entrepreneurship

Is 'Bioplastics' a really bad term? - with Alex Thielen from the Bioplastics Magazine

Alex Thielen is a psychologist by training who ventured into creative writing. He has a passion for conveying information in nice stories - which is highly needed in a technical sector, such as plastics, and also became the reason why he joined Bioplastics Magazine in the first place.

The magazine started as a family business and was founded by Alex's father, who is a chemical engineer. After 18 years in operation, the magazine has established and publishes six issues per year. Each issue features two focus points that highlight inspiring stories from the bio-based plastic value chain, researchers, and start-ups.

Despite its name, Bioplastics Magazine does not solely focus on promoting bioplastics. The magazine recognizes that other technologies that support circularity are equally important, as long as they are backed by scientific evidence. In this podcast episode, we discussed opinions and perspectives on bioplastics. Whether it is bad, what the term actually implies, and why it could be confusing sometimes. We also talked how the challenges faced when delivering information, including the factors which affect them (such as location and system), and importantly, we also learned what bioplastics are.
PS: They even published a bioplastics basics book in 6 languages, which you can find HERE

Find out more about Bioplastics Magazine at www.bioplasticsmagazine.com/en/ and feel free to contact Alex via LinkedIn.

Democratizing Renewable Materials - with Charles Dimmler from Checkerspot

In this podcast episode, we’ve had the pleasure to speak to Charles Dimmler, who is the Co-founder and CEO of Checkerspot. Having a passion for both history and biological sciences, Charles believes that economy and business can drive impactful societal change. After working as a junior investment banker and holding management positions in biotech companies, he decided to build Checkerspot, a biotech company with a sustainable mission.

Checkerspot develops renewable material technologies from bio-based sources - mainly algae. They use the power of biology to design production processes for renewable materials that replace petroleum-based chemicals, such as polyurethanes. Moreover, they empower product designers with knowledge and access to not only more sustainable material solutions but also performance features that expand their possibilities beyond commodity materials. They are committed to scale their technologies through practical applications just like, for example, developing bio-based materials that can improve the performance of skis! 

We also delved into the topic of scalability and asked whether how innovative bio-based materials can fulfil the demand for their traditional petroleum-based counterparts. Once more, it became clear that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and it's essential to explore synergies between innovations and synergies to existing technologies

Find out more about CheckerSpot at https://checkerspot.com/ and feel free to contact Charles via LinkedIn.

How Data Models Advance the Uptake of Sustainable Material Alternatives - with Roy Brooks from CirQulor

Roy Brooks’ journey into the sustainable materials space is a very unconventional one. He started his career in the media and advertisement industry before shifting to the IT sector and finally developing a passion for sustainable material alternatives as a solution to minimize our challenges with plastics. This passion led Roy to provide a data model that helps the industry to qualify such alternative material solutions and accelerate their uptake by the industry. That’s how CirQulor was born - a resource hub for planet-friendly alternatives.

CirQulor aims to provide insights and published data on the whole supply chain, including economic, environmental and societal aspects specifically for sustainable and bio-based material alternatives. We spoke with Roy about how having reliable data and a science-based taxonomy helps to tackle greenwashing and gain trust, scale commercialization and production, raise awareness, and even in getting investments. CirQulor believes that with data, it will be possible to escalate the growth of sustainable alternative materials.

In this podcast episode, Roy also took us on his journey of developing CirQulor, together with its co-founder, and explained the importance of data, and the story behind their purposeful start-up. Check out this controversial and inspiring discussion, which shows the importance of science-based dispute and alignment.

Find out more about CirQulor at https://cirqulor.com/ and feel free to contact Roy via LinkedIn.

Plastic.Climate.Future podcast episode with Roy Brooks from CirQulor

Leveraging Bioeconomy in the Global Sustainability Agenda - with Paul MacDonald from World Bio Markets

Paul MacDonald is one of the founders of World Bio Markets, a leading international event that connects the bioeconomy community and drives the commercialization of sustainable bio-based material solutions. Paul entered this sector as a B2B event expert when running some of the world’s largest food exhibitions - with lots of players from the packaging sector.

 

With World Bio Markets (WBM), Paul’s goal is to address the need for a fast scaling of bioeconomy solutions and bring brand owners, investors and solution providers together. To achieve a larger impact with the focus on commercialization, WBM matches the right stakeholders by organizing one-to-one meetings to encourage commercialization and grow the bio-based sector. This also leads to the intention of World Bio Markets in serving the entire value chain of stakeholders within the bioeconomy sector.

 

In this podcast, we also discussed the importance of a trustful scientific dialogue and a stronger communication of science based facts to the business world. As a community enabler, Paul told us more about the strategy behind “Storytelling for Scientists” - and, importantly, about the amazing program of the upcoming event in May this year (2023) in The Hague, in the Netherlands. Definitely worth checking it out and registering here: https://www.worldbiomarkets.com/

Find out more about World Bio Markets at https://www.worldbiomarkets.com/ and keep updated with the latest news about bioeconomy here https://worldbiomarketinsights.com/. Feel free to contact Paul via LinkedIn.

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.

Danimer Scientific podcast episode, talking about biopolymers, bioplastics, and circular economy

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

Plastic climate future podcast episode 26 with Jason Robinson from Evoco

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

Merijn Tinga, The Plastic Soup Surfer. Plastics Climate Future Podcast