#48: Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy (World Ocean Council) – Getting Proven Solutions Past the Pilot Stage

Learn more about The Ocean Age Walk & Talk, Barcelona, 1st Nov 2026 Too many proven ocean solutions never make it past the pilot stage. Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy wants to fix that by replicating what already works: getting tested solutions into many ports, cities, and projects at once, with the funding to match. He’s the CEO of the World Ocean Council and co-founder of Okhtapus. We talk about why procurement slows startups down, how a port finds and buys a new solution, why wastewater is the forgotten piece of the blue economy, and why prevention is so hard to get funded. **Stewart’s bio:** Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy is CEO and Managing Director of the World Ocean Council and co-founder of Okhtapus. He was previously Global Director of Policy and Investments at the Resilient Cities Network and interim executive director of the Ocean Sewage Alliance. During the Obama administration he was partnerships director for the Hurricane Sandy task force and earlier worked on recovery with a tribal community on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. He coined the term “precovery” for doing the resilience work before disaster hits. **Timestamps:** 00:00:00 - Introduction 00:01:08 - “Turdles” 00:04:15 - Wastewater as the forgotten piece of the blue economy 00:08:05 - What decentralised wastewater treatment looks like 00:15:40 - Precovery and the disaster, rebuild, repeat treadmill 00:21:15 - Blue Mind and why access to water should not be a privilege 00:30:15 - Why so many proven ocean solutions stall at the pilot stage 00:40:25 - The three hearts of Okhtapus: innovators, enablers, and funders 00:43:25 - How a port finds and buys a solution 00:51:10 - Why Okhtapus is not an accelerator, and how it makes money 01:01:20 - The World Ocean Council’s new strategy 01:05:50 - Tomorrow Blue Economy and the Walk & Talk event in Barcelona **Useful Links & Resources:** Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy on LinkedIn World Ocean Council: Website, LinkedIn, and Instagram Okhtapus: Website and LinkedIn Tomorrow.Blue Economy World Congress The Ocean Age Walk & Talk Turtles, not Turdles, Stewart’s article for the Ocean Sewage Alliance Blue Mind by Wallace J. Nichols Get in touch with The Ocean Age’s host Fed DeGobbi on LinkedIn, X or by emailing directly at [fed@oceanage.co](mailto:fed@oceanage.co) Please send in your feedback: what do you want to hear more or less of? Any suggestions? Would love to hear what you think!