The AdaPETation Podcast

Welcome to The adaPETation Podcast. In today's episode, we dive into the inspiring story of Marta Uetela and her groundbreaking startup, Biomec. Discover how Marta's vision is turning the tide on plastic pollution by transforming discarded fishing nets and plastic waste into life-changing prosthetic limbs. Join us as we discuss the genesis of Biomec, the challenges and triumphs of creating prosthetics from recycled materials, and the future aspirations of a movement that redefines the value of waste. Marta's journey is not just about offering mobility; it's about inspiring a global shift towards a more sustainable and compassionate world. Tune in to hear how innovation and empathy can create a ripple effect of positive change.

In this episode of the adaPETation Podcast, we speak with Freya Burton, Chief Sustainability Officer at LanzaTech. We discuss how LanzaTech utilizes fermentation to transform waste CO2 from Chinese steel mills into eco-friendly PET plastic. Its carbon capture technology fosters circular systems, which promise to provide a pivotal solution to global environmental challenges.

Listen the interview with Cordie Aziz-Nash, Founder of Environment 360, on tackling plastic pollution in Ghana and supporting women waste pickers.

Cordie Aziz-Nash, the founder of Environment 360, shares her journey of creating a sustainable solution for Ghana's plastic waste problem. She talks about the creation of Environment 360, an organization dedicated to addressing plastic waste in Ghana by promoting local solutions and the importance of creating local solutions to solve global issues, and how her work has impacted waste pickers in Ghana.

It’s a fascinating glimpse into how storytelling and connecting with other founders can sustain networks of hope and how her organization is working towards restoring ecosystems in a place where there is a serious need for waste management infrastructure and eco-heroes.

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Listen to Captain Fanplastic, a.k.a ⁠Ruben Hazelzet⁠, a pirate that teaches kids to treasure plastic with a fun program that educates them on the importance of plastic reduction and sustainability.

Ruben moved from the Netherlands to Cape Town in October 2016 to work remotely for Soapbox Amsterdam and discover the opportunities to set up an office in South Africa. By experiencing the beautiful nature and the vibrant culture, but also the opportunities Africa holds Ruben’s determination grew to implement behavioral design in Africa.

By facilitating behavioral design workshops for South African firms, a sufficient basis was found to start Soapbox’s first foreign office. He was setting out to positively impact Africa through behavioral design in education, healthcare, financial inclusion, and sustainability.

Captain Fanplastic is an environmental literacy program that grew from the initiative using graphic storytelling, creativity, and gamification to educate primary school kids about the impact of land-based pollution on the marine environment and the value of plastic should it be recycled.

The learning objective is to create a mindset that plastic waste is #NoTrashButTreasure. The initiative now reaches more than 20,000 children in 11 countries and that is why he becomes one of the adaPETation Network nominees for PET Heroes 2024.

Click ⁠here⁠ to know more about AdaPETation.

The adaPETation® network talks with social entrepreneur Siddarth Hande, founder of Kabadiwalla Connect, on tackling plastic pollution in Chennai, India, and how to optimize waste management networks with data.

Social entrepreneur, Siddharth Hande, is a development sector specialist based in Chennai, India. As a geographic information system expert, experienced in delivering high-quality data-driven research he has held leadership roles in varied projects related to Urban governance, sustainability, and the environment.

As the founder and current CEO of Kabadiwalla Connect, an award-winning social enterprise in the field of waste management, he has focused on developing scalable and inclusive solutions to the collection, aggregation, and processing of post-consumer waste in cities in the developing world.

He hopes to be able to articulate a cheaper and more inclusive approach for cities in the Global South to apply circular economy principles — by leveraging the informal waste ecosystem.

As a consequence of his innovative work in Chennai, he has been invited to map waste management systems in other cities facing similar problems and that’s why he’s been nominated as one of adaPETation’s PET Heroes for 2024.

Click ⁠here⁠ to know more about AdaPETation.

In conversation with Filip Petrovic, Plastipak Packaging business development manager for Europe. Learn how Plastipak is producing sustainable PET by trapping greenhouse gas emission from steel plants in China and turning it into regenerative plastic with the help of some friendly LanzaTech-trained bacteria.

Plastipak, a US-based packaging company, has been working on innovative, sustainable solutions that could make plastic a carbon sink. Their latest partnership with LanzaTech has resulted in the creation of a PET resin that captures carbon from steel plants, significantly reducing the material’s carbon footprint.

The partnership with LanzaTech is a critical development in the packaging industry and a step towards a more sustainable future. Filip Petrovic, Plastipak’s business development manager for Europe, shared his thoughts on the partnership with LanzaTech in a recent interview on the adaPETation® Podcast. He emphasized the company’s focus on sustainability and its efforts to reduce the impact of packaging on the environment.

Click ⁠here⁠ to know more about AdaPETation.

Listen to this episode and discover how Yunus Environment Hub is transforming the environmental and climate crisis through social business solutions, including their Circular Rise program and Zero Plastic Waste Cities initiative.

One organization leading the way in response to the mounting environmental challenges we face is Yunus Environment Hub (YEH). Co-founded by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus, his Creative Advisor Hans Reitz, and our latest interviewee, co-founder and managing director, Christina Jaeger, YEH develops social business solutions that tackle the environmental and climate crisis.

At the heart of YEH’s work is the concept of social business as a way to combat the climate crisis. The concept translates into helping social business entrepreneurs who are passionate about the climate, environment, and ecosystems to set up ventures that protect our environment as one of the key activities to achieving net zero carbon emissions.

Through incubator and accelerator programs, YEH provides capacity building and technical assistance to entrepreneurs at different stages of their venture journey. 

Click ⁠here⁠ to know more about AdaPETation.

We spoke to Wes Jones, Chief Transformation Officer, and Juan Villamayor Sustainability Officer at IMG group - the owners of packaging specialists Evertis and Selenis - about the experiences and challenges of moving the company and the industry in a regenerative direction.

Finding a regenerative path for the PET polymers industry is a difficult task and one that needs everyone pulling in the same direction. For many, plastic remains a controversial topic, largely due to the mismanagement of the material and the environmental fallout that results.

And yet this hasn’t stopped some from investing in taking the steps required to help the world appreciate the value the material can offer in shifting towards a more regenerative future.

In a bid to move beyond the blame game towards a conversation that focuses on plastic and its important role within the different systems that support life on earth. Learning from the experience of companies moving in a regenerative direction is a vital element of putting an industry-wide shift in place and lessons can be learned from companies like the IMG group, the owners of packaging specialists, Evertis, and Selenis which are moving from a sustainable to regenerative outlook by copying from the principles of biomimicry.

Click ⁠here⁠ to know more about AdaPETation.

In this episode, the founder of Plastic Technologies Inc talks about an industry that he helped build that has touched almost everyone on the planet and the essential teachings of his book, The History of the PET Bottle.

There are few people in the PET polymer industry with the depth of knowledge as Dr. Tom Brady. The 50-year veteran, began his career at Owens-Illinois, Inc in 1972, just as the carbonated soft drink companies started to ask their suppliers to create and offer family-size carbonated beverage containers.

The inquiry required an industry-wide conversion from glass and aluminum to plastic, a challenge gladly accepted by Brady and his colleagues. In a period of 10 years, Owens-Illinois and its competitors rolled out a remarkable response, creating an entirely new industry that was capable of supplying sustainable PET packaging to the beverage, food, and personal care product industries.

Click ⁠here⁠ to know more about AdaPETation.

The AdaPETation Network talks to Ewan Morrell, an industrial design student from the United Kingdom who has created the BOT lifejacket, which is designed to recycle PET bottles and waste fabrics to save lives in Bangladesh.

The latest of the AdaPETation Network’s PET heroes is Ewan Morrell, a student of design at Northumbria University. His final year project – The BOT Life Jacket – was featured at New Designers in London. The easy and cheap-to-produce lifejacket uses discarded PET bottles to save children’s lives during monsoon season in Bangladesh. It’s a wonderful initiative that brings together reciprocity, circular and regenerative design and is very worthy of its entry into our shortlist of 12 PET heroes for 2023. 

Click ⁠here⁠ to know more about AdaPETation.

Ashwani Aggarwal’s circular venture, Basic Shit, is converting PET and other plastic waste into public toilets to answer the call of nature and respond to a serious sanitation issue in India.

Building a business that gives people dignity when they are “doing their business”, is the goal of Indian systems thinker, Ashwani Aggarwal.

Keeping the poop in the loop and away from polluting the country’s water supply while recycling plastic waste and preventing it from being burned in the sprawling urban metropolis of New Delhi are the admirably, beautiful by-products.

That’s why Ashwani Aggarwal, the founder of Basic Shit, is our eighth and final candidate for PET Heroes 2023.

Click ⁠here⁠ to know more about AdaPETation.

The AdaPETation talks with Plastiks.io co-founder, Andre Yanvi-Robin, about Increasing traceability in the plastic value chain with the first NFT marketplace for plastic clean-up operations around the world.

Harnessing the power of Web 3.0, an online NFT (non-fungible token) marketplace, Plastiks has created an innovative bridge connecting plastic waste producers and clean-up champions to stem the tide of plastic into our oceans. 

Putting the art into recycling, Plastiks gives individuals and organizations the chance to fund clean-up operations in India, Brazil, Thailand, Kenya, and Egypt. It’s the first step towards the tokenization of recycling and an important way to increase the visibility of the people on the frontline of the fight to close the loop on plastic waste.

Click ⁠here⁠ to know more about AdaPETation.

The AdaPETation Network talks with Systemiq's plastic lead, Yoni Shiran about how to take plastic to net zero.

Plastic has an important role in helping the world achieve the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement and COP27 of arresting global warming by bringing an end to greenhouse gas emissions. 

Achieving the world’s sustainable development goals is the principal focus of the purpose-driven company, SYSTEMIQ. The London-based B Corp recently looked at how the European Plastics System in particular can lead the way in helping the industry move towards the world’s net zero goals.

Commissioned by Plastics Europe, SYSTEMIQ’s report ReShaping Plastics: Pathways to a Circular Climate Neutra Plastics System in Europe aimed to evaluate current progress and assess the potential of different levers to help transition towards the EU’s net zero carbon emissions and circularity goals by 2050.

Click ⁠here⁠ to know more about AdaPETation.

Play this episode and listen to how Álvaro Catalán de Ocón's PET Lamp and Plastic Rivers social initiatives shine a light on PET plastic recycling at NYC x Design Festival.

Álvaro Catalán de Ocón (ACdO), the founder of a movement that reflects and questions the world around us through design, has been showcasing recycled PET for more than a decade placing the material in the talented hands of talented artisans who weave PET bottles a beautiful second life with a powerful message.

Click ⁠here⁠ to know more about AdaPETation.

Nanoresonance Industries co-founders Athan Bloom and Dr. Ekaterina Markelova talk about how they are exploring better water holds as the key to many of the world’s most pressing problems including reducing the environmental footprint of the polymers industry.

As much of the world swelters and struggles with alarming heat waves and forest fires, water has taken on even greater importance. Making up more than 70% of our planet’s surface, some say that we mistakenly named our home Earth when it should have been called Planet Water, and it’s probably the liquid part of our planet that holds the answers to some of our existential challenges. 

Regenerative thinkers like Daniel Christian Wahl argue that answers to our pressing needs to secure renewable sources for our material needs can be found in a shift towards biodegradable materials and particularly the use of materials that can be easily dissolved in water, allowing our industrial processes to become more aligned with our planet’s more regenerative natural systems and flows. 

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Listen to a masterful conversation in this podcast with Sibele Cestari, a Scientific Researcher Specialized in Polymers Recycling, who in the company of our host, Rainbow Nelson, will explain in depth what some of the projects she has been involved in on her way to find a plastic solution.
Click here to know more about AdaPETation.

In this episode, Marie Stafford, global director from Wunderman Thompson Intelligence, talks about how Gen Z and new trends in the modern consumer can help to bring solutions together in the plastic industry.

Almost born with a smartphone in their hands, Gen Z, is the first to grow up with constant access to the Internet and portable digital technology from a young age. They, more than any before, have started to send shockwaves through corporate boardrooms around the world.

As the generation’s activist-in-chief, Greta Thunberg, says, “change is coming, whether you like it or not”, and her words are backed up by research by Wunderman Thomson, the New York-based global marketing communications agency. 

Click here to know more about AdaPETation. 

In this podcast, Brian Bauer from Algramo, talks with our host, Rainbow Nelson, about how important reuse systems to find plastic solutions together.

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Tristan Lecomte, founder of the Thailand-based cleanup operation, Second Life, and regenerative network, PUR Projet, believes so and is doing his best to make sure it plays a part in stemming the flow of plastic waste into our oceans.

Second Life grew out of existing relationships Lecomte had built up over two decades helping corporations to offset their carbon footprints by planting more than 20 million trees. One of his existing clients – French cosmetics brand Caudalie – wanted to extend its carbon offsetting activities to cover its plastic footprint too.

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Combining two of the top trends for consumer brands in 2022 - purpose and customization - the sneakers, face masks, tote, and clutch bags produced by Skizo Shoes - put slow fashion in the thick of one of the world’s greatest challenges, reversing the flow of plastic waste into our oceans.

Founded by passionate Portuguese power couple Andre Facote and Andreia Coutinho, the company has grown hand-in-hand with their son, Lorenzo. Their tiny toddlers' encounter with a rogue piece of plastic on a visit to the beach three years ago was the Genesis moment for their deep entrepreneurial dive into stopping the flow of plastic waste into the world’s waterways and oceans.

Host Rainbow Nelson talks with Andre Facote about how the idea came about in their stylish response to offer eco-friendly consumers a chance to create their own unique piece of fashion from rubbish pulled from the rivers, beaches, and oceans close to Porto and Lisbon.

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Erica Ericksson lead researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, USA talks to Rainbow Nelson about the breakthrough science that put nature back in the picture when it comes to recycling plastic.

NREL is a national lab that is supported by the Department of Energy in the United States and my team works on lots of different things but I’m part of the group working on turning waste materials into more valuable compounds so whether that is energy, some parts of NREL are focused on renewable energy or whether that is taking waste materials and making those into more valuable commodity chemicals so there is an incentive to renew the materials we are using into new things and continue the cycle. 

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