Roots of Company

A boy holding a broken “Made in Japan” toy—
that was where our journey began.

In 1995, as a young backpacker wandering through Calcutta, I found myself among children living on towering garbage mountains.
One boy clutched a broken Japanese toy as if it were treasure.
“Give me anything made in Japan!” he cried with a smile.
It was a smile that carried both pride—“Japanese craftsmanship brings joy to children around the world”—
and an unshakable sense of disquiet that has stayed with me ever since.

After university, I entered a factory automation company, helping drive mass production where fractions of a second defined efficiency.
Yet deep within me lingered that boy’s image, and the unspoken question it left behind:

Where do all these mass-produced things go in the end?
Whose hands do they pass through, and what fate do they meet?

Years later, in the Netherlands, I encountered the idea of the circular economy.
Not only to make, but to circulate.
Not “sold and done,” but responsibility for “what happens after use.”
In that moment, the unease I had carried since Calcutta finally found its meaning.

Three decades on, I returned to the towering garbage mountains of Asia.
The scene had hardly changed—people still lived surrounded by the remnants of endless production and consumption.
And so we made a vow:
to design a future where industry, society, and the environment coexist within a single cycle—
to enable the circular economy, and to hand a living future to the next generation.

Rethink Waste. Create Value.
A future where value circulates.