Creative and Eco-Friendly Solutions with Lisa Gautier of Matter of Trust

Hello and welcome everyone to this episode of Conscious Design. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, author of the Conscious Design book, and I'm really excited to have Lisa here. She's the president of Matter of Trust, and we're gonna be talking about their mission and what they're doing around renewable resources and Many other things that you guys do. Very excited. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. Really happy to be here.

Yeah. So love to always start with how, how did this start? What, what, what got you into starting this, this mission of yours?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, we started in 1998, so this is our 25th anniversary. Uh, thank you.

Thank you.

Uh, we're a public charity, uh, and, um, Originally, we just wanted to link surplus with needs. I moved here with my family, my husband and daughter, to San Francisco into a furnished apartment that we could keep the stuff of. And I had stuff coming, you know, on a ship, and I had double of everything. And so I went to this school that was amazing, amazing school. 2 ladies wanted to share the salary of a principal because they knew that there was just so much work to do. And they had the largest population of children in homelessness. And I just really wanted to help the school. And I gave them, you know, what they'd asked for. And then I said, you know, what else do you need? And they had— they gave me my first wish list. And then I went to businesses and other households. And everywhere I went, I was given way more than I asked for. And I'm like, there's just such a big disconnect here. here. So I wanted to set up a website which has now morphed after all these years into thehumsum.org for Humanity Adding Solutions, which is our social media environmental platform for wishes and gifts and events and etc. And I, as I was setting it all up, this was, you know, 1998. It was, you know, Craigslist was just starting around the corner in Cole Valley in San Francisco, and eBay was just starting. And I'm like, oh my God, this is going to be huge. What are we going to do? And I reached out to Paul Newman's own company, which Paul Newman and Ben and Jerry, they were kind of the only green businesses at the time that really had a lot of press. And I was like, how do you do this? Like, how do you donate your money and, you know, back into the organization? And so their lawyers, Nevis, Nevis and Capaci, wonderful people, set us up, still on our advisory board. And so we started, you know, back then, and of course it didn't become an eBay or even a Craigslist, which I love. But in about 1999, we met a gentleman. We were looking at all kinds of surplus. So not just, you know, toys and clothing and furniture and stuff. And we met this gentleman who was starting to collect hair, hair from hair salons and fur from pet groomers. And so really, you know, we do have an unusual niche. If you go to our platform, You know, if you want to learn about the program, it's matteroftrust.org. But if you want to like start donating hair, your hair, it's on the HubSum. And we've now opened it up so that every nonprofit can, you know, whatever weird thing they're collecting, it can be on there and it's free.

So. That's awesome. Well, that was one of the things that caught my attention because we're right here in salons and stuff is just Right? It's a problem for them that they're trying to get rid of.

Yeah.

So you being able to go, oh, that's— we have a product we can actually use it in. We have something that's useful. And that's— I just love the idea of thinking outside of the box. So it's a space, you know, who would have thought, really? I mean, you guys did, but it's a very Not many people have come up with a good idea, and I think it's a great just to be there and be like, hey, there's waste, and if you think a little bit, you can probably find something to do with it besides toss it away.

So many things.

Yeah. So many. Yeah, that was a long list. Could you talk a little bit about how For everyone that doesn't know what we're talking about, what do we do? What do you do with the hair? How do you turn this into a product? And it's always been growing. You've been doing this for 25 years, so it's still going. But yeah, dive, dive into that a little bit. Yeah.

So Phil McCrory is a hairstylist in Huntsville, Alabama, and he was in 1989 before we had even gotten started. He was shampooing this really oily head of hair and he had a CNN television newscast on about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. in Prince William Sound, Alaska. And there were all these otters covered in oil and the water around them was just a little bit cleaner. And it just kind of clicked for him as he's shampooing this guy's hair. He's like, wow, hair collects oil. And then he looked down on the floor and like, there was all this, you know, hair clippings on the floor and his garbage was 95% hair.

Right.

And he's just like, there's, you know, 900,000 hair salons in the US and then there's, you know, 400,000 pet groomers and they need dog walkers now. And, you know, all, you know, all, you know, 320 million households, and that's just the US, you know. So, um, all this fiber is a renewable resource. And, and so he had clients that were with NASA, and they, uh, they tested it. And, and hair collects 5 times its weight in oil in general, between 2 and 9 times on the scale, but really generally 5 times. Uh, it's very fast, which is why the otters can't, you know, get rid of it. Um, the feathers on the birds also get it too, and they either try, you know, cleaning it off and ingesting it, or that gets them sick, or, or it absorbs so quickly. Yeah, it coats all that surface area. It's the surface area, the surface area. You just have miles of it, or I have miles of it. Yeah. And, and so, so he had a garage full of hair and he was working on how to do this. And of course, you know, the competition is, is that oil companies use oil to make polypropylene products that soak up oil spills. And so they're not really into hair, amazingly. And so, yeah, it's, it's really interesting. Like, you know, he tried reaching out to everybody and When I finally connected with him in 1999, and then we officially partnered in 2001, and, and, and we've been, you know, working on it ever since. And he's just a really great guy. He's also started to work with like how hair could work with soil. So now we call it Hair for Oil, Soil, and Seas.

Mm-hmm.

And, but yeah, we have our, our charity is in, in San Francisco, California, and we have a working model factory called the Eco Industrial Hub in San Francisco. And then And now we've opened up and partnered with 96 different, we call them our global hubs around the world, and we send them all the felting machines and they're needle punching this into mats. And, and, and yeah, then you have the surface area of the mat as well as the surface area of the hair. And yeah, it's just a, it's just a really, a really great program. And people love it because it's very empowering to know that you're growing a little you know, renewable resource in front of your eyes every day and it can go to use, you know.

Right. Well, that, and so you're obviously doing some research around it too if you're exploring sort of like, and if you're, if it's 90% hairs or trash that's alive as a business, if you can find a better use than paying the trash company to take it away.

Absolutely. You know, and pet groomers have a lot more and then the ranchers now, you know, there's Thousands of alpaca ranches and buffalo herds in the United States. And so, yeah, so what's interesting is, is that we've done research. We're doing research right now with National Parks and the Presidio Trust in San Francisco, UC Berkeley. We're doing it with University of Technology of Sydney, Australia. Lots and lots of research with them. We do in Scotland now with Sea Wilding. So The hair can go into storm drains, which is where 50% of the oil that gets into our waterways. That's the first point. So it's not the big oil spills that you see on the news.

Really?

They're 5% of the problem. But it's all of us, all of us daily, you know, with, you know, used motor oil drips and tire, probably, you know, all of the petrochemicals mixing with fog and rain and, you know, just washing and everything getting into the storm drains. That's where you really can make the most impact. So we decided to work there. Plus it's a little less litigious. There's like a lot of, there's a lot of lawyers involved when you're around an oil spill. You come around and like, I have a hair mat. They're like, no.

Yeah, there's a lot of publicity and there's a lot. I can only imagine trying to even talk to anyone in the middle of that kind of scenario because, you know, they're all under the microscope somehow.

They are, they're struggling. And there's amazing people who work in oil companies. And I know that I'm an environmental charity, and it's unusual for people to say that. But just, you know, like, we work in the South, and we work in places. And I mean, you know, they're all trying to make a living. They're all trying to do their best. They want to, they want to do things clean, but they know that oil is still a big part of everybody's life. And, and they're all trying, and we talk a lot. And so yeah, but honestly, I think that the best bang for our buck, and hopefully people from your, your viewership will I will agree is like if we can get more and more of these into inlet guards and storm drains and filtration systems, we're doing a huge thing with the Air Force. We have been for years working on contaminated reservoir filtration systems. And then, and now the mats that we make are really good to have in the ocean and in lakes and places like that because seagrass and kelp like to attach to it. And it's a really great substrate. It's something for them to hold on to. And so we're doing—

Oh, man. Interesting.

Regeneration with that, and that's really exciting.

Yeah. I wonder if it, it would be useful in something like hydroponics growing.

Yeah.

Even if it's just this mashy— now that you said it, now it's like, oh, that makes perfect sense. You're able to attach roots, can grow. It's not like hard, right? It's not a—

it's natural. We've done tests to see even if the hair is dyed or chemically treated in any way, it's still less like alpacas that roll around in the dirt have a lot more heavy metals in it than any of the chemically treated hair. Our hair tends to be very clean. We wash it.

It's a good test.

Yeah, we wash it a lot. So it's— and it's, you know, it's a really— it's another thing that we're talking about. I call it the quiet cycle, is that hair works amazingly with soil. It's even great for mining, you know, restoration projects, places that have lost all of the biosphere. You know, we have a big study in San Francisco Where it was an old scrap— there was an old scrapyard. I swear I turned it off. You can do it again. Old scrapyard. And, and it had heavy metals and toxic chemicals, and nothing was growing on those plots for decades. And then what happened is we put the same amount of seeds, the same amount of, you know, time and water and sun. in this area, and we had straw mulch and hair mulch and then just control plots. And the hair was 1,000 times better. It's amazing. So that's actually— we're getting a lot of press on that, and I'll send you pictures and stuff, but it's wonderful. So what happens is that the— you know how you get moths and you need mothballs and things like that?

Yeah.

They love fiber, so they like the wool and the pet fur and the hair and everything. And moths are actually better than bees, although we love bees. Bees are very important. We don't want to hurt the bees. But they're actually better pollinators than bees. And there's way more moths. And, you know, people think about birds and butterflies and hummingbirds as pollinators. Well, moths are kind of like the ugly butterflies. Nobody ever talks about them, but they're really important and they're really amazing. And, and so, so we were looking at this like, why, why is this working so well? And it's because, like, also, you know, everything's an intertwining cycle. So fungus, fungi.

Fungi.

It will start to grow on all of the hair. It sort of becomes mossified, we call it. It starts to just look really sort of smooth, and the nitrogen slowly breaks down into the soil, and the fungus grabs onto it and goes deep in the soil and remediates it all, and then fruits so we can see that it's helping. And the birds that like the seeds, they'll go through the straw mulch, but they don't go through the hair much. They're like, I don't think I'm going to pick through all that hair to find my seeds. It's too deep.

Keeps it from all the seeds being bird feed.

Yeah. And they get caught and the seeds get caught in the hair so they don't fly away. So it's like a wind protection and the rain and the fog go through the hair. It's hydrophobic, but it's shade. So a lot of the— it doesn't evaporate out, whereas like wood chips and straw will hold the water and let it go in. But the hair just lets it go right through it. And then— and yeah, it's so great in so many ways. And so we're telling everybody because people always want to send us their, like, their shower drain hair and their hairbrush hair and we're like, Put it in your plants, put it in your flower boxes, in your flower pots, in your garden. Do a balcony garden, do a roof garden if you don't have your own garden, but put it in the pots. And if it's outside and it's really long hair, you don't want birds to get string foot. We talked with the Audubon Society about this. And so just bury it a little bit under the soil. But if it's short hair, less than an inch, less than 2 inches, whatever, you can just put it on top. And Snails don't like it, so it's great to put around basil. It's great to put around lettuces, you know. Um, so yeah, and, and, and so we're like, why does this happen in nature? And it's because spring season is when everybody sheds. Like, the birds molt all their, their winter coats, and the animals, the buffalo, they'll rub against trees and huge amounts of fiber fall down. And in the water, like, for the seagrass and everything, like seal pups, you know, like, um, and the seals, they'll all rub off all of their winter coats as well. But like lots of Sadly, lots of little, little mammals die. Um, and that's like a whole hair mat, you know, and, and that's where, like, in estuaries, like where the saltwater and the seawater mix, uh, the freshwater mix, that's where you have a lot of these calving areas and the babies are born and, and, and it's where you, all the seagrass starts. Um, so it's, hair mats are, are actually natural. Um, so we're just discovering.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I've never, yeah, I've never, uh, I've heard about that or had anybody, anyone mention that. But I mean, if you're not looking, right, you would never—

I'm calling it a quiet cycle because, yeah, nobody talks about— everybody talks about sun, water, photosynthesis, carbon capture, um, pee and poo fertilizer, the big ones, you know. Nobody talks about hair, right?

And yeah, because it's—

yeah, you have all those huge animals in a forest all shedding And the little ones, all the mice, all the rabbits, all the moles, all of them, you know, all of that comes off. So, and it, and, and it—

Oh, we know it's there. I have a dog. I know how much hair our, our one dog generates on a daily basis because we vacuum it up and it's like, you know, it's a container.

Yeah.

In, uh, especially spring, like right now we're transitioning to summer. Like it's one, like about this much every day easily. could brush off of her.

And so that lasts about 30 years. You put it in the soil and you can just keep putting in the place next to it and next to it. You don't have to go back to it. That's the amazing thing is that, because like when these animals, you know, migrate and they shed and they're doing all this stuff, it's like, it, they're, you know, chances are they're eating grass that was, you know, cultivated by the hare, you know, a while ago, but their bodies are like, you know, 6 feet long. So they eat here and they're peeing and pooing 6 feet away and all their hair is falling. And so it just keeps like spreading out farther and farther. It's really interesting.

Wow. So it doesn't, it's not like, you know, like a grass, like you put straw over everything, it's gone. Like the straw disappears within a year.

Like it doesn't last long. Yeah. The benefits seem to last a long time. Like if you're doing a crop, we're looking at it, it looks like it's more like a 3 to 4 year, you can extend it. But, you know, if it's, if it's great, it's producing a lot of produce, you know, then you're using it more. But It's like compost. I love compost. Compost is one of my— I love compost. So it's just a, it's like a hair mulch or compost. But, you know, if you're doing compost for vineyards, for example, you have to do it a lot of time. If you're doing compost for grasslands, like grazed grasslands, you know, which by the way, if you just put compost, like a centimeter of compost on all of the public grasslands in the U.S., you know, these huge ranges that, that, you know, all of the animals migrate on. If you could just put all of that out there, You know, the compost would activate all the soils and the microbes and, and, you know, just liven up those soils to, to do so much more photosynthesis. Probably some of the estimates we've seen, you could reverse global warming in 4 years. Like compost is so important. Hair's important, but compost is even more important.

Wow. I did not realize that. That is crazy.

Sort, sort, sort, people. Sort your, sort all of your organic stuff away from all of your other stuff. It's all about the sorting.

Yeah. Yes. Because the landfill doesn't do that. It just sits there.

Yeah. And methane.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Wow. So that's— so you're working on now, and I'm guessing you don't have a supply chain issue. Like you have all the hair you possibly—

Oh, bring it on. Anybody can sign up to the Hometown. Go to matteroftrust.org and on the top it just says, want to donate hair or fur or fleece? Yeah. And, and Yeah. Anybody can do it from a home, from a business, anywhere.

And it doesn't matter hair or fur because, you know, people will be like, oh, this is more fur, this is more hair. It's just—

We take everything now because now we're—

You see it as a fiber and it doesn't mess up. You blend it, you do everything.

And now we're even looking at other things. So we have like laundry lint. A lot of people working with laundry lint, like you can make these little discs yourself at home that will like if you want to Some people just want to pour their kitchen grease down the sink. You can put it into a little disc of laundry lint into like an egg carton cup or whatever, and it soaks it up so much better than everything we've seen, twice as well as everything else. So laundry lint is like full of microplastics and it's like, and so we're just trying to figure out like, how do we, how do we deal with laundry lint? I mean, ideally everybody only buys natural fiber clothes, but we're a bit away from that. So until we do that.

Yeah, we know that that's not there yet.

Yeah, we're not there yet. We're really far away from there. So we're trying to think, what can we do with laundry lint? Because everybody keeps asking us, you know, like, you know, all the hotels and the dry cleaners and the— and then everybody's household and laundromats. And there's just huge amounts of these microplastics. So we're always trying to look at what, you know, what can be done with all of these extra different little fibers. And then you can vote, you can post anything on the Hump Summit as long as it's legal. But you can, you can post. We have a big group coming on where it's about to be translated into 130 languages. So we're in the engineering stage of that.

Amazing.

I know, we're excited. Hopefully by September that'll all be up. And we have 250,000 people coming from Chile on this, on this group that, that does all of this matching and they want to use the Humsome for children's matching all their children's products. So, so yeah, so you can use it for anything. It's just right now it looks a little bit serial killer website because it's just all these shaved heads and braids and ponytails. It just looks really bizarre. But, but, you know, it's going to a good cause. It is hair posting after hair posting after hair posting. It looks very bizarre. That's okay.

Yes, I can see that. Awesome. Well, what else? I know you, you do other things too, but is that like— hair is one of those things that you've— feel like you just got into and it's going well, which is fantastic. But what else? What other areas are you—

We have 5 things. So we have our Eco Home, um, which is a showcase. Nobody lives there, but it's a showcase, um, apartment because so many people actually live in apartments and most stuff about how you can be planet-friendly are for builders and owners and stuff like that. So we're like, okay, let's just take this niche, you know, and show what it's like, you know, filled with products. And you go through it and we have open houses for a week every 2 months and we do it on a, like highlighting a different room, but you can see every room. So yeah, so we, the Eco Home is really fun in the Haight-Ashbury Coal Valley District of San Francisco, but it's online. And right now we're doing this big project with refill places all over the world and looking at We want to get a network of 1,000 eco-sustainable homes and, and tiny homes, um, and we'd love to partner with you on that. I bet you have lots of people that work with you on, on all the design stuff for that. That would be really fun to do that together. Uh, so yeah, so then we have the, the, um, working model factory, uh, where we make the hair mats. So that's our 3rd program. But the, the factory also has an exhibit hall, so we do lots of field trips and talk about you know, ecologizing industry. And what does that mean? Clean air, water, energy, materials, you know, and we talk about what are the best materials, what is the best and highest use of materials, you know, like, like you're thinking about. And, and it's really, you know, sometimes plastic is the answer, you know, like if it has to last 100, 700 years and, you know, if it needs to be waterproof, it doesn't break when you drop it and you can see through it and, you know, like all the important things. But generally everything we use plastic for is like just because it's subsidized And, you know, it's just like, right, right.

And so I appreciate that, that you think of that because there's, I talked to some people and they're like, zero plastic. I'm like, do you know what that actually means? Like you're doing that from a phone. You're telling me through a phone that wouldn't work without some of the plastic in there. Yeah. How you can't have any.

I mean, like my glasses, you know, like I need lightweight see-through, like, like you don't want the, you don't want the 1800s.

Half a pound of glass on each.

Yeah, I mean, just to— just, I'm very, very environmentally conscious that got my babies— I have 3 daughters— I got my, my first baby a glass milk bottle, you know, and I was gonna— and then she dropped it and smashed. My husband was like, went to the store and got a plastic one and brought it back. It was like, that's not happening.

Hey, it's Ian here. So glad you're enjoying this episode of Conscious Design. If you want the full scoop on Conscious Design, what it is, how we do it, how you can do it, then check out our book. We wrote it so creative entrepreneurs like you can code social and environmental responsibility right into your brand's DNA. You can download the first chapter for free. Link is in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. Yes, I am, I'm 100% use as, as eco-friendly as possible. And then also You gotta make a product that works and if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter. Yeah, I guess I'll always give the argument, the perfect eco product, if made and never sold, is actually the worst product on the planet because you wasted all the resources on something that no one would buy. So exactly.

And it has to be convenient. That's the number one thing. Like, yes, like, you know, like why did Uber take over? It's because Forever, everybody's been saying, where's my taxi? It's not because of all the other models. It's the fact that you could see it coming toward you and it calmed that thing in your chest. And so that's like, why is Hairmat so popular? Why do we get the chance to talk to you and all these people? It's weird. It's creepy. It feels funny. People that aren't hairdressers don't really like touching other people's hair, all kinds of stuff. But it's a renewable resource that everybody gets. A 5th grader, or what am I saying? A kindergartner understands you shampoo because hair collects oil. You know what I mean? Yes. has to be something that is just really, really, uh, a personal visceral experience in a shared community kind of a thing that's happening there. And there has to be this element of convenience that, that is— and, and then, and then no matter what it is, everybody will just, you know, you don't— it sells itself. Yeah, you have to go with the flow.

Exactly.

So then we have the— so yeah, Eco Home, Eco Industrial Hub, or Eco Hub. Our Clean Wave project, which is for hair mats for oil, soil, and seas. Then we have the HumSum, which is this really big website. So my husband's with Apple, and I, I recruit everybody I can. I am shameless about just bringing people like, help us, help us. And so we have this really, you know, really wonderful group of engineers helping us. And, and Apple is not that group. They advise us and, and And like we have, my husband's in charge of Apple Maps and it's Apple Maps is like, I, he was like, you know, are you sure you want to wait for this? I was like, yes, we're going to put Apple Maps on this thing. So now it has Apple Maps all over the website, which is great, showing all the places that we're getting, you know, donations and eco events. And then the last thing we do is we call it YERP. So it's Youth Eco Education Resources, Research, and Pilot Projects. And so it's basically our dump-all for everything, but we have lots of apprenticeships. I'm really big about apprentices. I think that's so important. Not everybody's made for college. I wasn't made for college. So I feel like, you know, we should have this track for people who just want to start working and they work with their hands. And, you know, that's— I love apprenticeships and internships, lots of, you know, high school and middle school. And then we do lots of work with universities, as I said. And yeah, it's so It's, I like to see things. So we do lots of pilot projects. Like we actually, you know, like some things sound really good, but then when I try them, they just don't quite work. And I'm like, so we, you know, I'm like, bring everything into the hub. Let's check this out or let's do it in a, you know, in a land space or in the water and then let's just really see it. And so we do lots of, you know, with our eyeballs we're seeing. So we actually, we're called Matter of Trust, but we're kind of Matter of Trust but Verify.

You know, the verify part, if you skip that, it can lead to tears. That's the only way it goes. So always, always good to do the verify as well. But that's good. I mean, it means you can, you're testing stuff and looking at things and, and then you go do it, which means you'll have a better, better chance of succeeding.

Exactly.

Oh, that's awesome. With your— I'd love for you to dive a little bit more into the home, well, apartments that you built. Is that— I'm guessing it's a collaboration. You probably didn't make every single thing in the apartment yourself. So how have you put that? Like, is it rolling? Do you have new things coming in? Kind of how, how do you run that?

Well, we love partnerships. We'll partner with anybody. So we like, we're like, you have something, bring it on, let's check it out. So we have We do have our built exhibits lead in-house, but we also have a tiny home in the back in the garden that is Shelter 2.0. It's a gentleman that's created these sort of like tiny home kits. We have bees. We have installed a laundry-to-landscape, showers-to-flowers gray water system.

Nice.

We have 3 chickens. chickens, which we used to have a little chicken mansion, but then we had to build a chicken fortress because it turns out that raccoon babies need to eat too. So—

Oh man.

I know, it's part of the cycle of life. But now our chickens are— we have, we have 3 chickens and they're good layers. We get lots of eggs. The whole garden is edible. We have raised beds that are— they go all the way to the— they don't have bottoms, so they have the biome going all the way through them, up and down through the soil. We have lots of hair in them and they're really well. So, you know, everything is like, you know, lots of herbs, lots of carrots, tomatoes, etc. So yeah, we're always working to, you know, we have partnerships with SFB Association, with refill companies and stores all over the place. So yeah, we would love to partner with you, love to look at things, you know, we're big on You know, obviously children item sharing, you know, passing on through the hamsam used furniture. We look at, you know, carpet squares. We have a whole eco flooring exhibit and display. We love looking at. We have exhibits all the time on, for example, just you know information about. diapers and services like that, you know, all kinds of different coverings you could have instead of plastic wrap in the kitchen. And, you know, looking at what does it mean hoarding versus minimalism. And we talk a lot about what I call the balanced class. So, you know, it's like a lot of people think that being very rich is kind of somewhere you should be going toward. And some of the saddest, most depressed people I've ever met are extremely rich. And a lot of people think that you should really be staying away from not having very much money at all. But actually, I think that the fulcrum, the balanced class, which is really, I think, where everybody should want to be. You don't want to be in the extremes. You don't want to be middle. Nobody wants to be in the middle seat during this kind of boring, but balanced. It's like dynamic. It's like, it's like the sweet spot. Like you should always be kind of working toward it. When you hit it, it's great, but it's fleeting. It's like, I love this idea of a balanced class. And so I keep talking about it. And we really, we really kind of look at that a lot in the eco home. Like, you know, what does this mean? Like, does it mean that you have community, that you have people of different ages in your life, you know, that you have, you know, that you are looking locally, but you can expand to globally, you know, like, it's like, what does all of this relate to? And I find that that balanced sweet spot is much closer to having less income and money than it is to the other way. I think, but people don't think that. I think people really think that the more you get to having more is better. But I'm like, it's just seems to be burdensome. And I say this from somebody who lives in California, who's married to somebody from Apple. And so I know that I understand both sides of it, but I just, I want, personally, I wish that I could get there. And I want other people to see too that I feel like part of our problem, our affluenza that our country has and that we're imposing on a lot of other countries is A misconception. I don't think we're in the right place. I think if, whenever I'm, if I'm walking and I don't have something with wheels and I have to carry more and more stuff, like we were saying at the beginning of this conversation, more is not better. It's burdensome. And so, so we have that conversation in the ecohome because it's, as I say, it's, it's more of an apartment idea and it's not about the big houses. And a lot of the The green building and a lot of the information in the articles that you see are, you know, amazing about materials and systems and designs, but they're always, you know, really big and expansive and expensive and not affordable and not— it's not going to touch 99%, I guess, of the people that are looking to be planet-friendly. Right.

Yeah, I think there's, you know, it's cool to have those large systems because there's also, you know, commercial and industrial. Like, we do need, we need that. But it also is nice to have those more accessible levels that is like, oh, you don't need $100,000 in order to be sustainable because that, you know, that immediately leaves most people's reach. And, you know, even in the US, let alone own any country with not at least our level of an economy. You know, that's just not—

And our economy is falsified. Like, it's, you know, it's subsidized and it's on the backs of everybody else. Like, it's not— what we're paying for things is not real. We know because we're doing something with donated hair, right, that comes to us. It's mailed to us. Like, we're not paying for that. And we're still trying to work out all of the systems. And it's the logistics of everything and paying people a decent wage and trying to do this, you know, with cottage industry. Like, it's— we're seeing it and we're talking about it all the time saying like this, you know, when fair trade is real, like you have to look at this, like what does this mean, you know? And but then we're doing this at a time of AI, maybe everything's going to change, maybe in 6 months, you know, ChatGPT and the robots and everything.

Who knows? I don't think anybody actually knows that So we're all just here for the ride right now.

Yeah, we're all just watching right now.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, that's awesome. It's great to see you have this program. You're able to— I love that you built an apartment too instead of just a house because I feel like people— I mean, you have the tiny house in the back so people can see that. But I think people really focus on, you know, the single home dwelling. It was like, oh, we'll make a tiny house. We're just going to make your house, you can fit in now, we're going to make it smaller so you have less room. And that like turns off a whole bunch of people to it. But that's not even like most population, like what you said, like apartment buildings, they're everywhere and more people live in those. And I haven't heard of anyone that's really focused on how do we make a better apartment building. And like you said, you know, the builders, like you got If they're going to go build it, they have to, you have to cater it towards the people who are actually building it. Because I'm not going to build an apartment complex myself. It's not like you and your 10 favorite friends all show up and we're like, we're going to build an apartment together like that. I mean, maybe somebody might have done that, but that's not— It's not usual. Right. The approach is somebody with enough money to do that hires a builder to build it. And if there's no resource or blueprint or any options for that building other than what we have been using, that there's not even, you know, even if you're like, oh, I wish I could make it green, if there's nothing, if there are no options or there's no nothing out there, what are you gonna do? You're gonna, you're not gonna stop building to go invent everything and then come back. That's not, you didn't sign up for that. So now you're like, Well, I guess I'm gonna do it the same way because there's, there's no other way.

So, or it's just more affordable. Like, at some point, you know, like every construction project takes twice as long and costs 3 times as much. And so at some point people are just like, yeah, I want to be green. I want to be— I can't be green. Oh well, just do it. You know, like that's what happens.

Just paint it green. We'll be— there we go. That's all I can afford now.

Look at how green it is. Yeah, I mean, like some of the basic things, you know, like when we were first looking at this, um, it was like, you know, well, how can we incorporate solar? Like, you know, so it's like this and there's all these different apartments and then the solar is this tiny little roof, right? And so, um, and so there are these ideas of like, okay, well, what if the solar was just for the common areas and then a plug-in for an electric car, you know? And then everybody could, could rent the electric car and use it, you know, like just trying to, trying to look at what there is available, what, what makes sense. Um, and, you know, the owners don't want to pay for solar because they don't live there, and the renters pay, and they don't pay the PG&E bill, and the renters pay the PG&E bill, but they don't own it, so they don't want to do it. So you have to make something that's, again, convenient for everybody, somebody that's— there's, you know, perspectives and incentives. I'm always like, what are your perspectives and incentives on, you know, and, and, and so it's, it's really, you know, like looking at, you know, how much do you like if you had chickens and you can have up to 5 or 6 farm animals in San Francisco. You know, you can have goats, you can't have roosters, they're too loud. They really are.

All right, I get that one.

But you can have, you know, you can have chickens and goats, you can, and bees. And so there you got honey, And milk and cheese and eggs. And, and of course you can have, and I'm like, why don't we have edible cities? Like, why isn't every tree, you know, a fruit tree or a nut tree? You know, like, why, why aren't we doing this? And, um, and so it's, it's, uh, just, just kind of thinking about the abundance of it all. Like, like, and everybody's always telling me, oh, you know, it's all about scarcity. And I'm like, nah, I don't see that. I can't go outside because I am a very Like, person— I get burned, like, standing next to an oven. So I go outside, if I don't cover myself in something, you know, there's so many photons and electrons coming at me, you know, just in a little while that I turn into bacon. So it's like, um, there's plenty of energy, you know, and like, we're constantly being flooded. We're, we're on an, uh, a planet that's 70% water. We just have to be smarter about desalination and what that means. But we, we don't have a water problem. I mean, And we probably have the opposite water problem, which we're beginning to discover, than we think we do.

We're giving ourselves another water problem.

Yeah, I know. We'll give ourselves another water problem. We need more water problems. And, you know, and, and everybody's like, oh, overpopulation. It's like, no, come on. Every single person on the planet, if we were standing up, could fit at SFO Airport. We don't have an overpopulation problem. We just make really stupid decisions about things. And, and we just need to be smarter, you know, about how we spread out and what we use and who benefits when we're doing stuff, follow the money a little bit and make smart choices. And so yeah, I feel like, you know, we can all vote with our dollars. And I like to go into IKEA and like, I don't, you know, pass all the boxes and then I go to the pretty one that's kind of like Disneyland. It's like, it's already all set up. Oh, I guess I want that, you know? So I was like, that's what I need to do. I need, if I wanted to have an eco place, I would need to have everything set up kind of like IKEA. idea, and you make them want to go to there, you know. So it's like, this is what you could do with a kid's room or a bedroom or a kitchen. This is what your drawers could look like. This is what your refrigerator could look like with these coverings on it. And, you know, and then it's like, oh, that's not so mysterious. That doesn't look so bad. That looks like doable. Oh, it smells nice. I touch it. Everybody's allowed to feel it and touch it. And, you know, and, um, and yeah, so that's what we're doing. It's like a little museum of an apartment.

Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. I hope more and more people see that. Maybe you guys will expand enough and you can like launch in a couple other cities and give—

I feel like anybody can experience it, right? All of our exhibits are replicable. Just contact us. Just let us know. Yeah, anything. We share, we partner. Please do this anywhere. Yeah, absolutely. The whole reason we did it is to just like say, yeah, Come, come, come do this again. Everything we do is replicable.

Come copy you, make it. Let's partner.

Let's do it together, please.

Exactly. Oh, that's amazing. Well, before we wrap up, I just wanted to make sure to give you a chance to— how people want to contact you, where best to find you, anything that I skipped that you're like, I really need to say. Just give you the space to do that because it's been, it's been amazing so far. And I just want to make sure you got it.

Yeah, sure. Like if anybody wants to put hair mats underneath their leaky cars, for example, you can just go to matteroftrust.org. Let us know. Please sign up to the Humsome if you have any eco events or if you want to be on the forum or if you have anything to give away or anything you want to wish for, wish for anything. Because if you don't wish, you don't know if it's out there. It's very similar to Craigslist free stuff and It's just, you know, just this idea of like, we, we also are kind of data collecting everything so that we can kind of say, oh, in this zip code, there are these many people that are really planet friendly. But we don't share or sell any of the databases, and it's free to use. And it's, it's all— we're, we're very— we work with classrooms and things. So if you're under 18, you get a little balloon, and there's all kinds of security safety things. So yeah, so matteroftrust.org is how you find us. And, and thank you for this. This is great. Yeah.

Amazing. Well, yeah, thank you so much. I'm glad we were able to finally get together and talk about all this. And yeah, looking forward to seeing everything you guys do.

Oh, thank you. Yeah, I love what you guys do too. Thank you.

Thanks.