Thank you and enjoy this episode.

From college went on to start my career at what was at the time Anderson Consulting, now Accenture, and then went to Deloitte.

When I just started my MBA, a friend of mine from high school asked me to come over for dinner and say, like, I have this idea that if you could reward people for recycling, you could probably motivate them to change their behavior.

And I said, that's a pretty good idea.

I think I could build the software and system to do that.

And that's really where the training I got at Anderson was so important is I could now take some of my idealism, a good idea, and actually be the one that built the software to drive the solution.

And so we co-founded Recycle Bank together.

I mean, it's a clear financial competitive advantage.

I think the combination of companies thinking again about circularity and households thinking about circularity, but now also with policy support, that that might bring about that change that I think we, we all sort of desire but haven't quite figured out how to make it happen.

Well, the first thing is to start with the recognition that unless a plastic has value in the recycling stream, and there are some plastics that have a lot of value, so like PET, which is for your beverage container, HDPE, which is laundry and cleaning products.

They actually have a lot of value in the recycling system.

So recognize that some plastics have value, some plastics don't.

The plastics that do have value, we need to make sure that there's the infrastructure in place to get them collected and get them back into, uh, products.

And the plastics that don't have value, I think that we need to tell the producers, "If you can't invest in building markets for this plastic, then you need to stop using it, because otherwise it's just creating an environmental hazard that's too expensive for society." I think all of this gets down to who's going to pay? Who's going to pay? If you put a product into the market that's not recyclable, or into a market that doesn't have recycling infrastructure, there's a cost to that that somebody has to pay, and I think the sooner we get down to who's gonna be responsible for it, the sooner we'll see that nobody wants to raise their hand, the sooner we'll get to a place where people just say, "You know what? Let's find an alternative or stop using it," because nobody wants to pay to handle it.

As opposed to what happens today, which is the cost is passed off to the taxpayer in many cases.

I think the combination of companies thinking again about circularity and households thinking about circularity, but now also with policy support, that that might bring about that change that I think we, we all sort of desire, but haven't quite figured out how to make it happen.

Well, the first thing is to start with the recognition that unless a plastic has value in the recycling stream, and there are some plastics that have a lot of value, so like PET, which is for your beverage container, HDPE, which is laundry and cleaning products, they actually have a lot of value in the recycling system.

So recognizing that some plastics have value, some plastics don't.

The plastics that do have value, we need to make sure that there's the infrastructure in place to get them collected and get them back into, uh, products.

And the plastics that don't have value, I think that we need to tell the producers, "If you can't invest in building markets for this plastic, then you need to stop using it, because otherwise it's just creating an environmental hazard that's too expensive for society." I think all of this gets down to who's going to pay? Who's going to pay? If you put a product into the market that's not recyclable, or into a market that doesn't have recycling infrastructure, there's a cost to that that somebody has to pay, and I think the sooner we get down to who's gonna be responsible for it, the sooner we'll see that nobody wants to raise their hands, the sooner we'll get to a place where people just say, "You know what? Let's find an alternative or stop using it," because nobody wants to pay to handle it.

As opposed to what happens today, which is the cost is passed off to the taxpayer in many cases.

Or even worse, it ends up in our oceans.

I think the combination of companies thinking again about circularity and households thinking about circularity, but now also with policy support, that that might bring about that change that I think we, we all sort of desire but haven't quite figured out how to make it happen.

Well, the first thing is to start with the recognition that unless a plastic has value in the recycling stream, and there are some plastics that have a lot of value, so like PET, which is for your beverage container, HDPE, which is laundry and cleaning products.

They actually have a lot of value in the recycling system.

So recognize that some plastics have value, some plastics don't.

The plastics that do have value, we need to make sure that there's the infrastructure in place to get them collected and get them back into, uh, products.

And the plastics that don't have value, I think that we need to tell the producers, "If you can't invest in building markets for this plastic, then you need to stop using it, because otherwise it's just creating an environmental hazard that's too expensive for society." I think all of this gets down to who's going to pay? Who's going to pay? If you put a product into the market that's not recyclable, or into a market that doesn't have recycling infrastructure, there's a cost to that that somebody has to pay, and I think the sooner we get down to who's gonna be responsible for it, the sooner we'll see that nobody wants to raise their hands, the sooner we'll get to a place where people just say, "You know what? Let's find an alternative or stop using it," because nobody wants to pay to handle it.

As opposed to what happens today, which is the cost is passed off to the taxpayer in many cases.

I think the combination of companies thinking again about circularity and households thinking about circularity, but now also with policy support, that that might bring about that change that I think we, we all sort of desire but haven't quite figured out how to make it happen.

Well, the first thing is to start with the recognition that unless a plastic has value in the recycling stream, and there are some plastics that have a lot of value, so like PET, which is for your beverage container, HDPE, which is laundry and cleaning products.

They actually have a lot of value in the recycling system.

So recognize that some plastics have value, some plastics don't.

The plastics that do have value, we need to make sure that there's the infrastructure in place to get them collected and get them back into, uh, products.

And the plastics that don't have value, I think that we need to tell the producers, "If you can't invest in building markets for this plastic, then you need to stop using it, because otherwise it's just creating an environmental hazard that's too expensive for society." I think all of this gets down to who's going to pay.

Who's going to pay? If you put a product into the market that's not recyclable, or into a market that doesn't have recycling infrastructure, there's a cost to that that somebody has to pay, and I think the sooner we get down to who's gonna be responsible for it, the sooner we'll see that nobody wants to raise their hands, the sooner we'll get to a place where people just say, "You know what? Let's find an alternative or stop using it," because nobody wants to pay to handle it.