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Terracycle: Recycling Everything from Plastics to Global Waste Solutions · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  How do you feel about recycling?
• 0:02
  I've talked a lot about recycling on this podcast, and you know, I've
• 0:04
  talked a lot about it from a benefit standpoint and also from a not so good
• 0:08
  standpoint because we know a lot of the items that get recycled within our
• 0:11
  area, or maybe we thought were getting recycled, weren't getting recycled.
• 0:15
  But today on the podcast we have Tom Ske, who is the founder and CEO of TerraCycle.
• 0:20
  He is here to talk about TerraCycle and how TerraCycle
• 0:24
  pretty much recycles anything.
• 0:26
  And he says it's based on how much people are willing to pay for it.
• 0:31
  You know, he breaks it down into formulas.
• 0:33
  Very insightful conversation.
• 0:35
  It's gonna be a lot of fun.
• 0:37
  It's gonna hopefully change your mind about recycling and maybe
• 0:40
  participating in some of these programs that TerraCycle has to offer.
• 0:44
  They're all around the world.
• 0:46
  It's a lot of fun.
• 0:46
  We're talking about plastic pollution in the ocean.
• 0:48
  We're talking about microplastics and how they could be maybe used and how much it
• 0:51
  costs to use something like that, and to making other products all on this episode
• 0:55
  of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 0:57
  Let's start the show.
• 1:01
  Hey everybody.
• 1:01
  Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 1:04
  I'm your host, Andrew Lu, and this is the podcast where you find out
• 1:06
  what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean,
• 1:09
  and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action.
• 1:12
  On today's episode, we're gonna be talking to Tomski, who is the founder and you
• 1:17
  know, president and CEO of TerraCycle.
• 1:19
  TerraCycle is an organization that takes your waste.
• 1:22
  It's making waste the hero, as Tom says, and brings it into a production
• 1:29
  line to make different products that you will buy or that somebody will
• 1:32
  buy and truly recycles these types of items and also provides ways for
• 1:38
  you can recycle pretty much anything.
• 1:40
  I think it's really important to have these types of conversations
• 1:43
  to understand that there are companies who are out there.
• 1:45
  Working in waste and there's so many opportunities to work in waste, but
• 1:49
  people are just not doing the work.
• 1:51
  And it's something that has to be done in the future.
• 1:54
  If we wanna truly reduce our waste.
• 1:56
  Obviously we have to reduce our waste at the point of consumerism.
• 1:59
  You know, when we're buying something, we get to vote for that
• 2:01
  every time we pay for something.
• 2:03
  We also have to understand that, you know, as waste increases and
• 2:07
  as products are built to have more waste, we have to be able to
• 2:10
  recycle that type of waste as well.
• 2:12
  So on both ends, right, we don't want to just say recycling's the only
• 2:15
  way we wanna do it for both ends.
• 2:16
  So it's gonna be interesting to see what happens with this, but I think it's
• 2:20
  something that people are gonna love.
• 2:22
  And I hope you enjoy this interview with Tomski from TerraCycle.
• 2:25
  Enjoy and I'll talk to you after.
• 2:27
  Hey Tom, welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 2:30
  Are you ready to talk about TerraCycle?
• 2:33
  Absolutely.
• 2:33
  Thanks for having me.
• 2:34
  Awesome.
• 2:35
  This, uh, it is great to have you on the podcast.
• 2:37
  This has been, uh, a bucket list of mine.
• 2:40
  I've been a big fan of TerraCycle for a long time.
• 2:43
  I'm happy to have you on to be able to, if not introduce, or just to
• 2:48
  kind of let people in behind the curtain of TerraCycle, what it's all
• 2:52
  about, how it came to be, uh, and just how people can get involved in,
• 2:56
  in submitting items and so forth.
• 2:59
  And, and I think it's gonna be a lot of fun to have to have this
• 3:02
  podcast, uh, published for, for the audience to be able to hear.
• 3:05
  Uh, so when we get in, before we get into all of that, Tom, why don't you just
• 3:08
  let us know who you are and what you do?
• 3:10
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:10
  So, well, I'm Tom and I'm the, uh, founder and CEO of TerraCycle.
• 3:14
  And if you haven't heard of TerraCycle, you know, we've been around now for, uh,
• 3:17
  actually next year will be our 25th year of operation for so a little bit of time.
• 3:20
  That's awesome.
• 3:21
  I know.
• 3:21
  It's amazing how, how time flies and, uh, we operate all
• 3:24
  over the world in 21 countries.
• 3:26
  Uh, and the things we do are all about.
• 3:30
  Fulfilling our central mission, which is eliminating the idea of waste.
• 3:34
  And, uh, that can range from, uh, uh, cleaning up high risk litter.
• 3:39
  We run Bangkok's biggest, uh, river cleanup system, all the
• 3:42
  way to recycling things that are not traditionally recyclable.
• 3:45
  Uh, we are the world's largest cigarette butt recycler, world's
• 3:47
  largest coffee capsule, recycler, hundreds of other waste streams.
• 3:51
  Uh, we help companies then make their things from waste, uh, from
• 3:55
  Olympic podiums to the world's first shoe from shoes or pen from pens.
• 3:59
  And then we really push upstream on how do we really shift out of just recycling
• 4:03
  things to reusing, um, all on this journey for how do we solve for the idea of waste.
• 4:09
  It's incredible what you guys are able to do and what you've been able to
• 4:12
  do accomplish over the last 25 years.
• 4:15
  Um, how, like, how, like, this is what I wanted to find out is, yeah.
• 4:20
  Is how did this all build?
• 4:21
  Like where did this all begin?
• 4:23
  Yeah.
• 4:23
  Take us from the beginning.
• 4:24
  'cause like, you know, we've, we've heard the recycling.
• 4:27
  You know, sort of story, you know, people came out, recycling was a big thing, but
• 4:31
  then we realized that, oh, wait a minute.
• 4:33
  You know, not everything is recycled.
• 4:35
  And a lot of things we, we think is recycled isn't, but TerraCycle
• 4:39
  can kind of recycle stuff that we just don't think is, is recycled.
• 4:43
  So how did this whole idea start?
• 4:45
  Yeah, it's a wild, uh, story.
• 4:47
  So, look, I've always loved entrepreneurship as a young kid,
• 4:50
  you know, like my lemonade stand was badass when I was like 12, you know?
• 4:54
  Um, I started my first company at 14.
• 4:57
  Nothing purposeful, just like a web design company, right?
• 4:59
  But still, you know, like I love the idea of entrepreneurship.
• 5:03
  And I, uh, when I got to college, I had this real turning point where one
• 5:07
  of the classes I took was Introduction to Economics, like econ 1 0 1.
• 5:11
  Yeah.
• 5:11
  And the professor gets up opening lecture first class first, everything, and
• 5:15
  says, what's the purpose of business?
• 5:17
  Which is a highly appropriate question.
• 5:19
  Yeah.
• 5:19
  And long story short, the answer she was looking for was
• 5:22
  maximizing profit to shareholders.
• 5:24
  Interesting.
• 5:25
  And like that fell flat for me, right?
• 5:27
  Yes.
• 5:28
  Yes.
• 5:28
  It fell flat because there's so many stakeholders the business serves mm-hmm.
• 5:32
  That are, that don't give two shits about profit to shareholders.
• 5:35
  How can that be the point?
• 5:37
  Right?
• 5:37
  Yeah.
• 5:38
  And it got sort of this journey going for me where I was starting to really
• 5:41
  like, like, uh, meditate on this.
• 5:42
  And where I landed maybe slightly utopian, is that maybe profit
• 5:47
  is an indicator of health.
• 5:48
  So it's critically important.
• 5:49
  Right.
• 5:49
  Of course.
• 5:49
  If your business is not profitable, it will die.
• 5:53
  Yeah.
• 5:53
  And it will not be healthy and strong.
• 5:55
  Right.
• 5:55
  It's unhealthy.
• 5:56
  Yeah.
• 5:56
  And inversely, if it's profitable, it will be flourishing, have
• 5:59
  longevity, all those things.
• 6:01
  But maybe that then leaves room that for what is the actual purpose, right.
• 6:06
  Because our purpose on the planet is not to be healthy, but we have
• 6:08
  to be healthy to manifest anything.
• 6:10
  Right.
• 6:11
  Um, is then how does the business, uh, you know, make the
• 6:14
  world better in some fashion.
• 6:15
  Yeah, right.
• 6:15
  In some way.
• 6:16
  And that felt much more comfortable for me.
• 6:19
  And then I started thinking, you know, as one does, like where should I focus?
• 6:23
  Um, you know, the, the, the honest story is, uh, my friends, this was
• 6:26
  now mind you, like 25 years ago.
• 6:28
  So the relationship, the legal relationship with growing pot
• 6:31
  was very different than today.
• 6:32
  Yes.
• 6:33
  Um, but my friends up in Canada started, you know, sort of growing
• 6:35
  some stuff in their basement.
• 6:36
  They couldn't really figure it out.
• 6:38
  I get invited up fall break freshman year, uh, because they had, you know, the plants
• 6:43
  were working well and they were, when I got into their, you know, their home and I
• 6:46
  asked them like, how did you guys do this?
• 6:48
  And they said we were taking organic waste, feeding it to
• 6:50
  worms and using the worm poop to make the plants, uh, flourish.
• 6:54
  That's fantastic.
• 6:55
  And that lit the initial spark for me on making the, the topic of interest.
• 7:01
  And it's become now a, you know, life's journey mm-hmm.
• 7:04
  On exploring waste.
• 7:05
  Because what I realized is that, and have continued to realize is
• 7:09
  waste is filled with a phenomenal, the idea of waste is filled with
• 7:13
  a phenomenal amount of anomalies.
• 7:14
  The anomaly I noticed right then and there was, wait a minute, it's garbage.
• 7:18
  So you guys could get paid to take this.
• 7:21
  Then you can get paid for the output.
• 7:23
  Huh?
• 7:24
  Like you have negative raw material costs.
• 7:26
  Right.
• 7:26
  In fact, an interesting thing, 'cause I was drawing, you know, in econ class
• 7:29
  is lots of supply and demand curves and garbage is the only commodity
• 7:35
  that you cannot draw on a traditional supply and demand curve because it
• 7:38
  intersects in the negative quadrant.
• 7:40
  In other words, it has monster supply, but negative demand.
• 7:45
  In other words, in Japan for example, the legal definition of waste is
• 7:49
  something you pay to get rid of.
• 7:51
  Right, right, right.
• 7:53
  I mean, it's obvious when it's said, but it's, you know, like
• 7:54
  there's this counterintuitive, that's the legal definition.
• 7:57
  'cause otherwise, like if I have an object, here's a pen.
• 7:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 8:00
  It's my property.
• 8:01
  Even if it's empty, broken, it's still my property.
• 8:04
  I can give that to you.
• 8:05
  I can do all sorts of things.
• 8:06
  Of course, it's the moment I say I need to pay someone to remove
• 8:09
  it, that's when it's garbage.
• 8:12
  Right.
• 8:12
  That's insane.
• 8:13
  You think about that way.
• 8:14
  Yeah.
• 8:14
  Yeah.
• 8:14
  It's, and, and it's not just, that goes on and on, right?
• 8:17
  Mm-hmm.
• 8:17
  Like, uh, garbage is filled with these phenomenal an
• 8:20
  anomalies, which are interesting.
• 8:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 8:22
  And if you can learn about them, it really helps suddenly bring out the solution.
• 8:27
  So, you know, uh, uh, another example, right, just to sort of give you some more,
• 8:31
  is, um, isn't it interesting that the only industry in the world that will legally
• 8:34
  possess all of your property one day with no exception, is the garbage industry?
• 8:39
  Yes.
• 8:39
  Legally possess, not be paid to transport.
• 8:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 8:42
  Not have some touch on it, but legally possess.
• 8:46
  And 99% of what we buy becomes the property of a garbage company
• 8:49
  within the year of purchase.
• 8:52
  And for how big of, uh, how big these statements are.
• 8:55
  It's also objectively the least innovative industry per dollar of revenue it has.
• 9:00
  Why?
• 9:00
  Because it's.
• 9:01
  Smelly, nasty, gross.
• 9:02
  Not metaphorically, but like in the flesh, right?
• 9:05
  Yeah.
• 9:05
  It's not a, a attractor of, you know, sexiness and talent and all this jazz.
• 9:11
  Right.
• 9:11
  Um, it's also though an incredibly modern idea, and I've written books on this
• 9:16
  topic, but it's only, uh, it was invented in the 1950s, which is 75 years ago.
• 9:21
  Unreal.
• 9:21
  Isn't that wild?
• 9:22
  Right.
• 9:23
  Um, before this, you know, like, yes, we, like all organisms, we
• 9:27
  had outputs always, you know, from chimpanzees to, to now, but our outputs
• 9:31
  up until the fifties were something that nature has systems to digest.
• 9:35
  Yes.
• 9:35
  Right?
• 9:36
  Yes.
• 9:36
  Our chair that you and I are sitting on would've been made from wood.
• 9:39
  You could throw it in the forest.
• 9:40
  Forest would've no problem with it.
• 9:41
  Today, it's probably some polymer plastic that the forest
• 9:44
  is not gonna be so happy with.
• 9:45
  Right.
• 9:45
  Um, our clothing would've been made from what, like cotton wool, maybe silk.
• 9:49
  Today 60% of the clothing we wear is some petrochemical derivative, nylon, latex.
• 9:53
  Yeah.
• 9:53
  You know, uh, uh, um, different sort of, you know, advanced materials.
• 9:57
  And we then exacerbate this by consuming today 10 times more than
• 10:01
  we did just back then in the 1950s.
• 10:04
  Yeah.
• 10:04
  Right.
• 10:04
  And it goes on and on.
• 10:05
  And so this became really fascinating, but you know, the truth is TerraCycle
• 10:09
  then started as a worm poop company.
• 10:10
  Uh, the logo I drew was Yeah.
• 10:12
  A worm originally.
• 10:13
  It's a worm.
• 10:13
  Yeah, that makes sense.
• 10:14
  It's a worm.
• 10:15
  TerraCycle is earth cycle, you know, worm poop.
• 10:17
  Right, right.
• 10:18
  And uh, we first started the journey by basically saying to solve waste, let's
• 10:23
  take garbage and make products out of it.
• 10:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:26
  Now the interesting, and it worked, you know, the warm poop business grew.
• 10:29
  I dropped outta school and, you know, off we went.
• 10:32
  But we had this big reflection, maybe, I don't know, like four or five years in.
• 10:37
  And we're at that point, like a five, $6 million small worm poop business of
• 10:41
  are we gonna really achieve our mission by making products outta garbage?
• 10:45
  'cause what we started realizing is we were trying to make the best product.
• 10:50
  And even if we say it must be made from waste, we would, as a result.
• 10:54
  Be taking certain organic ways to feed the worms, but not other, we were
• 10:58
  taking certain use soda bottles to package the worm poop, but not others.
• 11:01
  Right.
• 11:01
  We're picking the best of what is technically garbage, and then we
• 11:04
  would never deal with the bulk of it.
• 11:06
  Right.
• 11:06
  Right.
• 11:07
  Um, and so that created a massive shift for us.
• 11:11
  We decided to effectively close down the worm poop business and refocus on
• 11:16
  making the garbage, the business hero, not the, not the output, not the product.
• 11:20
  And that's sort of how we landed on the, you know, where
• 11:22
  we are today and off we went.
• 11:24
  Yeah.
• 11:25
  That's incredible.
• 11:26
  And if you think about too, how society has changed, even the products that we had
• 11:30
  back, you know, I'm, I'm in my forties, so back when I was a, a kid, like the
• 11:35
  furnace, you know, your dishwasher, your computers, they all lasted a long time.
• 11:40
  Yeah.
• 11:40
  They all lasted like, especially like the long items, like the dish, uh,
• 11:44
  dishwasher and all that kinda stuff.
• 11:46
  You know, you're looking at 25, 30 years before you're thinking of replacing it.
• 11:49
  Now you're probably looking at a life cycle for those, like a dishwasher.
• 11:52
  I remember talking to some people and they're like, you're looking at
• 11:55
  like three to five years, and as soon as it's broken, it's more expensive
• 11:58
  to fix than it is to get a new one.
• 11:59
  Which it is insane to me.
• 12:01
  And they just, it's, I guess it's, that's more of the economy.
• 12:03
  They want you to churn out and buy, buy more new things, but that increases
• 12:07
  the amount of waste that we produce.
• 12:09
  Right.
• 12:09
  Massively.
• 12:10
  And what's so interesting, you're referring like to this concept
• 12:13
  of planned obsolescence, right?
• 12:14
  Yes.
• 12:15
  Um, where things are planned to break.
• 12:17
  Because that's better for the economy, right.
• 12:19
  To, for you to buy a new dishwasher in three years mm-hmm.
• 12:23
  Than to maybe repair one in 20 years.
• 12:25
  That's the other thing.
• 12:25
  Not only is, are all these things made, uh, like much poorer quality.
• 12:30
  Now you could argue what's the virtue of that?
• 12:32
  'cause we're gonna shit all over this for a moment.
• 12:34
  So let's talk about the positive, the positives is that, that dishwasher
• 12:37
  is technically cheaper Yes.
• 12:39
  Than it was before relative to your income, right?
• 12:41
  Yeah.
• 12:41
  Like the amount of labor hours you have to put out to get
• 12:44
  the dishwasher has gone down.
• 12:46
  Yes.
• 12:47
  Right.
• 12:47
  Um, a good example is like a hundred years ago, we would, it's 1920s.
• 12:52
  We would buy an average of two apparel items a year and use them for 20 years.
• 12:56
  Uh, before disposal.
• 12:57
  Today it's 66 apparel items per year worn on average, three times before disposal.
• 13:04
  But a key part of this is, that's incredible, right?
• 13:06
  It why I bet you a wool sweater would've been a lot more labor hours
• 13:10
  a hundred years ago than it is today.
• 13:12
  Right.
• 13:13
  Today it's what, 10 minutes of labor Back then it could have been
• 13:15
  weeks of labor hours that you have to, uh, earn to spend on that.
• 13:19
  Yeah.
• 13:19
  And now the planned off lessons thing is so fascinating because I don't know,
• 13:23
  uh, it was actually proposed as a law back in, I think it was in, in, in, in,
• 13:27
  in, in the UK at some point when the economy was down, it was proposed as
• 13:31
  a regulation saying manufacturers must take back or make break objects in short
• 13:38
  period of time to spur the economy, right.
• 13:41
  To create more consumption.
• 13:42
  It never passed 'cause it sort of grotesque, but it
• 13:45
  was proposed in that way.
• 13:47
  And I, and then what happened is companies realized that, well, we should, you
• 13:51
  know, this is good business anyway.
• 13:52
  It doesn't have to be regulated.
• 13:53
  We should do that.
• 13:54
  Um, a very famous example of this is, uh.
• 13:58
  Incandescent light bulbs.
• 13:58
  Now they've been really disrupted by the LED bulbs, but back in the day when we
• 14:02
  would just buy incandescent bulbs, what was it, like, 5,000 hours on a light bulb.
• 14:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:07
  Right?
• 14:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:07
  You know how long, when the incandescent bulb was first commercialized,
• 14:10
  how long the light bulb lasted.
• 14:11
  This is like a hundred years ago.
• 14:14
  There's still one burning in a Florida, uh, uh, uh, firehouse that
• 14:18
  has not gone out in a hundred years.
• 14:20
  And what happened is the light bulb manufacturers realized if we
• 14:22
  make light bulbs that last forever, we're not gonna sell that many.
• 14:26
  Yeah.
• 14:26
  So they created a cartel that purposefully took down the, uh, life
• 14:30
  of a light bulb still to this day, just so that they can sell more.
• 14:34
  Right.
• 14:35
  So, but it's important to understand the tension.
• 14:38
  Right.
• 14:38
  Of uh, because that's the only way one can then figure out how to solve it.
• 14:42
  Right.
• 14:42
  We shifted our 'cause.
• 14:44
  We also vote for this, right?
• 14:46
  We buy these things.
• 14:47
  Yeah.
• 14:47
  We vote for their existence.
• 14:49
  And what drives our vote?
• 14:52
  Is generally convenience, convenience of low cost.
• 14:55
  'cause that conveniently allows us to buy more things and
• 14:57
  convenience in all other ways.
• 14:59
  Fast delivery, you know, easy.
• 15:01
  Um, mending is less convenient than buying new, you know, that's
• 15:05
  why we don't cobble our shoes or, uh, darn our socks or mm-hmm.
• 15:08
  Fix anything anymore.
• 15:09
  Right.
• 15:10
  Right.
• 15:10
  Um, and, and, but, and that's that, uh, uh, uh, really drives then increase
• 15:16
  of economy, so they go hand in hand.
• 15:18
  Everyone's happy from a business point of view.
• 15:20
  Right, right.
• 15:21
  It just creates this phenomenal externality, not just of
• 15:24
  waste mind you, but like.
• 15:25
  Every environmental issue we face.
• 15:27
  Yeah.
• 15:27
  Climate change, uh, species diversity loss, which I think in the ocean is
• 15:31
  manifesting way more than it is on land.
• 15:34
  'cause we don't see it.
• 15:35
  Right.
• 15:35
  We don't even know about it.
• 15:36
  Like half of that.
• 15:36
  Right.
• 15:37
  No, it's, I bet you if we say what is the World Wildlife Fund said
• 15:39
  that we lost 50% of our, uh, species diversity one in the past 50 years.
• 15:43
  Yeah.
• 15:43
  I bet you that's more terrestrial than it is aquatic.
• 15:46
  Yes.
• 15:46
  And I bet you if you want aquatic it would be worse.
• 15:48
  Could be in the nineties.
• 15:49
  Yeah, exactly.
• 15:50
  Could be in the nineties.
• 15:51
  Right.
• 15:51
  So all these externalities are linked to one thing only.
• 15:55
  Yeah.
• 15:55
  Us voting for them by buying things that create extraction.
• 15:59
  Yes.
• 15:59
  Right.
• 16:00
  Yeah.
• 16:00
  And, uh, I think that's the key thing to reckon with in this whole gluttonous
• 16:04
  consumption of cheap crap right now.
• 16:07
  But with that, like, it's hard to look at the system that we're
• 16:11
  in right now and because a lot of people will say like, you know.
• 16:16
  I guess the re they, they'll say, first of all, I guess like we look at this
• 16:19
  waste, we, we know that we're in a system where there's a lot of waste.
• 16:21
  Yes.
• 16:22
  Um, so, and, and we know recycling on a, on a grand scale is not
• 16:27
  what we hoped it would be.
• 16:29
  No.
• 16:29
  It's not what we, it was sold to be.
• 16:31
  Right?
• 16:31
  Yes, that's right.
• 16:32
  Um, but TerraCycle takes it a little differently 'cause you
• 16:35
  guys are not just recycling to make the same products, right?
• 16:40
  Like say a a water bottle to back into a water bottle.
• 16:42
  You're actually taking it and making different products.
• 16:45
  Uh, I think remember when I first discovered TerraCycle was like
• 16:50
  park benches and things like that?
• 16:52
  Yep.
• 16:53
  Where did that idea come from?
• 16:54
  Like, to be like, oh, we're just gonna make cr like brand new products from
• 16:57
  these, from these like waste items.
• 17:00
  Well, if I'm, I, I'm gonna take a step back to answer your question, right?
• 17:03
  Sure.
• 17:03
  Because you mentioned, uh, that, you know, recycling isn't
• 17:07
  what we thought it would be.
• 17:08
  And I think you're precisely right.
• 17:09
  But I wanna peel that open a little bit.
• 17:10
  Yeah, please.
• 17:11
  That will frame.
• 17:12
  Everything we talk about.
• 17:13
  Right.
• 17:14
  Perfect.
• 17:14
  And this was one of those academic things that, you know, we dove into
• 17:18
  when we shifted away from being a worm poop business as to what really
• 17:20
  makes something recycled gold.
• 17:22
  Right?
• 17:22
  Yeah.
• 17:22
  Like actually get recycled.
• 17:24
  And here is the problem is that we have a misunderstanding of the system.
• 17:28
  That's why it's not what we hoped it would be.
• 17:31
  We perceive, and this has been, you know, we've studied this in our consumer
• 17:34
  insights department, you know, with consumers all over the world, everywhere
• 17:37
  and unanimously people view recycling as a public service similar to say healthcare.
• 17:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 17:43
  Um, or education.
• 17:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 17:45
  And the concept in healthcare is if, if, uh, if the cure exists
• 17:50
  or the therapy exists to help you, it will be given to you.
• 17:53
  Yes.
• 17:53
  You know?
• 17:53
  Yes.
• 17:53
  Irrelevant of the cost and your income.
• 17:55
  It's just, I mean, maybe America's a bit different, but
• 17:57
  like everywhere else, right?
• 17:59
  Yeah.
• 17:59
  You, you know, it's, uh, you, it's almost like a moral obligation to,
• 18:03
  you know, treat whatever is the issue.
• 18:05
  Mm-hmm.
• 18:06
  And.
• 18:07
  The difference though is recycling is not a public service.
• 18:10
  It is carried out unanimously, with no exception by only for-profit
• 18:14
  companies everywhere in the world.
• 18:15
  There is no law that tells those for-profit companies that
• 18:18
  they have to recycle anything.
• 18:20
  Right?
• 18:20
  Right.
• 18:20
  They choose what gets recycled.
• 18:22
  And so really when you deep go below the surface, what makes a cardboard
• 18:27
  box or an aluminum can recycled in most countries that have recycling,
• 18:31
  it's not that it's special, it's because it's profitable to recycle.
• 18:36
  Mm. And what makes 95% of objects, uh, uh, not recyclable, like, uh,
• 18:42
  you know, if we just look at each other are clothing, the, yeah.
• 18:44
  Electronics.
• 18:45
  Uh, this pen.
• 18:46
  You know, I mean, most things in our, in our, uh, in our video not
• 18:50
  recycled is not that it can't be, it just costs more to collect and
• 18:54
  process and the results are worth.
• 18:56
  Interesting.
• 18:57
  That's it.
• 18:58
  It's just economics.
• 18:58
  That's like, another way to think about this is how can you make an object?
• 19:02
  Go Circular is, I think only one of two ways.
• 19:04
  Imagine if I put an object in front of you, right.
• 19:07
  Either that object has to have enough intrinsic value in it that
• 19:09
  you're like, yeah, thank you for putting this object in front of me.
• 19:12
  You know?
• 19:12
  Yeah.
• 19:12
  If I put a bar of gold in front of you, I'm sure you'd be thrilled.
• 19:15
  Right.
• 19:15
  Or, uh, whatever.
• 19:16
  Right.
• 19:17
  But if I put something that isn't valuable in front of you, well, the
• 19:21
  only way to do it is to pay you.
• 19:22
  And at some point when I pay you enough, your happiness will get to the
• 19:26
  point where you'll happily deal with that object and give it a new life.
• 19:28
  Right.
• 19:28
  No matter what.
• 19:29
  It's Right.
• 19:30
  Right.
• 19:30
  And that is the foundational point.
• 19:33
  So when people say recycling is broken, it's because they put
• 19:36
  things in the recycling bin that they hope will be recycled, that
• 19:39
  don't, that aren't recycled.
• 19:41
  And that's because the way it's communicated implies that
• 19:44
  that'll happen, which is poor.
• 19:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:46
  It's bad framing.
• 19:47
  Um, a really good example of this is, say those clothing bins, because
• 19:50
  this is really tied to, you know, pollution in the ocean, right?
• 19:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:53
  Like we put our used clothing into those charity bins.
• 19:56
  They may be in front of a school.
• 19:58
  Yeah.
• 19:58
  Or a, or a, uh, church, uh, you know, whatever it may be.
• 20:01
  Yeah.
• 20:01
  And what do we think happens?
• 20:02
  We think what happens is our clothing will then be.
• 20:05
  Gone to a good use, someone in need will use it.
• 20:08
  But here's the reality, right?
• 20:10
  That entire business is driven by the resale value of the clothing.
• 20:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 20:15
  Period.
• 20:16
  Because it costs more to recycle clothing than the resulting materials are worse.
• 20:20
  There's no economics to recycle it.
• 20:21
  It is just driven by the resale value.
• 20:23
  Now in America, if we put a bunch of used clothing, remember that's
• 20:27
  our garbage that we don't want.
• 20:29
  Yeah.
• 20:29
  Only 1% of it can be resold in America because it's stuff
• 20:34
  we didn't want to begin with.
• 20:35
  You know what I mean?
• 20:36
  Right, right.
• 20:36
  So the sorting centers that take this will sort out the brand name goods,
• 20:40
  the Patagonia jackets, you know, the Levi jeans that are in good quality.
• 20:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 20:44
  Ironically, probably shouldn't have been thrown into the bin to begin with.
• 20:48
  That will get resold at a vintage store in the us.
• 20:50
  99% gets bailed and sold by the kilo to emerging countries.
• 20:56
  Now, let's say you and I are the vintage shop, use clothing
• 21:00
  shop in, uh, you know, Ethiopia.
• 21:02
  Yeah, we're gonna be excited to buy this stuff 'cause we're
• 21:05
  buying clothing by the kilo.
• 21:07
  Way cheaper than making way cheaper.
• 21:08
  Yeah, yeah.
• 21:08
  Way cheaper.
• 21:09
  But we're gonna buy at eyes wide open that about two thirds no one's gonna buy.
• 21:14
  Hmm.
• 21:14
  But one third they're gonna buy.
• 21:17
  And that makes the business economics work.
• 21:19
  Yeah.
• 21:19
  But what do we do with that Two thirds We dump it.
• 21:23
  And so what I'm trying to highlight here is that is exactly how it works.
• 21:27
  Now the problem is the person putting it into the goodwill bin, you know,
• 21:30
  in Kansas City, you know, uh uh, thinks everything is gonna be reused.
• 21:35
  'cause the bin shouldn't just say, this is a reuse bin.
• 21:37
  It should say, if the clothing is has a market on it and someone's gonna buy it,
• 21:42
  it will certainly be reused for sure.
• 21:44
  And if it isn't, it's gonna be dumped.
• 21:45
  Yeah.
• 21:46
  That would be the accurate way to describe that process.
• 21:49
  And I think that's the essence.
• 21:51
  Once, once you view recycling as actually just urban mining for material value,
• 21:56
  everything makes sense from there.
• 21:58
  That is so interesting and it's, you know, something we've talked about a lot
• 22:01
  on this podcast is, is the fact is like if it's, if it's recyclable, there's
• 22:05
  a demand out there for that product at some point, whether it's in its true
• 22:08
  form or whether it's in another form.
• 22:11
  Um, so, so for for TerraCycle, yeah.
• 22:15
  When you first came out with this, this vision to say, okay, we're gonna take
• 22:20
  products and we're gonna make another product out of this, or waste, sorry,
• 22:23
  I should say waste from products and we're gonna make another product.
• 22:26
  How did you choose.
• 22:28
  The waste, was it waste that nobody else was gonna take?
• 22:31
  Yeah.
• 22:31
  Or was it waste that you knew was gonna fit within a, within like in a,
• 22:36
  like would do well in a park bench?
• 22:38
  Well, it's a good question, right?
• 22:39
  So like when we first began in the worm poop days, we were a consumer product
• 22:42
  company making objects, uh, products from waste, from fertilizer to bird feeder,
• 22:47
  then later backpacks and whatever.
• 22:49
  And there we said, we wanna make a backpack.
• 22:51
  What's the right waste to make it from Maybe we sew together
• 22:53
  juice pouches and make a backpack.
• 22:55
  So we then started as a classic consumer good thought process
• 22:59
  where the product is the hero.
• 23:00
  Yeah.
• 23:00
  And what waste inputs can we make the product from.
• 23:04
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:04
  When we realized that that is limited because we're gonna pick only the
• 23:08
  best garbage, we switched it and said the garbage has to be the hero.
• 23:12
  And remember the issue is solely economics.
• 23:16
  Everything in the world can be recycled.
• 23:18
  It.
• 23:18
  I've not seen a waste stream.
• 23:19
  That cannot be, the only times it cannot be is if there's a law preventing it.
• 23:23
  A bloody glove from an operating room legally can't be recycled.
• 23:27
  Right.
• 23:27
  Gotcha.
• 23:28
  Yeah.
• 23:28
  But other than that, they all can.
• 23:29
  Yeah.
• 23:30
  It's just a question of money.
• 23:32
  Right.
• 23:32
  So I'll give you an example.
• 23:33
  We're the world's largest coffee capsule, recycler, and recycling.
• 23:36
  A coffee capsule is always gonna come at a cost.
• 23:39
  It's never gonna make money.
• 23:40
  And that's, again, 95% of goods.
• 23:43
  So it, because the money is the issue, what we first said is, let's
• 23:46
  go to stakeholders that are willing to pay and fund for recycling to
• 23:50
  exist on certain waste streams.
• 23:52
  And the intuitive stakeholder could be like the people who
• 23:54
  made it, whose logo is on it.
• 23:56
  Right.
• 23:56
  It could be the retailer who sold it.
• 23:58
  Um, it could be maybe where it's consumed like a, um, a pool may
• 24:03
  care about swimsuit and goggle recycling disproportionately, yeah.
• 24:07
  Right.
• 24:08
  They're certainly not gonna care about recycling bicycle helmets.
• 24:11
  Right, right, right.
• 24:12
  And so it's about finding those stakeholders who are willing to fund.
• 24:15
  Now, when you have the funding.
• 24:17
  Let's just take an example.
• 24:18
  Like cigarette butts, right?
• 24:19
  Most littered item in the world.
• 24:21
  Oh my gosh.
• 24:21
  So there could be the tobacco company, it could be a retailer
• 24:24
  that might sell cigarettes, it could be, uh, maybe a city, you know?
• 24:27
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:27
  Because they have high rates of litter on these, uh, or other stakeholders.
• 24:31
  Then we bring that into our r and d organization and we first make sure that
• 24:35
  we can find a recycling solution for it.
• 24:37
  Um, that's before we set up a program.
• 24:39
  And generally speaking, what we're looking at is can we take the thing apart
• 24:43
  and can we reconstitute the materials?
• 24:45
  So for example, in cigarette butts, the breakthrough that really helped
• 24:47
  enable that was the ability to separate the paper that's glued
• 24:50
  onto the filter from the filter.
• 24:52
  'cause the filter's plastic and the, and the paper's paper fiber, right?
• 24:55
  Yep.
• 24:56
  And, uh, once we have that, we have a process set up.
• 24:59
  Then we start building the program and getting it bigger and bigger.
• 25:02
  As that happens, we don't stay there on the process.
• 25:04
  We keep trying to refine the process to get to the gold standard.
• 25:08
  Which is, it goes right back into what it started with.
• 25:11
  That's the endpoint we try to get to.
• 25:13
  If there is the appetite from the stakeholders and uh, you know, 'cause that
• 25:18
  takes a lot of resource to achieve that.
• 25:20
  So we will, you know, let's take shoe recycling is a good example.
• 25:23
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:23
  When we first started, we figured out how can we take the shoe apart,
• 25:26
  separate all the components, make sure we can reconstitute those.
• 25:29
  And, and there a big breakthrough was how do we take shredded leather
• 25:33
  and make new rolls of leather?
• 25:35
  Right?
• 25:35
  Uh, yeah.
• 25:36
  And we did that by shredding them.
• 25:37
  And then you can sort of hear them together to create a new leather compound.
• 25:40
  Almost like, um, you know, in wine corks you have like a normal natural
• 25:43
  cork, but then you may see a. A natural cork, but it's made from lots of
• 25:47
  little pieces like a Birkenstock sole.
• 25:49
  Yep.
• 25:49
  That sort of effect.
• 25:50
  Right.
• 25:51
  Okay.
• 25:51
  Now, once we had that, then the question was how do we go more than that?
• 25:54
  And then we started working with shoe companies to turn the shoes into things
• 25:57
  they care about, like sports surfaces.
• 25:59
  And just last year with asics, we launched with them their
• 26:03
  first shoe made from you shoes.
• 26:05
  But that is the highest technical achievement, right?
• 26:07
  Yeah.
• 26:07
  Like that is really tough and requires a lot of, that's a lot of research and Yeah.
• 26:11
  And a lot of investment on part of the partner of who like, of course, really
• 26:14
  needs to lean in because it's, I can't do that without them wanting to lean in.
• 26:16
  Right?
• 26:17
  Yeah.
• 26:17
  Yeah.
• 26:18
  But that's sort of the journey we take.
• 26:20
  Um, uh, but the, the big white elephant in the room is that it's
• 26:24
  all about the money flow, right?
• 26:26
  Um, someone has to fund it because in parallel to this advancement in, uh,
• 26:32
  in all sorts of advanced materials that nature doesn't have systems for,
• 26:34
  and us consuming quite a bit within all that, the biggest mega trend
• 26:38
  in object design is cost reduction.
• 26:40
  Everything is cheaper tomorrow than.
• 26:42
  Everything.
• 26:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:44
  And as you reduce costs and things there, the, the value that you can
• 26:48
  recover intrinsically goes down.
• 26:51
  Hmm.
• 26:52
  Right?
• 26:52
  Yeah.
• 26:52
  The thing I'm putting in front of you looks less, less, less and
• 26:55
  less like a gold bar every day.
• 26:58
  Right, right, right.
• 27:00
  That's so cool.
• 27:01
  That is so cool.
• 27:02
  So how do you decide.
• 27:06
  What items can be made from the waste that you're collecting or
• 27:09
  even what waste you collect to make?
• 27:11
  Like do you still, where does it, is it like, is it a chicken
• 27:14
  and egg kind of situation?
• 27:15
  Like what product do you ha do you want to make?
• 27:18
  And then what waste would be best?
• 27:19
  No, it's, there's a, it's, it's actually very linear, so I'll walk you through it.
• 27:22
  Yeah.
• 27:22
  So the first part is, 'cause the issue is a money flow.
• 27:25
  The first question is, where is their willingness to fund?
• 27:28
  So if, for example, we have willingness from a great company like lip rip
• 27:32
  curl to fund wetsuit, recycling, then we're gonna focus on wetsuits.
• 27:35
  If inversely we can't find anyone to wanna fund bicycle helmet recycling,
• 27:40
  that won't be the focus because without the money flow, nothing happens, right?
• 27:44
  'cause everything costs more than the results are worth.
• 27:47
  So you, you depend on the vision and the effort put willing, being
• 27:52
  willing to be put in by a specific company or investor to invest in that.
• 27:59
  Yes.
• 27:59
  In order to even start even thinking about doing something,
• 28:02
  it needs to be some stakeholders.
• 28:03
  If you take wetsuits, it could be like rip curls a partner.
• 28:06
  So it could be the wetsuit manufacturer, right.
• 28:07
  But it could be maybe a dive shop, you know?
• 28:09
  Right.
• 28:10
  It could be a diving coalition.
• 28:12
  It could be any stakeholder, but it's gonna be someone who cares more about
• 28:15
  wetsuits than the average bear, you know?
• 28:17
  Okay.
• 28:18
  Then once, sorry, go ahead.
• 28:20
  Go ahead.
• 28:20
  No, no, please go ahead.
• 28:21
  Well, I was gonna say like, what's, I was gonna say that like the next step
• 28:23
  is like, are they collecting the waste or are they just that's, that's, no, no.
• 28:28
  Great.
• 28:28
  Yeah.
• 28:28
  So then the next step comes, which is, okay, now that we know
• 28:31
  that there's interest, right?
• 28:32
  Yeah.
• 28:33
  Then we think through, 'cause what are the costs?
• 28:36
  They pay?
• 28:36
  They pay for whatever it costs to collect the waste.
• 28:38
  Yeah.
• 28:38
  What it costs to convert that into a sellable material minus what
• 28:41
  the sellable material is worth.
• 28:43
  Right.
• 28:43
  That's the cost.
• 28:44
  So then we think through how do we collect and.
• 28:47
  Collection is not just about how do you collect as cheaply as possible mm-hmm.
• 28:51
  Collection's also about how do you create as much value for
• 28:54
  whoever's paying for it as possible.
• 28:56
  So take the, the wetsuit example.
• 28:58
  A really good business logic for someone like Rip Curl is, wait a
• 29:01
  minute, if I offer wetsuit recycling, maybe I run a promotion saying we
• 29:05
  rip curl will recycle any brand of wetsuit, but when you do, we'll give
• 29:08
  you whatever, 10% off your new one.
• 29:10
  But of our brand.
• 29:11
  Right.
• 29:11
  Gotcha.
• 29:12
  'cause as long as you can build in some business logic,
• 29:14
  the money flow gets bigger.
• 29:16
  Right?
• 29:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:16
  And then these programs can get incredibly large, like uh, you know, in
• 29:20
  some cases, like in uh, coffee capsule recycling in Canada, we collect back
• 29:24
  30% of what, uh, of what is consumed.
• 29:27
  That's amazing.
• 29:27
  But it's also one of the best drivers of which brand you choose.
• 29:31
  Yes.
• 29:31
  And those are connected concepts.
• 29:32
  'cause money flow comes from business in many cases.
• 29:35
  Yeah.
• 29:35
  So then we think about the collection.
• 29:37
  So in that example, the collection for wetsuits would probably be in retailers.
• 29:41
  'cause that's where you're gonna make your next purchasing decision.
• 29:44
  Then we also think about how do we make the collection as convenient
• 29:47
  and as affordable as possible?
• 29:48
  So it's easy for someone to take part and it doesn't break the bank.
• 29:51
  Right?
• 29:52
  Yeah.
• 29:53
  So for, yeah, like for, I was gonna say, for example, uh, we mentioned it,
• 29:56
  uh, right before we started to record, uh, you know, Arbon is a company.
• 30:00
  Yeah.
• 30:00
  Uh, that, that I, that I use.
• 30:02
  I have these little FS sticks, which is like a little green tea extract, and
• 30:05
  they come in individual packages, plastic packages, and there's a, there's a program
• 30:09
  with TerraCycle where I can, you know, basically when I'm finished, I, that
• 30:13
  comes with a, a. Basically like a, a, a, um, a label that to go to TerraCycle
• 30:19
  plus a package and you just stuff that package as fa as much as you can.
• 30:24
  You know, you, you, uh, you know, secure it, you zip it up and then you send
• 30:28
  it to Purolator and Purolator brings it over, sends it over to you guys.
• 30:31
  And sometimes I'll have like three or four and I'll just send, like, I'll save 'em
• 30:34
  all up and then I'll just send 'em off.
• 30:35
  Makes it easy for me.
• 30:36
  I literally just drop it off.
• 30:37
  I don't have to do anything else.
• 30:39
  It's probably one of the simplest processes for me.
• 30:41
  And then I know that the, the product that I use is gonna be used for
• 30:45
  something better than, what if I just threw it out in the garbage?
• 30:49
  Exactly right.
• 30:49
  Yeah.
• 30:49
  So that's a, yeah, and there's dozens of different methods of collection, right?
• 30:52
  Yeah.
• 30:52
  It could be what you described, which would be a mail-in model.
• 30:55
  It could be public locations, like, uh, right.
• 30:58
  I think in Canada where something like 50% of all the schools, uh,
• 31:01
  uh, uh, like, you know, uh, public schools, K through 12 schools use
• 31:04
  our programs and, and many other.
• 31:05
  That's, uh, uh, such examples.
• 31:08
  Then we think through, and this goes to your question on what do we make
• 31:11
  it is first we have to make sure that we can recycle it, that we can take it
• 31:15
  apart and reconstitute the materials, and then honestly, to make the price
• 31:18
  as cheap as possible, we sell the materials to whoever pays the most.
• 31:22
  Yeah.
• 31:23
  And to us, it's not, you know, that's the key because that's gonna get them
• 31:26
  the program to be as big as possible.
• 31:28
  Now we don't stop there.
• 31:30
  Then we go, uh, uh, back to the company, whether it's Arbon or Rip
• 31:34
  Curl or whichever one, and say, now that this is all functioning.
• 31:38
  How do we really elevate the waste and try to get it to go
• 31:41
  right back into your system so it becomes as closed loop as possible?
• 31:45
  Yeah.
• 31:45
  That may start with deployments, like marketing deployments.
• 31:49
  Like with Colgate, we've built, I think two dozen playgrounds from
• 31:52
  toothpaste, tubes and toothbrushes, or with Procter and Gamble from their
• 31:55
  waist, every Olympic podium since the Tokyo Olympics and, and so Wow.
• 31:58
  Really that's, yeah.
• 32:00
  It could be that sort of stuff.
• 32:01
  Wow.
• 32:01
  But then we say, okay, how do we get it more into your system?
• 32:04
  Maybe then we start making the displays their products sit on, or the fixtures
• 32:08
  for their stores with the end goal to be right back into what it began from.
• 32:14
  That is so, and that's the journey that our r and DT team takes over many years.
• 32:19
  Yeah.
• 32:19
  To make sure that we can formulate the waste, make it behave in the
• 32:22
  way that it needs to, to be able to create that, that outcome.
• 32:25
  Because these products were never designed with the idea of
• 32:28
  being recyclable into themselves.
• 32:31
  So your r and d team is, it just consists of a number of different, like, uh,
• 32:36
  engineers and, and product engineers and marketers and, and so forth.
• 32:41
  It's, it's mostly polymers.
• 32:42
  Uh, uh, it's, it's not just polymer, but it's like material scientists.
• 32:45
  So it's People specialize in alloys or, or plastics Yeah.
• 32:48
  Or polymers or fibers or glass.
• 32:50
  We have a whole laboratory, you know, a big one out here where it's, because it's
• 32:54
  about the ability to take the, the, the waste and then process it in a way that
• 33:00
  it can be used for a certain application.
• 33:03
  Makes sense.
• 33:03
  Right.
• 33:04
  A very simple example of this would be if you collect, let's say potato chip bags.
• 33:09
  The color of the plastic at the end that you get is going to be green.
• 33:14
  It's gonna be green, because when you mix all the inks
• 33:16
  together, what comes out is green.
• 33:18
  It's sort of like when kids have paint and they mix it all together,
• 33:21
  like Play-Doh, it becomes brown.
• 33:22
  Yes.
• 33:22
  In the world of recycling, green is the brown.
• 33:24
  Right.
• 33:25
  And now you need to make that color something that someone actually
• 33:28
  wants to use in their product.
• 33:30
  So that's a very simple example of like the coloration, but it could be
• 33:34
  the how fast the plastic melts, how strong is it, how bendable is it?
• 33:38
  Those are more sophisticated characteristics.
• 33:41
  Oh, that's incredible.
• 33:42
  It must feel great to, to be able to run a company that has such
• 33:47
  benefits to the environment, right?
• 33:49
  That has such like, like, it must make you feel good, like to do this.
• 33:53
  Especially when you're, you're able to find something new and have a new partner
• 33:57
  to be like, oh, okay, this is great.
• 33:59
  Are you always, you and your team, are you guys always thinking of different
• 34:03
  companies that you can partner with based on like the material that they have and
• 34:07
  like, oh, if we had this material, like if we had this waste of like, if this
• 34:12
  running shoe, you know, goes to waste this, like what's in it will really
• 34:15
  help us make, you know, such and such.
• 34:17
  So I would say like, do you guys always think about that inverted.
• 34:21
  Okay.
• 34:21
  And what you said, right?
• 34:22
  Oh, okay.
• 34:22
  When we were at the beginning of the worm poop days, that's how we thought, yeah,
• 34:25
  we wanna make x What do we need right now?
• 34:28
  We think, what are the things that, uh, what are the waste problems?
• 34:31
  How do we set up a program on that waste problem?
• 34:34
  And then what can happen to it to make sure that it continues to flow?
• 34:39
  So the, the logic shifted in our early days, it was what do we wanna
• 34:43
  make and what do we need to, yeah.
• 34:45
  What are things that are creating waste issues and how can we
• 34:48
  collect them and make sure that something new is made from them?
• 34:50
  It shifted.
• 34:51
  Yeah.
• 34:51
  It looks in the surface identical, right?
• 34:53
  But it's what you know, which is, uh, what is the tail that
• 34:57
  wags the dog, if you will.
• 34:58
  Yeah.
• 34:58
  And in our world today, it's about there is this, whatever
• 35:01
  it is, there is a waste issue.
• 35:03
  How do we help bring solution to that issue using the
• 35:07
  power of business to do it?
• 35:08
  So, so you're at a point of like, how do we make the biggest impact to Yes.
• 35:12
  Waste systems, like, you know, in terms of recycling, let me ask you this.
• 35:17
  Yeah.
• 35:17
  And, and this is, and I don't know if you have an answer to this because
• 35:20
  it, you know, this would solve a lot, obviously we can't get it.
• 35:23
  But imagine if we could go out and, uh, you know, and like
• 35:28
  microplastics is probably the biggest problem in the ocean right now.
• 35:30
  Massive.
• 35:31
  It's like a soup, right?
• 35:32
  As you know.
• 35:32
  Yes.
• 35:33
  Um, if we could dredge, or not dredge, but like net, like a, a water column mm-hmm.
• 35:39
  And collect, you know, say tons and tons and tons of microplastics.
• 35:45
  Yeah.
• 35:45
  Is that something that you'd be like, okay, so here's the, you know, somebody's
• 35:48
  willing to do this if we can go out and not that it'll solve the waste problem.
• 35:53
  Yeah.
• 35:53
  But we could at least recoup some of it or have a, a reason to recoup.
• 35:58
  Yes.
• 35:58
  And mind you, it would probably be extremely expensive with boats
• 36:00
  and everything like that, but.
• 36:02
  How do we bring, make, like how do we take this out to make a, a valuable product?
• 36:06
  Can you make products from microplastics, I guess is the question?
• 36:09
  Yes.
• 36:09
  The answer is yes.
• 36:10
  Right.
• 36:10
  Okay.
• 36:10
  So not only have we been able to take microplastics and recycle them into
• 36:14
  new materials we've done with the world wildlife and we did a massive project in
• 36:18
  our Japanese division around ghost nets.
• 36:20
  Where collecting ghost nets Yes.
• 36:22
  And turning them into new products.
• 36:23
  We did, uh, uh, uh, a big thing with head and shoulders where we released a head and
• 36:28
  shoulders bottle made from beach plastic.
• 36:30
  We've done a lot, you know, of these sort of activities.
• 36:33
  Um, they can all be done.
• 36:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 36:36
  What's the white elephant in the room in this example is something like the soup
• 36:41
  of microplastics that is contaminated all of our, uh, aquatic systems.
• 36:46
  Right?
• 36:47
  Uh, there is not, uh, the money flow attached to cleaning that up is negligible
• 36:54
  relative to the size of the issue.
• 36:56
  Yes.
• 36:56
  It would be trillions of dollars to clean that up and because.
• 37:00
  No one knows the genesis of that microplastic.
• 37:03
  Like did it come from a chip bag or did it come from a soda bottle?
• 37:06
  Or where did it come from?
• 37:07
  The stakeholders to fund don't, don't feel that responsibility.
• 37:12
  Right.
• 37:13
  Um, you know, to do so, or don't feel that if they invest that much
• 37:17
  money into it, they're gonna somehow, you know, get some value out of it.
• 37:21
  That's enough to, you know, to, to blend to the size of the issue.
• 37:23
  Yeah.
• 37:24
  That's the big issue in, in, uh, in, in the whole ocean plastic space.
• 37:27
  Right.
• 37:28
  The other key issue is the impact is bigger the more we go upstream.
• 37:32
  So for example, it's the most expensive per se, ton of plastic to clean
• 37:37
  up, uh, uh, uh, the microplastics.
• 37:40
  Yes, it is slightly less expensive to clean up the floating
• 37:43
  fractions that may be at the top.
• 37:45
  You'll notice that a lot of the ocean cleanup projects that are out there and
• 37:47
  they're all doing phenomenal work, they're more thinking about the stuff at the top.
• 37:51
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:51
  Because you can get more kilos out per dollar.
• 37:55
  Right.
• 37:55
  Gotcha.
• 37:55
  Um.
• 37:57
  And 95% of ocean plastic is the soup.
• 38:01
  Below 5% or so is the stuff floating at the top, which we get
• 38:04
  all the visuals from the photos.
• 38:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:06
  So one step more upstream, which is like the work of our foundation is
• 38:10
  to not collect it in the ocean, but collect it in the canals and waterways,
• 38:13
  but before it ends up in the ocean.
• 38:15
  Yeah.
• 38:16
  And then of course that's, that's even more affordable.
• 38:18
  'cause you know, it's easier to do that where you have, like in
• 38:20
  Thailand, what we do in Bangkok is I have a lot of like river traps.
• 38:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:24
  Right?
• 38:24
  Uh, that are somewhat connected to land and then into the river that skim it off.
• 38:28
  We can very easily drive a vehicle, empty it out versus
• 38:31
  doing all that through boats.
• 38:32
  Yeah.
• 38:33
  Yeah.
• 38:33
  And then, and so what you'll notice, and then as you go further upstream.
• 38:36
  It's even more cost effective to, you know, to collect it
• 38:39
  before it ends up in the river.
• 38:41
  Of course.
• 38:41
  And the object, uh, and that's not just on the collection cost, but also
• 38:45
  on the val of, of the cost you have to spend to process versus what, um,
• 38:50
  what you can sell it for at the end.
• 38:52
  Because the, to process, let's say the, the most hardest stuff,
• 38:56
  like the true microplastic soup is exceptionally expensive.
• 38:58
  'cause it's filled with salt and algae and all this stuff, and
• 39:02
  the output is very low grade.
• 39:05
  Right?
• 39:06
  Right.
• 39:06
  So, 'cause remember the costs are collection and processing minus value.
• 39:10
  Yeah.
• 39:10
  And that equation is the worst for microplastics.
• 39:13
  That's it.
• 39:13
  It's a multi-trillion dollar issue.
• 39:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 39:15
  Now.
• 39:17
  You know, I think my theory on this, by the way, uh, is
• 39:20
  that in the end it'll be okay.
• 39:23
  Mm-hmm.
• 39:23
  All of this, because the world is phenomenal at inventing
• 39:26
  digestive systems for everything.
• 39:29
  Now, I don't know if you know the story of coal, but that's like
• 39:30
  a great example of this, right.
• 39:32
  You know, um, what was it like trees emerged onto, onto the
• 39:35
  earth, but there was no fungus or bacteria or, uh, digestive systems
• 39:40
  to digest the trees when they died.
• 39:42
  So what happened?
• 39:43
  The trees died and just stayed on land.
• 39:45
  Yeah.
• 39:45
  Enough of these piled on top of each other and pressurized, and
• 39:48
  that's how coal got created.
• 39:50
  Right.
• 39:50
  But coal was only created for about a 50 to a hundred million year span,
• 39:54
  because after about 50 to a hundred million years, the nature evolved
• 39:58
  its digestive system for trees.
• 40:01
  And now no tree produces coal because it will rot and Yeah.
• 40:04
  Uh, decompose before ever.
• 40:07
  It has an opportunity to be pressurized into, into coal.
• 40:10
  And I think.
• 40:11
  Over that same timeframe, the earth will clean itself up.
• 40:14
  It will naturally evolve digestive systems as we see certain bacteria
• 40:17
  eating plastics and so on.
• 40:19
  It'll just take a hundred million years.
• 40:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 40:21
  And a huge amount of damage will have been produced, you know, uh, uh, you
• 40:26
  know, in that, in that timeframe.
• 40:28
  I think that's why the challenge is on humanity.
• 40:30
  Right.
• 40:30
  I think for us, I think our key challenge is can we rise above sort of animalistic,
• 40:37
  you know, tendencies to curb consumption?
• 40:41
  'cause that's very basic, animalistic, you know, sort of tendency.
• 40:45
  Yeah.
• 40:45
  And can we clean up our own mess and not rely on some other system to clean it up?
• 40:51
  And let's note that neither of those are animalistic tendencies, right?
• 40:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 40:55
  When an animal poops in the forest, it's not gonna bother cleaning it up.
• 40:58
  No.
• 40:58
  You know?
• 40:59
  No.
• 40:59
  Uh, if it, if it dies in the forest, it's not gonna clean up the body.
• 41:02
  Right.
• 41:03
  Right.
• 41:03
  Another one, you know, and it cannot control its appetite.
• 41:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 41:08
  Yeah.
• 41:09
  That's so cool.
• 41:10
  I, I, I think it's, uh, you know, interesting, like you've already
• 41:12
  talking about prevention of getting pla like plastic into the ocean.
• 41:17
  Uh, you know, you talk about TerraCycle already has
• 41:19
  systems, uh, was it in Bangkok?
• 41:21
  Is that what you mentioned?
• 41:22
  Yes.
• 41:22
  Yeah, yeah.
• 41:22
  In Bangkok.
• 41:23
  Now, obviously we can't have systems everywhere.
• 41:25
  Yeah.
• 41:25
  It's, it's difficult 'cause it's, it's a huge investment.
• 41:27
  So did you just, like, does TerraCycle choose based on where the investment's
• 41:32
  willing to be made at this point?
• 41:34
  Yeah.
• 41:34
  Is that, is that, I mean, simple, simple.
• 41:36
  Uh, I think of two parts where we react and where we invest.
• 41:39
  Right?
• 41:39
  Right.
• 41:39
  So the answer, why are we in Thailand doing that work?
• 41:43
  Because that's where we got investment to do it, right.
• 41:45
  If the, if the capital that emerged said to us, we care about
• 41:49
  Indonesia, then we'd be there.
• 41:51
  Yeah, yeah.
• 41:52
  Right.
• 41:53
  We really, because the problem is the same, doesn't matter, you know, it's
• 41:56
  a, it's a floating piece of garbage.
• 41:59
  One is the same as the other, the negative externalities.
• 42:01
  But then the other part is where we choose to invest and
• 42:04
  our biggest investment to date.
• 42:05
  And we've put about, you know, uh, $50 million into this.
• 42:08
  So for our size, that's a huge number has been in how do we bring out reuse?
• 42:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 42:13
  Because recycling is a solution to the symptom of waste, but it's not
• 42:18
  solving waste at the root cause.
• 42:19
  It is not eliminating the idea of waste.
• 42:22
  And if you think about it, right, like back before the 1950s when we cobbled our
• 42:26
  shoes and darned our socks and mended our clothing and all this stuff, we also, you
• 42:31
  know, our soda was in reusable bottles.
• 42:33
  Our motor oil was in reusable bottles.
• 42:35
  Um, every, you know, like everything was much more repair, reuse based.
• 42:39
  And we believe that is what we need to return to.
• 42:42
  Yeah.
• 42:42
  We, we can only do so though by matching the convenience and
• 42:47
  affordability of disposability or.
• 42:51
  It will always be something we aspire to, but never do.
• 42:54
  You know?
• 42:54
  Yeah.
• 42:54
  We read the article about it, we listen to the podcast about it.
• 42:57
  We're like, how cool is that?
• 42:59
  But then we still shop normally when we're at our local Walmart, you know?
• 43:02
  Right, right.
• 43:02
  Um, and that's what we're really focused on.
• 43:04
  And for us, you know, reuse has, it's been challenging.
• 43:07
  You know, we ran pilots in, uh, uh, Canada, the us, uh, uk, Japan, France,
• 43:12
  with the world's biggest retailers, biggest brands, and it really struggled.
• 43:16
  But in France, it's taken off.
• 43:17
  You know, today you can go into almost any major French supermarket nationally.
• 43:22
  400 different products are available to you in fully reusable packaging
• 43:25
  through our system, like your Nutella or your whatever, shampoo
• 43:29
  or, uh, you know, whatever it may be.
• 43:31
  And you buy it, you pay a deposit.
• 43:33
  When you're done, you drop it off, it gets cleaned, filled back
• 43:36
  up, and sold to someone else.
• 43:38
  Why do you think it worked in France, but not say in Canada?
• 43:43
  I, I can tell you crystal clear.
• 43:45
  Regulation.
• 43:46
  Regulation.
• 43:47
  Regulation.
• 43:48
  Yeah.
• 43:49
  In France there's the right regulatory environment.
• 43:51
  And the good news is Western Europe, UK Yeah.
• 43:54
  Are, uh, are, are, are enabling that same regulatory environment.
• 43:57
  Gotcha.
• 43:57
  Uh, so we're gonna see the expansion go in that region.
• 43:59
  And what the regs are doing is enabling carrots and sticks.
• 44:02
  The, the, the stick is, they are mandating it in 2027.
• 44:05
  French supermarkets must dedicate five to 10% of their floor
• 44:09
  space to reusable offerings.
• 44:11
  Okay.
• 44:11
  Which is huge.
• 44:12
  Yeah.
• 44:12
  But they're also giving carrots right now, the, uh, EPR or extended producer
• 44:17
  responsibility assistance, that's it.
• 44:18
  The packaging taxes on packaging that's produced has to dedicate 5% of its, uh,
• 44:23
  revenue, which is about a hundred million dollars, uh, in funding to subsidize
• 44:27
  reuse systems until they get bigger.
• 44:29
  Right.
• 44:30
  And that is the role of regs because in the end there are, I, I sort of view two
• 44:35
  types of sustainability activities that a, that a, that an organization can do.
• 44:40
  Right.
• 44:40
  Or anyone, probably even an individual.
• 44:42
  There is the ones that just save us money.
• 44:44
  Um, Hey, turn off your light bulbs when you leave your home.
• 44:47
  Yes, yes.
• 44:47
  Um, put your air conditioning thermostat down when there's no one there.
• 44:51
  Um, drive an electric car and don't pay for petrol, you know, or gas.
• 44:55
  Right.
• 44:55
  Those things are, are cost savings that are synonymous with sustainability.
• 45:00
  'cause you're just being smarter with resources.
• 45:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 45:03
  Everyone should do that.
• 45:05
  Oh my God.
• 45:06
  Like, but that's not true sustainability.
• 45:08
  That's just being not, uh, you know, uh, like, like not being
• 45:11
  wasteful, you know what I mean?
• 45:12
  Yeah.
• 45:13
  Like just using resources, uh, without wasting them.
• 45:16
  Yeah.
• 45:16
  The real sustainability questions, I think are the ones that, uh, require
• 45:21
  sacrifice, that require us to stop doing something we like to do, you know?
• 45:26
  Yes.
• 45:26
  Like, um, let's not eat animal protein.
• 45:29
  Yes.
• 45:29
  Let's not eat big bodies.
• 45:31
  Thinking of aquatic examples.
• 45:32
  Let's not eat, uh, endangered species.
• 45:34
  Mm-hmm.
• 45:34
  Let's not eat big bodied fish that are gonna go extinct.
• 45:37
  Uh, yeah.
• 45:38
  Let's, you know what I mean?
• 45:39
  Those are sacrifices.
• 45:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 45:41
  And the sacrifice.
• 45:43
  Is where regulation needs to come.
• 45:45
  Yeah.
• 45:46
  Because that's the only way at scale things will change.
• 45:50
  You're always gonna find the person who, you know, like does
• 45:53
  it or organization who leans in.
• 45:54
  But to really do it at scale, that's regulation.
• 45:58
  And we heard from so many retailers and brands, you know, in the markets we
• 46:03
  tested that did not proceed, uh, that hey, um, you know, we know it works.
• 46:09
  Consumers, there's no issue.
• 46:11
  But we don't wanna take on the extra work of reuse until it's, uh, mandated
• 46:16
  because it is extra work, even in the simplest of models like our loop model,
• 46:20
  because instead of getting your packaging brand new from a packaging manufacturer,
• 46:25
  it's coming in having been used.
• 46:27
  So you have to spend a little more effort designing it mm-hmm.
• 46:29
  So that it, it can come back and not break.
• 46:32
  And you have to put in a little bit of extra effort into, um.
• 46:37
  Uh, doing health and safety checks on it when it, you know, comes in.
• 46:40
  Right.
• 46:41
  And we're doing and reuse baby food, for example.
• 46:43
  So, and you don't know where that baby food jar went when it
• 46:46
  went out there into the universe.
• 46:47
  So you have to have some muscle.
• 46:49
  Yeah.
• 46:49
  Which is by definition, extra effort to make sure that package doesn't have micro
• 46:54
  s on it and has been safely cleaned.
• 46:56
  Right.
• 46:56
  And that extra effort is the sacrifice, if you will.
• 47:01
  And that's where regulation is really valued.
• 47:04
  And I, I really highlight this 'cause you know, the world is going into a very
• 47:07
  aggressive deregulation, uh, uh, moment.
• 47:11
  This, this is really interesting, especially like the loop model.
• 47:14
  I remember when Loop came out, didn't it have.
• 47:17
  Was, and, and, uh, maybe I'm confusing this, but wasn't it, they, they almost
• 47:21
  had a model where they can send it to your home specific products in a bottle, right?
• 47:24
  Is that the same?
• 47:25
  Well, type of, that's the same company, right?
• 47:27
  It might be.
• 47:28
  So just to be clear, right.
• 47:29
  So when we first started, this was 2019, uh, yeah.
• 47:32
  What we did is we went to all the major brands and said, Hey, let's you know,
• 47:35
  please put your packaging, so like Doss to Tide laundry detergent, like
• 47:39
  we got everybody, which was phenomenal.
• 47:40
  Yeah.
• 47:40
  Yeah.
• 47:40
  I remember that.
• 47:41
  Then, then we went to the retailers like Loblaw in Canada, Walmart in the US Yes.
• 47:45
  And all the other likes.
• 47:46
  And they said to us, before we put this on shelf, we need to
• 47:49
  know that our consumers like it.
• 47:51
  So we told them, look, we'll launch it as an e-commerce model.
• 47:53
  We'll brand it Loblaw in Canada or Walmart in the US or Tesco
• 47:57
  in the uk, whatever, and let's prove that your consumers like it.
• 48:00
  Yeah.
• 48:01
  And that, so we started as an online model to learn it worked.
• 48:04
  Then we said to everyone, let's now move in store.
• 48:07
  Right.
• 48:07
  'cause we don't wanna be the retailer.
• 48:08
  So we shut down the online models everywhere.
• 48:10
  We moved to in-store pilots, like, you know, a dozen stores
• 48:13
  here, a dozen stores there.
• 48:15
  Yeah.
• 48:15
  And honestly, everywhere it worked.
• 48:18
  But then when we pushed to scale and said, look guys, can we now go from a dozen
• 48:21
  stores to like hundreds and hundreds?
• 48:24
  Yeah.
• 48:24
  That's where really, you know, like the wheat and chaff separated and everywhere.
• 48:29
  But France, they said we're happy to keep doing pilots until regulations
• 48:33
  come, but they're not here today.
• 48:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 48:36
  And in France, 'cause the regs are there, it exploded.
• 48:40
  So once they're mandated to do it, they'll do it.
• 48:42
  Yeah.
• 48:43
  But if they're not mandated to do it, like why even if, if they're not mandated
• 48:47
  to, what's the harm in doing it for them?
• 48:49
  It's easy.
• 48:50
  Um, every organization, and there's nothing wrong with this.
• 48:55
  So what we teach our team, 'cause you will, it'll feel wrong when I say it,
• 48:58
  but the number one lesson we teach, you know, folks who join TerraCycle is learn
• 49:02
  how the chess pieces on the chess board move and don't just understand how they
• 49:06
  move, empathize with how they move.
• 49:09
  Like a funny story is my, uh, uh, 5-year-old, he likes playing chess, but
• 49:12
  he's offended by how the pond moves.
• 49:15
  He doesn't get, why does it only attack left to right?
• 49:18
  Why does it only move one step forward Except the first move?
• 49:21
  He goes, that's so screwed up.
• 49:22
  And he's really upset about that, but because of that, he never wins.
• 49:26
  Right?
• 49:26
  Right.
• 49:27
  If he not only accepted that it moves in a certain way, but empathized, you know,
• 49:31
  really like was on the same page that this is awesome how it moves, then he could
• 49:36
  have a really good chance of winning.
• 49:38
  Yeah.
• 49:38
  And so how do corporates move?
• 49:40
  It's a simple thing that starts, that is the bounding movement.
• 49:43
  The bounding movement is make the most amount of money with
• 49:45
  the least amount of effort.
• 49:47
  Now you see how that sounds wrong, by the way.
• 49:48
  Right.
• 49:49
  The amount of effort.
• 49:49
  Yeah, I get it though.
• 49:50
  But I get it.
• 49:51
  It's the way, it's the way water flows.
• 49:52
  It flows in that direction.
• 49:53
  Right.
• 49:54
  And so why is reuse resisted is because a, a system where you have to design and
• 50:01
  deal with the package coming back is by definition always some extra work cost.
• 50:08
  Versus a system that's linear and you never have to worry
• 50:11
  about the thing coming back.
• 50:14
  And no matter how much you simplify it, it will never be as easy as a linear system.
• 50:21
  Right, right, right.
• 50:22
  Wow.
• 50:22
  It just cannot, I mean, even in places by the way, where like reuse has been
• 50:26
  so big, like beer kegs, you know what the biggest trend in beer kegs are now?
• 50:30
  Single.
• 50:30
  Use beer kegs.
• 50:32
  Single use beer kegs.
• 50:34
  Oh yeah.
• 50:34
  It's massive.
• 50:35
  Massive.
• 50:36
  When you get a chance, look it up online.
• 50:37
  But basically, you know, beer kegs are highly returnable, right?
• 50:39
  Yeah, yeah.
• 50:39
  I mean, that's what you think.
• 50:41
  But a lot of companies figured out that that's a hassle for the bars.
• 50:44
  So they make 'em single use and they're just, they, they're, they look like
• 50:48
  a beer keg, but they're like plastic, whatever, and they just chuck 'em
• 50:51
  in the dumpster when they're done.
• 50:52
  And why are they popular?
• 50:53
  They're easier.
• 50:54
  They're easier.
• 50:55
  It's just convenience.
• 50:56
  Yeah.
• 50:56
  Yeah.
• 50:57
  So when, when you look at trying to disrupt the market, because you guys
• 51:02
  are disrupting the market in terms of like how people think of waste.
• 51:06
  It requires, sometimes it requires behavior change.
• 51:09
  Like even my example of our bond, it requires me to collect these, these
• 51:14
  items and then bring them into, to, uh, you know, in this case it's, it's, um,
• 51:20
  uh, oh, what's the name of the place?
• 51:22
  Uh, the, the, the, it's not Purolator.
• 51:26
  It's, um, no, like a, like a shipping UUPS or something.
• 51:30
  Ups.
• 51:30
  Yeah.
• 51:30
  Yeah.
• 51:30
  And it, you know, requires me to just kind of go outta my way, which is like,
• 51:33
  to be honest, it's not that big of a deal, but it's a change of behavior
• 51:36
  that a lot of people probably Yes.
• 51:37
  Wouldn't, it's an extra want to do, right?
• 51:39
  Yeah.
• 51:39
  So how does TerraCycle combat that, like a behavior change?
• 51:43
  That's an excellent question.
• 51:44
  So the way we do it is, is it's three, three very clear phases.
• 51:49
  The first is the most unintuitive.
• 51:50
  We want you to change your behavior as least little as possible.
• 51:53
  Okay.
• 51:54
  Like in Loop for example, we were just talking about our, our uh,
• 51:57
  internal sort of moniker, right?
• 52:00
  Is we need reuse to feel like disposability in every way.
• 52:03
  Yeah.
• 52:03
  One simple example of that is in our return bins, when you return the
• 52:06
  reusable packages, you can return them and put 'em in one at a time.
• 52:10
  You certainly can, but we also give you a reusable garbage bag that you can
• 52:13
  just throw 'em all into and drop it off like a bag of garbage and then we will
• 52:16
  check in everything inside for you.
• 52:18
  So for the first part of behavior changes, don't change the behavior.
• 52:21
  'cause it's hard, right?
• 52:23
  It is hard.
• 52:24
  Yes.
• 52:24
  So make it as little as possible then, and the, and the answer
• 52:28
  to that is make it feel as much like what you do today, right?
• 52:31
  Right.
• 52:32
  Then it's about, um, so once you've done that and made it convenient, as convenient
• 52:36
  as absolutely possible, then the other two things you can add on that will get you
• 52:40
  to do something greater than no behavior change is incentive and excitement.
• 52:45
  And excitement.
• 52:46
  You can view as a type of incentive, but there's sort of
• 52:47
  three forms of incentive, right?
• 52:49
  That get you going One.
• 52:51
  Is the baseline, which is, it's better.
• 52:53
  You're doing something noble.
• 52:55
  You're helping, you're, you're, you know, it's like volunteering somewhere.
• 52:58
  It's doing good, right?
• 52:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 53:00
  And that is an incentive that really matters, interestingly, more to women
• 53:03
  than men, and especially more to women that care about other life forms
• 53:07
  in the order of plants, pets, and then, uh, interesting children ing.
• 53:10
  Yep.
• 53:10
  Interesting.
• 53:11
  Um, that's why the worst for the, uh, planet demographically
• 53:14
  speaking are single men.
• 53:15
  Right?
• 53:15
  Right.
• 53:16
  Um, so, you know, both of us were that at some point or are, you know.
• 53:19
  Yes.
• 53:20
  Um, then the other form of incentive, after doing the right thing, which is a
• 53:24
  powerful one, mine, uh, very much Yeah.
• 53:26
  Is economic incentive.
• 53:28
  Maybe I give you, so in the, in the reuse model, it's, you
• 53:31
  get a deposit back, right?
• 53:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 53:32
  You get money back.
• 53:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 53:34
  And what's cool is that, for example, in France, when you get that money
• 53:36
  back, the product is cheaper than the disposable version, right?
• 53:41
  Yeah.
• 53:41
  Yeah.
• 53:41
  So economic and economic incentive could be derivatives, it could
• 53:44
  be like coupons on something.
• 53:45
  It could be other things, but some form of economic incentive.
• 53:48
  And then the third incentive, which is unintuitive, is.
• 53:50
  Happiness, right?
• 53:51
  Happiness is different than doing the right thing.
• 53:53
  So what I mean by this is we did a study where we put in, uh, busy train
• 53:58
  stations in, uh, New York, uh, like Grand Central Station, these sort
• 54:02
  of places, recycling bins and trash bins beside each other, well labeled.
• 54:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 54:07
  And we saw how many people put something obviously recyclable,
• 54:10
  like a soda bottle in the right bin, and there's no extra hassle.
• 54:13
  They're literally beside each other.
• 54:15
  50% didn't do it correctly.
• 54:18
  Okay.
• 54:18
  So then we changed something, just happiness.
• 54:21
  We put a little sound detector into the recycling bin so that when you put
• 54:25
  something in the bin, it would play you back a sound effect, like an infinite
• 54:28
  drop or an an applause or whatever.
• 54:31
  Some fun.
• 54:32
  It went to 95%.
• 54:33
  Correct?
• 54:34
  Yeah.
• 54:34
  And we even notice people going out of their way to pick up a bottle that wasn't
• 54:37
  theirs, to put it in the bin to get, just to hear the sound, sound, happiness.
• 54:41
  And I wanna say happiness is different than, um, than doing the right thing.
• 54:46
  Those are two different things, right?
• 54:47
  Yeah.
• 54:48
  Because like the doing the right thing sometimes is harder.
• 54:51
  Yeah.
• 54:51
  We, we almost think of it as harder.
• 54:53
  Yeah.
• 54:53
  Like I have to eat better, to be healthier, but that's
• 54:57
  sometimes harder than just eating.
• 54:59
  Like, you know, the, the stuff that's bad for me eat, like,
• 55:01
  I think it tastes better.
• 55:02
  Yeah.
• 55:02
  You know what I mean?
• 55:02
  Yeah.
• 55:03
  And it's almost like, uh, like, like doing the noble thing is different
• 55:06
  than just smiling, you know?
• 55:07
  And it's those three things.
• 55:08
  Like, you know, you give economic benefit, you give happiness and you
• 55:12
  give, um, you know, this, you know, doing, doing the right noble thing.
• 55:17
  That's really, really interesting.
• 55:18
  It's, it is interesting.
• 55:19
  I, uh, my daughter's going to University of Guelph.
• 55:21
  It's her first year.
• 55:22
  Yeah.
• 55:22
  This year.
• 55:22
  We're taking her, uh, in two days.
• 55:25
  Nice.
• 55:25
  We went to visit the campus.
• 55:26
  Yeah.
• 55:26
  And, uh, at the campus, they actually had this device.
• 55:30
  So you have the, your bins, there's like four different bins.
• 55:33
  And then they had a TV with a camera.
• 55:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 55:35
  And you, all you had to do was put your item that you want to throw
• 55:39
  out in front of the camera and it would tell you what bin it would go.
• 55:41
  Oh, thats cool.
• 55:42
  That's cool.
• 55:42
  Right?
• 55:43
  That's really cool.
• 55:43
  Like you think, how come we don't have that anywhere else?
• 55:45
  Like, like why is this not all over the place?
• 55:48
  It costs money.
• 55:49
  It costs money, but such an interesting way Yeah.
• 55:51
  Of disposal.
• 55:53
  But I really like the sound because everybody loves sound.
• 55:56
  It could be music, it could be anything, anything.
• 55:57
  And once you get in the right bin and you can hit that right sound,
• 56:01
  you're almost gamifying in a way that's a big part of happiness.
• 56:04
  We do a lot of gamified collection bins.
• 56:06
  We've done these at like the Super Bowl and other places where like,
• 56:09
  imagine like an arcade room, but the machines, the, the thing you play with
• 56:14
  is a used aluminum can or used PET bottle and that is your token to play.
• 56:20
  Like that is what you play with.
• 56:21
  That's so, yeah.
• 56:22
  Yeah, yeah.
• 56:23
  Let me ask you this.
• 56:24
  Yeah.
• 56:24
  You know, you talk about the, the, the first thing was make it easy, like make it
• 56:27
  like, so it's like your regular routine.
• 56:29
  So normally every Monday I put out my garbage or recycling depending on the
• 56:33
  day, uh, at the, at the edge of my curb.
• 56:36
  Has there been a model for Loop to.
• 56:39
  Go.
• 56:39
  I know it's more expensive.
• 56:41
  Yeah.
• 56:41
  But to go and, and have a service to Well pick that up.
• 56:45
  Yeah.
• 56:45
  It's a great question.
• 56:46
  So I'll uh, I'll answer it this way.
• 56:48
  TerraCycle has a model like that.
• 56:50
  We call it TerraCycle Home.
• 56:51
  Yeah.
• 56:52
  In the us I just know that number.
• 56:54
  It's, it's available to 8% of the public today.
• 56:56
  'cause we set up a geography at a time.
• 56:58
  Yeah.
• 56:58
  But basically it's curbside and it actually gets cheaper.
• 57:01
  Uh oh, interesting.
• 57:03
  So, and that's be, but we have to get the density of enough people doing it.
• 57:06
  That's why I just can't launch it.
• 57:07
  National.
• 57:07
  We have to go like zip code by zip code by zip code, which makes sense.
• 57:10
  Like pilot, but basic.
• 57:11
  Yeah.
• 57:11
  You get these, um, like zero waste bags.
• 57:14
  You fill it up with a certain waste stream and then you put it on the
• 57:16
  curb and it gets picked up by, uh, a local waste management company
• 57:19
  and then it comes, uh, comes to us.
• 57:21
  So we are certainly doing that on the recycling side.
• 57:23
  Yeah.
• 57:23
  But again, it's limited to where, where it's available.
• 57:26
  You can go to our website and, and see.
• 57:27
  But on the reuse side, 'cause that was your question there.
• 57:30
  What we found is if we can get to 10% of the public using a loop type service,
• 57:35
  we can enable, uh, curbside pickup.
• 57:38
  And then becomes all about it is all about buying into the system and
• 57:40
  getting people to buy into the system.
• 57:41
  Yes.
• 57:42
  Because if you get enough people doing it, you can run a route.
• 57:44
  Yeah.
• 57:45
  Of course.
• 57:45
  That, uh, becomes economically efficient.
• 57:47
  Now you, you've, like, TerraCycle has created like an opportunity, uh, not
• 57:52
  only from a, you know, selling new products and, and collecting waste.
• 57:56
  So you're having that opportunity of reducing waste and making it to another
• 58:00
  product and selling it and making you, I assume you guys make money on
• 58:03
  the products that you sell mm-hmm.
• 58:05
  In the various, kind of, in the various kind of ways.
• 58:07
  And you're, and you're a profitable company.
• 58:09
  Um, it seems like there's a lot of opportunities in this space in the
• 58:14
  waste and to, to creation to this space.
• 58:17
  Like, for instance, having a, a, a delivery service or pickup service, like
• 58:22
  in a different country or like a company saying, Hey, let's partner and we'll
• 58:27
  do here in Canada, you know, a system where we're gonna try and get a, like a
• 58:31
  region and we'll do the pickup and then we'll send it to you and, you know, work
• 58:34
  something out with that kind of way.
• 58:36
  Yeah.
• 58:36
  Is, is this like an opportunity where it can create jobs, create,
• 58:41
  you know, on, you know, a new set?
• 58:42
  Like, like Yes.
• 58:43
  Launch a new set of entrepreneurs and businesses?
• 58:45
  Yeah.
• 58:46
  I guess the question is, if it is, why haven't people taken advantage of that?
• 58:51
  Because other than yourself of course.
• 58:53
  No, no.
• 58:54
  It's what we talked about at the top.
• 58:56
  You're absolutely right about all of it.
• 58:57
  Yeah.
• 58:57
  It's very blue ocean it, and it's also very fulfilling to solve.
• 59:01
  Right, right.
• 59:02
  Uh, you said, you know, you mentioned that earlier, it's like, it's great to
• 59:05
  work at a purpose-driven company, right?
• 59:06
  Yeah, for sure.
• 59:07
  It's because waste is the opposite of sexy.
• 59:10
  Yeah.
• 59:11
  It is super unattractive.
• 59:12
  It is not just shitty, smelly, nasty, metaphorically.
• 59:15
  It is in the flesh, you know?
• 59:17
  Yeah, yeah.
• 59:17
  Um, I always make a funny joke about this.
• 59:19
  So imagine if you took the human body and then as a metaphor to business.
• 59:25
  What I mean by that is our immune system would be the healthcare business, right.
• 59:29
  Our brain would be the IT business.
• 59:31
  Right?
• 59:32
  Right.
• 59:32
  You know what I mean?
• 59:32
  Like, and you can put a metaphor, right?
• 59:34
  Yeah.
• 59:34
  What would be the garbage business?
• 59:36
  Your butt.
• 59:37
  Yeah.
• 59:38
  The thing that is, you know, the, the, the least attractive part of the whole body.
• 59:43
  Yeah.
• 59:43
  Right.
• 59:44
  But, but again, like, you know, it's, it's kind of funny you mentioned it
• 59:47
  that way 'cause I, I see like from a, a psychological point of view, people are
• 59:50
  like, well, hold on a second, I don't want deal with that crap because literally
• 59:54
  that's what we're talking about here.
• 59:55
  However, if it can reduce the amount of waste Yeah.
• 59:59
  By a certain amount.
• 1:00:00
  Even if you measure it by that amount.
• 1:00:02
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:02
  Uh, gamify it for your own company.
• 1:00:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:00:04
  To say like, Hey, we've reduced amount, just like a lot of plastic
• 1:00:06
  pollution companies, like Four Oceans will say we've picked up.
• 1:00:09
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:09
  You know, this amount of Absolutely.
• 1:00:11
  Yeah.
• 1:00:12
  It seems like they take off pretty well and people like it.
• 1:00:14
  They like seeing the videos, they like seeing how they do things are made.
• 1:00:18
  I would say Alex of Four Ocean.
• 1:00:20
  I mean these guys, it's a very small community or boy on Yeah,
• 1:00:22
  we interviewed him last year.
• 1:00:23
  He's a great guy.
• 1:00:24
  Yeah, he's great.
• 1:00:24
  These guys are awesome.
• 1:00:26
  And, and they were able to hit like a nerve on that, like
• 1:00:30
  really brilliantly, you know?
• 1:00:31
  Yes.
• 1:00:31
  I think Alice did it really well with the bracelets, you know, at Four Oceans.
• 1:00:34
  Yeah.
• 1:00:35
  I think Boyan did it incredibly well with the ocean cleanup project.
• 1:00:38
  Right.
• 1:00:38
  And the, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and all that.
• 1:00:41
  Um, but for every one of them or me, there is like a thousand
• 1:00:46
  guys who try it.com Right.
• 1:00:49
  For the reason I said.
• 1:00:51
  Right.
• 1:00:51
  Because yes, you're seeing the polished success story.
• 1:00:56
  Yeah.
• 1:00:56
  But going out and doing the cleanups Alex does is treacherous.
• 1:00:59
  Yes.
• 1:01:00
  You know, it is, uh, yes, it shows up nice in a marketing video, but
• 1:01:03
  it is not something the average person wants to sign up for.
• 1:01:07
  That's true.
• 1:01:08
  True.
• 1:01:08
  It reaps.
• 1:01:09
  It's true.
• 1:01:09
  It's gross.
• 1:01:10
  It's, yeah.
• 1:01:10
  And that's the thing on waste is it is.
• 1:01:14
  You know, it is that, and that's why it is generally
• 1:01:17
  unappealing to an average person.
• 1:01:18
  You know, I give this, um, standing lecture at NYU every year.
• 1:01:21
  I've been doing that for 20 years to the inbound class at Stern.
• 1:01:23
  And it's just 'cause it's a big audience size.
• 1:01:25
  Right?
• 1:01:25
  Yeah, for sure.
• 1:01:25
  That's why I mention it here.
• 1:01:26
  And the point is, I asked this big group of kids who here aspires at all
• 1:01:32
  to even explore a career in waste.
• 1:01:34
  And honestly, in 20 years, not one hand has ever gone up, but you'd
• 1:01:38
  ask them, how many of you guys wanna be in the entertainment industry?
• 1:01:41
  Yeah.
• 1:01:41
  Or some other, significantly more sexy industry.
• 1:01:44
  It's like you get meaningful participation Of course.
• 1:01:46
  And that's an opportunity to anyone hearing this, it's that like you can
• 1:01:51
  really, you know, do something where there's not a lot of competition.
• 1:01:54
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:01:54
  Uh, it's very meaningful.
• 1:01:56
  Um, uh, you know, and there's not a lot of people playing in it, and it's a shame.
• 1:02:00
  I mean, it's why, for example, we set up our offices the way we do.
• 1:02:03
  If you Google TerraCycle offices, you'll see like it's really bright
• 1:02:06
  or we're majority female as a, as an organization of our five,
• 1:02:09
  500 team members, all this stuff.
• 1:02:10
  It doesn't feel like a garbage company because we wanna show
• 1:02:13
  that it can be exciting, it can be something that is totally unexpected.
• 1:02:18
  Yeah.
• 1:02:19
  And sometimes you gotta get smelly.
• 1:02:20
  Sometimes you gotta get dirty when you like Yeah, you do, but no one
• 1:02:23
  likes an it an easy thing to clean up.
• 1:02:24
  Right, right, right.
• 1:02:25
  It's just not something that anyone looks forward to.
• 1:02:28
  No, no, but it's also, you can you, with the results, like even that TerraCycle
• 1:02:33
  has done, and you guys have done it over 25 years, and I'm sure, you know, you've
• 1:02:37
  had your own, you know, set of problems and going up and down in terms of, of
• 1:02:40
  growing a company in, in today's world.
• 1:02:43
  Uh, but you've, you've been able to accomplish a, a hell of a lot,
• 1:02:46
  including employing for over 500 people in your companies, uh, worldwide.
• 1:02:50
  Which, which I, I, I highly, you know, uh, respect and, and, and give you
• 1:02:55
  props for, because that's something that, you know, you don't see every day.
• 1:02:58
  But also with the purpose of reducing waste and making it to something else.
• 1:03:02
  Because there are a lot of people who will say, well, we shouldn't be, um, you
• 1:03:06
  know, we shouldn't be recycling things.
• 1:03:08
  We should be reducing our.
• 1:03:09
  They're right.
• 1:03:10
  And they're right.
• 1:03:11
  They're right.
• 1:03:11
  Yeah.
• 1:03:12
  But what do you do with the waste that's around instead of
• 1:03:14
  just putting it into a landfill?
• 1:03:15
  You gotta do something with it.
• 1:03:16
  Something That's right.
• 1:03:17
  And if you can do something with it that's purposeful, then you can
• 1:03:20
  do a really good job in doing that.
• 1:03:22
  Um, you know, Tom, this has been great.
• 1:03:23
  Uh, we could talk for, for hours.
• 1:03:25
  Yeah.
• 1:03:26
  Last question I wanted to, to ask and, and please take your time in answering it.
• 1:03:30
  You have the, the website's.
• 1:03:31
  Great.
• 1:03:31
  I'm gonna, I'm gonna have people, you know, to, to look at the, the website.
• 1:03:35
  How would you suggest for the people listening to this, I have
• 1:03:38
  a lot of people who want to do something for the environment.
• 1:03:40
  Yes.
• 1:03:40
  Yes.
• 1:03:40
  And what would you suggest how they can get involved with TerraCycle
• 1:03:45
  and some of the programs with TerraCycle to, to Absolutely.
• 1:03:47
  To minimize their, their behavior change.
• 1:03:49
  Yeah.
• 1:03:49
  No.
• 1:03:50
  Well, thank you.
• 1:03:50
  So, so the uh, uh, the easiest thing to do is go to the website terracycle.com.
• 1:03:55
  Yeah.
• 1:03:56
  When you get there, you're gonna see in the recycling areas, 'cause
• 1:03:59
  that's where you can really work with us anywhere in the world.
• 1:04:02
  Uh, again, reuses right now, France only recycling is where you can
• 1:04:05
  really work with us anywhere.
• 1:04:06
  You're listening to this.
• 1:04:08
  First check out the free programs.
• 1:04:11
  Okay.
• 1:04:11
  These are programs like your Arbon program that you mentioned?
• 1:04:14
  Yeah.
• 1:04:14
  Where there's no cost.
• 1:04:15
  Yeah.
• 1:04:15
  We pick up the waste, we process it.
• 1:04:17
  That's because sponsors are paying for it.
• 1:04:20
  Gotcha.
• 1:04:20
  And in many cases it raises money for schools or charities of your choice, you
• 1:04:23
  know, and many programs, donations are given, not all of them, but, but many.
• 1:04:27
  We've donated out about $20 million to date in these forms of, uh, donations.
• 1:04:31
  So that's how you begin with us.
• 1:04:32
  It's come in, recycle, and then if you wanna do more and you don't see a free
• 1:04:36
  program, there's a paid solution for just about everything, uh, available as well.
• 1:04:40
  And you can buy one of our zero waste boxes, uh, or zero waste bags and
• 1:04:44
  recycle almost anything you'd like.
• 1:04:46
  Yeah.
• 1:04:47
  With that said, though, there's one step before you should do anything
• 1:04:50
  with us, which is the biggest message I can leave is the most powerful
• 1:04:55
  thing we do in shaping the world.
• 1:04:59
  What we buy and what we don't buy.
• 1:05:00
  I think it's the most fiercely democratic action.
• 1:05:03
  Let's remember.
• 1:05:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:05:04
  How often do we get to vote?
• 1:05:05
  Like once every four years.
• 1:05:06
  And many of us don't even have the privilege of voting 'cause maybe we're
• 1:05:09
  too young or not a citizen or whatever.
• 1:05:11
  Right.
• 1:05:12
  Um, we vote for what we for the future, uh, with what we
• 1:05:16
  buy and what we don't buy.
• 1:05:18
  And let's just next time we shop, 'cause we all shop, shop this way.
• 1:05:22
  Imagine everything you buy two will appear tomorrow.
• 1:05:25
  One to replace the one you bought and one to signify the trend and one less
• 1:05:30
  will appear of everything you didn't buy.
• 1:05:32
  There's nothing to replace, but there's a negative trend.
• 1:05:35
  Yeah.
• 1:05:35
  Will you shop differently?
• 1:05:37
  Yeah.
• 1:05:38
  I like that.
• 1:05:38
  So whatever you buy will double.
• 1:05:40
  Yes.
• 1:05:40
  Whatever you don't buy will actually lessen.
• 1:05:42
  Yeah.
• 1:05:44
  Yeah.
• 1:05:44
  I like that.
• 1:05:44
  And like, you know what the crazy part, it's exactly what happens.
• 1:05:47
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:48
  Right.
• 1:05:48
  It's true.
• 1:05:49
  There's no metaphor here.
• 1:05:50
  It's like straight up what happens.
• 1:05:52
  Yeah.
• 1:05:52
  But it's, it's, it's training your, your mind to think about that every
• 1:05:54
  time you make a purchase that we make.
• 1:05:56
  'cause we are voting blindly.
• 1:05:58
  It all, we are voting without realizing that is what's happening.
• 1:06:01
  Yeah.
• 1:06:02
  Yeah.
• 1:06:02
  I think that's a, that's a, that's a great thing.
• 1:06:04
  Uh, and, and also like from a, that's from an individual standpoint, there
• 1:06:09
  are a lot of businesses, you know, like even my company, like the company that
• 1:06:12
  I work for, you know, we have, you know, mixed recyclables and garbage, but a
• 1:06:16
  lot of times, like in the, the city that I live in, you know, there may not be
• 1:06:20
  like a recycling program for businesses that may not come and pick it up.
• 1:06:23
  Yeah.
• 1:06:24
  You mentioned some of the paid versions, like there's a, a zero waste box.
• 1:06:27
  Can you just talk a little bit of before we go about how that works?
• 1:06:30
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:06:31
  So in the paid solutions, and we are half B2B, half B2C, so we do tons
• 1:06:35
  in facility recycling, you know.
• 1:06:37
  Okay.
• 1:06:37
  Whether it's hazardous materials like light bulbs, batteries, electronic waste,
• 1:06:41
  all the way to, um, uh, not hazardous.
• 1:06:45
  Latex gloves and uh, personal protective equipment and all this stuff.
• 1:06:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:06:49
  So you just go to our website, you type in the waste stream, uh, into
• 1:06:51
  the search bar, and you're gonna see if there are free solutions.
• 1:06:54
  You'll see those.
• 1:06:54
  Totally use those.
• 1:06:55
  Yeah.
• 1:06:55
  If not, you're gonna see paid solutions, which we call our zero waste boxes.
• 1:06:58
  Basically you can buy zero waste box for just about anything, and they go as small
• 1:07:02
  as a little pouch, as big as a pallet.
• 1:07:04
  So every size you can imagine.
• 1:07:06
  And uh, you, uh, you, you receive the device, you fill it up, the cost already
• 1:07:10
  includes us picking it up from you so you, you know, you can put it into a UPS or if
• 1:07:13
  it's a pallet, we pick it up with a truck.
• 1:07:15
  Um, and then everything inside gets recycled and the cost of the box
• 1:07:19
  is basically whatever it costs us to get you a box, pick it up full,
• 1:07:23
  recycle everything inside, minus what the resulting materials are worth.
• 1:07:26
  Okay.
• 1:07:26
  That's how we, how the prices, uh, uh, come to be.
• 1:07:29
  And through the zero waste box system, you can again, recycle
• 1:07:32
  just about anything you want.
• 1:07:34
  I love that.
• 1:07:35
  I love that.
• 1:07:36
  Plus it's great for your employees.
• 1:07:37
  Like to know that gets.
• 1:07:39
  Yeah, I think that's fantastic.
• 1:07:40
  It's a really easy sustainability solution for a small business.
• 1:07:43
  Like if you're a coffee shop, imagine the value of suddenly
• 1:07:46
  offering coffee bag recycling, or coffee cup recycling, or organics,
• 1:07:51
  you know, like the coffee grounds.
• 1:07:52
  Yeah.
• 1:07:52
  Right.
• 1:07:52
  Or if you're a automotive shop, what about recycling all the plastic
• 1:07:56
  gloves, you know, or motor oil containers, you know, that, uh, yeah.
• 1:07:59
  That are produced or broken wipers, you know, uh, and whatnot.
• 1:08:02
  Right.
• 1:08:03
  There's something like that everywhere.
• 1:08:04
  Yeah.
• 1:08:04
  You can use that as bit of a selling item.
• 1:08:05
  Be like, Hey, by the way, this is what we do here.
• 1:08:06
  If you wanted to come here, that's Yeah.
• 1:08:08
  Yeah.
• 1:08:08
  If that's important to you.
• 1:08:09
  Yeah.
• 1:08:09
  Like my local swimming pool through TerraCycle does, um,
• 1:08:11
  goggle and bathing, suit recycling.
• 1:08:13
  And that's a draw for them.
• 1:08:14
  You know, like they tell people and people come in just to drop it off, and then
• 1:08:17
  maybe they'll, you know, go for a swim.
• 1:08:19
  Who knows?
• 1:08:19
  Yeah.
• 1:08:20
  Stay for a swim.
• 1:08:20
  It's a great way to bring people in.
• 1:08:22
  That's right.
• 1:08:22
  I love that.
• 1:08:23
  I love that aspect.
• 1:08:23
  Tom, this has been so great.
• 1:08:25
  I'd love to invite you back on, talk more about TerraCycle.
• 1:08:28
  Yeah.
• 1:08:28
  Because I think we just, we're just scratching the surface.
• 1:08:30
  Yeah.
• 1:08:30
  Uh, you have been so, uh, insightful, uh, for a lot of us and motivating for, for
• 1:08:35
  a lot of us who are listening to this.
• 1:08:36
  I know.
• 1:08:36
  For me, definitely.
• 1:08:37
  But I wanna thank you so much, uh, for joining us, uh, on today's episode.
• 1:08:41
  It's been great to have you on.
• 1:08:43
  Well, thank you so much.
• 1:08:44
  I look forward to the next time we cross paths.
• 1:08:45
  I look forward to it as well.
• 1:08:46
  Thank you.
• 1:08:47
  Awesome.
• 1:08:47
  Thank you.
• 1:08:48
  Thank you, Tom, for joining us on today's episode of the How
• 1:08:50
  to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 1:08:51
  Such a great talk, such a great interview.
• 1:08:54
  To be able to hear such positive messaging around waste and the fact that there's
• 1:08:58
  so many opportunities around waste and to work within waste and to start
• 1:09:02
  businesses, to handle waste, and to really truly build recyclable materials
• 1:09:07
  or out of like recycling materials to build products for people to consume.
• 1:09:11
  I think this is something that's really interesting.
• 1:09:13
  I think, you know, Tom's right?
• 1:09:14
  He, like a lot of people just don't want to do it because it's stinky and it
• 1:09:17
  could be messy and it could be difficult to work with, but if you have the right
• 1:09:20
  idea, you have the right motivation.
• 1:09:22
  You want reduce waste, this is what we need to do.
• 1:09:25
  And of course, I'm gonna say it again because I know people
• 1:09:27
  are gonna call me out on it.
• 1:09:28
  We still have to reduce the amount of waste that we create.
• 1:09:33
  We have to reduce, as Tom said, when you're looking at buying
• 1:09:35
  something that has waste, there's two things that replace it.
• 1:09:38
  If you buy a bottle, like a pop bottle, soda bottle, or a sugary
• 1:09:42
  drink and a plastic bottle, there's two things to replace that.
• 1:09:45
  But if you don't buy it, it actually reduces the amount that there is.
• 1:09:47
  So that's something to think about when you start purchasing things
• 1:09:50
  and you want to be mindful of that.
• 1:09:52
  And so I think it's a great way to just shift your mind.
• 1:09:55
  A lot of this stuff is just shifting your mind, maybe changing your behavior
• 1:09:57
  just a little bit, or duplicating your behavior and doing something a little
• 1:10:00
  different that really makes a difference.
• 1:10:03
  And I think that's something that I would like to explore a little bit more in
• 1:10:06
  That is how do we change our behavior?
• 1:10:07
  How do we get people to change behavior to be more resourceful?
• 1:10:11
  To be more mindful of how we can live for a better ocean.
• 1:10:14
  So I wanna thank Tom.
• 1:10:15
  I'm gonna go and point people to Terra Cycles website, which is terracycle.com.
• 1:10:20
  I'll put it in the show notes, the link in the show notes, and if you
• 1:10:22
  have any questions or comments, or leave them in the comments below
• 1:10:25
  if you're watching this on YouTube, or you can hit me up on Instagram,
• 1:10:28
  DM me at How to Protect the Ocean.
• 1:10:30
  Or of course, if you go to my website, speak up for blue.com/contact,
• 1:10:34
  you can fill out the contact form.
• 1:10:36
  It goes right to my email and I'll answer you as soon as possible.
• 1:10:39
  I wanna thank you so much for Tom for joining us on this podcast,
• 1:10:43
  and thank you for listening and your insightful questions.
• 1:10:46
  Any concerns or anything, comments, we'd love to hear from you.
• 1:10:48
  I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
• 1:10:51
  How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 1:10:52
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the True North Strong and Free.
• 1:10:54
  Have a great day.
• 1:10:55
  We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.