CEO Connor Bryant / The Rubbish Project

https://therubbishproject.com/

could we recycle all materials back into what they were?
why would we use  something once and just throw it away?
Are you ready to join the circular economy?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/connor-bryant-rubbish-ideas/

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Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:31

Welcome to sustainable packaging with Cory Connors. I'm excited about my guest today. Mr. Connor Bryant is the CEO of the rubbish project.

Connor Bryant: 0:40

How are you? Connor? I'm doing very well. Corey, thank you very much for having me here. Well,

Cory Connors: 0:44

we've been going back and forth trying to schedule this, and I'm really excited to have you on, can you tell us a little bit about your background? How did it into sustainable packaging, sustainability, all the, all of

Connor Bryant: 0:55

this. Okay. No, no, no. A problem at all. So I think probably it wouldn't be fair not to start with with my mother. My mother was Julia Hales who co-authored among another other books, but co-authored the new green consumer guide with John Elkington who also happens to meet my godfather. So, you know, given that she got involved in the environmental sustainability movement, her kind of twenties, of course, I, you know, by the time, by the time she had me, she was a little older than that. So, you know, I've, I've grown up in doctoral. Native some might say into the, into the world of green. But actually through school and, and university, I, I studied product design and really partly because it was my passion, but then also throughout university. I discovered really that that product design played a major responsibility for the problems that we saw in the world. Essentially the, the wasteful systems that we had were wasteful by design. And so. This is really the background of me getting into this industry is that while doing my product design course at university, I became increasingly disillusioned with mainstream product design. As I saw design had really been sort of somewhat hijacked is that, you know, I felt that the. Design was problem solving and what greater problem is there to solve than the planet's problems. But of course, one other problem you could solve is how do I make a business more money? And of course that does seem to be where the focus understandably, but that has been the focus of, of where my industry has gone for many, many years. And, and of course the result is evident. We have incredibly wasteful systems of consumption. A, and so this really warned me when, when leaving university to set up a sustainable design consultancy originally called loop innovations now called rubbish ideas with my then and current business partner, Jack Schneider, a fellow product designer from, from Loughborough university.

Cory Connors: 2:50

That's a brilliant name. I love it. Rubbish ideas. That's awesome. And I, I appreciate what you said. We need to design packaging for its commonly thought of, or its end of life or its next life. And I think that's what we're gonna talk about today is the circularity of packaging and how can be reused and reused and repurposed and over and over again in perpetuity, which is in my opinion The best way to do it. So tell us about the rubbish project. What is that?

Connor Bryant: 3:21

Okay, great. So with the rubbish project, we are trying to help large companies that have linear supply chains, consuming vast amounts of disposable products into a circular, you know, helping them transition to a circular economy model and. You know, the reason for this is all the reason for the, the focus of the rubbish project being, this is that this was the scale of the largest scale of waste problem that we could identify as that when we started with rubbish ideas and we were looking at how we could design out waste and systems that were wasteful, we were working with businesses to redesign , their business models. And we noticed it actually started with the, the events industry and disposable packaging used in the events industry. We identified that lots of single use disposable packaging was being used yep. In a linear system, but the, actually the, the technology existed today to make that system circular. I mean, take, and this is, this is indeed where the rubbish project started. PET drinks, cups, plastic, disposable cups, lots of festivals, football, stadiums, music, venues, pubs Et cetera conferences use these disposable plastic drinks cups. Now, traditionally, these were made from Virgin PP type of plastic for anyone that's that's away and polypropylene, right. Polypropylene. Exactly. And. You know, made out of, of Virgin PP used for an incredibly short period of time, often thrown on the ground or, or whatnot, and then incinerated at best landfill or polluting the environment at worst. Right. And of course, with the scale of, of international events, you know, I think big sporting events, like the OMP picks and, and whatnot, you know, the, the scale of consumption of these projects was huge. Yep. What was really interesting though, is that. There had been a move to towards more and more PT products. Mm-hmm . But yet, despite the fact that PT bottles were being collected and recycled PT cups were not being recycled in it in any way, because they were, although it was the same material, it was a different density and firmo formed PT is slightly lower quality than blowed PT. It had a. Slightly lower grade or slightly higher grade. And there's masses of material to choose from. They were just ignoring this perfectly recoverable material in favor of PT bottles. Right. But we thought this is a missed opportunity to show that actually even disposable packaging can be supplied in a circular economy model. Now of course, In a circular economy, re reuse is best and reusable models are great, but reusable models don't work everywhere. You know, there is no silver bullet solution. You know, imagining that McDonald's could switch to all, you know, reusable glass and ceramic you know, things. It is obviously. And so, you know, we need different systems for different use case scenarios. And of course, what we are trying to prove is that at vast scale, the businesses that the largest companies in the world that are consuming, you know, literally billions of these single use disposable items that actually. They can be consumed in a system where they are recaptured and reprocessed back into exactly the same thing. And so that is what we set out to prove. And as I say, we started with, with the events industry working with festivals and, and you know, music festivals and the football stadium. And. Through that we have now formed a partnership with HKI. One of the world's largest producers and suppliers of food, service packaging. Actually much, much larger in the fiber fiberboard space than the plastic space. So, well, although they make billions of, of plastic cups, they make hundreds of billions of paper cups. Of course, orders of magnitude bigger there. But our partnership, sorry, just, just to finish off thing. Yeah, please. That our partnership with automatically shifted our focus away from. Just PT cups, right. At events because we, we never saw ourselves as the plastic cup guys or the festival guys. We are the circular economy systems people. And so obviously with the partnering with food Mac and forthright, well, they have packaging that goes out to a, a wide range of packaging, not just PT. Wide range of materials and it goes out to wide range of clients and markets. So what is our purpose? And our purpose has, you know, less of the has shifted to thinking, okay, well, the challenge is you have to track all of these products so that they can be recovered. And that is what we do.

Cory Connors: 8:05

That's excellent. So you're setting up recycling and recovery programs for events and festivals and , all of these kinds of places. Where does the material go? Does it go back to Huda Maki?

Connor Bryant: 8:18

Okay. Good question. So in the case of recovering the, the PT for drinks. We can, that material can be turned back into new cups. So that is indeed supplied back to T Mackin. Of course, that happens for a disparate web of connected by various waste managers sent to waste processes that we work with. And then, and then so on. But yes, essentially the, the material goes right back. The PT material goes right back to T Mackin. Now that isn't possible with all material streams yet. So for example, with products, We haven't yet developed a product who automatically can make from their paper board waste. So that paper board we recover, we log that it's been recovered. We get it recycled, but not by the original company producing it. But as I said, our aim is generally to create systems where the products can be made back into themselves. And the reasonably, this is quite simple, really is that therefore supply of material meets demand is that if you take. Coffee cups and you say, oh, well, I've got a recycling solution for coffee cups. I'm gonna make them into napkins or I'm gonna make them into chairs. Well, does the world need as much napkins and chairs as coffee cups? They consume right. If, if they don't, if they don't, then you're still gonna have more coffee, you know, you're gonna have more coffee cups than, than you need to process. So it, having those products match up, it. Is really effective. And it also sets the goals for companies of a hundred percent recovery because in a world where there's a hundred percent recovery, then, then is no need for external material sourcing. Well,

Cory Connors: 9:55

that's excellent. Well done and kudos to you. And your team has the UK plastic tax affected your business. Or will it

Connor Bryant: 10:08

in the future? Yes, I, it, it has, it, it has I mean, obviously, well, not us, it affects our clients and therefore it affects how our clients think and act, and it's affected them in, in good ways and in, and in bad ways. I, I feel, think that one of the big problems that we, that we have at the moment is. And I think this, this actually comes back to one of my, my, my sort of original problems. It's a very long time the industry has been pushing the problem back on the consumer blaming consumers for the problems that we see in the world. And. The problem is, is that consumers have been taking that responsibility on boards and taking it really seriously and trying to fix it. But these problems are complicated. This is, you know, sustainability is not a simple science. There is no one size fits all. It, it, you know, there's lots of nuance depending on systems of use circumstance. One system that works somewhere will work differently somewhere else. So it's a very complex issue. Very true, which of course the general public are not gonna get their head around. Frankly, they have bigger fish to fry. They're worrying about making enough money to eat and, and taking their kids to school and so on. So they're not gonna become sustainability experts, but that means in a world where responsibility is put on them, but they don't have the answers they latch on to simple solutions, which is understand. Can do almost as much harm, if not more harm than good plastic in the ocean is terrible. And there are actually lots of other negative effects of, of plastics such as microplastics and even, you know, polluting our environment before it gets to the ocean. But this doesn't necessarily mean, in fact, it doesn't mean that plastic is an evil material that we shouldn't use anywhere. And, you know, the problem is, is that that sort of nuance is a difficult conversation to have with the public that the public are affecting the legislation and the legislation is affecting how business is acting. And so essentially we've got popularism I think decision. And, you know, that's not a great position to be in. And as I try and warn the companies that we work with, the problem is, is that public opinion is fickle. what I mean by that is they will change their mind when presented with greater information. So if you jump on the trends now and you ban all plastic, even where it doesn't makes sense. When awareness that actually, that wasn't the right thing to do grows the consumers. Aren't gonna blame themselves for being misinformed. They're gonna blame the companies who had all of the right information, but chose to just follow the popular opinion. Yeah. And so, you know, it's dangerous just going with. What is publicly perceived to be the right thing to do for businesses, because you might be hobbling yourself for the future. Sorry. That's a, as you can see, that's a bit of a,

Cory Connors: 12:56

oh, that's a great answer. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And, and it's so complicated and it's so diverse and there's so many. Issues to look at plastic is oftentimes considered evil. And I, I disagree with that. I agree with you. It can often have a great place. It's very recyclable. P E T H D P E very recyclable materials and easily recovered often and easily turned right back into what they used to be or something very similar. You know, we have a company here called Paktech . They take milk jugs and they turn 'em into beverage can six pack and four pack holders in perpetuity forever. It can be recycled and reused and recycled and reused. That's circular. And that's what we're trying to do here, I think.

Connor Bryant: 13:41

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's, that's brilliant. Exactly. It's the sort of model that we need to, and to be the plastic of. The majority of, of plastics are petroleum based plastics. So therefore they come from oil, fossil fuels. Yep. You know, not sustainable in the long term. So, you know, we are not, you know, it's one of those things. I'm not saying that that plastic is the best material in the future, but that we know we are going to hopefully replace plastics, probably with bioplastics will be much like the plastics we have today, but renewably derived and, you know, we've already seen the examples of that. And further development is being made in that era to. You know a startling rate, but of course the, you know, the worrying thing is with people, consumers at the moment turning off plastics is that they are switching to solutions. Soran worse, you know, I mean, switching, you know, I saw a thing about Alaska airlines switching from. Recyclable PT water bottles to Tetra pack a, you know, Virgin mix of, of three different materials that, you know, can only be recycled in very specialist facilities. And they were claiming that as a win. And you know, it is, yeah, there's a very interesting challenge there.

Cory Connors: 15:18

Yeah, I, I had that first thought when I saw that. And I saw a big pushback on LinkedIn and the internet people saying, oh, that's a terrible decision, but I, I interviewed the guys from Tetra pack and they are, they set up a recycling system. For this particular situation. So that to me is very circular, much improved and a great idea. So as long as they stick to that, and they're actually getting those recycled, which it sounds like they are, it's a, it's a circular model. And I think it's an improvement. So that's good.

Connor Bryant: 15:54

yes, no. So on that, I completely, I think it is a very good thing to have products supplied, you know, with the company that's supplying them, taking more responsibility for making sure they get recycled. So that is a positive move where I would be slightly hesitant for that. Is it just that. That wasn't the area that needed saving, right. That PT, that PT bottle can already be made out of a hundred percent recycled material and can be collected and recycled with existing infrastructure without having to put new infrastructure in place. And I think most importantly, one of the things that you know is a barrier for Tetra pack still to reach is okay. Collect recover and recycle. But at the moment, the recovery for Tetra pack is still, you know, down cycling or cycling into other products. There is no a hundred percent recycled Tetra pack on the market. And of course that's, that's what of course, you know, it is one of those things. There's also, there are steps on this journey. We can't, you know, people aren't gonna be perfect first time. I, you know, I applaud Tetra pack for investing at, you know, in their recycling solutions. You know, I think. More focus on making a products, outdoor, recycled material as well would be a really good area to pay attention to.

Cory Connors: 16:59

And that's, I think their next step, I agree with you kudos to them. Their, their, the next step is a recycled material that they use to make their containers out of it. And that's exciting because that that's, that's where it becomes actually

Connor Bryant: 17:14

circular. Right? Yeah. And of course the real chance for them there is, is the legislation. So, you know, in fairness, that's one of the things is that, you know, we can ate companies all we want, but this has also been governments moving far too slowly, you know, in Europe, You know, still PT is basically the only recyclable food contact material. You know, we're trying to make progress with PP and, you know, in America you're allowed a bit more, you're allowed to do recycled paper contact a bit more than we are, you know, it's anyway, lots of legislation progress to be made there. I. I'd like to quickly get back, cuz I'm, I'm conscious that I could talk about all these other issues quite a lot. I'd like to talk more about the rubbish project and I would specifically the rubbish tracker and dashboards.

Cory Connors: 17:52

That's right. Yes. Let's talk about those. That's actually the next thing on my list. So let's tell us about that. How does it work?

Connor Bryant: 17:58

Okay. Brilliant. So it, it works from the fundamental of really taking a step, taking a step back. You know, when, when approaching these sort of large companies is that we know what they want. Right. They want. Hundred percent circularity, but of course it's a journey to get that, or we know what we want them to get to as well, I suppose, right. We want them to get to a hundred percent circularity and we tell them that that's what they want to, and there are lots of good reasons for the businesses do that. It's not just environmental prisoners actually, you know, adopting a circular model for businesses will make them much more cost effective and sustainable long term economically as a. Right environmentally. But of course the, the first question is if you're gonna get to there to solve a problem, you need to understand it. And in the case of consuming products, that's. You need to know where the products are. So the first question is not, you know, how do we recover these? The first question is where are they going? Because if you know where they're going, then it's becomes much easier to recover them because it also solves the question of the, you know, one of the big issues with recovering material is, and recycling is quantity needs. Certain volumes of material make the economies of scale in order to recover streams. And so, especially if those streams are. For example, a bespoke material, like a Tetra Packers that you need quite a lot of Tetra pack together in one place for it to be cost effective to recycle them. Right. So one of the big challenges in the circular economy is identifying where all of our products are, and this represents a mark change for the waste management industry because the waste management industry were previously. Transport companies that dumped into tips and there's no traceability to that. They get paid to pick up stuff they want to pick up from you as regularly as possible. So they have regular pickups based on the schedule, regardless of whether, you know, you've actually, you know, often a waste managers are collecting from businesses on a weekly schedule. Even if the, you know, The business has beens are only 30% full because that supports their business model. And you know, definitely the business model that they had, the business model that they are struggling to transition away from. But of course in that business model, there is, there is no traceability and really they there incentivized to keep it that way. It's, you know, it's is more costly for them to segregate the material and to provide these sort of traceable streams. But of course, that's in direct contrast to where, you know, where we need to go and where, you know, big businesses are now demanding to go because their consumers are, you know more aware of this issue. So what we are doing is we are helping who to Mackey and it's customers track their products out into the market. Therefore, we are identifying the venues. The locations, the events, football stadiums universities, schools, train stations, airports, where these products are consumed. We are then offering these locations access to a event or location or venue dashboard that contains really two fit. It contains. The rubbish tracker, which is a sort of data portal that allows them to upload what products they're consuming and information about what's happening to it. And we actually have all sorts of smart devices that we can then sell in that allow us to gather that data automatically as well as smart bits of software. So it's not a manual reporting process. And of course this data feeds to us, but we also feed this data back to the partners that we're working with. So if it's. Who Tamaki products in that venue who Tamaki is knowing what's happened to their products. If it's one of their partners, you know, a soft drink company or a brewery we'll be telling them about, you know, what's happened to their products. The other side of the platform that helps the, the venues or festivals is, is our consultancy. We've taken our consultancy and we've digitalized it. And so we have courses and which contain lessons and so on, and lots of digital media guide people through the process of, or guide business through the process of managing their waste in a circular way. And you know, this is giving everything from. Again, we don't start. At the end, we start at the beginning. So one of the things is that businesses always come to us and say, tell us what to do with our waste. And we say, no, we're gonna, we're gonna tell you our products to consume. And then we're gonna work our way down to your waste, because that makes, you know, if you only got one type of material consumed on site, then your, the waste job is, is much easier. So our platform provides a consultancy that guides them through all of that process, as well as telling them how to gather data and. Upload it into our system. That's excellent. Well done. And so it, it creates a reporting mechanism for the businesses that we are working with to not only report what they're doing, but to continually improve that chart, that improvement and optimize it. And then on a grounder scale, that data allows us to optimize the, of this. The more businesses that we, that we work with in the locality, the more we get a view of the total waste landscape and the more that we can then work with a waste manager to go, right. Well, actually you can send round a dust cart and you can pick up a single segregated stream of this highly recoverable material in a very efficient transport route. Cause we've, I got the branch to gather that data.

Cory Connors: 23:35

Excellent job. It sounds like you've really filled a, a niche that needed to be filled

Connor Bryant: 23:39

all done. Yes. And thank you. Well, and, and, and the other thing is that it's, it's come from looking at how we could make the approach that we had previously more low cost and scalable. So previously we provided, you know, we've been doing this quite a few years now. We've been provided the consultancy to the business that we work. Directly you know, we were building them their own platforms and management systems and coming in, advising them on how to set up all these systems, what bins to use, how to segregate their ways, how their little Biggers run, et cetera. Obviously what we've done is we've taken that knowledge and we've turned that into a much more SC. Scalable lower cost digital offering. Awesome. Less one on one time, but therefore a much more affordable product. In fact, we are hoping to develop a freemium model for our service. Oh, wow. That allows people to take part in the cer economy for free and to start you know, start participating and then, you know, give them low cost options in order to do To forever improve there.

Cory Connors: 24:42

I'm writing down that word freemium. I've never heard that. That's wonderful. So how do people, how do people get ahold of you guys when they, when they're

Connor Bryant: 24:51

ready? Okay. How do people get ahold of us? Brilliant your question through our website. So the rubbish project.com It's actually currently being redesigned, but by the time anyone sees this it will be the new upgraded version that will guide you nicely through the, the services that we have from our sort of, you know, more custom offerings to the, to the more standard tracker and dashboard. Well,

Cory Connors: 25:13

thank you so much for your time today, Connor, this has been an excellent episode. I really appreciate what you guys are doing. I'd love to have you back on in six months or a year, and, and just talk about the progress you're making. I'd like to thank Landsberg Orora for sponsoring this podcast. And thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

Connor Bryant: 25:33

Excellent. Well, thank you, Cory . It was a, it was a pleasure to be here and to talk with you. And now I'd look forward to talking more. And I say, actually, the other thing about contacting me if anyone else wants to reach out LinkedIn. Yeah. Is a great place to, to reach me Connor Bryant on LinkedIn, all the rubbish projects at LinkedIn. Thank you. All right. Cheer, Cory. Thank you very much.