Eso-x | Earth System Optimizer

‘We are building a global consumer collective for citizens who are looking for the most sustainable option when buying any product or any service from any company.’ Start-up eso-x is the odd man out when it comes to entrepreneurship: instead of aiming for the largest possible profit in terms of money, the company’s goal is to maximize profit for the planet instead.

It was about three years ago when the seed for eso-x was planted, team members Peter Rindt and Ivana Abramovic recollect. ‘The two of us were sharing a room with our co-founder Maximilian Messmer at TU/e, where we worked on fusion research. Peter stumbled upon a competition in the context of the UN’s 75 year anniversary: they asked for people to send in ideas on how to tackle global challenges by setting up new global governance systems,’ Abramovic explains.

‘We came up with the idea to start a new independent global consumer collective funded by member contributions that provides consumers with reliable information about which products and companies to choose when you want to go for the most sustainable option,’ Rindt adds. In February 2021, eso-x, or in full Earth System Optimizer, was officially registered. Though in the end the envisioned organizational format is a nonprofit membership organization, the founders decided to start off as a company first to gain traction.

Unique method
The team of founders developed a dedicated method to asses what product or company is the most sustainable option when you want to buy anything, ranging from clothes to cars and from energy contracts to insurance policies. With their method, eso-x hopes to enable as many people as people as possible in making the right choices and buying from companies that follow the latest scientific insights when it comes to responsible use of resources and improving biodiversity.

This method consist of three steps. First, the eso-x team sets a measurable definition of sustainability. Here they consider all aspects of sustainability, not just one. For example:how much CO₂ is allowed in the atmosphere and how many species and plants are needed to keep an ecosystem stable? Second, the team defines an optimal roadmap for a certain product or service (hence the company name): what should be done to get from the current state of affairs to the desired situation most efficiently? Finally, with the roadmap in hand, they make specific recommendations for products and services, comparable with what the Dutch Consumentenbond does when it compares quality and prices.

Define sustainability
With regard to step one, the team has already made some considerable progress. On the eso-x website, they explain the measurable definition of sustainable development they described in scientific literature. Now the team has picked one product group to start working on the second step of their method(developing a roadmap): ‘With the current debate about gas prizes in the Netherlands, we decided to focus on energy contracts,’ Rindt says. ‘We will dive into the daily practices of energy suppliers, and will for example take stock of how much they invest in renewable energy and what they do to promote the energy transition for the future. We can then compare this to our roadmap, to see which ones contribute most. We can even collectively negotiate with them to see which one is willing to go even further.’

Besides consumers, the start-up will also focus on companies, Abramovic adds. ‘In the roadmapping phase, during our research we will identify the best measures companies can take to become more sustainable. On a consultancy basis we will share this information with enterprises that want to do better for the world.’ ‘There the challenge will be to safeguard eso-x’s independence, to be able to provide consumers with unbiased advise’, both team members agree.

Forcing change
The three founders dream big. Ultimately, they envision their initiative to grow out into a global ‘United People’ – a collective of world citizens that can negotiate for the best deals, not in terms of price but rather in terms of sustainability. ‘We are worldwide unique,’ Abramovic stresses. ‘We define sustainability much broader than is currently done by most other initiatives, and we base our advice on solid science.’ Rindt: ‘You can calculate that about five percent of the world’s population cares about sustainability. These five percent are responsible for about twenty percent of all global economic activity. If all of these people organize themselves and bend their purchasing power toward the most sustainable alternatives, commercial parties are forced to change for the better. And that is exactly what we want.’