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An Open Letter from our Founder
Founder to founder: The time for change is now.
The Transmutation Principle Newsletter
September 23, 2025
Why ‘Transmutation Principle’?
Since founding the company 2 years ago, the most commonly-posed question I get asked is why ‘transmutation principle’?
‘Transmuting’ comes from the Latin word ‘transmutare’. ‘Trans’ means ‘across’ & ‘Mutare’ means ‘to change’.
It also refers to the ancient chemistry of alchemy, changing from one element into another, such as from base metal to gold, or in biology it refers to transforming from one species into another, such as organisms combining elements to form new ones.
The beauty of ‘transmuting’ is that the combination of elements in their original state, can be changed into an entirely new element.
It is a compelling word when applied in the context of sustainability
The Art of Transmutation in Sustainability.
Applied to sustainability challenges, ‘Transmuting’ is the art of transforming liabilities and cost into an engine of sustainable long-term growth. Not necessarily with more resources, but it’s about maximising and optimising with what you already have - to be truly sustainable.
Transmuting is the Alchemy of Modern Business
It is an art to turn your BAU (business-as-usual) activities into the gold standard of Resilience, Relevance & Robustness, all while Reducing, Removing & Reducing negative impact on the environment and society, to create a lasting heritage for generations to come.
This is about shifting from a check-box exercise of compliance, to building and growing genuine long-term value for People, Planet & Profit - the golden triple bottom line.
The True Cost of Climate Change
Let’s be real. Asia is the beating heart of the global economy.
Asia contributes to 60% of the global economic growth 1 . We have a vibrant and diverse trade of producers and consumers.
We have seen rapid growth, incredible innovation, and the rise of a new middle class.
Yet, this progress has come at a cost.
Our air, our water, our life-giving ecosystems are screaming for help.
It’s not just about saving our beloved animals and childhood parks. It’s also about preserving our economy.
Without biodiversity, there’s no economy.
Without biodiversity, there’s no sustainability.
55% of our world’s economy relies on biodiversity resources 2 . In APAC, 53% of Asia-Pacific's Gross Value Added (GVA), approximately $18 trillion, is in economic sectors that are moderately or highly dependent on nature 22 .
We are also extracting and utilising Earth’s natural resources, faster than we can replenish it.
Today we would need 1.8 Earths to match our current rate of consumption, based on the Earth’s Overshoot Day calculations 4 .
Rate of Consumption vs. Replenishment=
Earth’s Biocapacity divided by Humanity’s Ecological Footprint
The Earth’s current Biocapacity is 1.5 global hectares.
Humanity’s current Ecological footprint is 2.65 global hectares.
Global material extraction has more than tripled in last 50 years, increasing from about 30 billion tonnes in 1970 to over 100 billion tonnes in 2020 3 .
Humans have only been around for 300,000 years, compared to the age of the Earth which is 4.54 billion years & counting.
If the entire history of the Earth were a single 24-hour day, Homo sapiens would have appeared only in the last 1.9 seconds.
Humanity hasn’t been around for that long, yet we’re already in the makings of the 6th mass extinction - biodiversity losses in the last century are 100x higher than the last 5 mass extinctions. 17
We have 5 years till we exhaust our Global Carbon Budget.
The 1.5°C limit window is shrinking fast.
As of 2025, we have 50% chance 5 of avoiding the 1.5°C increase, if we maintain with 2024 emission levels for the next 3 years (est. 42 Gt CO2 per year).
By the 5th year, we would have exhausted our Global Carbon Budget, entering into a 1.5°C warmer world 5 .
Asia remained the world's most disaster-affected region due to weather, climate, and water-related hazards in 2024.
The continent is warming at twice the global average, which intensifies these events.
According to a World Meteorological Organisation report in 2024 24 , floods and storms were the leading causes of reported casualties and economic losses in the region.
Munich Re's 2024 natural catastrophe report 25 found that total losses for the Asia-Pacific region were around $91 billion, which is higher than the 10-year average (US$ 66bn).
Sept 2025: Bali’s worst floods in a decade. Widespread flooding and landslides were triggered by torrential rain, which scientists link to the intensifying climate crisis.
In 2024, we had already exceeded the 1.5°C threshold and global surface average temperature exceeded a record high of 1.55°C 21 .
In the same year, World Economic Forum also reported extreme fire weather days had occurred 54% more frequently globally 20 .
Here’s a comparison of Wildfires in 2024 VS 2005:
Region | Burned Area 2005 | Burned Area 2024 | Economic Losses |
United States | 8.6 million acres | 8.9 million acres | $394 billion to $893 billion each year. |
Canada | 1.8 million hectares | > 5 million hectares | > $1.8 billion in insured losse |
Russia | No official report | 8.8 million hectares | No official report |
Europe | 350,000 hectares | > 1 million hectares | > 3.81 billion Euros |
We can either keep our heads in the sand, hoping the problem solves itself, or we can take action today and maximise the next 3 years as the biggest opportunity of our time to save our habitat, businesses and future of our children.
Sustainability isn’t just CSR, it’s about building Resilience & Relevance in rapidly changing world. It is about preparing for a world that would be unrecognisable by the turn of the century.
Is your business and supply chain prepared for a warmer world?
How will your supply, demand and prices be affected?
Are your operations and clients disaster-proofed from rising sea levels, increased frequency of typhoons and droughts?
But we can’t afford to wait
Experts have estimated that a slow-transition is more harmful than a steep change. That’s because our environmental problems are cumulative.
Transitioning to a cleaner economy entails short-term costs, but delaying will be far costlier.
We are currently experiencing and living through the negative impact of human activities since the industrial resolution.
Our natural carbon sinks, such as the oceans, forests and soil, can only remove about 50% of CO2 emitted from human activities 10 . The remaining half remains in the atmosphere.
Our natural carbon sinks are currently the largest carbon storage in the world but we aren’t doing enough to protect them, as they are rapidly diminishing due to overconsumption, pollution and deforestation.
CO2 is notorious for its long atmospheric lifetime. A tonne of CO2 can stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years before it’s moved along the ocean-atmosphere-land system. 12
What most people don’t realise is that it takes time for emissions, toxins, waste and pollution to be removed.
For example in 2005, the global average surface temperature was about 0.6°C to 0.7°C above the pre-industrial average (1850-1900). For us today to revert to 2005 levels, it would take centuries to a millennial to remove the 1,200 Gt of CO2 23 from the atmosphere, assuming we also stop all emission-inducing human activities.
Compared to 2024, the global average surface temperature was a record high of 1.55°C above the pre-industrial average.
Nature works in miraculous ways, but it needs time to recalibrate and restore.
The abundance of natural resources that we have today is the result of the last 4.5 billion years of ecological evolution.
But there is also a limit to how much waste and emissions we can store and capture.
The negative residue compounds over time. Making it even more resource-intensive over time to resolve them.
The longer we wait, the sooner we’ll reach a tipping point where the damages will be irreversible. 11
Transmuting Liabilities into Assets
Since the 1960s, environmental scientists have proven that climate-change is a man-made crisis 9 . Whilst we are part of the problem, inevitably we also bear the answers.
If you can develop a solution today, that not only grows your company, but also increases the lifespan and health of our planet, everyone, including your loved ones and your children’s loved ones, can benefit from it.
Here’s my Transmutation Principle for businesses:
Disrupt the status quo. Question how things are. Can we do better, the right way?
Disrupt with a purpose, disrupt for a net-positive bottom line and a planet-positive future.
Behind every first-mover advantage, is a self-belief that your solutions are better and different.
Leading Sustainability in Asia.
Asia holds 60% of the world’s GDP 1 , but it's also the most vulnerable to climate change.
Not only is Asia heating up faster than global average, it is also the most disaster-prone region in the world.13
Our dense cities, long coastlines, and intricate supply chains are highly exposed to climate risks.
But this also presents opportunities for Asia to lead in the transmutation of our economy, from self-destruction to a prosperous and sustaining one.
3 ways to reframe Sustainability for Businesses:
Lack of sustainability is a financial risk
Investors aren't just looking at profitability, they are also measuring and predicting your risk exposure, which includes climate-related risks. APAC financial institutions14 are starting to integrate climate-risks in their loans and investments policies. International regulators are pushing for mandatory ESG disclosures.
Ignoring the impacts of climate-change disruptions in your value chain is like ignoring a tidal wave—it will eventually hit your bottom line. Not tomorrow, but today!
Practicing sustainability is good business sense. It doesn’t just preserve our beloved nature and supplies of raw materials, it is self-preservation of our planet and humanity.
Businesses need Vision & Inclusion
77% of youths surveyed in APAC have expressed interest in sustainability-related roles.15
98% of Millennials & 89% of Gen-Zs express the need for a ‘sense of purpose’ for job satisfaction. 16
Ignoring the citizen responsibility of your organisation, would not only cost your business’s reputation and investor trust, but also missing out on the best minds who would be our future innovators and leaders.
As our society’s climate literacy improves, people are more aware of their consumer power. Every purchase or lack thereof can be an act of resistance and a vote for change.
For the eco-educated, recycled packaging is the bare minimum for them.
Hence it’s important that businesses are also able to substantiate their claims and commitments with evidence of progress towards needle-moving targets.
Compliance sets the bar high for us
Regulations can be a pain and it’s easy to perceive new rules as a burden and resource drain.
What if we flip the script to see compliance and regulation as a launchpad? Regulations are necessary guardrails to enforce important boundaries. But they can also forge new businesses, compelling us to rethink and redesign operations, pushing us to be more efficient.
Companies that see regulations not as a chore, but as an opportunity to address governance issues. Those who do would not only survive, but also thrive by setting higher standards for their products, premiums and people.
Sustainability gives your clients and talents more reasons to be retained.
Pioneering the Transmutations together
At The Transmutation Principle, we believe that sustainability is not a job description, it's a principle.
It governs the way we do business, the way we treat our environment and people.
It holds us to a higher standard that our peers, investors and future generations can look up to — doing business thoughtfully, purposefully, and profitably, the right way.
It is the alchemy for the new world and we’re here to build it with you.
Sincerely,
Thibaut Meurgue-Guyard
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3 United Nations Environment Programme
6 National Bureau of Economic Research
7 Climate Change & its impact on Biodiversity & Human Welfare
8 World Economic Forum & Oliver Wyman
9 Syukuro Manabe & Richard T. Wetherald, Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity
10 National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.
12 Environmental Protection Agency
14 Climate-related risks in financial regulation and supervision in APAC
17 WWF
18 EGUsphere
19 The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (AR6)
21 Copernicus Climate Change Service
22 PWC study
23 The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in 2005 was approximately 379 parts per million (ppm). The most recent data for 2024 shows that the concentration has reached approximately 421 ppm. To return to 2005 levels, we would need to remove 42 ppm of CO2 from the atmosphere. 1 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 is equivalent to roughly 7.8 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon. Therefore, the total amount of CO2 to be removed is: 42 ppm×7.8 Gt carbon/ppm≈328 Gt carbon. Converting this to CO2 (by multiplying by 3.67, the ratio of molecular weights of CO2 and carbon), we get roughly 1,205 Gt of CO2, equivalent to more than 30 years of current global emissions.
24 World Meteorological Organisation Report
25 Munich Re