Science as a Cornerstone on the Mission to a World Free of Plastic Pollution - with Marcus Eriksen from 5Gyres

Marcus Eriksen is the co-founder of 5 Gyres, a US-Based non-profit organization that focuses on research, consulting and active engagement in tackling the problems of plastic solutions. 5 Gyres uses education and community-based science to drive and inform local, scalable reuse models. By engaging key stakeholders in identifying the sources and potential solutions of problematic plastics in their own communities, we can work together to drive more equitable solutions. Far too often, local policies are set without engaging the communities that will be most affected, which can lead to challenges with implementation.

Marcus is a marine scientist, who also lectures on marine conservation, especially the impact of plastics on the world's oceans, breaking down the complexity of stakeholder objectives and identifying common ground and actionable solutions. He's led more than 20 expeditions through the 5 Gyres Institute exploring and researching the world's oceans.

As the co-founder of LEAP LAB, he also lectures on biophilia, and the role of art, science and self-reliance in achieving urban resilience.  

In this podcast, Marcus told us about the birth of 5 Gyres and how he started studying the sources of plastic pollution on expedition journeys to collect scientific data, publish reports and journals, and collaborate with companies to create change and advocate. We discussed the power of policy and enforcement to achieve systemic change, and how they get involved in it.

Find out more about The 5 Gyres Institute at https://www.5gyres.org/ and feel free to contact Marcus via LinkedIn.

Biopolymers: How to scale them up? - with Brad Rodgers from Danimer Scientific

Brad Rodgers is the Vice President of Danimer Scientific, a biotechnology company that works towards transitioning fossil-based plastics to biopolymers, particularly, specializing in PHA-based materials. Brad initially started his career in polymer research for sustainable packaging applications and became a sustainable food and beverage packaging expert. While working at PepsiCo, he already tried to answer the question of the most environmentally friendly solution for short-term packaging applications. This led him to the world of biopolymers or bioplastics, as we sometimes call them.

Biopolymers, such as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), are naturally-sourced and biodegradable plastic materials. It's one of the solutions to tackle our plastic waste problem, but also has bottlenecks in the development process, and when it comes to changing the mainstream attitudes of the consumers (affecting how biopolymers are adopted). Although that's the case, we discussed in this episode that currently, more and more large companies have made investments and efforts to upscale the technologies to bring innovation to mass production. During our talk, we also touch upon other important factors affecting the development of bioplastics.

Find out more about Danimer Scientific at https://danimerscientific.com/ and feel free to reach out to Brad via LinkedIn.

A Key Puzzle Piece to a Circular Future - with Mesbah and Phil from Circularise

 It is the first podcast in 2023, and maybe some of you remember Circularise from 2022, when Phil and Brian spoke with us in the special CRE conference episode. This time, we got hold of Phil, who was joined by Mesbah, the founder of Circularise, for a full episode.

Apart from getting more details about Circularise's technology, mission and daily business, in this episode we get the chance to dive deep into the challenges that industries face when implementing circularity on various supply chain levels. We also speak about key technological enablers and how important it is to facilitate trust and transparency on this journey.

Circularise's mission is to provide a transparent digital background to supply chains as one of the most important milestones to achieve circularity. Circularise facilitates transparent communication of companies in order to foster cross-industry innovation and as Phil mentioned:“If only companies trusted each other, Circularise wouldn't be needed!”

Check out more at www.circularise.com and of course, feel free to reach out to Mesbah and Phil on LinkedIn.

Into the Plastic. Climate. Future 2023 - with Sam (Depoly), Kidus (Kubik), and Andrea (Net0Insights)

Happy New 2023! We welcome you to the future with our end-of-the-year recap episode of Plastic. Climate. Future. Literally one day before Christmas, we came together as the entire team, meaning Saskia, John and Mat, to give some quick thoughts about the best and most interesting episodes of 2022. We also prepared our wishlist of topics and guests for next year and...

Yes, we actually managed to get three of our former guests from previous episodes to conclude this year with us. Kidus Asfaw told us how Kubik will continue being driven by purpose to tackle plastic waste, create new opportunities for women and provide new building materials in Africa. Samantha Anderson gave us insights into the scale-up and innovation activities of Depoly to drive the circularity with a sustainable chemical recycling technology for PET. And Andrea Canepa, took a look into the crystal ball predicting the growth direction for climate tech start-ups based on his exclusive knowledge from the Net Zero Insights platform.

In that sense, let's have a sustainable start into the 2023 Plastic. Climate. Future!

Check out more about our guests at www.depoly.co, www.buildkubik.com and www.netzeroinsights.com as well as through their LinkedIn profiles. And don’t forget to check out the previous episodes with Kidus, Sam and Andrea.

Using the power of plants to make plastics future-proof - with Jason from Evoco

Jason Robinson is a chemical engineer, born innovator and technology lover, who has been involved in the climate-tech sector ever since the start of his career. He is also the CEO of Evoco, a clean-tech innovation company based in Canada, that develops plant-based chemistry to replace petrol-based materials, among others plastics. The company's mission focuses on closing the carbon cycle in the most natural way, not only by using materials from plants, but also ensuring them to be compostable.

Therefore, Evoco provides a bio-based chemistry platform to serve multiple product needs. They work closely together with product designers, brands and manufacturers to make sure that they can integrate in the most efficient way with the consumer goods value chain to fully close the loop. Doing so, they also established an own ecological footwear brand called Fates. All this as a part of Evoco’s sustainability mission to create new polymers from plants with the same applicability as their counterparts made from oil, but future-proof and sustainable. That is why Evoco stands for disruptive innovations with fewer disruptions of the value chain.

In this podcast, you will also learn more from Jason about plant-based materials, and the important aspects to consider when developing sustainable material concepts out of bio-based plastics.

You can find out more about Evoco at https://evocoltd.com/ or reach out to Jason via LinkedIn

The Plastic Soup Surfer - Driving systemic change through surfing with Merijn Tinga

Meet Merijn Tinga, a biologist, former teacher, surfer and activist from the Netherlands - also known as the "Plastic Soup Surfer". This is because Merijn turned his passion for surfing into a strong voice for a more sustainable future with plastics. To make his point he started building surfboards from plastic waste and surfed them throughout his many trips that lead him to drive systemic change.

His journey started 10 years ago, when he left his work as a teacher and took a sabbatical leave to go surfing. Without any expectations, he became a visual artist, what taught him the art of campaigning and story telling. His passion for surfing and thereby constant exposure to plastic waste in the ocean raised his concerns and motivated him to actively do something against it. From there on, Merijn decided to combine his passion, motivation and experience to build surfboards and use them for in record-breaking challenges as a way to create awareness and a weapon to influence society, politicians and industries to create change.

In this podcast episode, Merijn shared his amazing journey that among others took him to the EU parliament to initiate policies that are now in place in the Netherlands to reduce PET bottle waste, for example.

You can find out more about Plastics Soup Surfer at https://www.plasticsoupsurfer.org/ or reach out to Merijn via LinkedIn

A Special Episode: Highlights of the CRE Annual Conference 2022

On the 13-14th of October, for the first time the entire PCF Team attended the Annual Conference of Chemical Recycling Europe (CRE), which was focusing on the Circular Economy and how to achieve circularity with plastics.

The two days were filled with insightful discussions between all players of the plastic value chain. Next to the spotlight on the role of chemical recycling, the agenda also included policy debates, new technologies and innovation, as well as the importance of life cycle assessment and mass balance analysis for and with the entire industry. The event was attended by more than 200 participants with different backgrounds, ranging from industry stakeholders, regulators, academia and NGOs.

We took the chance to pick some of the attendees and ask them live about insights, reflections and of course our plastic climate future topics. The result is this special podcast episode, which for the first time includes not only one but many people exchanging views related to our PCF mission. Here are some of the amazing guests that were so kind to lend us some of their time and answer some of our questions (some of them you might already have heard on previous episodes): Maëlys Makotta from EuPC; Jasper Munier from Clariter;  Jan Hommen and Laszlo Szekely from TOMRA; Phil Brown from Circularise; Fabian Loske from Sphera, and Adela Putinelu from Plastic Energy.

Looking at this diversity of backgrounds and topics covered in this one hour of discussions, we can all agree on the importance of having such dialogues and collaboration between all the actors in the plastic value chain.

How can we transform the plastic value chain? With Virginia Janssens from Plastics Europe

Despite known for having a “bad” reputation in society, plastic is and will continue being part of our daily lives and economy. We all know that plastic waste comes with severe negative environmental consequences, the same as we rely on its benefits such as durability and ease-of-use. Hence, it is important to find sustainable strategies for avoiding the negative consequences and still being able to profit from the benefits of plastics.

In this podcast episode, we had the amazing opportunity to speak to Virginia Janssens who is the managing director of Plastics Europe. Plastics Europe is Europe’s largest polymer industry association, with more than 90% of the polymer producers being its members. As an association, they focus on advocacy, regulation, technical expertise, and also help to set scenarios to make the plastic industry sustainable and circular. Plastics Europe supports its members and also all kind of external stakeholders (e.g. regulators) of the value chain in the transition to a circular economy.

Together with Virginia, we discussed the importance of fostering the dialogue between all the stakeholders and gathering science-based facts. We also talked about her journey, and how she became the managing director of the association. 

You can find out more about Plastics Europe at https://plasticseurope.org/ or reach out to Virginia via LinkedIn.

Rethink - Recycling: Chemical recycling made simple and sustainable with Sam from DePoly

Meet Samantha, an aspiring organic chemist who fell in love with materials. Her journey started by following her childhood dream to become an organic chemist soon after her PhD she discovered her passion for bringing things on the road.

Driven by her love to make develop and make new chemicals, she co-founded founded DePoly, a start-up that depolymerizes plastics - or in modern language - the chemically recycles them. Together with two other PhD students, they combined their different expertise to develop sustainable and simple solutions for PET recycling.

The company aims to sustainably recycle PET waste with different initial feed conditions back into monomers. They strive for straightforward chemical reactions with low-energy requirements, that can be even run in the kitchen!

During our discussion, we also talked about chemical recycling, the current bottlenecks, and how their chemical recycling method differs from other processes.

Find out more about DePoly at https://www.depoly.co/ Or reach out to Samantha via Linkedin

An African start-up transforming plastic waste into building materials - with Kidus from KUBIK

Kidus is the CEO and Co-founder of KUBIK, a Nairobi-Based start-up that converts plastic waste into building materials. As a son of Ethiopia, Kidus tells us how his memorable childhood experiences got slowly disrupted by the adverse effects of urbanization. This was part of his motivation to act and look into ways how to valorize plastic waste as a building material.

An experience-rich personal background and his career at Google led him finally into the space of sustainability and circularity with plastics. And, voilá, KUBIK was born.

After observing the big problem of plastic collectors at Cote d’Ivoire, and its effect on society and education, KUBIK’s mission is grounded in transforming society by taking care of the environment. By focusing on this simple existential problem, KUBIK converts plastic waste, as a problematic low-cost material, into a cheaper alternative for building materials.

In this inspiring podcast, we spoke with Kidus about his company and the general situation of plastic waste, circularity and problems caused by the urbanization in Africa.

You can find out more about Kubik at https://www.buildkubik.com/ or reach out to Kidus via LinkedIn