The Best Home Composting Appliance for Reducing Food Waste

Hello and welcome to Conscious Design Podcast, where sustainability meets innovation and business savvy. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, CEO and founder of Peterman Design Firm, hub for green tech and visionary ideas. Join me as we chat with Matthew Bertolli. He's the co-founder of Lomi, where they do composting at home and peel a case for compostable phone cases. Welcome to the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me, man. It's fun.

Absolutely. I know the origin story between these two are— is blended. Let's start at the beginning. How did— how do we go from phone cases to composting?

To a device? Yeah. So I've got 2 business partners, and I was the first investor in the business back in 2017, and that was when it was just Pela Case. At that time, actually, it was pre-revenue. My partner Jeremy had just made the product. He'd spent years kind of developing this material. I met him, heard his story, liked kind of what it stood for, figured like phone cases, good market, super competitive, but like, this is super different. I like it. So I invested in the business and spent like the next year and a half kind of building it, just figuring out like, could we turn this into a product? Will people buy something? With a completely different message than what they were used to buying, right? Like phone cases was very much a, like, as big and bulky as they could be, as protective as they could be. And then we showed up with something smaller and telling people it's made from plants. Totally different design, totally different, like, way to go to market. So the business kind of started there and it grew quite quickly. We took on some investment to, like, do R&D on different products that we could take this, like, idea of create a waste-free future. That was the big mission. It's like, what else could we go do? And as we started selling more and more of Pela Case, like we've got as of right now, like a million and a half customers around the world, it became abundantly clear that most of the world has no infrastructure or no way to actually deal with organic waste. Parts of Europe do, here in Canada, some of our cities do. We have like actual curbside pickup of food waste. Kind of scratching around, we discovered this, like there's just the lacking need for infrastructure with organic waste. And rather than kind of like look at that business or that problem set from a traditional lens, which is very much like more trucks, more bins at the side of the road, we were like, maybe we can develop something that can go in the home. Like if Elon Musk can put a gas station in your garage, why can't we do something in the home that could, you know, solve this problem? So That's where the idea for Lomi came from, truly. That, and I grew up, I spent most of my life in Toronto. We had curbside pickup for food, and I really grew to hate raccoons with like an actual passion. That lived experience with this like question around charging in the home and gas stations were like, that kind of led us to Lomi. So launched that as a separate product, separate business, but they're very Intrinsically linked.

Now, talking about Lomi, right, it can take in anything that is food, plant, basically anything biodegradable, including this phone case.

Yeah, so the phone case can go in a Lomi. There's like a big wide spectrum of compostable, biodegradable materials out there. So like most people who buy a Lomi, it is— they have food and food waste. That's like the thing you produce the most of in your home, most homes, and it Its promise is simple, right? It's like it takes all your food waste and it turns it into a natural fertilizer. You could throw that out. You could use it in your garden, use it on your lawn. Like it's useful. Basically, like our goal is like, let's keep it out of landfill. When food goes to landfill, it creates methane. That's really bad. When food rots in your kitchen, it attracts bugs and pests and smells. And that's also really bad. So it's kind of like a vitamin disguised as a diet pill or diet pill disguised as vitamin. Like it does 2 things, you know? Then, you know, what we designed it for was to eat the phone case, because if it could do that, it can do food quite well. That was the whole impetus for the product. And then what we discovered was like, there's a lot of materials that can go into a Lomi. It's a very gray area of waste right now, right? There's a lot of question marks like, is compostable better than recyclable? When it comes to plastics, we believe yes, because plastics don't get recycled. It's the worst sort of like recycling rate of all materials is plastics. You know, there are materials that are great. So like we're very pro-recycling paper, steel, glass. Like there's certain waste streams that are incredible from a recycling and upcycling standpoint, but food is not one of them and plastic is not one of them. So it's kind of trying to like go after those 2 big ones.

Right. And a lot of people don't know the difference, right? There's a lot of materials out there that are listed as Compostable. This is actually a rainbow and you're able to get a little bit, but you're not fully industrial compost. No, you're not going to stick something that needs to go to an industrial facility inside a Lomi.

Lomi is really for backyard compostable is kind of what we go for, right? It's like if it can go away in a backyard bin, it can probably go in our Lomi. That's a safe way to look at it. There's a whole bunch of certifications and standards around Compostable and what that word means. It's really controversial. Like it's actually weirdly political, and there's a lot of lobby groups in and around waste management, like not the business, but like the category of waste management that have influenced a lot of these laws and a lot of this language. Right? Like there's actually a compost manufacturers like alliance or association where like it's like a ten billion dollar a year industry. They care a lot about the use of that word. So there's a lot of materials that are Home compostable, industrial compostable. There's different standards that have been created, usually by like a few people, and they're very strict about those standards. We agree with most of them and we disagree with some of them.

Waste is interesting. I actually got to meet some people in DC that work in the waste industry, and it was eye-opening to just realize how much, how much money and resources and time and people They were in a huge building in DC. There's a lot that goes into it.

Yeah. Waste in the USA is like hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

Yes. It's an interesting space to look into. I don't know enough to really know everything, but there's a lot there. For the average person, right, the person who's actually going to use this, so process, pretty simple. Put it in, it does its job. It's not, you don't have to go spin the thing in the backyard and rotate your compost.

Go to bed.

What are the things that you can do with what you get? Right. And it is, it's not like it evaporates. It turns into a usable—

No, it's taking like a gallon of organic waste. And what comes out is this like tiny little bit of, it looks like dirt, right? It's like, I call it my magic dirt machine. It's transforming your food waste into— the best way to think of it is like it's a natural homemade fertilizer. So most of our users will have gardens, flowers, food, whatever, right? Just garden beds of any kind, plants, lawns. Like my primary use is I have a lawn out back. I have a dog and a daughter and we have a lawn. So like I use it to fertilize the lawn all year long. It's just, it's nutrient dense. Great plant food, and then we have a lot of people who live in condos and apartments who simply use Lomi to get rid of the food waste. Like they don't want to don't want it sitting in their apartment in New York City rotting and smelling and attracting rats all summer long, and they also don't want to have to freeze it anymore, which is what a lot of people in big cities do is that freeze their food waste to keep the pests at bay. So a lot of people use Lomi as a way to like. take away all the gross in Lomi and then they just throw out the output, what comes out. Then you're throwing your garbage out a hell of a lot less than what you would have if it was just wet waste. It's not just like if you don't have a garden, you shouldn't have it. It has a real function in life. It's just like it genuinely reduces people's trash by like 80%.

I hadn't heard of— so freezing, you freeze your food waste. I live on the West Coast. This is not a thing that I've really heard of. So, that would be a huge change from, oh, I have to freeze all this to make it solid and not edible and throw it away to I just dehydrate it.

Oh, yeah. We get customers all the time that live in the Northeast, even down in the Southwest where they have to freeze the food waste because they're not allowed to put out their trash except on garbage day.

Oh, right, right. Yeah.

There's nowhere else to put it. So either sits in their apartment and rots and attracts unsightly things that you don't want in your apartment, or they freeze it because that's the next best place to put it where it doesn't attract pests. So we turned to be a nice solution for those folks.

Yeah. Cause you're losing, you're losing actual food storage space to trash. That's a terrible trade. That's a— wow. I hadn't thought about That. But I guess, yeah, if you have a ton of pests, you really just don't want— you don't want that attracting all those things, or bears. You can get bears and raccoons and stuff. You put it outside.

Yep. Here on the West Coast where I live, it's bears. You know, like putting your food out before garbage day is usually not a good idea. There's these large, you know, animals that people don't love that will come around and explore your garbage for you.

Man. And so as a fertilizer, there's no, nothing really wants it. There's no, you can put that out. It just goes into the grass, goes in the dirt.

Yeah. Yeah. I've, I've like literally put it in my garden beds and I grow tomatoes and cucumbers and I feed my lawn. It's quite valuable and quite useful. It, it functions. It's not compost, but it's easier. Right. So we say it's like, it's like composting, just easier. So this is not compost, but it functions like it. So like you can use it as a nutrient for plants.

So all the benefits without, without the gross part of—

That's kind of the idea.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Let's jump back a little bit in how you went about launching this. So I know that the idea of Lomi came out We have this case. Let's figure out how to— if we can do that at home, battery grade that. Great. How did you go about launching it? What was your process of going, all right, we figured out we can do it, but there's a big gap between, oh, I figured out I can do it and I have a thing that people actually want to buy. Yeah.

Well, I mean, look, so I think the lucky thing for us was serving so many customers in Pela. As a business, you start to really figure out what people want, what do they not want? Like, we can talk to so many folks, right? So when, when we had the idea and we were starting to design it out and put the engineering work into it, we had enough of a customer base where like we would pick our diehards, like people who are really passionate about this like waste thing, and we would show them and just be like, what do you think of something like this? Right? Like if it worked this way. And so like a lot of customer development goes into it. We also like kind of built it for ourselves. Like, I would use this, was really part of it. Like, we would use this machine if we could make this part of our lives easier and better. I just don't like food waste. It's like childhood trauma. I used to work in a grocery store produce department. I really don't like rotting food. So because of that, you know, whenever you're making a new product, the worst thing in the world to do is to make something that nobody wants. Like, it's just a waste of energy and creative force.

Everything. That's the worst.

Just don't do that. So it's like, you want to try to validate it as fast as possible as early as possible. And we did that with our existing customer base and we knowing enough people. The launch was a whole other thing, man. Like, then we de-risked it even further, is rather than— like, we raised money and we invested lots of money into the development of the product, but before we invested huge sums into like manufacturing and all this stuff, we actually launched using a crowdfund. on Indiegogo. And we did that in April of 2021 to really see, like, would people pay for this? Right. And the answer is yeah, we sold a lot of them. We sold thousands of them in the first month.

So you were able to use— so you validated it, so you developed it, proved it, used Indiegogo as your— do people actually want to buy it?

Yeah.

And then that was a yes.

They said they wanted to buy it. Now let's give them a chance to pay for it. That's a whole other thing. You can say you want something all day long, but until it comes to like pulling out your credit card and paying for something, you don't really know. So then we did that. Once we had that as a like proof point of success, then we went and made the investment in tooling up and manufacturing and like everything that it takes to like bring a device to the world, which is not easy. Like hardware, hardware firmware is very different from like I'm a software guy and that's the world I come from and it's just super different.

Yeah. As I tell people, it's right in the name. It's hardware, not easyware.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not easy. Yeah.

Because you mentioned being able to tap into, you have this big customer base with Pela Case, right? Yep. How big is the crossover between, I would imagine if you care enough to buy a phone case that's compostable, you're probably pretty Pretty close to being in the same, but do you— is it a big crossover for you guys?

I don't think really. Yeah, I mean, there's some. So like, I think about 8 to 10% of— probably maybe 5 to 10% of Lomi's customers are also Pela Case customers, right? So it's, it's not a huge amount, right? You're talking about like Tens of thousands of people. It's always been the thing that surprises us that we have this like really loyal customer base in Pila Case who loves the Pila Case product, but have not yet made the jump to Alomi. Now, some part there's a lot of reasons why somebody wouldn't. Like one of them is going to be price. You know, Alomi is a lot more money than a Pila Case. Like you're talking about an appliance and smart home device. Not a phone case that's fifty bucks. So there is like a price jump between the two. That's not an easy thing to get a hold of. I think the thing with Lomi too is a lot of folks just don't know what it is, right? And so as much as like we can show somebody, it takes them a long time to buy it. Like it take like from when somebody learns what a Lomi is to when they finally buy one, that is usually like six months to a year where they go through the customer journey of like. What the hell is this? And why do I need one? And where's it going to fit in my home? And all the rest of it, right? Like, there's so many questions before you bring something new into the house of like in this price point, like it's a $400 or $500 product. I think every month that goes by, more and more of the Pela case customer starts to convert over, but it's taking a lot longer than I originally— I would have expected there to be more.

Again, Yeah, I thought it was, you'd be able to tap in and get, you know, 20, 20-plus percent of your case customers to jump over because it's so related.

But, but no, no, not yet. You know, we're working on it.

A lot of your marketing and sales efforts, is it really Because you're saying it takes up to a year. Is it— you're really focused on education then? Is that like your biggest—

Yeah, we make a lot of content, a lot of advertising with the content to like really get people to see it. Multiple different formats, media, like different messages. There's just so many things that you have to do to educate that many people about something. It's expensive to educate a market on a new category.

Yeah, there's not a reference. Everybody knows what a fridge is. Everybody knows, you know, all the other appliances in your In your kitchen, you know, and they've all really— there's not very many new, new ones. Like, it's been around for old enough, your grandparents probably have seen most of what you, what you have in a kitchen. Even a top-of-the-line best thing, that's just better versions of old technology.

Where it's just totally like, even an air fryer, right? It's like, oh, that's for cooking, right? You know, or like a sous vide machine, like, that's for cooking. Like, this is We're talking about like innovation and trash, which not a lot of people have ever really taken a crack at that. That's what makes this tricky is like there's never, there's been a lot of smart home, but there's never been any smart waste. Right.

Right.

Yeah.

We have trash cans. That was the last invention was a trash can.

The trash can.

Well, they have the ones where you can wave your hand over them and they open for you like that. That was pretty much, I think, the last The last thing to do it with trash.

Yeah.

With this product, right? You, so you, when you were launching it and before you went to Indiegogo, did you do a lot of marketing? I'd love for you to talk about how you approached, because some people use those platforms as like their only sales channel. They're like, basically rely on it. They make or break on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Yeah. It sounds like you weren't quite that way. You were more of a, it was a market test rather than we have to sell a certain amount to be able to make it. Whereas you were more going at it about a, is there enough market demand? Yeah.

Is there demand? And then like try to size the market demand. The challenge with new categories is Nobody really knows what the TAM is, total addressable market. Even now we don't. We have no idea where the upper bound of— we think it's like, this is good. This could be a very, very big new category in the home. You know, we need some competition to come in, which we have finally now. We need a lot of things to happen. Mostly we just need time. And, you know, so when we did this test, it was very much a like, is this worth our investment? Money and time. And then the worth part was like, I figured we would sell some. I had no idea that we would sell as many as we did. You know, I thought this would be like a much longer and tougher slog. And it is like, there's lots of parts of this business that are really hard to make work. But the test was really just about that. It was just like, is this, is it worth taking the next step?

What was that point when you hit that you hit? Because I know you sold a ton on Indiegogo. When did you, like, before the, before your campaign closed, was there a point where you're like, oh, we hit a number, we hit enough?

Oh, in the first hour.

Really? Okay.

So you did a million dollars in the first hour.

So that was a, that would be a solid yes then. That's a lot.

And then after that, it was sort of a, And you know, when I started getting a lot of like people in my network reaching out to me that this is like, what a great idea. And once it was public, you could kind of see the momentum start to build a bit. And that's sort of like, as an entrepreneur, that's one of your jobs is to like try to read the tea leaves a little bit, right? You don't get a lot of data, but you get some. And then you kind of have to tap into that intuition or that like gut feeling, which I've been building companies for 16-some years now. Like, I've got a fairly decent intuition about things, at least I think. So once we kind of saw it, my partners and I were like, okay, this looks good. This is taking off. This seems like a good next move, right? And that became our focus for, you know, 2, 3 years was just how do we take this thing from a standing stop, you know, to a to like an actual real business. And it's still, you know, we're still in that process now. Like we're 2 and change years in, 2 and a half years into the market now. So like we shipped the first one into homes in March of 2022. So it's been a little over 2 years that these machines have been in homes and we're on version 2 point something right now, 2.1, 2.2. So like we've had 2, like version 1, then we, then there's version 1.3 that we put out in the market. There's obviously other versions, but like which was basically version 1 with a bunch of improvements and fixes. And then there was version 2, which was a connected version of the device plus more fixes. And then now we're onto like a slightly updated version 2.1, 2.2 that will come out soon. And then after that, we're working on version 3, version 4, version 5. Like you're way out in the future trying to think about like, how does this category evolve, right? Like what is, how do you design the next thing that follows this first thing?

With this, do you see this becoming a family of products? Like, are there areas that you can add on or that you guys are thinking of that you can share? I know you can't— don't share all your R&D secrets yet, but is this something that turns into a bit of an ecosystem to handle more than just food?

So Right now, no. Like our focus is very much food. Food is a very monster waste stream to solve for. Now there's lots of places that food waste starts, right? Beyond the home. Like there's restaurants, grocery store, there's like stadiums, there's cruise ships and hotels and all kinds of places that food waste originates. Geez, transportation. There's so many places that you, if you were just narrowly focused on food waste, you can do quite a bit. And so we're looking at just like where in the home, like when it comes to food waste, it's like, what can we do in the home for different types of homes and different types of living, like different types of families, right? Like big families, small families, condos, like single-family homes, apartment buildings, student housing. Like there's so many different types of housing. And like we made a product for a single-family home with like 2.5 people in it, 3 people, right? Like, there's— we got people from all over the world. They're like, you know, can you make a bigger machine for a house of 5 or 6 or 7? We're like, okay, that's a good idea. Maybe when, right? Like, because that's a question of when, not if. That becomes obvious stuff. But so the ecosystem is less about types of waste and it's more about form factor and experience around organic waste. And then what can we build on top of the device, right? So like what kind of software and connectivity and where is there other value in this world? That's kind of what we're focused on.

I think we talked about this a little bit at one point. Carbon footprint. Yeah. With this, with that, right? So you're able to track Your carbon footprint offsets, I would say. Would you say that? Offset? Yeah.

Lomi is the only device that you'll have in your kitchen that's actually carbon negative. Negative in this context being positive. Carbon negative is like from the moment you plug in a Lomi and you're using it and you're diverting food waste from landfill and you're in a home, right, in an environment where you didn't have an alternative that was easy. So like somebody wasn't coming and doing it for you. Like you, You're on your own. Yeah, you're generating carbon offsets every time you run the machine, right? So like, this is a negative footprint device in your home. You can't say that about anything else in your home. It's like an electric car. It's like you switch out your gas car for an electric car. After a certain period of time, that electric car is now carbon negative, right? Like when you count for like the carbon that goes into making the car, et cetera, et cetera. So for those listening, Don't jump down my throat. I understand the carbon math. Yeah, it takes time. With a low meat, it takes a lot less time because it's a much smaller product. Doesn't require a lot of input. So like into making it. And then the big variable just becomes where does the electricity come from? And then what do you do with the output? So like if you live in a place where it has a pretty green grid and you're using the output in like your yard. Man, you are so carbon negative at that point. Like you're just doing good for the world without even trying, right? By just throwing away things like you always have, no other change in behavior. That's sort of how it works, right? It's like just food waste diversion from landfill and can you get it back to the earth directly?

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. Is there anything that that can plug into, right? As you're— you have a way to track it. Does it do any Is there a path for that to do more than just, oh, I feel good, I saved a pound of carbon this month?

Yeah, so we built a— like, we have our own rewards marketplace for the product too. So like, you actually get rewarded for using the device, and then you could redeem rewards for, let's say, like our filters. You got to replace filters, you can lower the cost of operating the machine by just having rewards. We also get like other partner Like brands who will contribute product redemptions or discounts to our customers for, in exchange for their rewards. So we're trying to build up this like marketplace of like, I did well, I did good, I got rewarded for it so I can do X with it. So it's like, can you turn food waste into some form of like currency that people value, brands and people, and then connect the two? That's, we've built that, we roll it out if you, but our app has that built into it now. But beyond that, there's so much that can be done just with the idea of like, imagine if every home had one and every home was generating carbon credits. And, but they're so small, you know, you're talking about like $5 to $10 per home per year. Right. So it's not a huge amount of money, but in aggregate at like a community or a city or a state level, Like there's quite a bit that can happen, right? So what do you do with that? And there's lots of opportunity there. We just don't know what it is yet. Not big enough.

You need enough of them running and then you can see what can you do with that? What's the benefit? How big do you think it would have to be? Like how many do you think you'll have to sell before you can even attempt to find that value?

I think it's going to be about half a million to a million machines running out in the world. So like, we're on track. We just, we need, you know, 3, 4 years to get there.

You should have that in like 3 or 4 years.

I think so. I think like real meaningful scale is like, like really big scale, like millions of homes, is probably no longer than 10 years away.

Are you able to use, like, is this, now that it's a smart device, is there data that you're able to collect that Gives you insight, or because I could see this being useful even at a municipality level. Yes. Going, hey, a million homes here just bought these. Clearly there's a supply. Where do you see that value chain going and what are kind of— what are you— what can you do with that?

Yeah, I mean, look, I think there's— you're hitting on like this. So the obvious thing is we now have data at a household level on actual waste Like usage, like, or production, right? So like, how much do people throw away every day? How big is that family? What are their like eating habits and grocery habits based on how much they throw away? If you're a city, so the thing with waste is like most cities outsource this to companies, right? They collect tax dollars and they go to a private company. That's why the business is so big.

Yep.

So the question We know there's opportunity to make existing waste infrastructure more efficient. So the data is going to be valuable to municipalities who actually are, are going to have problems to solve. Like, one of those problems for a lot of cities is straight up just going to be we're running out of landfill space. Landfills are extremely expensive to build, and it's a NIMBY issue. Nobody wants the damn thing in their backyard.

Right.

So a lot of states have Real problems that there is nowhere to put landfill. So our theory, our thesis is that efficiency is coming to waste management, whether they like it or not. We're going to have to start being more data-driven and create better incentives at a household, at a business level to manage this more efficiently because we're just going to run out of landfills. And then there's not enough of the other infrastructure, compost facilities, et cetera, to take in organic. So like, no matter what, we have a waste problem. It's just a question of like how close we are on that timeline to it. And I think the data part is going to be the thing that tells— it's going to be where all the insights are driven from, right? Like, imagine if your garbage truck only came around to homes based on actual like usage and output, not, hey, it's every Tuesday. You know, like, what if I don't need that every Tuesday?

We were traveling for a month. I couldn't even get— because they packaged our water bill and our garbage bill together. And like, we have a dog here. Like, the water couldn't be shut off. We had someone taking care of our dog here while we were traveling, but no trash was produced. Like, we're a family of 7. We produce plenty while we're here, but it was none. And I couldn't Turn off the trash. Like, that's, that's what it is. It's, it's, it's showing up on Tuesday whether, whether you want it to or not. Like, well, you're wasting your truck, you're wasting their time. They're driving, they're thinking it's a stop. They're right. There's just— why, why would you waste resources on that?

Yeah.

Especially when you go into some of those rural areas where the truck is driving to only one place. Right. Quarter mile out. If there's— and maybe there's— they— the driver has to go whether there's— they don't know if there's a can there or not. They gotta drive that, go see if there's a can, and then come back. So they just wasted time and gas, usually, because they're all gas trucks. Totally. Maybe some electric, but they're wasting— I don't think they are.

No. And then think like even smaller cities and smaller communities where it's actually not— it's cost prohibitive to run traditional trucking, right? So like there's lots of places in the US where everybody has to drive their own trash somewhere, which is like even more inefficient than a garbage truck. So it's, there's, there's a lot of different problems in and around all waste, but like organic waste, which is what we're focused on. It's a global problem, but it's also, it only shows up locally, like every single jurisdiction has to think of it a little differently than the one next door to them. You know, like if you live in a town where you don't have a compost facility or a landfill nearby, then your waste fees are going to be quite a bit higher because those trucks are driving long distances to get rid of what they're picking up. Like New York City, I don't know if you noticed, there's no landfills in New York City. The closest one is a very long ways away. So like you're paying a lot more money in a big urban area like New York for trash because, but partly because the distance that you need to haul this stuff away to.

Right. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that because you kind of think about like when you're in a big city, like, oh, everything's close by, everything, you know, but then you don't think about the fact that, yeah, but landfills are never close by where all the high-rises go. Nobody would build the high-rise to start with if that was the plan.

Who wants to live near one? Like, they're gross, right? I've got a landfill 10, 12 minutes from my house, and that's close enough. Like, even I'm in the business and I get it, but like, man, it's close enough.

But no, yeah, I like how nobody actually wants them. We need to throw things away, but nobody wants it.

We like the away part. That's the word that we like.

Do I get to be away?

Just take it away.

Now, when you produce this, if you're living in a city, you don't have anywhere to go use it for, it's still really good nutrient, right? So talking about supply and infrastructure, and there's, there's actually, I think it might have been a documentary that I watched that was about, or a special on like New York City was trying out putting gardens on top of high-rises because they have all this square footage space, trying to put on a little greenhouse structure, grow vegetables. Is there— if you have a million people in New York City making this amazing compost, you guys have played with a little bit. Is there a long-term play of being able to go, hey, we have all this food? Food, food grade, ready to go make, make a field very happy.

Yeah, man. We know there's a meaningful market for what comes out of a lomi, right?

Oh, yeah. Look at the price of fertilizer. Yeah.

There's like, that's got value. And it's got value. It's like, from one home to the next, from one, like for a farmer versus like my house, like it has a different amount of value depending on where it is. So We know there's a lot of value to be generated and or captured there. What I was not sure on yet is what is the most efficient? What's the best market, right? Like, is it going to be taking it and bagging it and selling it in like a Home Depot or a Lowe's, like in a garden center? Or is it actually going to be like taking it, processing it, and like bulk selling it to farmers or big ag? Like, I'm just not sure. A lot of questions. around the stability of the fertilizer at large scale, right? So like, if you collect, it's kind of like one of the big issues with commercial composting in general is that everybody's food waste is so varied. Some people have incredibly healthy diets, which is mostly whole foods, and some people eat pizza every day.

Right.

You know, and like pizza's not going to make for good fertilizer. Like it's mostly just processed shit. So What is— yes, the crap in, crap out problem. So like, the market for what comes out of a Lomi, it will eventually be there because I think the technology and the processing will actually advance enough where it's like we kind of know what's going in and we know this home produces a 10 out of 10 product and this home is like a 2 out of 10.

So being able to grade—

I think so. I think it's going to have to be like, it's again, it's going to be data driven. It's going to be much more intelligent than centralized infrastructure.

It's funny that there's a lot of parallels between the food waste and even plastics recycling. I was just talking to some people about it. They're like, oh, well, there's recycled plastic, we can use it. But ocean plastic is horrendous compared to plastic off a factory floor. That's just totally the trimmings.

Totally.

Right. It's nobody, nobody's done anything to it. It's perfect quality, barely even qualifies as recycled. And so there's issues in that waste stream of, because people will put into recycling, even company, whatever they find. And then it all gets— And there's no sorting. It's really hard to grade, right? That varying, oh, this is, this is really good. This is really bad. And blend it and have that consistency of going, oh, I know this is 10% bad, 80% good. 10% middle. We know what that does. We know, we know what that compound actually looks like.

Oh yeah, man.

Yeah.

I mean, plastics is awful. Like food, I actually think is a more simple waste stream than plastics. As much as like plastics are like a miracle material and modern society would not exist without them, like they're so good in so many ways. There's a major downside to them, which is like, we've now made so many varieties That there is no one clean way to recycle all the varieties. Like you've got some are requiring a chemical process. Some can be mechanical and you know sorting them is a pain in the butt, and nobody really has that solved. And you're right, like there's plastic out of the ocean, there's plastic out of a landfill, there's plastic off of factory floor. Like that creates variety. You know with food we're mostly talking about quality, not variety. Right? So it's like lettuce and carrots that you didn't eat are very different from like processed cheddar cheese. The nutrient quality in that, those 2 waste products is quite different. So with that, like it is a little easier to try to mix and process everything together. Still, there's challenges. Don't get me wrong, like oils and fats and like there's lots of things that can make composting and degrading food difficult. But I think that's a better and easier problem to solve than the plastics guys have. Yeah, that's why I think compostables— while the critics of compostables simply point to compostables saying there is no blue box for them, like there's no infrastructure for compostable materials, right? That's their argument against them is, well, there's no infrastructure, so people don't know what to do with them. And I'm like, well, but the blue box exists and it's just a straight up lie. So like, Why don't we try something new? Like, this thing isn't working for this type of material. Like, it's just not. Can we just all admit that now? Like, it was a wonderful PR campaign by a bunch of oil companies in the '90s. They killed it. It's not working. So maybe we need to create new infrastructure for this new type of material that lots and lots of companies have access to. Like, All the big CPG companies know how to use compostables in pretty much everything they make, but they're not allowed because governments are also saying, well, there's no infrastructure, so please don't make your chip bag out of a compostable material. Just continue using the cellophane, whatever that crap is that has no end of life. Go ahead and use that. That's fine. So the argument is like, we don't have a perfect answer, therefore we're just going to stick with the crappy one that we have.

Right. Yeah, that's a good philosophy. It always works out that way.

Sure.

Yeah.

So yeah, I don't envy the plastics guys, like trying to solve for all of these types of materials to recycle. It's really difficult.

Another thing that people are like, there's a lot of industrial compost materials out there. Yeah. And this is something I even have to explain because I have a design firm. And so I have clients that are like, oh, I want it to be compostable. And then I have to have this whole conversation of compostable is a rainbow. There is not, it is not just one thing. So when you're talking about materials, like, have you thought about putting together a list of materials that you can, is there some way, an easy way as me as a consumer? who's probably going to find out that not everything compostable is actually compostable at home, even though it says compostable. Is there a way for me as a user to go, all right, this is great, I love this product, what else can I stick in here, and know, know what's going to actually work and not mess up the machine or the batch that I'm trying to work through?

Yeah, it's a really good question. We actually Have a little standard that we created called Lomi Approved that a bunch of different packaging companies are starting to use. So like, those are materials that are genuinely tested. And like, not even materials, those are finished products, like a finished packaging of like grapes. You know, there's a company who has like packaging that we know, they know works in Lomi. It's been tested and it's been approved. It's a pretty significant like investment to build out All of it. So we're not scaling it up right now, but long term, yeah, like the actual Lomi app, we have like an AI assistant in the app that you can ask it, what about this food? Can I put this in the Lomi? Like you can ask it and we, we're constantly building up this database of like food items and then non-food items. Like, can this go in a Lomi? And if you kind of look at like where the capabilities of AI are going with like image recognition and then just speech and communication. It's not hard to imagine a world where the app is going to be able to guide a user. It's like you'll be able to take a picture of something and eventually say like, can this go in a Lomi? And even beyond that, if you think of just waste in general, man, like you should be able to take a picture of something and we should at some point have the data and the infrastructure to say like, I can recycle this in Phoenix or like I can recycle this in Toronto or New York. So it's like, can you have an assistant that's like really easy to use if you wanted to find out like, what do I do with this? Right. Like, what do I do with my batteries? I live in Portland. Like, where do my batteries go? So that kind of like database of like materials and waste stream, I suspect that that's going to be a thing. I just don't know when. It doesn't feel like for us, for the Lomi, like what can go in a Lomi, that's a problem that's worth us solving.

Right. Because you want people to be able to use it more. Yes.

We have like real incentive to solve that. The bigger problem of all the waste streams, I don't know who has the incentive to solve those things. So I don't know when that's going to happen. But for Lomi, I can definitely see us very quickly solving that.

I don't know who would have a vested interest in all waste streams. That sounds like a government program.

It's government, but like, they're not very good at it. So, um, I mean, they can do it.

I haven't seen them launch a successful app yet.

So No, like they're not going to figure that out. That's like very far down the list. They can, yeah, they, they, I mean, most all waste is a private contracted thing. Like very little is actually operated by some form of government, right? The, it goes onto your utilities bill and they hire out to some private company. That's, it's a very big industry. Most people don't know that, but it's a, it's a very large industry.

Yeah, I actually met with some people in DC that were in the recycling and garbage, and it's— they have very nice offices.

Yeah, it's not a tiny space. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's clearly money in waste streams. They're doing it right if making money off of waste is your goal. So it's, it's there, but it's also, but it's also kind of odd, right? It's so differing. Right. And what is available where. Right. So what I can do here is very limited compared to other places that actually sort out and can recycle and can— I don't even know. I mean, everybody kind of knows. This is the other thing. Everybody kind of knows, oh, I can recycle it. I can recycle and I can throw in the garbage. Right. Those are—

Yeah.

Most places at least have those 2. I can't even tell you whether there is a composting facility in Arizona. I actually can't tell you where any of them are. Here there are some, some, but like, that's not as known. Like, that's, you know, like common, common knowledge is garbage recycle. We at least know we have that, but nobody really knows if it's even available. No, I don't know how to get it there because that's not a curb.

Recycling is not a thing. So, and here's the thing, you can't. So there is a facility in Phoenix. It's operated by a company called Denali. So it's like, it's a state, it's a facility, right, that the state or the city owns, that a private company operates. And that facility processes food waste, but from commercial. So like, think schools, hotels, restaurants, like big, big producer, like, like call it 40% of all the food waste. 30, 40%. The other, most of it's still in the home. Most of it's home. And there's like restaurant, commercial, then there's farm. So that facility takes in yard waste and some food waste. I do not know the specifics on like size of that facility in your area and whether it could even handle raw residential food waste. I doubt it. Most, most facilities in America are nowhere near the size required to handle residential food waste, right? Most facilities are built purely around yard waste.

What makes— because we're talking about, you know, commercial food waste, right? Restaurant, that they can take that. What makes home waste so hard? Is it just the volume? Because there's way, there's way more.

There's so, so, so, so much.

It's just a volume issue.

It's a volume game. It's also like anything else that comes out of the home, the The variety is quite a bit larger. Like think about the food waste of a McDonald's. Like what is it? It's like potato scraps. You know, it's probably not even real food. So it's a very easy waste stream to understand. Like some of these fat, like fast food and other restaurants, like it's pretty easy. And restaurants, believe it or not, like really well-run restaurants, they have a lot of financial incentive to waste very little. Right? They like. Because they pay for those ingredients and they sell them, they want to use as much of their raw ingredients as possible. So what they're throwing out is basically what people don't eat. They tend to be very efficient in using their raw ingredients. They also— restaurants, for example, pay a lot of money to have that waste taken away. So they don't want to throw out waste. They are directly paying for it. Homes, we often don't pay directly for our waste. Most people couldn't tell you what their waste bill is. In a month. If they went and looked, they would see it. It's pretty shocking. You should definitely go look. And there's ways like, you know, Lomi can actually save you money in a lot of places in the States because of pay-as-you-throw systems, bin sizes, bag tags, lots of ways that Lomi actually saves people money. That's the mind-blowing kind of part of the product. You're a great example of like, there is infrastructure, it's not big enough, and volume is too high. Diversity is weird. You know, it wouldn't really mess with the economics of those facilities too. They've got a really nice consistent way to take yard waste and certain types of food waste and turn that into an end product that they can sell to farmers or, you know, Home Depot, whoever bags it up. If all of a sudden you introduce residential food waste, now it's like, what happens to the quality of our output? Is it still going to be sellable? Who's buying it? Like, it creates a whole bunch of problems. Economically that people are unaware of. So it becomes a difficult problem to solve.

Interesting. Yeah, I get you would probably be, have to go, well, you'd have to just run it separately, which makes it almost having 2 separate facilities, even if you're able to do that, right? So that's expensive. That's double your cost to go have it be able to handle that. Now you mentioned you guys can actually save money So not only do you give a negative carbon footprint for the product, you can reduce actual cost. You got any other unknown, not very well-known benefits from the product?

The one I like the most is kids actually like it. I have an 8-year-old daughter. It's the only chore she'll do is like feeding Lomi. It's like feeding a dog. It's the thing that she actually likes. You know, the nice thing is, is A lot of schools, I don't know about where you are, but our schools now up here in Canada, like we teach regenerative agriculture and sustainability and like they learn this stuff in school. So kids coming up now are way more aware.

I think you're ahead of us a little bit.

Okay. So like—

The US is, we're so varied. So one school would and one might not. Right.

Oh, us too. Like it's not all schools, but like we're starting to see more of that. So we get feedback. My favorite thing from customers is like, how much kids get involved in the actual thing, you know. So it's like their parents are teaching the kids something really cool, it's new. So it's like you're getting them to do a chore, but it's also educational. And it's— and kids love to push buttons.

Oh yes, that button's the best.

Yeah, buttons are the best if you're a kid. So the benefits to the grown-ups in the house are all fine and dandy. It's like, those are easy. The fun one is like all these videos that we get from parents. It's always kids. It's just like, it's the best part.

If it's easy and fun for a kid to do, then it's also one of those things where if you want to make a, if you want to make a big shift in behavior in society, start with kids. And we know this, we've known this forever. Start with kids. If you can get the kids to do it, they'll remember it.

Yeah. Start with kids and be patient.

And yes, you got it. Yeah. You know, you got to wait 20 years for that generation to become adults. That will move forward those, those behaviors. And that's, that's what the Nordics, the Nordics did it for, I think, a few, a couple decades of training. And now it's just, oh yeah, I don't know. This is what I do. I, there is no other way of, of, we sort our stuff, we take care of it, we compost, we do all these things and it's not weird. It's not the, this group over here is doing just, they're being weird and recycling. It's just is, you're doing, you're doing it.

It's normal.

Yeah. Totally.

Yeah. It's even why we named the product Lomi is we wanted something that sounded cute, right? That was a fun name.

It—

we wanted it to be like a very family-friendly name. Like, it's almost like it could be a Disney character, like a Pixar character, right?

Right.

So like, you know, you gotta— when you think about like design a product, build a product, you gotta think about all aspects of it. It's like, what's everything that the person is gonna interact with and The name is very important.

I love that you cared about that. A lot of brands get renamed after they become successful because people are, it's too hard to say, or we don't get it. And it was, you know, the founder was like, oh, this is an inside joke between the 3 of us. It's great. There's the name of the company. Then they realize, hmm, it's, you didn't win because of your name. It's because it's your product and they dealt with your name. Now we're, now we got to fix that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

I love that you were thinking about that at the beginning, not having to fix that later.

Totally. Yeah, man.

Perfect. Before we wrap up and talk about your— the phone case material, so you mentioned, you mentioned something, and I, I hadn't forgotten. You guys are looking at different applications. So obviously it starts out as a phone case. That's your, that's your use. Where are you working on being able to use— is this material usable in other ways? Because it's— it goes through injection mold process, correct?

Yeah, our cases are injection molded. They're actually made right here in Canada. So that's the crazy thing is like we are a domestic manufactured product in a category that most people think like that's definitely made overseas. It's not us, we make them right here. So it's an injection molded product, which means you can make a lot of stuff out of it. We've made— so like we went from phone cases to like other mobile and technology accessories like watch straps and AirPod cases and tablets. And we've got— we even made like, uh, silicone, you know, those like workout rings for like CrossFitters and people go to the gym. We've made those. Anything that is like an elastomer, so like soft, malleable, injection molded part, is what this material is a good alternative for. So like, kind of just looking at like the categories of product out there and saying, You know, should we be the ones to make it or should we partner with and license to somebody else? So like for the rings, we worked with a company called Qalo, Q-A-L-O. They made the actual rings and sold them. We simply provided the material.

So you would say like, uh, it's pretty close to a rubber, silicone, TPU type of—

Yeah.

Slightly squishy but durable.

Yeah, like you can kind of see, like it's very easy to fold and bend and, you know, feels great. It's also feel— it just feels so much better than plastic, like to hold the damn thing. It's like so much nicer.

Interesting. Is it the feel? Is it just—

It's just soft. Like the material works out to be like not leather soft, but closer to leather than it is to like hard plastic. You know, like everybody knows what plastic feels like. This feels like something else entirely. Like it's soft to the touch. You don't mind keeping it in your hand all the time. It doesn't like get gross, you know? So like it's a nice material and there's a lot of applications. Like we're, I want to, there's a bunch of product that we're working on with other companies right now that I just don't want to tell you because I can't, but they're coming soon. And there's just going to be a lot of places that people find Because one of the things—

I run a design firm, we talk to all kinds of people about products, and when I mention materials that are biodegradable, one of the things that pops into people's head a lot of times that they ask about is, well, if it's biodegradable, it's compostable, is it going to survive? Like, is it going to— can I— if it's going to protect my phone, do I have to replace it after I go for a swim? If I run in the rain with it, does it just fall apart? Dissolve and go away.

No, in regular use, like, I've— it's good as new, and it's been on my phone now for like a year. And think about, like, for a phone case, we like that category because people kind of change their phones every 3-ish years. It's like between 2 and 4 years. It's like no matter what, you need a new case every 2 to 4 years, assuming you're not fashion-driven. Some people buy like a new case every 3 months. Uh, it just depends, right?

Yep, yep.

So Certain categories, this type of material makes a ton of sense. If you were talking about like making a product that should last 20 years, 30 years, I think that's where traditional plastic is actually superior, right? It's going to last a long time. You're making a durable good. It's not meant to be temporary. Our view is like so much of consumerism is designed to be temporary and consumed, like people consume it. In a temporary way. That's the stuff that we go after. Now, the funny thing with our material is like, will it fall apart in your hand? No. Will it fall apart in your jeans? No. As long as like your jeans aren't the most gross pair of jeans in the world where there's like bacteria. Okay. But I, I used to, I say that and you're laughing, but like we've had, I remember 2 or 3 years ago, there was a package that went missing. Somebody tried to ship a phone case to Mexico. And it got returned to us like six months later, returned to sender. Like this thing that was lost in the postal system, we got it back months and months later, and the case started to degrade inside the envelope, right? And all we thought was like, I guarantee this was sitting in some hot-ass warehouse somewhere around the border between the U.S. and Mexico for months and months and months, just sitting there degrading and degrading and degrading. So when we got it back, it was like. In pieces.

Oh wow, okay.

Right, so like the material works, um, it just won't do that in your regular life. Like, that's just not gonna happen.

Maybe this is one of the products you're working on, but is this something that could go on to like other like footwear products where they're trying to be a little bit more temporary because they know, hey, you're going to wear it out anyway? Why use a material that's going to last 30 years when you're going to wear it out in 2?

We've looked at various footwear categories. Footwear is very hard. The challenge with our material is it doesn't foam well, right? And a lot of footwear, you like for the sole, you sort of need it to foam. And that's what like most footwear goes through an incredible amount of abuse. Just like the pounds of pressure in a day is pretty nuts when you look into what a shoe has to do. It's kind of cool actually. The science of it's very cool. So we've not found— we could get there. We just haven't determined it worth the R&D to do it. There are other categories that you're not wrong. As a species, we buy a lot of them that are much better for us to go after.

Well, that's awesome. I'm excited to see what you're going to come out with that you can't tell us yet and see what those are. That's amazing. Oh, I'm glad you're finding more uses. I love your point about the consumption part. We do design so many of our products to be short-lived.

Yeah, it's just how it works, right? Like, we like things that are temporary. I don't think we consciously do. I think we're just so used to it now, especially Western society, like, that we don't consume for quality and durability as much as we do now for cost and comfort and convenience, right? Like, those are far more powerful motivators for people than Quality and durability. So I think you know with our material, we're looking for like where are people consuming a lot based on cost and convenience that that are wasteful that we could do something with the material. Like durability and quality, there's actually lots of good materials out there that satisfy those needs. And if you're going to keep something for a really long period of time. You know, like, sure, make it out of steel. Like, it doesn't need to be made out of plastic. Seriously, like, that's the nice thing. There's some stuff out there that, yeah, you should totally buy that and use it forever as long as you possibly can. That's a good thing. There's nothing wrong with that. That's sort of been Patagonia's way of building their business for a long time is try to make things that last and then if they don't last, repair them. And Arc'teryx does the same thing in that outdoor space. Like, that's a great way to go about it. If you're going to use materials that don't have a graceful end of life, there's just a lot of stuff out in the world that we throw away.

As good as we don't have very many good materials for short lifespan. No, there's some, right? There's, there's always some. You can make stuff out of grass. You know, we've, we have a grass basket, but as far as like products we're used to. Yeah, there's not— there isn't a plethora of options. You have, you know, there's a few biodegradable bag companies I know of. Yep. There's a few, there's, you know, but we're talking about handfuls of companies in this space. Yeah. Not, not thousands. Yep. So it's, it's always good to see another, another material come out. That's really a good option. If you want something temporary, use this. It'll last really well right up until it doesn't.

Yep. Until you need it to go away. That's graceful.

Exactly. Well, this has been really great having you on. I really appreciate you taking some time. I know you're busy running 2 companies, so thanks for your time jumping on and chatting. And for everyone that's listening who wants to reach out, connect with you, keep in touch with what you're doing, what's going to be the best way for people to do that?

Yeah, I think either Instagram or Twitter. If you just look for Matt Bertulli, B-E-R-T-U-L-L-I, You'll find me. It's either M. Bertulli or Matt Bertulli. It's both. That's probably the easiest place. That's where I'm active. All right.

Make it easy. Make it easy for everyone. Follow us, man. For everyone listening, we will have links to both of those for you. So you can just click those if that's easier. And thanks for being on, Matt. Really appreciate it. Yeah, man.

This has been fun. Thanks.

And that wraps up another episode of the Conscious Design Podcast. If today's episode inspired you to bring your product idea to life and turn it into a sustainable, figure business, visit petermanfirm.com or click the link below. Your ideas have the power to change the world, and we're here to help make that happen. Thank you for joining us, and I'll see you on the next episode.