Our Misison

Sustanique was born with a purpose: to enable companies to build more sustainable products and help consumers make better, climate-conscious choices.

How It All Started

The journey began while I was working in FMCG industry. I saw a shift. The "big players" were starting to track everything—carbon reports, sustainability certifications, and ESG goals. I wanted to know how the math worked and how these claims were actually verified.

But when I pulled back the curtain, I found a system that was, frankly, broken. The process was either through expensive consultants or certification bodies, or a collection of vague claims backed by nothing more than good marketing.

I looked for a way for an individual founder or a small business owner to calculate their own product’s footprint. I found that the market was split into two impossible extremes.

On one side, there were "Free" tools like OpenLCA. But the interface was a nightmare—built for academics and scientists, not for business owners. It was too complicated, too manual. On the other side were the comprehensive enterprise tools. They were functional, but they would cost up to USD 30,000 a year for software and datasets.

The data itself is a monopoly. The world’s most accurate carbon datasets are locked behind paywalls that only corporations can afford. Governments offer free data, but it’s often fragmented and useless for real-world design. 

There was no middle ground. If you weren't a massive corporation with a massive budget or a dedicated research team, you were locked out. Sustainability was becoming a luxury. I wanted to make it a right.

I drafted a business model, built an MVP, and applied for a government grant in Korea. It was incredibly competitive, but winning it was a huge milestone—validation that the mission mattered.

But the road ahead was difficult. When I started building the tool properly with developers, I approached the major data companies to license their emissions records. They wanted hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was an impossible wall.

I went to investors and accelerators, and they were skeptical. "Who cares about carbon footprints?", "Small businesses and consumers don't care." It was devastating to be told that a more transparent world was just a "hobby."

I didn't give up. I looked at how the world was changing. We are living in an era where AI is doing the "impossible." It is being used to map the stars, predict protein folding for medicine, and even to decode the language of whales. Isn't it crazy?

I believed AI can certainly help us synthesize the world's fragmented environmental data. I decided to stop waiting for "perfect" data that was affordable as it would only prevent us from making "better" choices today and started building my own instead. We began training our own AI using verified global records to really make Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) accessible to the brands that actually make up the majority of our world.

Where We Are Now

Today, Sustanique is a Certified Social Enterprise. We are building the first LCA software tool and AI-powered carbon dataset that is truly accessible to everyone.

The tool is being perfected as we speak. While it takes time to get this right, we are starting with labels. Every physical product in the FMCG world needs one—making it the perfect place to start disclosing the truth. By providing the carbon footprint of our labels upfront with every purchase, we give brands the data they need to start their own journey.

A Quiet Belief

I believe sustainability improves when people start to care. Most people want to do better, but the system makes it too hard, too expensive, and too confusing.

We are here to change that system. We want to make protecting our future generations—and all the creatures we share this planet with—as easy and as standard as printing a label.