EP117. Should beauty go plastic free?

We're now in the middle of Plastic Free July, a global movement that works towards a world free of plastic waste. I've already dedicated two of my last episodes to the beauty industry's plastic addiction inside the bottle. And today I want to look at packaging. We all know that we have to stem the flow of plastic into our environment. No one wants to see their lotion bottle washed up on a beach. But just how big a problem is plastic? Well, let's look at just a few statistics before we get started with today's interview. Firstly, half of all plastics ever manufactured have been made in the last 15 years. And production of plastic has increased exponentially from one and a half million tons in 1950 to 367 million tons by 2015. And of that every year now, about 8 million tons of plastic waste escapes into the oceans from coastal nations. And of course, as we know from the biodegradable beauty podcast episode that I recorded with Anna Green last year, plastic can take about 400 years to break down in the environment. So we have a big problem on our hands. And the beauty industry has only recently really started talking about it. And that's why today I've invited an organization called Repurpose Global onto the podcast to talk to me about the way that they're working with organizations to reduce their plastic footprint. But how does the beauty industry end its addiction to plastic? We'll explore the complexities in this episode, so settle in for a great listen because you don't want to miss this. Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make and sell your natural beauty formulations. We tackle topics that will make you think and encourage debate about green beauty with your friends, followers or customers. I'm your host, Lorraine Dallmayer. I'm a chartered environmentalist, biologist and the CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school, Formula Botanica. We have thousands and thousands of students in over 180 countries around the world who study with us to become organic beauty formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. And if you want to be the first person to know what's happening in green beauty, make sure you subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app. So in today's episode, I'm joined by Peter Wang Yemdahl, social entrepreneur and co founder and chief advocacy officer of Repurpose Global, the world's leading plastic action platform dedicated to reducing waste, reviving lives and restoring nature's balance. At Repurpose Peter spearheads the ventures, marketing and communication efforts and advises a team of 20 impact storytellers and brand strategists across North America, the UK, Europe and Asia. Hi Peter, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm doing well, thank you so much Lauren. It's really excited for this conversation and big admirer of green beauty and I think there's a lot that we can dive in here. So yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Oh, it's a pleasure and I can't wait to explore this topic because it is such an important one. So let's start off at the beginning. Can you please tell us and me and all the listeners what Repurpose Global is?

Of course. So I'm one of the co founders and chief advocacy officer at Repurpose Global and today we are pioneering the world's leading plastic action platform that is dedicated to reducing waste, reviving lives and restoring nature's balance. Specifically, we do that by activating and spearheading an ecosystem of purposeful brands of waste innovators, of sustainability leaders and conscious consumers. And in particular we're focused on really tackling the plastic problem in collaboration with the consumer goods sector such as food, beverage, health, beauty, cosmetics, personal care, wellness, the sector that's really been one of the most responsible for the single use plastic pollution and the ocean plastic crisis that we see have been unfolding for the past couple decades. And I think specifically we help consumer goods and CPG brands take a variety of actions on plastic waste, ranging from helping them measure their plastic footprints through our proprietary technology to helping them advise on how to reduce the supply chain plastic use through our team of sustainability experts and also through offsets and credits and certifications that help genuinely mend businesses and brands who want to measure, reduce and offset their plastic footprint and do so and go plastic neutral or plastic negative by committing to remove finance the removal of at least as much plastic from the environment as they use in their packaging and the operations. And in return we also then engage use that critical environmental finance to scale up the crucial efforts of waste management innovators and entrepreneurs on the ground through repurposed impact projects now spread across all three developing continents in India, Indonesia, Kenya, Colombia, Ghana and expanding quickly. So. So all in all, yeah, we are really excited to be here and that you know, we are come a long way since we started now working with over 250 businesses and brands ranging over 100 personal care and beauty businesses who have certified with Repurpose and we're really proud to be removing over 14 million pounds of plastic waste from the environment every single year through our projects across the, you know, five, six different countries in the developing. That's a little bit about repurposed, but I'm happy to dive deeper wherever you like to do solaray.

Absolutely. Well, I'm looking forward to this. Well, obviously it's a huge undertaking, what you've got there, and it's very exciting. But before we start to go into the nitty gritty of how you do it and how it all works, you tell me why you started Repurpose Global.

That's a great question and one that's very close and dear to our heart. I think for us, the entry point to plastic waste was not actually, surprisingly to me, to maybe to many lay people, not the environmental perspective of it. It was actually through the social, economic angle of plastic pollution. And that's a really bit of an undercover sort of relative underreport. Right in the overall ocean. Plastic zeitgeists sort of have entered us. You know, this was about 2016 and you know, we were actually just tasked with the student case competition and the challenge that was posed to us was how do you double the income of 10 million people living in extreme poverty in urban slums across the world? And that's where we really found out. And we were completely surprised by the fact that waste picking and informal waste workers comprise of the second most popular source of income for informal workers among the urban poor worldwide. And that's really where we got digging and started to understand more about that problem and realized that plastic pollution is a critical effect and symptom of that socioeconomic issue that is so widespread, where tens of millions of informal workers are stuck in abject poverty and dealing with the consequences of our consumption across the world. So my co founders and I, you know, we, we decided to take it up actually as our honors research thesis in our final year of, of school and actually, you know, went to Mumbai, where we visited one of Asia's largest landfills, where there was a moment where we realized that we were standing between mountains of plastic. On the one side, as far as the eye can see, and on the other side there was this booming, endless skyline of India's financial capital. And we realized that something had to be done to bridge the divide between these two vastly contrasting realities. And that's where we really started to look for solutions that are on the intersection of both the realities of the lack of waste infrastructure, the lack of financing, the lack of support, technical assistance for innovators and entrepreneurs in the plastic Waste space and combine that with, you know, the newly found will and resolve to, from the business and brand community, particularly within consumer goods industry, to tackle the plastic problem. But on the other hand, that resolve didn't really have any roots, right? There was no education, knowledge, steps and real solutions to help the CPG brands take immediate, accessible and systemic action on the topic. So that's really where we combined the both and innovated and pioneered the idea of plastic credits and, and sort of modeled and inspired after carbon offsets, but with crucial differences. You know, we've learned from the failures and the successes of the carbon markets and applied that into solving the plastic problem. That's a little bit of how we got started, Lorraine. It's, you know, definitely a very personal one, but I think it's one that, that is very close to, you know, how we, and even today translate into the mission and the values of our organization as well.

Absolutely. Wow, what a fantastic story. And I can imagine that standing there on that landfill must have been quite impactful, for sure. I mean, you've talked a little bit about the socioeconomic aspect, as you say. Everyone rightly also thinks about the environmental components of global plastic pollution. Can you give us an overview of just how bad the global plastic pollution problem really is?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think it's a hard one for, for me to personally answer because, you know, as an entrepreneur, as a, as an impact entrepreneur in the plastic space, right, there's, there's a one end of it where you want to tell the whole world, whether or not it's brands, it's government policymakers, it's innovators, that this is such a dire problem. And that because it is, right, 8 million tons of plastic flow into the oceans every single year. The world needs $30 billion of additional financing every single year to effectively end plastic waste in nature. And I'm sure we can rattle off a ton more stats, right? I think we've all heard too much. So you can say a lot of, of the real scale of the plastic waste problem and then also then at the same time balancing that with, you know, letting people know that it's a solvable problem, that we can do something about it and that it's not something it looks scary, it looks big, it looks untackleable, but we can actually do it. And to be honest, personally, if you ask me, it's, it's, it's a really tough challenge, right, to try to balance those two particular perspectives because we sit in the middle of this, right? And then at certain points we have to talk about how big the problem is. At certain points we also have to break that problem down, right, for people across the ecosystem to understand. Because plastic waste is incredibly complex. That's the bottom line, right, Is that there's no one single stat, one single perspective that summarizes the scale of the problem. But I think the closest one that gets to really understanding the scale of the issue is just translating into real dollars. How much money do we need to tackle the problem? And with climate change you need hundreds of billions, but actually trillions over the course of the next couple of decades to solve the problem. But the nice thing is that we actually the science has been done, right? So we know that it's a tackleable problem. $30 billion every single year sounds like a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things, it's something that is actually doable to solve the problem. And it's high time for us to really internalize that and realize that there is a lot that we need to do. Not just within the supply chains of each of these organizations and brands across the world, but also everybody has to come together to solve the challenges of the systems at large. And in addition to looking at what they're doing in their supply chains, if we really want a real shot at tackling and solving the plastic problem, blimey.

I mean 30 million, 30 billion as you say, it sounds like a huge number, but actually when you look at what governments spend all the time, it's a drop in the ocean and there just has to be the willpower to do it. Which is presumably also why you've set up repurposed global. So can you walk us through how the scheme works? I mean it's a certification scheme. So someone imagine I'm running a brand, I come to you, how does it work?

For sure, I think happy to go into the logistics as well. I think you know, we've designed our certification program to be accessible by brands of all sizes small all the way from mom and pop. So even tons of brands are working with us who, hey, repurpose. We really want to be plastic neutral. We haven't launched yet, but I love to get my brand to be plastic neutral, plastic negative from day one. Tons of brands in those scenarios, tons of also challenger brands are fast growing ones that really want to sort of tackle the problem and as well as design for larger businesses and Fortune 500 companies. And that's the one side. And the other side, I think the other principles of the design of Certification is really the rigorousness that is situated within it and a real process of how we actually do this, and that's to answer your question, is in three steps. So number one, we help companies and brands actually measure the plastic footprint. It definitely is a more bells and whistles to it, right? But I think the, the easiest way to understand it is that let's say if you're a beauty brand, you're selling, right, a million units in your, if your brand was one single SKU and that one single SKU had a million, you sell a million units. And every unit, let's say, contains about 20 grams of plastic in a large shampoo bottle with times the number of grams of plastic per container, times that by your sales. And that's really the mix of the bulk of your plastic for printing, packaging. But of course, right, there's, there's bells and whistles. So there is more than just packaging that just what meets the eye, right? There is supply chain, there's manufacturing, there's distribution, right. There's a lot of other parts of it as well. You know, in carbon you refer to as scope one emissions, Scope two emissions, Scope three emissions. Right. So we've designed something similar within our plastic footprint methodology for Repurpose where we measure scope one, we also help measure scope two and assume certain factors of scope three, both using technology, but also, you know, advisory just to help brands and companies understand their plastic use, which can take either an hour for smaller companies to a couple of days, right. For much larger businesses, that's step number one. Now step number two is to commit to reduction, right? So we're very clear at Repurpose is that, you know, our plastic neutral certification, we don't use it as a license to pollute and we don't allow anybody to use it as a mere way to justify the plastic production that they're putting out in the world. So we're very clear that we help companies actually think through and to commit to tangible reduction targets and monitor on that progress on a year by year basis. And then finally is where the credit, the plastic credits come in. Where for certain amount of, you know, let's say, use a hundred tons of plastic in the supply chain in 2021, they finance the removal through our platform, at least 100 tons of plastic from the environment to, through one or several of our impact projects on the ground to then enable them to use our platform to achieve a net zero plastic footprint. And that's really what initially awards brands the plastic neutral certification. And then year on year, we Continuously measure. Right. So their footprint changes on a quarterly basis. And we also monitor the progress on reduction and other things related to taking holistic plastic action beyond just the offsetting part of the certification.

So what sort of uptake have you seen amongst beauty brands so far? Obviously, we're on the Green Beauty Conversations podcast. It sounds like you deal with a lot of different consumer good companies. How have things been with beauty?

It's been great reception from the beauty industry and we're really thankful for the support. And I think that's rooted in the fact that, I mean, consumers, beauty consumers particularly really care about this topic. If you look at the difference between a beauty brand versus, like a food brand, the performance is still key. The safety, the performance, the ingredients, like all of those things are still things that consumers really care about. But for beauty and personal care brands, I mean, people are not just looking at those factors and also looking at intangible factors differentiate brands within a very, as you can imagine, more than I can, a very crowded marketplace. Right. Where there's a lot of beauty brands, you know, trying to make a difference. So, yeah, we, we're working out. Yeah. Again, over a hundred personal care and beauty brands across us, Canada, uk, Europe and also the rest of the world. You know, my brands in Asia and India as well. And yeah, so notable ones like Grove Collaborative Play, Beauty Inner Sense, Organic Beau, across cosmetics as well as personal care and wellness. I think various parts of this big tent of green and sort of clean beauty, you can say. And yeah, and in fact, I mean, sort of another commentary on top of that as well is that, you know, we see actually a really big trend of, from beauty and personal care companies to not just go plastic neutral, but actually go plastic negative, where they're committing to a measure, reduce but also offset the removal and finance the removal of at least twice as much plastic as they use in their packaging and operations. So over 200%, 200% or more of their unique annual plastic footprint. And I think particularly here, you know, we see that beauty brands, and particularly the founders of these organizations that companies are really conscious, wants to take steps beyond just being neutral and sort of being net zero to the environment to actually be net positive. Right. And actually help remove the legacy plastic pollution that we've created on the environment and do more, you know, take more out of the system than we put into it. So there's that within the beauty space as well.

Amazing. So, I mean, 40% of the brands you're working with, it sounds like they're beauty brands. So obviously there's been a huge response from the beauty industry, which is great to hear and we're going to come to offsetting in a minute. But I first want to talk about reduction. Obviously this is a great topic. So tell me how you work with beauty brands to reduce their plastic footprint. I mean you've already touched on this a little bit, but I'm a beauty brand, I come to you, I've obviously committed to this. How do I reduce my plastic footprint?

It's a tough challenge, right. You know, I think the starting point is that that's really the holy grail, right? That's the million dollar question there. Right. You know, there's no one single answer. I wish there was a magical wand that, you know, just helps all supply chains become plastic free. That's impossible. And I think it will take decades to really unwind what we have built into it. Right. But I think at the same time the way we help brands reduce is really in three different ways. One is through insights against conventional knowledge. Right. Measuring plastic footprint is not just about spitting out one single number. That one single number is just logistics. Right. We actually that number, yes, used for the offsetting calculations and knowing how much plastic we want the brand wants to take out from the environment. But in doing so and actually calculating their plastic use, we're doing much more than that. We're helping them understand recyclability, we're helping them understand where they can reduce unnecessary parts of their packaging. Right. I think sometimes like people just go by the daily business and of course with beauty and personal care brands like the founders and the organizations, they're not necessarily experts in packaging as much as the experts in the normal course of functions of becoming a beauty brand. Marketing, sales operations. And this is where we say, you know, we help you not just measure and calculate the totality of your plastic, but also analyze and help you think through, do things in data driven way. Because without data, without real understanding of how the makeup of your plastic footprint, it's impossible for you to do anything when it comes to reduction. That's number one. Insights. Second is through recycled plastic. So you know, I think there's of course, as you know there's a big push right towards beauty brands and overall CBG brands, you know, incorporating pcr, post consumer recycled content into their, into the supply chain. And that's something that we are in the process of doing as well. Right. So we offer ethically recycled plastic from all of our projects and the overall sort of the end goal that we're trying to accomplish here. Is really a circular economy around offsetting where they're not just paying to, to remove plastic from the environment that, but that plastic that they also pay to remove from the environment can also go back to their supply chains. Of course that's complicated. Right. It takes time to really figure that out. So I think we are innovating or piloting some of these things with larger companies like for example, Colgates. Right. You know, I think PCR is also a challenging game given how much supply chain logistics and complexities and costs associated with as well. Right. So I think but to that point we are removing thousands of tons of plastic from the environment every year. That plastic actually gets recycled and becomes materials and feedstock for the circular economy, particularly when it comes to PCR content, which is a very, very critical way for us to reduce plastic use in the first place. And last but not least, I think is really just through advisory. We've got a team of packaging sustainability experts. Right. So you know, really the. We've studied the issue, right. To such a granular extent to understand about the problem and recommend solutions with your consulting hours and workshops and helping brands just to think through this beyond just data, but also actually using strategies and you know, using that advisory to help them think through those problems. So no singular silver bullet, attractive answer, right. To reduction. But through insights through advisory and through PCR recycled circular economy feedstock, those are a couple of ways how we help beauty brands reduce plastic.

Sounds like quite a sizable undertaking. Very interesting to hear how you go about this. So I'm going to play devil's advocate for a minute, which I know you were expecting because I told you beforehand I was going to do this now. You've got your plastic neutral scheme, you've got your plastic negative certification scheme. Let's talk about the neutrality component at the moment. So being devil's advocate, does plastic neutrality not imply that the current levels of plastic pollution in our environment are acceptable? Because some people might argue, and you already touched on this earlier and I did pick up on that, that you're effectively sort of giving people the license to pollute. So how do you respond to something like that?

Yeah, I think that's, that's a great question. I think one that we grapple with and you know, think through. Right. Every single day. The bottom line is that there is no survival solution to plastic pollution. You know, I think we're not advocating for pass neutrality or offsets or credits to be the final step. It's very much the first step of many. Right. And I think here we find that it's important to give brands the opportunity to get started with something and then help them deepen that engagement. Right. I think, you know, it's kind of like if somebody else goes to somebody and says, hey, I'm gonna need you to pay a million dollars, I'm going to need you to change the supply chains overnight, you know, and then they're not activated. The brands and the businesses that are ready for certain undertaking and then they get daunted by the challenge, right? I think that's the last thing that we want right now because the situation is dire. The plastic pollution problem is urgent and unless we start finding effective ways to solve the problem, we just don't have, we cannot afford to wait, we don't have the time on our hands to wait to solve the plastic problem. It's really, really all hands on deck situation, right? It's measurement, it's offset, it's reduction. All those three things have to go hand in hand to solve the plastic problem. And then we are in full advocacy and we are full support and actually provide services not just in one component. Right? We provide services and help in various components to solve the problem. That's number one. But I think maybe, maybe, you know, if you can afford to get a little bit more deeper and a little bit more philosophical about it as well, I think it's important to also recognize that, you know, there's a bit of a artificial barrier being placed here, right, between offsets and reduction. Those two things are go hand in hand. If you look at one of the major problems that are blocking one of the major bottlenecks that are currently impeding the progress of us from our transition from a linear economy to a circular economy. It's really the price, the price and availability of PCR content, right? The price avail of recycled content. We've heard from hundreds of brands how they've found, try to find solutions that works for the industry, works for their geography and the price points. Even if it does, even it's available, which is a big question mark in the first place. Even if the material is available in the first place, it's too expensive, right? It's incredibly costly compared to what they're currently paying. And that's what we also solving for here with a plastic credits. Because fundamentally we're not going to get to a full 100% recycled circular economy if we don't have materials and we're not going to have recycled materials if we don't have the infrastructure across the world to collect the plastic waste that is actually recyclable. That is now being millions of tons of which are actually ending up being in landfills, incineration in different places. Right. So in doing so, what we're doing with credits and offsets is actually propelling that forward and making that PCR content much more available on a systems level beyond just individual supply chains. So I do think we need to have a very constructive discussion here. Right. I think as a brand we know that progress is never perfect and we welcome debates, we welcome feedback. We would love to for others to tell us how we can do better because we want to. Our intention is to do the best that we can. But we are so open to collaboration on this. And to the extent that we've actually created an independence and ability advisory board, a scientific advisory board of Experts ranging from U.S. plastic Pack to Ellen MacArthur foundation and other people that, across the value chain who can then help us, you know, in this leading position around advancing the circular economy, do better than what we're doing right now.

So yeah, that was a great answer. Well, thank you very much for tackling my difficult question there. I just want to talk about pcr. So post consumer recycled plastic. I mean the beauty industry is making a lot of commitments around this. There's been a real flurry of activity over the last two years, which is great. Although it frustrates me that it's taken so long for them to make some of these commitments. And I'm getting press releases sent to me all the time going, hey, our packaging is now recyclable. And you sort of sit there and go, oh my goodness, is it really taking them that long? But yes, I guess the question I have, and you've already touched on this a little bit, I mean, obviously the infrastructure isn't really there at the moment for pcr. So what needs to change in order for us to be able to start to use it a lot more other than the price?

Definitely. Yeah. I think, you know, we have to start with elephant in the room, which is government policy. Right. We have to start with our conversation. Right. I think there's Sony so much that, that we can do, right. In the space of service provision, in the space of for profit social entrepreneurship. I think we need to get more governments to mandate that from companies and brands we can close the gap a little bit with price and that will happen over time, you know, to bring down the price of cycloplastic closer to virgin. But it's never going to be the same. Right. I mean there's just one the physics of It. Right. I mean there's just so much more you need to do. There's a whole loop you have to close. Right. So virgin plastic is half the loop, but recycled plastic, you have to go that loop one more time for the same place. So. So it's physically not possible for it to get to the same price. Right. And fundamentally the government has to either subsidize or mandate essentially the cost of cycloplastic. And that resolve needs to be there. And I think we need to. To push governments around the world through advocacy, through to help them understand how important it is to do that. That's number one. I think number two is also just best practices and knowledge. Right. I think there's a lot of, you know, sustainability. I was reading an article earlier today, I think about the rise of CSOs, the rise of chief, chief senability officers. It was interesting article because it's one of the newest professions in the world. It wasn't a profession even five, 10 years ago. And now you have this flurry of influx of talent coming from nonprofit for profit government. They come from different places to fill up this vacuum in the sustainability sector. But doing so in a way that is sort of building the plane while you fly it. Right. And I think much sustainability is still like that today, right. Is that we're building and we're fighting it. But I think, you know, to do that properly, we need resources, they need training, they need education. I think this is much to your business learning around the form of Botanica as well in terms of helping people learn how to do the craft. Right. I think there's a lot of. And that might seem dirty and not very attractive as an answer, you can say either. But I think it's really the details, right. I think is really helping people and translating those knowledge pieces, particularly in a pre competitive way. I would argue specifically, I think there's a lot of feeling around competition even on those things. Right. There's not a lot of knowledge sharing amongst competitors. But we're all going towards the same goal here. I still think that, I mean, to be completely honest here, I think there's still a little bit of that feeling that sustainability is a differentiator. Right. It's a competitive differentiator. It's an edge that we want to keep for ourselves. If we know how to do PCR content really well without compromising product safety and quality, maybe I don't want to share that with my competitors. Right. And I think unfortunately that's a mentality issue that we have to solve. Right. Within the industry to make it clear that, you know, and sustainability no longer to go from just being purely a competitive differentiator to a cost of doing business. Once that shift starts to happen, with policymaking, with consumer advocacy, with training and services and provision from. To help sustainability leaders perform better, only that mentality will start shifting much quicker, I think.

Yeah, that's completely fair enough. I am seeing the big players in the beauty industry start to share information a lot more, which is good to see, but we still have a long way to go. I find it interesting you mentioned the CSO job. I did my degree in corporate sustainability and environmental management 20 years ago and I can tell you those jobs did not exist when I came out of university. But it's great to see that they're starting to sort of mushroom out the ground. So I want to talk briefly about the projects that you're running with the funds that you receive from the certification scheme. What sort of projects are you setting up? Can you give us some examples?

Yeah, that's a bread and butter right there. Right. That's the part that we get excited about every day in terms of, you know, actually adding value and creating these projects on the ground. You know, there's really three categories of projects, right, of how we run things on the ground. Number one is creating new infrastructure where no infrastructure previously existed, particularly in vulnerable coastal communities in the developing world, either rural or for other reasons, where there's just simply no formal waste collection process. I think here in the west, me sitting in Miami, you sit in the uk, I mean, it's easy enough to, you know, it happens like clockwork, right. There's a trash shoot outside your door. You go out there and you put your trash at the door and, you know, magically, it just happens in much of the developing, in much of the world, to be honest, that is not the case. Right. So. And coming from firsthand experience of having lived in India for the past three years, it's a big challenge. That's where we come in and work with local partners to finance trucks, balers, equipment, real estate, working capital, safety equipment. Right. Just all the nuts and bolts that are needed to collect plastic in geographies where none previously existed. And then feeding that plastic that we collect into recycling or other environmental end destinations. And specifically, I think here I want to highlight the importance of the principle of additionality in the work that we do. Every piece of plastic that we collect from the environment through our system of credits and finance and support from brands is a piece of plastic that would have Otherwise remained in the environment. Or in other words, we're not in the business of funding whatever is already happening in the status quo. And that's a nice segue into the second option, right, Is where we tackle the things that previously have been untackleable, particularly low value plastic waste. So over 91% of plastic today is not recycled because over 50% of the plastic that is produced is not recyclable. That is a principally medium term, long term redesign problem. We need to. That's problematic plastics, right? Phantom problematic plastics that we need to eliminate from being produced in the first place. But of course billions of them are still being produced, have been produced, are being produced, will be produced. And I think to deal with that problem, this plastic, the reason why plastic gets recycled is because it has value. So this unrecyclable plastics does not have value. And here's what we do is to create an add value to those pieces of plastic that doesn't have value and subsidize the collection and the processing and the HR costs and the equipment costs to actually recover all that low value plastic and ascend it into effective end destinations. It's unrecyclable, no doubt. Right. So unfortunately we can't make into new products again. We need to redesign it out of the supply chain. But you know, the most effective way is basically through co processing, which is a combination of energy recovery and mineral recycling, which is better than incineration, better than burning, better than waste energy, better than landfilling or any of the environment and making sure that, you know, it gets processed in the right way. That second and third, this is the part that I think is the most frontier part of our work right now is in looking at plastic credits as not just a vehicle to finance recovery or collection or recycling, but also finance the reduction and redesign of the way that we, the relationship that our society has with plastic in the first place. So example here is what we piloted this collaboration with Saathy Pads which is a manufacturer, a global manufacturer in biodegradable plastic free female sanitary pads. And again, you know, there's a lot of polyester and plastic materials in regular sedentary pads and this innovator, Sathsathi Pads, we worked with them to actually subsidize the cost of their offerings and distribute it into communities, particularly around lower middle class marginalized women. In India we have previously no access to proper menstrual care and provide that service, provide those pads to them, piece of plastic, those kinds of materials would have now replaced the need for plastic containing products and that reduction, you know, for every southeast pad that is sold, a certain amount of pasta is being avoided from the environment. Right. And then using the posit credit ecosystem that we've created to facilitate and to commercialize the scale up of those innovations. And that's applicable across. Right. That that's not just going to be within this particular sector. It can happen to water bottle companies, it can happen to reuse systems. You can, you know, we can think about so many applications. As long as innovations and companies can prove that their products tangibly replaced and reduce plastic, we can use the credit system that we've created at Repurpose to support their scale up again towards closing the loop. Because those services are what fundamentally what the brands and companies need as well in the future to help change the way that we interact with plastic in the first place. So in summary, those are the three things that, those are the three ways that we create impact, creating infrastructure when none existed. We're covering low value plastic and also funding and financing innovations on the cutting edge of achieving a circular economy.

Wow, that's quite an undertaking there and you know, amazing ambition and it sounds absolutely fantastic what you're doing and these projects sound absolutely amazing. So I guess I have one final question for you. So this episode is going out as part of my Recordings for plastic Free July. The episode before you, we talked about the microplastics inside your formulation. There are over 500 of them. By the way. This might be something interesting again for you to sort of add in as well. But I think the question is, can the beauty industry eventually get to a state of being plastic free? Do you think that's even realistic or achievable?

That's a tough question. I think the answer is yes and no. We can rephrase the challenge. Should the beauty industry be eventually plastic become plastic free? That's a prerequisite question, is it not? To answer right. Before we decide whether or not is that the goal is the goal to have to reduce unnecessary plastics that are being used in the supply chain. Use as much recycled plastic as possible, opt for other materials where other materials are better. From a life cycle analysis perspective. I'm sure people and folks have heard bits and pieces of this already from various sources. But plastic and other materials might be more recyclable and might be more likely to be recycled. But many of them have a much higher carbon emissions intensity to them. Right. So they might actually be better for recycling but worse for climate change. We're here to solve the climate problem, right. As much as it solved the plastic problem. So it's a tough one. Right. I think paper, aluminum, metal has a lot of potential, but all of which has much higher life cycle impacts on climate change than plastic. Right. So we don't want to make one problem better at the expense of the other problem that we all know is an incredibly complex challenge to solve. And I think the question is whether or not we should the ideal end state. If we do all the things that we described that we spoke about today on the call, policy, credits, finance, reduction, we do all those things, I think what we can end up with, and this is my ambitious, optimistic view, is that we can end up in a place where we perhaps use about 50% of the plastic that we use right now. And the other 50% becomes, well, we can say we can reduce the Virginia component of our plastic usage to 50% and then make up the rest of it with other materials and recycled plastic. I hate to end this on a very realistic note. It's difficult, right? It would take a lot of time and plastic production is going to triple in the next two decades. All these efforts and buzz around sustainability, the Exxons and the companies in that domain of the world keep pumping out plastic because we keep demanding them. So it's tough. Right? I think. I'm sorry, Lorraine, I don't have one clear answer for you, but I try my best.

That's absolutely fine. I think it's a really interesting question to end the podcast on, actually. And I want all of our listeners to come and tell us what they think on social media too. So, Peter, it's been an absolute pleasure listening to you and finding out more about Repurposed Global. If our listeners want to find out more, where should they go?

They can go to business. Repurpose Global. You can find out more how we do things and you can also calculate your plastic footprint. Your individual plastic use at Repurpose Global survey takes two minutes. You'd be surprised. Most folks I've spoken to will be surprised by the way they use plastic in their own lives. So I think that would be a great place to start.

Brilliant. Thank you so much and thank you for your time today. It's been a pleasure.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Lauren. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. How do you think we can stem the flow of plastic from the beauty industry? What do you think the solution is? How does all of this make you feel? I would love to hear your thoughts. So please do come and leave us a comment on our social channels as both the Formula Botanica team and I love hearing from you. Thank you for joining Peter and I for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations. I really hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please do leave us a five star review so that other people can enjoy these conversations too. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever your favorite podcast app is and stay tuned for for the next episode, follow Formula Botanica Formula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Visit our website at formulabotanica.com and sign up for our free online formulation course today.