Critical transforms hard-to-recycle plastics into high-end building panels, blending sustainability and aesthetic design.
Why we invested
Critical’s kaupapa centres around honouring Papatūānuku through innovation to ensure generations to come inherit a more liveable, circular world.
Rather than treating plastic as a disposable commodity, Critical challenges businesses to see it as a resource that must be stewarded. Their systems give organisations a clear, tangible way to take responsibility for their plastic waste and keep it out of landfills.
Their work is driven by the belief that design and sustainability are not opposing forces, but powerful allies. Their circular materials are as beautiful, functional, and durable as traditional options but with a fraction of the environmental impact. Every product tells a story - not just of waste diverted, but of values embedded in form, function, and whakapapa.
Transaction Summary
IRIS+ is a set of generally-accepted system created by the Global Impact Investment Network (GIIN) to standardise impact metrics and themes.
Aotearoa is facing a growing crisis of plastic waste and an overreliance on carbon-intensive building materials, with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of used plastic ending up in landfills and construction continuing to drive emissions and resource depletion.
Diverting plastic waste from landfill by transforming it into durable, locally-made panels (‘Cleanstone’) and other products.
Businesses taking responsibility for their waste, supplying their waste plastics to Critical for production of panels.
Architects and designers making environmentally conscious design choices for their clients.
Scale: Volume of plastic diverted from landfill, and number of projects or businesses who have bought Cleanstone.
Depth: Clients who are continuously making design choices to adopt circular materials.
Duration: Ongoing recycling of Cleanstone panels as a circular building material.
Without Critical’s solution, the otherwise displaced building materials would still be made from high-carbon, often toxic, non-recyclable materials. Plastic diverted from landfill have no other realistic destination.
Endurance / Drop-off risk: If panels aren’t returned to Critical to be recycled into new panels, they are likely to end up in landfill, facing the same fate as they would have if they weren’t made into Cleanstone.
Measuring What Matters
Impacts of enterprises on people and the planet can be understood across five dimensions, as defined by the Impact Management Project.
