Lonely Whale Director Tim Silman (TOM FORD Plastic Innovation Accelerator)

https://unwrapthefuture.org/

What is the TOM FORD Plastic Innovation Accelerator? 
How did seaweed companies win all three top spots? 
Did you know the Lonely Whale team helped get plastic straws banned in Seattle? 

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Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:31

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors . Today's guest is Mr. Tim Silman, the Program Director of Unwrap the Future and the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Accelerator. How are you, sir?

Tim Silman: 0:44

I'm great. Thanks for having me, Corey. I

Cory Connors: 0:46

really appreciate it. Happy to have you on. Excited to have you on. I think you win the award for the longest title. Yeah. Congratulations. You're responsible for quite a bit, my friend.

Tim Silman: 0:59

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I can't take all the credit certainly on that. lonely Whale, the organization at where I work, leading this program and the accelerator specifically, we've been around since 2015, and we've done a lot of different work in various areas, and I can't speak say that I, they touch on all of it. So we've got a lot under our umbrella and even with the small team, try to, punch above our weight.

Cory Connors: 1:23

Well, you're doing great things. I heard about you, because of the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation, Accelerator program that you've got, and the team over at Sway and NotPla that I've had on the podcast, spoke very highly of you and what you've done there. but let's talk a little bit about your background first. How did you get into sustainability and, environmental friendly conscious things? Yeah,

Tim Silman: 1:50

I actually started my career more on the social impact side. I went straight to grad school in public policy, right after undergrad. And I was really interested in the idea of, like, let's know more about what works and try to inform decision making. And it was it's really interesting. There's a lot of work going on there. But I found that, I didn't have there wasn't enough connectivity with like the actual work and the impacts like we would write a lot of reports. I didn't really feel like people actually read them. and it was very slow moving. actually took some time was like working remotely traveling around the world before this kind of digital nomad thing was a thing. And I thought I would find out a lot about what I wanted to do. But I think I found out more about what I didn't want to do. and I came back to the U. S. Was still having you. I was struggling to, like, pivot, a little bit in my career when I came back, and realized that around that time, which was about 10 years ago, that this kind of ethos of sustainable business and, like, business as a tool and force for potential, like, for good, had really emerged, And so I actually went back to grad business school, at the University of Vermont, which had just retooled their business program to focus specifically on sustainable innovation. Right? So, like, taking the business school toolkit, but really primarily through the lens, and one of our professors likes to say that traditional programs often have this kind of like saddlebags approach, like you're learning finance and accounting and, supply chain marketing, whatever. and then you're adding on sustainability. Whereas with this program, we really were, integrated from the ground up and I've always been really interested in like waste and packaging and like recycling oddly enough. I don't know, just, and then fortuitously, like, business schools are organized around cases and our cases were organized around work with novellas, which is the large aluminum company. and they had centered a lot of their strategy around recycling. So I actually did a, Consult. Luckily enough, there's a we do a whole range of consulting projects in the UVM program, and ours happened to be was lucky enough. We were able to be working with Novelis. We went to Europe and when it went to like Murphs in England, and we went to a aluminum manufacturing and scrap facility in Germany, talked to their customers. We were focusing on automotive aluminum, and so that was really eye opening. For me, after business school, I actually didn't focus on recycling sustainability much. I actually worked more in social impact consulting in government, actually, for a while, and then found myself at XPRIZE, which is an organization in Los Angeles, that designs competitions, so I was there for a few years, then the pandemic happened, and then I, the team at Lonely Whale reached out through some mutual contacts, from my time at XPRIZE, and they had at Lonely Whale. at the time had developed this concept with Tom Ford and the team at a Tom Ford International to do a prize focused on thin film plastic. so I came on board to design what that looks like in practice in terms of, like, the strategy, the operations, the sort of partnership ecosystem that we build around it. And yeah, it was, it's been a really crazy ride. It's been three years. Basically we launched the prize officially launched at the end of 2020. and we had, two rounds of that competition. we had announced the finalists in early 2022, we announced the winners, in early 2023. You mentioned sway was one of, is our, was our first place winner. The zero circle was based in India, which, we'll obviously have to get on the pod, so you'll get all three of them. they were one of our winners and then the team in NAPLA as well. we're one of our winners too. And so we've now transitioned into this accelerator program where we're looking, we're supporting our prize winners, leveraging this ecosystem of partners and advisors, to really, I think that if you, I like to say that if you do a prize competition and you don't lead to like meaningful impact, then you've just done a really expensive sort of science fair or marketing exercise. And so we wanted to avoid that. we spent a lot of time. We can talk about the protocols and methods we use, but we spent a lot of time evaluating these startups and their solutions. And now, It's really incumbent on us to help elevate them and continue to shine a spotlight and bring sort of collaborators to bear for their work.

Cory Connors: 5:56

Well, great work. Nice job. I love the idea of being a digital nomad. That's such a cool concept. And I think an important one that this day and age, there's a lot of us out there who are working from home or working remotely. What an interesting concept and, it certainly has changed the face of business, and sustainability as well. Imagine the, reduction in miles needed to drive and things like that. It's pretty cool to think about stuff like that. But let's talk about, Lonely Whale a little bit. Can you explain to us? It's the overarching organization and what you do.

Tim Silman: 6:35

Yeah. So Lonely Whale was founded in 2015, by actor, actually the actor, Adrian Grenier from Entourage Fame, you may be familiar with and the producer Lucy Sumner. and the goal is, has always been organized around preventing ocean plastic pollution. and really taking a modern kind of leveraging the tools of traditional marketing. Yeah. Yeah. And what we like to call artivism to really make it fun and cool and engaging, to make that sort of mind shifts, we don't want to put the onus on consumers. Like we recognize that, brands and government have a huge role to play, but, we've seen a lot of things change because people felt like, Certain things were cool, right? It was part of the culture. And so we wanted to make sustainability, and specifically around plastic pollution, part of the culture. so we primarily do that, through digital to social media, we do activations and events, but, we had like half a million followers on Instagram so that we've run a number of different campaigns and we started with our plastic straw campaign, which is called, stop sucking, again, that funny. Funny, right? like leveraging cool, make it fun, make it interesting. so we'd stop sucking. And then actually there was a sub campaign called strawless in Seattle. So we've worked specifically in Seattle. we had Russell Wilson, part of this, do like a PSA with us. We had a bunch of celebrities involved. you can find it on YouTube, on social. We're at Lonely Whale. there's some videos and things you can see some of the, from those campaigns, And so always trying to, raise awareness, but also connect it with the policy realm and actual tangible change. we're not policy experts, but we need to be policy informed, right? And leverage folks like yourself and industry and people, other advocates who are really on the have their finger on the pulse. So straws were our first, when I would say that the strawless in Seattle campaign led to the ban on plastic straws in Seattle. So that was like a tangible outcome and we're looking, looking to empower activists in other areas as well. so we started with straws. Our next campaign was about hydrate was called hydrate and it was about plastic water bottles. so we were looking at Helping to shift looking at reuse, also helping to launch some brands and raise awareness around aluminum as a solution instead, obviously, which is infinitely recyclable. And again, leveraging kind of celebrity influencers, other people to really, make, that conscious choice. Cool and interesting. the origins of this work now on thin film, we were looking around, and on like the next problematic single use plastic that we wanted to focus on and did some market research and just identified thin film plastics as a huge, on sort of Unaddressed area, as you can imagine, it's a high value, a high volume, low value, ubiquitous product that is essentially, designed to be invisible, essentially, and, most, almost no jurisdictions except at curbside, it actually is really problematic at MRFs, clogs up the machinery, et cetera. And so a lot of the recycling, Depends on consumer behavior, like collect it and bring it to your grocery store or something. And the, we already see low rates of recycling, even when people have access to curbside. So that additional, layer just means that the recycling rates are really low. And simultaneously we had been talking with the team at Tom Ford. They're really interested in working with us. They love the idea, obviously the fashion connection of talking about plastic, thin film plastic, the plastic poly bag, which protects garments you buy, they get shipped to your home more and more. I think estimates are about 180 billion of those bags are used every year. Yeah. So, that was the, the kind of genesis of that work. and I would be remiss in saying we have a few other programs of our ocean heroes program where we're supporting, a youth ocean advocates around the world. And we also have our, work, which called next wave plastics, which we, convene in conjunction with the circulate initiative, which is focused on integrating ocean bound plastic. into supply chains. So from areas that don't have, adequate waste management infrastructure, where there's a lot of like, informal sector work to collect plastics. So that's, that's our other, main,

Cory Connors: 10:31

initiative. Incredible. Wow. That's a lot. and I really am impressed by, the team, and the fact that Adrian from Entourage, what an awesome show, that he took his fame and celebrity and turned it into something so positive. you don't see that a lot. You don't see it enough from, these, actors and actresses, that he's been doing great things. I've seen him interviewed a few times and, it's very impressive to, to watch that. have you got to meet him or is this, is he

Tim Silman: 11:39

just virtually, yeah, he's doing a lot of different things now. He's got a ranch in Texas and a lot of their stuff. But, You always try to be like really timely and relevant when we leverage our network of sort of influencers, or celebrity kind of people with the gravitas and weight that can, bring attention. And that's always really that ecosystem, that attention ecosystem is sometimes challenging for us to navigate like on our own, like our phone or whatever, but we can use it for good. And That's the idea.

Cory Connors: 12:09

Well, I don't have millions of followers, but I have tens of thousands. So I'm here to help you and your team anytime I can. Awesome. Thank you. Even if it's a drop in the bucket, but I'll absolutely add to that. Let's talk about seaweed. I, I am just, it's everything, everybody wants to talk about seaweed lately. I got the honor of, having Julia from Sway on, on the podcast and Pierre from NotPla, and I get to interview him in Paris next week at Paris Packaging Week. Why is seaweed so important to the future of thin plastic film?

Tim Silman: 12:49

Well, I think seaweed's important to the future of a lot of different things at this stage. We're really scratching the surface, right? Like, I was really fascinated by Looking back, listening to Pierre's interview you did, the origin story of the Ojo, that it was actually technology developed by Unilever like a hundred years ago to make fake caviar, right? Like that's, and that with a lot of things, like great ideas and then people come back to it a long time later. obviously like seaweed as a, like a food. As an agricultural product has a long tradition in Asia, Korea, Japan, that type of thing. And then obviously a lot of people don't know that it's an element as like a stabilizer thickener, for a lot of foods. it's, obviously natural, it grows fast, doesn't require arable land. And I think that we're, we've seen a ton of interest and attention on the potential for seaweed in a whole different, area of domains. And we, I should say, like, we designed this prize, Without the intention of focusing on seaweed, one, one element of, the criteria are designed to be like, solution agnostic. Right. So, it's obviously biased a little bit towards like a drop in replacement for traditional plastic. So everyone's like, all of the winners are producing like pellet, right? Like a resin, but it's like, not a traditional. to traditional hydrocarbon based plastic, but they could have proposed some other solution, like a coating or whatever, and we, and the similarly, like the feedstocks, the risk criteria around, there's just the sustainability of those, primarily we did a ton of testing around the end of life of the materials and our primary partner is University of Georgia's new materials institute, which both does polymer development. And. Research and also does laboratory testing. So they have like the largest non, they have one of the largest, testing, facilities in the U. S. so we did a mix of like industry standard, like A. S. T. M. Aligned tests around soil and seawater degradation, but then a whole host of additional novel methods that they've done in the past and also worked with the Seattle Aquarium who developed a unique testing method to look at how the materials would perform if potentially ingested by a marine mammal. So we simulated in a lab if they were ingested by a whale, a gray whale, what might happen, right? So using temperature, PH enzymes to simulate digestion, because I think even if the materials, they. if there's the worst case scenario happens and they end up in the ocean, they, and they are not going to disintegrate immediately, right? Like, they will disintegrate way more quickly than, than traditional plastic. And I should say they will biologically degrade. They will not fragment or oxidize like you would see with a plastic. cause most of the plastic in the ocean is like macro particles. But the vast majority, because it's on the surface, the vast majority of it is small micronized particles that are invisible to the human eye that are floating in the ocean. But there'll be a period in which these, sustainable alternatives will be available to be consumed by a mammal or some fish or something. So we wanted to guard against these unintended consequences. back to your original question about seaweed. We. As an ocean organization, an ocean focused advocacy organization, we just happen to have the luck that all of our three winners are using seaweed and not only from like a communications perspective and messaging, but also allowing us to lean in specifically on seaweed as a topic. in terms of like the ecosystem we build and the issues we cover. so we're doing, the accelerator includes a whole host of components, seminars, at connections with advisors, experts, marketing, things like that. But one of our seminars is focused on seaweed. So looking to provide value and obviously our prize winners, they're the experts. Right. But so we're trying to figure out like, how do we add value in that context? But I'm really fascinated by, like to say that we're. Not, we're not early days on seaweed, but we're early days in terms of the full potential of seaweed. And the idea is that let's scale up this, like, like this potentially game changing, input feedstock, without replicating the problems we've seen of like scaling up traditional agriculture, right? Like we don't want a mono, monoculture seaweed industry that's really extractive, that it's not inclusive, and evenly distributed. We really, we can be intentional, and create more of a holistic kind of permaculture, aquaculture approach, that I think can really play a lot of dividends, both for packaging, food, and climate. And both in terms of mid, like resiliency and, and sequestration. So I think that there's a ton of, potential and just happy that we can support folks like, Juliet's way and Pierre and the team and NAPLA and the work that they do.

Cory Connors: 17:30

And they deserve that help and they need it. And, I spoke to them. They were both thrilled to be a part of your program and honored to be selected as two of the three winners. and you're right. Unfortunately, we have to be ready for packaging to end up in the ocean and in the environment. And, this is one of those rare materials that can be, composted, but it can also end up. And it'll be fine. and that's pretty rare. And, I wish they could all be like that, but we're not there yet. Yeah, we're not

Tim Silman: 18:02

there yet. I think one of our advisory board members put it best. Like, there will never be a magic material that is like, super strong in its service life when you're using it. And then. Like disappear, completely in a rapidly, once it's reached its end of life scenario, there's always a trade off even if you're in, the hottest, most microbially active compost, industrial composter, there's always going to be a trade off. and that's just the reality. So we see it as like, this is one tool in the toolbox, but like all options have to be on the table, like in terms of this, not even just from an ocean's perspective, but obviously like our. Perspective, that's our focus, but just from a larger kind of resource management, waste management perspective, but in terms of like reuse, recycling repair, the entire framework of the circular economy and needs to be on the table. And so, happy that we can play a role in advocating for this 1 specific solution, but it's just 1 among many.

Cory Connors: 19:00

I like that a lot and I agree. I look at it as a pie and those wedges of the pie will change as we move forward with these solutions. seaweed is very small right now, but eventually it hopefully will be much larger and, paper packaging and things like that, are becoming more and more. available and, they're becoming a solution to a lot of other problems that we didn't know that they could be. so things like that are really exciting, but, I do want to talk about this, you have a big event coming in March. can you talk about that? The World Ocean Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, March 11th through 13th.

Tim Silman: 19:40

So we're super pumped. so it's put on by the economist. it's an annual events, that they host, in, in, I think it's around Europe, but this year it's in Lisbon, Portugal, like you said, March 11th to the 13th. and it's really, The intent is to again, like spark conversation and action around the transition to a sustainable ocean economy. And that takes a lot of different. So there's a lot of different tracks, a lot of different components and touching on a lot of different things. Obviously, we're there as, first and foremost, like advocates for the ocean and prevention of plastic pollution. But secondly, really as advocates around, our prize winners and the potential of, seaweed as a solution. so there's a couple of components that are as part of that. all of our prize winners will be there and like this, expo, space to really showcase their work. They'll be doing some talks, as part of that. we have some of our prize winners on some of the panels at the events that we're working to determine. and then I think the most important piece is the, to try to get beyond just these, like, plenary panel type things, the economist team, I think smartly has started to develop this, called like a how to session. So a little bit more of an intimate, group setting that's more curated, that we'll be producing a session with them on how to scale, seaweed sustainably. And so we'll be bringing in some panel, members as well as some like, specific invitees to participate in that discussion and it's a smaller group. It's like, I think around 50, 40, 50 people. So you're really designing that as an intentional space to create dialogue and go beyond just talk, right. To actually maybe. Go come away with some actionable insights. so yeah, I mean if you know would love Folks in your audience who may happen to be there or have contacts who will be, there or in Europe who are considering attending, reach out to me. I'm Tim at lonelywhale. org. and you can check out our overall program website is unwrapthefuture. org. and you can check there for insights about the prize and then the current accelerator program. and then again, like we're at lonely whale on, on all social channels. So, so find us there, but yeah, it's going to be really great. We'll be convening. not just that how to, but obviously like, finding it, leveraging it as an opportunity to connect with folks in our network. so we'd love to meet folks. If I hope I get an avalanche of inbounds of people who may be there, but we'll see. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 21:57

We'll put a, we'll put a link to the, website you mentioned and, I'll note your email as well in, in the show notes. So if you're listening, just, scroll up and you'll see all those details in the, on the podcast. really exciting. I would love to go to this event, so let me check my calendar and see if I can go. Not

Tim Silman: 22:17

a bad time to get to go to Portugal as far as I understand it. I have never been, but March. I think it's pretty, pretty nice. So

Cory Connors: 22:25

not, not a bad time. And that's my wife's anniversary. my wife and I's anniversary. So that'd be awesome. So, what else do you want to talk about? Anything else that we didn't cover and, in lonely world?

Tim Silman: 22:38

I think that I think we touched on all the major things. And again, like, we like to say that we're not a name and shame. Like we, we do really want to hold people accountable. And, we did a campaign last year, like a mini campaign called recycling isn't magic, right? Like specifically around plastics, like you can't, we've talked about wish cycling, right? Like you can't, just assume that it's thrown in the blue bin and it's gone, right. There is a need for a little bit of an intentionality about that. And also what you buy and how much you consume. But at the end of the day, also, like we really have to be, bringing solutions to the table because we know that, we might want businesses to be more sustainable, but they are, you're running a business, right? Like, there's just, and you, I know, Lancebert Aurora and the, and some of the team you work with, like, you're providing, a service to. For protect things right like in packaging we order things online and I think it's incumbent on us to help folks on that journey. I think that I rarely, I don't think ever have run into someone who it seems like they don't care or don't want to be more sustainable. People want To make that transition, but we need to help them solutions that actually meet their needs and they're willing to make a lot of changes and even pay more in some cases, in many cases, but I think the reality is we're still early days on a lot of these solutions. And so we just really, I think it's like, as I mentioned, there's. All the options have to be on the table in terms of the different models, whether it's reused, recycling, compostable, whatever, but all of the different levers, right? It's like governments, there's brands and their demands, and then also manufacturers, right? We, it's like a, it's a full frontal assault, I think, because the volume of what we produce and what we waste, that's a missed opportunity, I think. and again, it's not shouldn't be waste. Ideally, it should be a resource. This is the goal. but we're, again, we try to be inclusive, and we really work. We leverage industry. We have a, as part of the prize and now the accelerator we built, this, we call it early adopter coalition, which is like a mix of consumer facing brands and some manufacturers who are committing to starting the trial process to get these new solutions. Integrated into their supply chains. And that is, for big brands that can take multiple years, and they're dealing with, millions and millions of pounds of plastics, right? but for smaller brands, there might be, events or, capsule collections or other things where they can try and do it in a more expedient way. You don't get the same scale, but you can really highlight that to the public in a unique and more nimble way. So it's a broad mix of big and small companies and, So that's, I think that the unique component of this accelerator work. And so we're, yeah, always looking for partners who are committed to really making this type of work reality. So,

Cory Connors: 25:25

said. And I agree. Aurora packaging is working hard to be one of those leaders in the industry. And I'm honored to be a part of that with them. I think. you're exactly right. The plastics industry has had a 50 year plus head start and we're catching up eagerly and quickly as we can, to adapt and to adopt these new, materials into things that will. be more sustainable. but we have to look at performance first and make sure that the consumer gets, their food delivered. and it's still fresh. nothing sustainable about rotten food. We always say, and, and broken, broken goods is, doesn't work either. So, yeah,

Tim Silman: 26:10

from an environmental perspective, like if you receive a, like a hundred, like a t shirt. Or a jacket, like a soft good, like it, but and it's damaged the environmental impact. If that's not like, reusable or it's like a total loss, the environmental impact of that is way higher than the plastic bag that it came in. Right? So. from there's that's not a trade off. You can really so these companies are they're looking at this failure rates. They're doing that testing. They're putting in the hard work, but at the end of the day, like it has to serve a useful purpose. And so that's the but you can do a lot of things to change. Maybe how you do fulfillment or, you're at the three PL or the distribution center. To make those tweaks, right? So it's just a, every brand is different. There's a different kind of landscape of solutions. And so it's really just important to find the right and toward the right mix.

Cory Connors: 26:59

Well, I agree. And it's very exciting. I think we're at a precipice of a whole bunch of really cool changes and a really neat innovations in the world of sustainable packaging and more, I think, seaweed, like you said, we're just getting started with what we can do with that. Very exciting. Thank you, Tim. I appreciate your wisdom and your time and, look forward to meeting you in

Tim Silman: 27:21

person someday. Yeah. Thank you again, Corey. I really appreciate it. Thank you.