Sustainable Future Team - Who we are

We – Jukka Mikkonen and Pekka Koivukunnas – have founded Sustainable Future Team in March 2020.

We both share same kind of background in a sense that we have been involved in all kind of industrial product development and innovation processes. We have been developing products ranging from mobile phones, printed electronics and optics, all the way to paper machines. Even if we have been along with in some success stories, something has started to bother us more and more lately. Looking back to what we have done, we can see that sustainability of those products is not what would be acceptable, if you think about those big challenges we all are facing at the moment, like climate change, use of natural resources and loss of diversity. We could state that we have been contributing to worsening those phenomena.

After some pondering, we came to a decision, that we want to change our doing. We decided to do, if not exclusively, at least more and more projects and products, that are sustainable and ethical. During past years, there has been some projects, that were somewhat sustainable. And during those projects we have been able to create some ideas of perhaps even more sustainable products, without them being adopted to production yet.

“We decided to do, if not exclusively, at least more and more projects and products, that are sustainable and ethical”

Sustainable Future Team has been founded to bring sustainable ideas into day light and at the same time to challenge people around to join co-effort to realize more sustainable and responsible products. First one to be published is our ideas to capture wave pover in economically sound manner.

Next, we aim to new ideas publish on regular basis and refining them together with You, hopefully. Please stay tuned on our channel to hear about new ideas and possibilities about to join the team work.

”Sustainable Future Team has been founded to bring sustainable ideas into day light and at the same time to challenge people around to join co-effort to realize more sustainable and responsible products”

Idea of Oscillating wave surge converter (OWSC) with PTO located on arc, away from pivoting axle. PTO is simple modular unit and it is possible to remove for service.

We are active also in our free time. We have had two main “projects” going on already for several years. We make and promote a very simple devices for capturing carbon from atmosphere, in the form of biochar. Basically everyone can compensate for his or her own carbon emissions. By using the biochar in a clever way, e.g. by putting it into the soil, one can boost biological processes so, that even more carbon is captured from the atmosphere into the soil, by plants. Our vision is to make the biggest biochar factory in the world, without a factory. Factory without a factory concept is crowd sourced and distributed way of making and using biochar locally, without transporting.

Our colleague saw on TV news, that Saimaa ringed seal population is endangered due the climate change. We decided to create some ideas for helping the situation, while having a coffee break. Within fifteen minutes we came upon an idea of using common reed as raw material for an artificial nest. The idea was well received among the researchers and after a while we were already testing our idea in practice, with good success; the first ever seal pup born in an artificial nest, was born in one of our common reed nests! We were very happy. We continue developing and testing, together with the researchers, different kind of artificial nests.

Innovators of artificial reed nest for The Saimaa ringed seal from left Pekka Koivukunnas, Jukka Mikkonen and Sebastian Kankkonen. Photo: Sauvo Jylhä

Please stay tuned on our channel to hear about new ideas and possibilities about to join the team work