Sustainable Packaging

Ridwell will pickup your recycling from you. (Taylor Loewen)

December 12, 2021 Cory Connors Season 1 Episode 34
Sustainable Packaging
Ridwell will pickup your recycling from you. (Taylor Loewen)
Show Notes Transcript

https://www.ridwell.com/ sign up today!
Ridwell has already diverted over 3 million pounds of waste from the landfill.
Would you like to have Ridwell pickup your recycling?
Can you believe they have 45000 members?
What do they do with the material once they collect it all?

Thank you Ana Luisa Jewelry for sponsoring this episode!
https://www.analuisa.com/
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I'm here to help you make your packaging more sustainable! Reach out today and I'll get back to you asap.

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Cory Connors:

Welcome to sustainable packaging with Cory Connors . This guest is somebody I've been waiting for probably since I started the show. I'm so excited to introduce my friend Taylor Loewen , who is a Portland general manager for Ridwell . Well, hi Taylor, how are you?

Taylor Loewen:

I am. I'm doing well. How about.

Cory Connors:

Great. I'm a huge fan of Ridwell. Well, I think I probably mentioned Ridwell So I'm so thankful that you took some time to be on the show.

Taylor Loewen:

Well, and I think one thing that's just awesome about Ridwell is because anybody can use the service. It's, you know, I've gone to the dentist and my dentist knows who it is. I think it's becoming a household name as people are becoming engaged with Ridwell and learning more about what. Yes.

Cory Connors:

Well, tell us about yourself first. How did you end up in the recycling? Sure.

Taylor Loewen:

So, you know, I'm somebody who has really just a history of trying to make a positive impact in the world around me in any way that I can and trying to figure out what area to focus in on. So somebody who right after graduation jumped into political campaign work doing campaign work on behalf of nonprofits, including several that had environmental initiatives. So we're going to know everything. Issues for planned parenthood action fund, but also doing a lot of work for behalf of groups like the nature Conservancy or the Sierra club the California league of conservation voters. And since then have worked in a wide variety of nonprofits. Everything from working in supportive housing. Formerly homeless residents have histories of mental health and substance abuse to working with the nursing school here in Portland, at the Linfield nursing school. And, you know, really I was looking at that next career jump. I wanted to find something that could benefit nonprofits and local community organizations, but also get to the heart of. Big issues I cared about such as helping protect our environment. So REBBL is a perfect mix. You know, we get the divert waste in a landfill and on an ongoing basis, our featured category changes every two weeks and goes to local community partners right here in Portland. So a really great local impact.

Cory Connors:

I do love that bag. So let's let's explain what Ridwell does. And let's try to do a little history of Bridwell. Can you tell, tell us who started the company who came up with the concept? It's totally innovative and I'm excited to talk about.

Taylor Loewen:

Absolutely. So we got started with Ryan Metzker, who is our CEO, and he had a room in his house, which I think a lot of people in America have, which is kind of like the get rid of stuff, room stockpiling items that he, you know, just felt guilty, throwing away. But wasn't quite sure what the proper reuse or recycling disposal would be of it. And he had a weekend project with his son, Owen, who I believe was six at the time, tasked with getting some of these things out of his house and was incredibly frustrated. You know, this big cache of that. And how to call three or four locations, even find one place where you could drive to, to drop off batteries. And everybody knows we don't want batteries to go in our trash, or you can go into landfills and mercury in our water. So, you know, thinking it should be easier. So when he found a place, he asked all of his neighbors, if they had items, many resources, And he gets such a great response. He continued to do that and continue to reach out locally to his community and his neighbors and say, Hey, I'm dropping off a big load of plastic film. I have space in my car or holiday lights that are broken and it became this kind of recycling carpool that had up to, I think our 4,000 people involved in the local Seattle area. And that doesn't mean there's not only a need here, but there's a potential business opportunity. People want to do the right thing and often don't have. The time and to do all the research and drive around and find these places. So that's the kind of Genesis origin story of, well, back in late 2018. And at first he was doing PowerPoint presentations in people's living rooms and talking about this as a business service. And now between Seattle, Portland and Denver, we have over 45,000 Ridwell members and have diverted over close to 3 million pounds of waste.

Cory Connors:

Wow. 45,000 members.

Taylor Loewen:

Yep. Correct. About 18,000 in the Portland Metro area. And

Cory Connors:

how much waste has been diverted?

Taylor Loewen:

Close to 3 million pounds.

Cory Connors:

Wow. Well done. So I'm a customer as well. I'm a huge fan and a customer. So what happens is you go online, you sign up, you get a metal box that they put on your front porch and it says, Ridwell on it has a hinge lid, and it is a receptacle for your once a week. Ridwell And they will always take overwrap plastics things like that, things that would, would have been a store drop-off plastic mostly the low density, polyethylene, number four plastics, things like that. The overwrap for a case of Coke or something like that. Those films are taken. But like you said, you have a featured item weekly. Can you tell us about that? How does that process, who decides that? What happens there?

Taylor Loewen:

Right. So, you know, we have our core categories, as you mentioned. So one of them is that plastic film, which is really like any stretchy, flexible plastics. So tons of Amazon mailers, bubble wrap, saran wrap, Ziploc bags we also do a couple more core categories. Things like batteries and light bulbs, also any clothing and. Or condition or good condition clothes that have tons of rips in them are actually turned into cleaning rags, which is really cool, given a new life and purpose there. And then we have this fifth category and it changes every two weeks featured category. It's my absolute favorite. And really each market leadership decides what those categories are. But I will say the vast majority of the categories we do are not because I personally, as a general manager thought I was a good idea. Local community members have been writing to us by the hundreds saying, have you talked to this nonprofit yet? Or do you have a good solution for this issue? I have so many in this item, the house, so topics can include eyeglasses are both wearing eyeglass frames. Corey, I had four in my house from old prescriptions, but I just couldn't bring myself to throw away the frames didn't know what to do with them. So we've worked with a great community partner that knocks out the lenses, puts new ones in and gives them to underserved. We're currently working with verge community services and they are awesome. I don't know if you're familiar with Birch. They work primarily with stores to help keep food from going to landfill. You know, typically when you have a store and you get new products in, even if the old products are not expired, you have to throw them away because you need to make space. So they take all the. From a lot of local grocery stores here that are still not expired, but are going to be taken off the shelves and work about 70 food banks around the Portland Metro area. So we're, we're picking up Halloween candy for them. I know I only had one trick or treater. I was so disappointed. That's useful a candy. So if there's people sort of throwing away candy, getting them to a community organizations the next day during winter warm. So all your old scarves and hats and jackets where you're upgraded, maybe your kids have grown out of the right size going to a couple of different, great nonprofit organizations like rose Haven, which is a day shelter for women and children. We're also working with ergo and ergo is helping a lot of refugees who recently have come to Oregon from Afghanistan. But it changes every two weeks and it can be anything from old dog collars and leashes. So the argument's society to children's books going to kids' homes around the Portland.

Cory Connors:

It's amazing. And, and I forgot to mention the biggest pet peeve of most of the people that listen to this show, which is clam shells. Most people can't recycle. Clamshells no matter where you live in the world. And so this is an opportunity for those to get picked up from your house and actually recycled, which is awesome.

Taylor Loewen:

And you know, that clamshells, I think is the prime example of the fact that our members are really the cat. For the change that we're trying to create. You know, when I first launched Portland just about a year ago we didn't have clamshells as part of our service because we were only operating in Seattle. Yeah. King county picks up those plastic. Number one, PET clamshells at curbside. So it was solely on rate Ridwell's radar. And as soon as I launched it became abundantly clear that that was the pain point for so many people here in Oregon and here in Portland and the. And when you buy a salad container, a berry container of not having an option for that plastic. So it really put the pressure on, on me, frankly, and read well to find a good solution and, you know, called it dozens of recyclers across the state. And it took me finding a trade organization for number one, PDT Thermo forums, to hook me up with the amazing partner, the called green impact. They take all of the clamshells we get they grind them down into food grade quality. Clamshells. And then it gets extruded into new classics. So you have companies like Driscoll berries that are now using 10% recycled clamshell flakes for every container they make. And they're hoping to get up to 50% within the next few years.

Cory Connors:

Amazing and Driscoll is I know a facility in Canby, Oregon that uses those thermal forms to, to pack for Driscoll. So awesome. That's incredible. Well, then this is it's, it's an amazing thing. W can you tell us where the overwrap film gets used or sent to just out of interest

Taylor Loewen:

and, you know, when I talk about over at film plastic film, that is our number one. Category. And that I think speaks to packaging. If you're ordering clothes from almost any retailer store, it's going to arrive at your house in some type of flexible plastic packaging. Most of the items you buy, if you're buying a big thing of Costco, toilet paper, you know, it's wrapped in plastic, we've had the girl Scouts locally or reach out because all their pallets of. Come wrapped in plastic. So 80% of our pickups include this type of plastic. So huge category for us and we get so much of it that we have a baler on site to bail it up into like 900 to 1200 pounds of bales and then ship them out in semi-trucks since you get 30 bales, which doesn't take that long to get, unfortunately, it's, it's pretty wild. How much plastic packaging there is. It goes to a company called. Tracks is really cool because they're able to grind down all that plastic film, mixed it with wood chips and turn it into composite lumber. So a lot of people buy Trex decking as if for their backyards here in the Pacific Northwest and even the local girl scout troops. I was working with their girl scout camp uses Trex. For the girl scout camp for a lot of the benches and different things. So it was a cool story to tell about that lifecycle of the plastic filler on their cookies and what it gets turned into.

Cory Connors:

Amazing. And I, my understanding of Trex is they actually started in Oregon. So that's, this is a, this is a real Northwest victory for the environment here. This is exciting.

Taylor Loewen:

Absolutely. I, you know, I think that when you talk about tracks, a lot of people cross the Pacific Northwest are familiar with the company. And a lot of people, I know how that decking in their backyards and it's much, much more long-term with the rain and moisture we get here then often would DEXA.

Cory Connors:

Yeah. So for people who are listening, who aren't from the Northwest, it rains here all the time. There's a reason it's so green. I grew up here and we, we, we call it a webbed feet. We're used to it. We're, we're comfortable in the rain. Most people don't have umbrellas, they have hoods. And that's just the Oregon Northwest way, I should say. But yeah, TREX is an amazing deck or material because. It lasts forever. You just have to push it away. You know, every five, 10 years. And it's great. So what an awesome alternative to wood and for building materials? Well, then I I was in my local grocery store today and there was a drop-off bin for plastic material and it said, recycle your plastics here and we'll turn it into. Trex decking. So that's cool too.

Taylor Loewen:

And you know, I think that that gets to one of the points about wall. There was no secret. Here we are Austin taking things that you, you can go and drop off here in Portland. If you wanted to, you could drive to tired in agile, X, every time you have any polystyrene or the kind of styrofoam stuff, you could then drive to a different location for your batteries and light bulbs and a grocery store for your plastic bill, and then call and talk to local non-profits and you have extra eyeglasses or Halloween candy. And, but the, the idea that. It's so much effort and work for individuals to keep up on. And it's a lot of driving around with multiple vehicles across the city. And depending on where you live your vehicle situation, you may not have that readily available access to really stay on top of those things. In addition, when it comes to non-profits, you'd be hard pressed to recreate every single category they were able to do here on this individual relations. And so what I love about red wall is the collective community impact, you know, by children's book, bank is a great example during COVID they were getting fewer donations. And that's because they had to up the security, you make things safe, you needed to have an appointment to come drop off books. You needed to wait in this line. There's all these different things are hassled. So people weren't doing them. And they're a phenomenal organization. You know, there's areas in the U S so there's one book for every 300 kids in a neighborhood. And by the time that kid gets to preschool, they are outpaced by children that have. Dozens of books in their household and one-on-one reading time and availability and access to it, to reading resources. So their big push is to get home libraries in every home and really work with underserved communities. When you're prioritizing food or books, you're going to prioritize food. So how do we get access to books for kids? And they were looking at having to cut some of their summer programming due to lack of donations. Back in April, this year, we only had a couple thousand members, but with a two week pickup meat delivered over 10,000. The children's book thing, and they were not only able to fulfill all of the work. They want to do this summer, but expand some of their programming. And that's an ongoing partnership we have. And each home I'd have given us two or three books, but collectively to deliver an impact over 10,000 books after just two weeks and work on our end was game changing for a local community organization here. Cause I think that's, what's the cool thing. 3 million pounds is that's a lot to divert from the landfill and no individual could do it, but collectively through our membership, people can, you know, as long as you do your small part, it really adds up. When you look at the big picture.

Cory Connors:

A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And when you're expanding to new areas, I've heard the number 100. You need about a hundred people in an area. Is that, is that pretty true to, to kind of get the service started assuming it's near another one.

Taylor Loewen:

So, you know, when we're looking at expanding service, once again, that really is. Driven by people, you know, how many people are interested. And so we were mindful of our carbon footprint. We don't want to, when we were first launched, we didn't want to go to Hillsborough to go to 25 homes across that entire area. The number, the number actually varies neighborhood by neighborhood. So we look at what we call SFD. Single family dwelling units. So how many people could potentially sign up for a red service in that area? And then we look at what is one or 2% of that population look like just a small percentage for smaller neighborhoods. That might be a hundred before I launched Vancouver, that was 800. So they had a much larger goal to hit before we could launch. And so we really scale it to fit the size scope and population density of that area that we want.

Cory Connors:

Incredible. And I know some sometime down in the future, you may be able to do multi-family dwelling units. Is that, is that something you've considered or schools?

Taylor Loewen:

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we're, we're considering it all right now, the more that we expand, the more there's a realization of how much need is out there for people who want to waste less when it comes to multifamily, I'll say, now we have. Several thousand members in Portland, do you live in apartment complexes and our members? So that's, that's an, it's already available to people in, in Portland. We S especially those like exterior facing apartment. What we're trying to look into is how do we scale up to those big apartment buildings downtown? So we're not serving parts of downtown Portland right now because it's exclusively giant high rises, where you might have only 45 seconds of access to the elevator. You need a specific key fob. So we are a hundred percent looking into what's the best way to scale up for those buildings. And does it look like instead of having a 500 person department. There's a lot of bins sitting on doors. So what does it look like to maybe have gigantic receptors? In the basement or the trash area where there's 50 gallon drums, where people would put their plastic film in and there's maybe built into the HOA, a slightly lower cost. And then we use a larger vehicle on a specific route to go pick them up. We tested a few pilots in Seattle and it's actually going fairly well. So something that's very top of mine. My entire objective this first year in Portland, frankly, has been keeping up with growth. When we started a year ago, It was, it was just me delivering bin. And now we have 45 members and our staff year in over 18,000 members. So you know, now that we've kind of had that first push across most of the Portland Metro area, I'm excited for 20, 22 looking at what other options can we do? What does it look like to try and service large apartment complexes?

Cory Connors:

It's it's an amazing problem that, that people want to use your service so much like that. That is awesome to hear that you can't keep up with demand right now, is, is frankly a good problem, because that means that you guys will continue to grow and that the you know, The focus on recycling will continue to be there and in this area and hopefully many others.

Taylor Loewen:

Oh, I, I think that reuse, recycle ethos just resonates with people here in Portland and people in Oregon. I think the fires and the smoke we dealt with as a community, Last fall was eyeopening. I think recent elections, people are talking more about climate change. It's becoming, ever present. As we talk about our weather patterns in, especially in COVID people were cooped up in their homes, surrounded by all this packaging that they were having to order things in. And I, you know, I, I really do think it's, to me, it's an incredible Testament that people have. You know, not everything can be collected at curbside. We think of riddles, very complimentary and, and hoping to fill in those gaps. And so the fact that people are not only doing their normal city recycling, but then on top of that came to be a member doing the act of commitment of pre sorting their items into bags for us and just being really conscious community members. Is an incredible credible problem to have when it comes to growth. And I feel like I've been tied to a rocket ship that won't run out of fuel. And I see it is very promising for our community here and for Ridwell ability to continue to.

Cory Connors:

A hundred percent. There's, there's been a lot of really exciting companies that have launched during these last couple of years with the environmental changes. For example, Ana Luisa jewelry one of our sponsors, they are totally carbon neutral and one of the first jewelry brands to do stuff, something like that, which is an incredible Powell's books. I grew up doing in my industry doing their packaging and they are, they were actually one of the first companies that ever told me about sustainability. And they said, listen, kid, we're going to be sustainable like it or not. So help us figure it out. And this is. 19 years ago when I started as a rookie in the packaging industry. So it's been cool to, to grow up in the, in the Northwest where sustainability is a way of life.

Taylor Loewen:

And, you know, I think Washington recently passed legislation to prohibit the use of polystyrene. In their packaging, which is incredible, year, the amount of, you know, buy a TV, any of those things, it's, it's wild, how much packaging there is. So I think it's, it's gotta be a two-fold effort. I think companies really need to commit and think about what packaging are you. And I think thinking about, is there an end market for this packaging? Clamshells is a great example. We only take clear number one, plastic, right. And not all clamshells are clear in color. One of the biggest contaminants you get from members accidentally is though those takeout containers have a clear lid and a black bottom. And there's a lot of other, you know, from hummus containers to everything else that attended by. They have a recycle symbol on them. They are technically recyclable, but there's no end market. They can't, you know, they grind down our clamshells to clamshell flakes. They can't extract that back. And companies like Driscoll's want to be able to have a clear container to put their berries in. And so really when I go to the store now, and I'm seeing multiple options that are number one, plastic, I'm going to choose the clear plastic versus the tinted, because I know that there is a an actual end market and a result you can get on the recycling side and you go with the clear plastic versus.

Cory Connors:

Absolutely. And that clear plastic is very desirable. A friend of mine runs a pet recycling facility in South Africa and he said they can't even keep up with demand. Post-consumer recycled material because of the extended producer responsibility laws that are taking effect. So these large companies, like you were mentioning Driscoll is, wants to be at 50% PCR. Well, that's happening in other parts of the world by mandate or these large companies or smaller companies too, are setting goals for themselves saying, listen, we're going to be at 50% or 60% PCR. By 2030. Well, how do you accomplish that? You need a whole bunch of recycled material. So this is going to make your job even hopefully easier because it will be more popular amongst the world to recycle. I think

Taylor Loewen:

I completely agree in the partner. We work with green impact. Similarly says they're having a hard time keeping up with demand. Companies like organic girl, there are a hundred percent recyclable containers now, you know, there's that drive and push for companies to hit those individual goals and part of it's because consumers are pressuring them to, to try and be more sustainable as well, which is awesome. So, you know, they need that feed stock to be able to create those containers from recycled materials versus virtual plastic. That's

Cory Connors:

amazing. You told me a story before we went on air that I think is really exciting. Can you tell me about the closed recycling that you guys did where you turned them into a new product?

Taylor Loewen:

Yeah, so, I mean, I think this is actually really exciting. It's a company called refleece they're on the east coast and what they work to do is take textiles. Old fabric and clothing and turn it into upcycled fashion. And it, the, the clothing and the items have a very unique look because it's kind of a hodgepodge of different colors and fabrics. And so we did a pilot with them early last year, around February and Seattle and in Portland where we asked our members, do you mean. Jackets, you don't want to give to Goodwill, or you don't want to donate because they feel a sleeve is ripped or there's a big stain on it. The zipper is non-functioning and it's a lot of bulky material to put in your garbage and you'd may not have a good purpose for it, but you don't feel good donating it. So what's an alternative way to reuse that material. So replete takes all those old types of. You know, it's from ski jackets and all the different variety of bulky winter wear that's in bad condition and then takes the usable bits of that fabric and then turns them into new products. So you might get a stylish Topaz that has 10 different colors from 10 different people's jackets. So we got that material back. It was made into fantastic products. They put a red wall logo on it, and then we said, let's just see if people are interested in. Upcycled fashion. And if they're interested in buying things with their logo on it, and we thought, well, first send it out to people who participate in this pilot, they get first choice. And then the rest of our members. Well, the rest of our members didn't get a chance because it's sold out within about half an hour from the pilot. So we're really thinking about. When it comes to clothing, what can we do as far as products go that our members are interested in working with companies like reflex. So, so that instead of going out and buying us honey made with Virgin cotton, what does it look like to buy the full outfit or clothing item made with upcycled materials that somebody no longer has use for, and to really help keep that circularity going with items versus a new creation of items.

Cory Connors:

Awesome. Just, you know, it can be done and you guys are doing it. I'm so impressed with you and your company. And everything about what you're doing is, is what we need right now. So thank you. We appreciate this. So oftentimes I'll get pushback on posts about people say, oh, recycling is not possible. It's not happening. It's dead. Not true. You guys are a key example of what's possible with recycling and what can happen if we work together to be positive impact on the world. Thank you.

Taylor Loewen:

I, I appreciate that. It's great to have the opportunity to chat, and I think I'm continually stunned. How interested people are to talk about recycling. It's not, not the sexiest topic, but there's, there's just so much interest being generated about it. And people who are keenly interested to see what they can do on their part.

Cory Connors:

Thank you, Taylor. And thank you, Landsberg Orora for your continued support of this show. We appreciate your sponsorship. And if you're listening, please take a minute to review and share it with your friends so we can spread the word about Ridwell and about sustainable packaging. Again. Thank you.