From PVC Waste to Building Tiles with Pretty Plastic

Hello and welcome to this episode of Conscious Design. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, an author of The Conscious Design Book. And today I'm excited to have Leva Conte. He's an account executive with Pretty Plastic, where they are creating building materials out of 100% recycled plastics. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Yeah, so everybody loves a good origin story. How'd you guys get started? What's your backstory here?

Yes, thank you first for having me. Always good to be here and spread the word about Pretty Plastic, about circularity, the sustainable industry. So basically, Pretty Plastic, it started in 2017 already. We are still in the startup phase, but the story, yeah, dated back a while ago. We have three founders, Peter, Hester, and Reinder, and they are designers, architects, engineers. And they were a bit done, I would say, with the build and burn concept of pavilions, so short-term buildings. And basically what they did, that was a design week in Eindhoven, a city in the Netherlands. And for this, they were asked to design a circular building, basically. And what they did, so the whole Windows, the doors—they were sourced on the marketplace. So the idea is to yeah once the building got demolished or yeah broken down, everything would go back into the system. The roof is made of a greenhouse gas, and then basically the facade—they had the idea okay we want to really make a statement, make sustainability visible. So what they did—they got into contact with plastic manufacturer processor, and they had like a container of. Household plastic, which is HDPE plastic, soft density or hard density plastic. And while they were like, we don't really know what to do with the plastic, maybe can you help? And they, on a very artisanal way, they were like, okay, we can do this. We have to clean all the plastic because there were mayonnaise, ketchup in all this household plastic. So yeah, it was really dirty and they had to, as a startup, of course, as a foundation, do everything yourself in the beginning. So they made up this machine basically and they cleaned everything. They saw it in a color. They shredded all the plastic, and then they made via an injection mold. They put like tile part tile. They got all the tiles out and attached it to the building, and it got a lot of yeah attention. People were like, okay, where can we get this product? Where yeah, it looks it looks amazing, and they even won like I think more than five awards for this building from the Netherlands, and even. In Europe, and if you're like into design, you know maybe the Zine, a worldwide architecture design newspaper, I would say. And from that, they were like, okay, maybe we have to make a business out of this. If that many people are interested in our tiles, basically, maybe we can actually do something with this. And that's how the the ball started rolling. But it took them three years to really develop into like a full grown product. It was some problem with like fire certificates.

Right.

Because, of course, as we know, plastic is still the source of petroleum, so it's, yeah, flammable. So then we switched to, okay, we were like, we're in the building industry, we can get the right fire certificates for this product, so let's make the building industry circular. What kind of plastic can we use? Can we source? Where can we source it from? And that's how we got into PVC. PVC plastic, you can find it in downspouts, window frames, basically the plastic window frames, gutters, and that's where we source our plastic from now. So as of 2020, we redirected, or like a small pivot, from HDPE household plastic to PVC. And now, yeah, everything comes from there. So that's the background story of Pretty Plastic.

I love that. I love the idea of, you know, finding the waste material from your industry and You know, it happens to be, works pretty well then for your application. You're changing over to PVC, was a good move. There's no, doesn't seem like there's been any issues. It's a pretty great move.

Well, there has been a lot of issues as any, I think any startup, you would've thought like, okay, maybe we just switch to PVC and we mix it up. And, but actually, yeah, if you work with like, you shred it one time and then you get the You regrind, you do it once more, you get like a— it's called a granulate, basically. But because you work with recycled material, if you work with, for example, downspouts and also window frames, the material is not pure. So the output is not pure as well. But you want to have like a standardized product which you can deliver, and every time you have the same. So, and at the same time, also PVC is a very solid material. It's robust, which means that we are the only ones Well, we know in the Netherlands working with this material as a recycled material, because most of the machines or the production facilities were like, we're not going to work with PVC material. This is going to break our machines in terms of like temperature settings. You put it in, either you get dust out of it or the machine just explodes like a little explosion, let's say. So it was very difficult as well to find partners. Yeah, exactly.

Well, yes, you found some people willing to work with this material. And actually produce something. That's impressive.

We call our production, like the facility, the founder of that production facility, the Plastic Wizard, because he was like curious. I think you have to be curious as well, you know? So he was just curious. He did a lot of testing and experimenting with plastic. He was like, hmm, let me take a look at it. He had like one at the back of his facility, had like one machine or one area where he was just doing experiments, and he went on with it. He found the right way to produce and yeah, because of him as well, we're still here.

That's awesome. Yeah, I don't really hear about PVC getting recycled very much. So you have a lot of plastic you can take in, then the world uses a lot of PVC. So it seems like a pretty useful resource now.

Of course, I think we all know there's a huge plastic problem. Like how much plastic is there, and of course also how much PVC is there. I think already in the Netherlands alone, we have like close to 100 million kilograms of PVC. That's only in the construction industry. So there's still a big ground to cover.

Wow. Yeah, that's a lot of material. It's a lot of material. Yeah. Now you guys have a couple couple different tiles that you guys make, and you said that this started off with temporary structures. Has this moved into, like, do you see this becoming into more permanent structures, or how does that look for you guys?

So basically we just started with one pavilion, and then the moment they were like, okay, we're gonna make a business out of this, it was for more permanent structures. So that's why we also need to improve our product itself. So want to go for more robust material. If you, yeah, I think the building industry, definitely in the Netherlands, I think in the US as well, it's a very regulated market. So you need a lot of certifications for this. Took also quite a while to get all certificates. Now, once we have this, it's definitely more for permanent use cases. A lot of we do, if you, once you see our product, it's like almost like art, I would say. It's very designy. The first one, I would say we have 3 different products now. First one is kind of like a diamond shape. It has like a shingle effect. So there's an overlap on the products, which means it makes a very, I think, a very nice look and feel of a building. But it also means that it's also context-specific. You wouldn't place the products, definitely in the Netherlands, we are a high-density country. So it's not, yeah, maybe suitable for every, yeah, it's not something you can replace the bricks with that easy, the traditional building materials in general. People here, they're very, in that kind of sense, conservative. They apply, they do what they know, that's easy, that's comfortable. So that takes a bit of time to really implement this, but we do quite a lot of schools, for example, utility buildings. So, but also like homeowners, they come to us and they're like, yo, we love your products, can we just use it? So it goes from universities, school, other utility buildings, private. We're doing also social housing now, getting more into this. So yeah, all kinds of different buildings.

So you guys don't really care its application. You can put it on anything, any building, any structure, or almost?

No, definitely. I think we don't care in the sense that If we want it, of course it needs to be suitable for the area and it needs to work also in terms of construction-wise, which in almost every case it can work. But as well, our mission as well, I would say, is to recycle as much PVC we can get our hands on. Now we are, I think, on a very low percentage of the whole PVC mountain which is available. So we want to do more. And I think Yep. I would say then you could also, for example, recycle PVC and make like a nice lamp or a desk or something more like interior products, which is all nice, but to reach scale in that, it's more difficult. So for example, if you— with our products, if you look at how many plastic goes in 1 square meter, it's 24 kilograms already. If you look in a big building, Yeah, we're talking about almost 2,000 square meters. So you can do the maths and figure out how much waste we can recycle with one building. So if you can do a lot of buildings, there's a lot of PVC which gets in that way recycled or even upcycled. And if you do make one desk here or one lamp there, you sell 100 lamps, it's nice, but it stays, I think, on a small scale in that regard. So it's a conscious choice, I would say, to really go for the bigger market. That's also why in that way we don't really care which, what kind of building it is. Of course, preferably bigger buildings because then we can wake, can recycle more PVC.

Right. Because you guys are pulling, you're one of probably the only, unless you know of anybody that's recycling PVC, you're probably the really the only people Grabbing that PVC out of the waste line and turning it into something that's actually usable again.

Yeah, unless there's something now listening to us saying, "Hey, we also doing the same." But as far as as far as we know, we're the only one recycling PVC waste. But then also in the sense that we're the only ones who make from recycled PVC facade cladding tiles. I think that in that way we are really unique.

Oh, this is a this is a very unique. product for people that are installing it, is it a pretty standard, like, were you able to make this pretty similar to existing tiling that you would put on, or is this fantastic?

I think from like a business approach, that's very important. It's the market that the market can adopt the product easy. So that's definitely something we took into account. While designing the product, so of course the founders are also architects. One of the founders is an architect, so he knows also. So he has a lot to deal with contractors, building project developers. So he knows a bit that I would say their their mindset as well. So it's very important to show them even though it's a new product. So the material people don't really work with it. It's a different shape. So they're already question arise. I would say they're really risk averse. Definitely builders because their margin they're they're they're working on. Low margins, so you don't want to make it too risky for them. So they're gonna, I would say, put the product out of the market because they're gonna price it too high to the developer, and then they're like, okay, we can't afford this. So it's really was really important to make it as easy as possible for the yeah installers contractors to apply to build, and I think that way we really succeeded. I would say in the beginning, people that look at it and they're like, hmm, okay, but how do you install it? It looks nice, but it looks nice, but or Okay, it's circular, but then you just show them actually, like, yeah, on our documentation, or actually we can just send people some tiles and they make, I would say, a test. They'll do a test with it. They take a couple of square meters, they take a wall, and they're going to apply it and they see, okay, but wait, actually this is just how we do it on this product as well, or this is just how we install shingles, or with this product, it's not different. And then they can just work with it themselves. Of course, we have our own partners as well who can install it. But at the same time, if you— I would say, yeah, any craftsman who was in the industry can do this.

Awesome. Yeah, it's always good to think about those things because there's been so many good products that have just died along the way that it was a little bit too hard to adopt. It's a big thing, especially like you said, those low margins. You don't want to— you can't afford to install the roof twice. You could only do it once. So It's got to be right the first time.

Yeah, no, it's too costly, definitely. And I think as well, like, we know the first product is a really, really designed product, I would say. You won't see it everywhere. But that's also why we thought, okay, we have a product for one market, but we also need to be more diverse in the markets we can operate in. So let's look at the second tile. Let's look at the third tile. To speak to different people, to different markets, to different kinds of buildings. So that's also very, very, very, very, I think, important to at the end also reach that tipping point and go more mass market, I would say. Then you will see pretty plastic everywhere, even in the US.

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. Yeah, so perfect segue. I know you guys are based in the Netherlands. Are you primarily in— is that where the product is getting sold? How have you been able to expand so far?

Yes. So basically, we are a Dutch company, production facilities in the Netherlands. Our waste, our raw material comes from the Netherlands as well. So we try to be as local as possible. Also, of course, in terms of transport, mitigating our carbon footprint. But at the same time, we are also a startup and we are aware that we are a startup. So most of our projects we have done in the Netherlands, in Belgium, which is of course very nearby. And then we also do Germany and the UK, Denmark. We actually have done and we are doing also now some projects in the US, but then of course you talk about more higher transport costs that you don't per se want to— of course now it's not waste anymore, but either way you want to keep the distance as small as possible, I would say. So I think on our trajectory, one of our ambitions is that we can have in every country we operate in or we do a significant amount of projects, we will start to create— we will open up a hub there. Because even the way we operate now, we work with a production facility. And yeah, if you know how it works, if you have an injection mold almost, and you have the mold itself, you can do it. I'm exaggerating a bit, but yeah, it's also not more difficult than that. So for example, if you would do more projects in Texas or in California or in the US in general, Maybe we can put up some production plants, different states, and then aggregate the waste there and do more projects there as well. So also the cost will be lower of the tiles.

Yeah, we have plenty of PVC here.

Yeah, that's definitely true.

So come over and start using it. Yeah, we have PVC for you for sure.

I think you guys are quite a big fan of PVC, also applying it to houses, even like facades and Yeah.

Oh, it's especially in the construction world. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. So if you're, if you're able to take all that used PVC, melt it and turn it into something actually useful, there's, there's a lot for you.

There will be a big market here. No, definitely. I think on the sourcing side, there'll be no problem.

Amazing. Well, when you guys decide you want to build a facility over here, let me know. That would be, that would be exciting to have that.

Yeah, that's cool. That's nice.

But that's, that's great that you guys are expanding though. So you're not, you know, you're not just in, you're starting to expand your market. And I love, I do really love the idea that you want to have your production facility close by, especially, especially when it's in a waste stream like that where, yeah, if you're building houses, it's, it's probably there as a resource. It's a huge improvement from kind of the model of, oh, we manufacture it here and ship it everywhere around the world. That's just carbon footprint plus cost.

Yeah, no, definitely. I think it's also where what we see definitely in the Netherlands, that's the carbon footprint. It becomes really like a score, like to, yeah, a priority. If you build a new building, you have to attain, reach a certain kind of like I would say a carbon score almost. So that definitely plays also a part that people are forced. I think that's in some cases or in a lot of cases that maybe the only way to really build more products in general to be more sustainable is when it's sometimes enforced by law. Otherwise, it's just a shareholder capitalist mindset and everything is just on price. And I think in the end, like now, for example, in most of the products, we are not there yet. That we're as— yeah, if you look, for example, for just PVC panels or PVC shingles and as a facade, it's still way lower pricing-wise than, unfortunately, than the sustainable recycled variant because recycling is just more expensive. Yeah, some people think like, okay, but do you get your raw material for free then? But no, it's the whole process, the logistics, all the different steps in the supply chain add to the pricing, like the whole system. It's not orchestrated around recycling yet. It's just a linear process, which makes virgin materials for now cost efficient, more cost efficient compared to the recycled alternatives.

How do you guys compare price-wise right now to, you know, if you're doing tile on roof, there's concrete tiles, there's shingles, there's a lot of options out there. Where are you guys able to hit right now in terms of cost comparability?

Yeah, I think if you look at our product, maybe the first— what I heard, one of the first impressions people got, they were like, oh, that must be expensive. Like, I think the way it looks, the feel it gives, maybe it's because of the positioning as well. But I would say actually we will be a mid-range product. You have, of course, I think the Brixton Nylons is a common product you will see everywhere now. A lot of people started building wood as well, cross-laminated timber, whole houses made out of wood, the facade as well. But we will be maybe a bit below them. At the same point, we're not the cheapest. So if you would go to just, for example, again, PVC or sandwich panels, for example, these kind of alternatives, they're cheaper still. I would say, yeah, there will be Some of them, you can get PVC panels for like €40 per square meter, for example, whereas we would be around €100. So, but yeah, if you will be like, for example, with wood or with bricks, you'll be like around €150. So yeah, there's a big range and we'll be somewhere around the middle.

Awesome. Well, I mean, that's a good place to be, right? If you're able to be sustainable and somehow in the mid-range instead of On the expensive side, that's good. That's a good place, especially with you guys being a startup. That's a great place to start.

Yeah, exactly. That's a good way to frame it. It's a great place to start, but still, over time, when the production gets higher, we still want to get lower in pricing because I think in the end, that's also— either way, it plays a big role in decision-making, definitely if you're going to do more bigger projects. It's a make or break in that phase. I think for now it's not.

And you mentioned too, you know, on the sustainability side, and Netherlands has their rules. I know there's a big— was it the Green Deal with EU that's coming through, making some more requirements? How does that play into, right, kind of looking down the road, right, as a We all start to implement, well, the US at some point, but Europe at least is implementing a lot more requirements. I'm assuming that this product really fits into that being more sustainable and so is better positioned to fit within that.

Yes.

Here's how that all is impacting you guys because it's such a big, I know everybody I've talked to from Europe recently, they're all talking about This, some of the new legislation coming through?

Yeah, yeah. I think 2 things. The first one is that there are more subsidies. I think more, there are quite some subsidies coming up favoring sustainable practices, favoring sustainable circular products. So for us as well, we're looking for consortiums and what's actually what we're doing right now as we speak this week, we're trying to, or this month we're submitting one for one project relating to the Green Deal or just more sustainable products in general. So I think, and I feel this is coming more because it's really a priority on the EU's agenda in the Netherlands. And in this country, I think we're kind of pioneering or take the avant-garde role in sustainability. And the Netherlands is a pioneer in that because I think the position we play is also we have to be and pull the rest behind us and a role model in that regard based on also the history and the amount of CO2 emissions per capita, what we have been doing. I think we should take this responsibility on us as well. Yeah, so that's the first thing I think what we see is a lot of money getting freed for these kind of initiatives. But at the same time, I think what is also good But it kind of prevents circularity in a way that I think that everything what we hear now is CO2, carbon footprint reduction, carbon footprint reduction. Whereas, for example, if you look at the— yeah, which is very good, don't get me wrong, but there's way more than carbon, like the CO2 emissions. We know there are like 9 planetary boundaries, for example, Freshwater use is one, and you have let's say like you have a bunch of planetary boundaries and CO2 emission is one. Then if you if you would circle it back for our products and you look at the construction industry, it is what we see is that everything if you build a project you need to get like for example a certain score or maybe you don't even need to get a certain score. You want to be the best kid in the class. So you want to get like the best score possible almost to show as well to other people like, hey, we're building this particular building or sustainable building. But our product, it's not— if you compare, for example, to bio-based products. So for example, wood, I would say, is the most common product now that you will see in bio-based building. And wood, they say, it basically takes in, it absorbs CO2. So you will get a negative score on CO2, which is very good. For one moment, we take it aside, or what's going to happen at the end of life. Not everything was from wood. It gets burned after it's been used. But it means that because circular products, not always, or most often, doesn't absorb CO2, it prevents CO2 in the first place because you don't use virgin materials and it doesn't get incinerated or being put on landfills afterwards. So we get a bit of a lower score. And sometimes then you don't get into projects because we are really focused on CO2 emission reduction, emission reduction. But yeah, I think at the same time, demountability, circularity, Material circularity, they're very important things as well. So that's, I think, something we struggle with a bit, or we have to find our balance and position ourselves in that, maybe a bit more, make us maybe more vocal about this. But yeah, that's a, it's a nice dance because on the other side, bio-based products, they're amazing. And yeah, we have to use them more as well. So in the end, we are still winning, I think.

Yeah, I think, I think it's a good point to bring up, and I'm with you. Is carbon is a great metric, but if it's the only metric you use, you start to miss out on these other things that you're talking about. Like, we're not using any virgin material, we're recycling.

I think at the same time, it's also easy because there's so much happening and maybe we focus now on carbon and we kind of, in here in the Netherlands, everyone know now that carbon is a big thing or like we understand the concept and we understand this is bad and maybe it takes time. To first fixate on this, and then we move to the next thing, and then we move to the next thing. And maybe if you put everything at once, it overwhelms people and becomes too much to really absorb and to understand and to get the consequences and understand the consequences of each individual factor. So yeah, I also understand, I think, why it is now that common. Right?

That is true. I mean, we do think if if you give people too much, we all start to just freak out and go, that's. Can't think about it too much. Time to go. We're gonna, we're gonna forget it. We'll just, we'll just ignore it for now because that's easier than trying to think about all the things that we need to do. So there's probably, there's probably something to what you're saying right there. I can see that. Kind of looking into the future again for you guys, uh, you have these 3 products, you've been selling it, you have customers, right? You've been getting feedback. Do you guys plan on expanding? Is there a roadmap for you guys to build more products, or is this— you found your awesome products, this is where you're at, and it's just growing the market of it?

No, we want to make more impact, so we're looking for ways to grow, we're looking for ways to expand. I think in the Netherlands, a lot of people, a lot of architects, they know us now, Yeah, we're still doing projects with them and we're getting them in and we do have some ambassadors. I would say that's always nice to have fans who really want to push through your product in most of their projects, what they have. So that's really cool. I think now having this base in the Netherlands, we're trying to slowly also expand to more surrounding countries. So we did some projects in Belgium, for example. We did some projects in the UK. And now we have this proof of concept, I would say, in these countries. So if people come to us and we can point to them and say, hey, go there, have a look and feel the product. You can see how it is. You can see it's still there. It's still hanging. It didn't catch fire or anything. So I think that's really important, definitely with this kind of products where people are always like, okay, it's new. Yeah, the construction industry in that sense, what I said already, is a bit conservative. So now once we have some traction, I think the expansion will be easier in that regard. So yeah, it's definitely also to get more products. We're looking into a 4th product and actually we want to play a bit with the architects in the sense that we can actually, because we are working with injection molding and we can basically just buy almost any mold. So come to us. Do you have an idea what kind of tile you want for a product? Do you have an idea about the dimensions, the shape? Let's talk with us and see what the project size is, and then we can just create a product with you. So that's one alley where we, where we go in, want to discover more now to say like, hey, do you got an idea? Come to us, let's explore this. I think on the other side, that's the pretty plastic side. But at the end, we're also seeing a trend where, okay, there are also bio-based products. Is that an interesting path to go into next to our, like I would say, pretty plastic side? But for now, it's definitely one expansion, getting really a real foot in the market, growing the business with the products we have, making, creating a a 4th product, and then, yeah, attacking the different markets and countries. That's, I think, for the next years, at least we will be busy with that. And then we can see, okay, what's next on the horizon. And so maybe then I will come back to you and say like, hey, now we are here, and we opened our facility in the US, and where's the PVC waste?

Absolutely. I love the idea of being able to do custom. That's a whole other You know, kind of market, right, of being able to go as an architect, go, hey, I want to do this, but I want something cool that's unique to this building.

Exactly.

When you're doing buildings, I was thinking about— I just visited Oslo and saw some of the interesting architecture and buildings and, and just the different, you know, different textures and things like that. If you're an architect doing something like a museum, right? Something you're like, yeah, this is a one-off, it's gotta be cool, and we don't want it to be like anything else. That's the whole point of building this.

Exactly.

That could be really amazing to partner with you guys on.

Yeah. Oslo is also great for that. That's definitely true. And that's exactly the reason because we believe that architects are, they're creatives. Of course they're engineers, but they're creatives and they want to I would say express this creativity. And what is a better way if you can make your own tile? And for example, you have this museum, you won this tender, and you can build your museum. And you were like, okay, but I can create my own tile with 3D plastic. And then everyone will know, you know, everyone can see this is my product, what I created on this building. I think that's very cool.

Yeah, I love that. Love that idea. Your product is awesome. I really like it. It's, you guys have some really great traction. It's great that you're already expanding multiple countries. You seem to be doing well, at least, you know, I know startup life, so it's always work.

It's always ups and downs, definitely. Yeah, you have your good times and then you have a problem with your production, the facility, and some things that don't go right as you think. And then, yeah, that's definitely there as well.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's part of the journey. You're figuring it out, which is why no one else has, right? No one else has been willing to put the energy and effort into this. So kudos to you guys doing that. This is a great— I love being able to recycle it straight out of the waste from construction and PVC. Maybe, maybe some people will come to you wanting something else out of PVC because you're the only people recycling it. Yeah.

Yeah, who knows? And then we get into a different market.

There you go. There you go. More things. Yeah. But yeah, so thanks for being on the show. This has been really fun. Love talking to you. I'm glad we found you guys and we're able to chat. And before we wrap up, of course, just want to make sure if there's anything else you want to add, whether it's for people that want to know more? And then also, what's the best way to find you guys, reach out for all these architects that should start using your stuff?

Yes, no, for sure. First of all, thank you. It was a pleasure to be on your show, Conscious Design. Really nice talking to you. And yeah, I think if people want to know more, they can just go to our socials, website prettyplastic.nl. We are on Instagram, LinkedIn as well, just Pretty Plastic. You will find us and Please contact us. Please do. That would be— it's always nice to have some feedback as well. If you do want to create your own towel, for example. Yes. Thank you very much.

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