At the end of 2022, I had the pleasure of receiving Media Brut , intrigued by the success of our innovation Bebot.
Bebot is a beach screener capable of removing small waste from the sand, such as cigarette butts, bottle caps or other fragments of plastic, which were previously impossible to remove.
Very quickly, the video went viral and there were many comments.
Among all these comments, of course there are the "Bravo!" and the "Keep Going Bebot". But there are also detractors. A PhD student in biology deplores our innovation because " The solution is not to clean, it's to stop polluting. Education rather than technology! " He doesn't mince his words about our robot and our work.
I'll let you in on a secret. He was right. Education is the main player in the ecological challenge. But I'll let you in on another secret. If he had been right, he was already wrong.
As early as 2015, we, the players in Green technologies , had launched our first innovations. We had been set in motion by the observation that it was impossible to clean polluted shores with bare hands. We wanted to create the technologies that would make it possible.
For their part, environmental associations focused on their awareness campaigns: “ We must teach the new generations to stop polluting! ”
We didn't see each other, and we ultimately saw our respective works as parallel paths, distinct dogmas: " Technology or education, you have to choose."
But reality doesn't care about dogmas; and impact seizes all possible synergies. So that's what happened.
Through encounters, opportunities, successes, and failures too, all of us, technological and educational players, have learned to know each other. We have found that the combination of Technology + Awareness forms an unrivaled duo.
Our technologies made marine pollution visible and the opportunities for action: “ But there was all that trash in the sand??!” Educational campaigns, meanwhile, could now leverage our technologies to generate more data and therefore deliver better content. For example, the University of Toronto acquired 10 of our robots, or we deployed an entire fleet to Ontario’s influential Great Lakes Region , known for its size and ecological importance.
So what did I answer to our Internet user under this post from Média Brut?
That I had experienced it several times. When it comes to impactful innovation, dogmatic postures do not pass the test of the field . Ideals, principles and virtuous imaginations unfortunately too often border on perfection and consequently, on inaction.
That I was arguing for a Realpolitik of innovation, in the broad sense . That it is better to act imperfectly than to remain inactive – because it is ultimately through action that reality reveals its virtuous possibilities that we would never have thought of!
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