behind. The greatest need for improvement is in making policies more consistent and people-centred, so that positive impacts reach the local level rather than remaining confined to strategic documents.”

“Moreover, the use of technology and cheap data processing has led to the rise of the platform economy and a new landscape of businesses. Global players dominate markets for online retail, holiday booking, social networks or transportation services and their market power is facilitated by network effects. While the emergence of these digital services provide cheap and convenient solutions for customers, they also come with societal challenges: social networks were sued for abusing private data and delivery platforms for violating labour laws. 

Therefore, a big lever for improvement and a more inclusive and green economy lies in new forms of business ownership. Alternative forms of ownership, such as cooperatives, support to address and include a broader range of affected stakeholders and, thereby, distribute power and profits more equally. 

With over 22 million members, cooperative membership shares are the most widespread form of public participation in the productive capital of the German economy. In comparison: 12.3 million citizens in Germany own public shares of corporations. Especially in the Nordic countries as well as in France, Spain, Italy and Switzerland, cooperatives play an even bigger role in the economy. In Italy, cooperatives contribute 3 % of their profits to a fund that supports cooperative innovations as well as educational work and studies which is a striking example of cooperatives supporting each other as an alternative form of organising business.”