This AI Packaging Tech Will Change E Commerce Forever

What we should be doing, the substrates we should be using for these functions that take 1 to 5 days, is a substrate like paper that biodegrades in a couple of weeks to a month. It can be recycled, comes from a renewable resource. We can plant trees, we can harvest trees, plant again.

You can make paper out of all kinds of plants.

You make paper out of— right, out of, out of all kinds of things, out of grass.

Hello and welcome to the Conscious Design Podcast. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and I help turn product ideas into sustainable 7-figure businesses. Join me for another episode where sustainability meets innovation and business savvy. Today, I'm really excited to have David Murguio. He's the Chief Sustainability Officer of Ranpak. They're advancing sustainability for supply chain automation and materials. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, Ian. It's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, a couple things I would like to— first, everyone loves to get a little bit idea of the background of the company that we're talking with. So very first, if you could, a few minutes, talk about, you know, what is Randpak? What is— how did it get founded? Like, what's the brief?

Happy to.

The brief synopsis.

So oddly enough, Randpak's been around for a long time. I say oddly enough because this whole sustainability And packaging, you know, is kind of a newer idea. But Rampack was founded in the early 1970s, so over 50 years old. It was originally a family business where the family created some IP around creating a machine that molded and shaped and quilted paper to use it for blocking out and packaging items for shipment. Over the years, over 50 years, the The company's gone through a number of ownership changes, and we've grown a whole lot, such that today we're a packaging company. We provide secondary packaging. So that means packaging, protecting products within boxes for shipment. So think when you order something online and it comes in a big brown box, ours is the packaging inside that box around the product that protects it. So when it gets to you, it doesn't break. It's not broken. So today we've got a whole number of ways of shaping and forming paper. And the key to everything that we do is it's all around using paper for packaging and packaging protection. We've got a whole bunch of different systems. We've got void-fill systems that dispense paper into boxes. We've got wrapping systems that wrap products— think paper version of bubble wrap. We've got what we call cushioning systems, which are more about shaping and quilting and crimpling paper to protect industrial items, heavier metal products, industrial items, B2B shipments, auto parts, that kind of thing. And then we also have a newer business as of the last 5, 7 years where we've broken into automation, where we've created a whole bunch of large kind of higher volume for higher volume customers, machines that shape boxes or size boxes according to the size of the product to reduce the void so you don't have to ship So you're not shipping air, basically.

That's always a good thing.

That use AI to dispense the right amount of dunnage into the box, all sorts of different automation principles. And those are larger pieces of equipment for very high-volume users. But that first piece about filling voids and wrapping, all of that, we've got a whole suite of machines that work from the, I always say, a mom-and-pop ceramic store working out of their garage to wrap their ceramics all the way up to the largest most complex fulfillment centers for the largest e-commerce players that are shipping out millions of boxes a day.

Amazing. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned, you know, the sustainability thing and people think of it as only new, but I think it's because the average consumer, right, is—

Absolutely.

Hasn't, well, it was hippies and it was weird and then it was, you know, it stayed weird and on the fringes for so long. That, you know, people forget that companies— there were actually companies thinking about this.

Absolutely.

Absolutely not everyone.

Way back when. We like to say we were sustainable before it was cool, right? Interestingly, the first patent was filed within a month or two. I can't remember if it was a month or two before or a month or two after the very first Earth Day, when Earth Day was totally, like you say, a lot of hippies out there. It was less Shall we say conventional, conventionally celebrated that it is today?

Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

Yeah.

So I think it's always great to have companies like you that you can go, hey, we have this history of we've been doing things, we've been involved in this kind of, we've been thinking about these things because that evolution, for me personally, it's always fascinating to look at the evolution of what we call sustainability. And I'm, you know, not to turn it into a history thing, but I like to look all the way back, you know, 150 years to when the idea of trash— and this is something I've talked to people— the idea of trash is actually, I would argue, a more recent invention rather than at least at the scale. We've always had trash, but unusable trash, that is a little bit new at the scale. Right, for sure.

I mean, if you wanna get philosophical about it, I mean, in a way, Sustainability is kind of a new label for just a very old idea, which is kind of waste not, want not, and to use only that which you need, right? And that's something that people have been focused on for thousands of years, right? In a weird way, what we're seeing today in this new sustainability movement, I mean, it's got its roots going back to biblical times about being conscious and prudent stewards of your resources and Leaving, you know, I always say, for me, the definition of sustainability, I always kind of cut through everything and say, at the end of the day, all it means to be sustainable is to leave the world a little bit nicer than it would otherwise be for your children. That's really all it is, right? Well, that's all it takes. That's all it is. All it is, all it means to be sustainable is let's just do what we have to do today with the least possible adverse effect on our children's lives. And that's really what it's all about. All that said, right? I mean, we've come, you know, I mean, there's been such technological change over the past thousands of years, much less over the past decades.

50 years now.

Yeah, exactly. 50 years, 20 years, 10 years on sustainability. We've learned all sorts of different ways to kind of live that mantra about leaving the world just a little better off than it would otherwise be.

And one of the things that I also, I always point people to When we talk about sustainability, because we have— I work with clients where I'm trying to tell them, hey, we should be more sustainable in how you're developing your product and avoid waste. And really, sustainability is efficiency. If you're super efficient, I mean, yeah, there's, there's a part where you could be really efficient and, you know, leak out radioactive materials. So like, skip that one. But for everything else—

Right.

More efficient is more sustainable. You're not wasting material. You're not— if you're not creating waste, then there's no— you're not causing problems anywhere else if there is no waste.

100% agree.

And so that, for me, as I've gone through even just my career, I've been doing this 20, just 20 years, right? A little, little window in life, right, to the last bit. Changing the language from, you know, sustainability obviously is a great At this point, buzzword.

Exactly.

To use. But on the business side, when you go, okay, well, efficiency, like just be more efficient and plan ahead. And like we were just talking about before we started recording, thinking about, you know, some planning, planning ahead. Is this the right material? And I think that—

That's the key to me.

That's the final question we didn't ask. We found petroleum, they're like plastic. And we didn't ask. We didn't. And I think part of it is there's so much rapid change, right? Think about the last 50 years. There's so much change. And when you have behaviors for thousands of years, it's really hard to change your— change entire civilization behavior around a new material that we also use everywhere.

Right. I mean, that's interesting. I mean, like you were saying before, I mean, to me, When I think about design and what it is that we do at Rampack, I mean, there's this first question, which is, to your point, if we were planning out a system, right, a global economy where today we ship things and it takes 2— I mean, I live in New York City. It takes me 12 hours when I press send, buy, sometimes before I get my product. Other places, maybe it takes a day or 2 or 5 days, right? 5 days is an incredibly long shipping time. So you've got this function, This function, which is how do we protect something for 5 days, for 1 to 5 days? And if we were planning this out from the beginning, we would say we should use something that's not going to be around for a long time. I mean, how crazy is it that we've kind of morphed into this world, into this— and I know how we got here because of our addiction to plastic, or addiction's the wrong term because our reliance on plastic. But to use a substrate that's going to last for 100 years, that our kids are going to have to be dealing with for the next 100 years to fulfill a function that is literally done and over with in 1 to 5 days. It's just backwards and not the way you would plan this out if we had foresight of design and it was more of a deliberate design problem as opposed to an evolution, as you say. I mean, plastic, you know, plastic's an amazing thing. And when it was discovered, invented, when it was created in the '50s and '60s, there were all these uses that people couldn't even imagine. And the point isn't that it's not— it is an absolutely amazing thing, right? I mean, I always say that when I go to the hospital or I go to the doctor and I get something stuck into my arm, right, at the hospital, I want that to be single-use plastic. I want that to be clean. I want it to come out of a plastic wrapper. I want it like, thank God for plastic when I'm in the— when I'm at the doctor's office. But that's not to say that it's really the right substrate when we're talking about shipping something and we have a useful life of 1 to 5 days. So part of the way I think about ramp pack and part of where I think this kind of fits into this whole question of, as you say, kind of like efficient design is what we should be doing, what we should be using, the substrates we should be using for these functions that take 1 to 5 days is a substrate like paper. that biodegrades in a couple of weeks to a month. It can be recycled, comes from a renewable resource. We can plant trees, we can harvest trees, we can plant again.

We can make paper out of all kinds of plants.

You make paper out of, right, out of, out of all kinds of things, out of grass. We make, we have a product in Europe that's, that's part grass paper. When we sit back and we say for 1 to 5 days, we're going to use something that can't be redone, right? We're pulling oil out of the earth. We're creating this amazing substrate that can do all these wonderful things, but it's going to last for 150 years. It just seems like it's a mismatch to me, which is why I think what we're doing at Rampack is so important and exciting.

Yeah, it's interesting material choice, right?

Yeah.

We think about, and I feel like we're kind of just, we became used to, oh, just plastic packaging, plastic this. Like you said, easy, cheap, and Yeah, I don't know if addicted is the right word, but yeah, we're kind of sucked into it and a little bit lazy now. Yeah, where we're just like, hey, just click.

Well, it's a nurture. You say lazy, it's a nurture. I mean, it's human nature, right? If it's not broke, don't fix it. It's human nature. I mean, I don't, I don't mean to cast blame. It's just the way we do things, right?

I mean, no, not a— yeah, not a blame, but it always takes more effort to change the behavior.

Yeah, it does.

And to just Keep going.

I mean, that's interesting. I mean, it does take a lot of effort, but it takes a lot of effort at least where we sit and the way that we conduct our business, the way our business operates. It's really a change in the mind more than anything else. I mean, so for, as I said, we have our kind of historic, what we call our paper packaging systems, which are void fills, which you get in the box for e-commerce. We've got our cushioning for the industrial. We've got our wrapping, which wraps housewares and things. The way our business is set up is actually we only make money on the paper. So a new customer comes in and wants to transition from plastic to paper, they get— we effectively lease them our machines. But when I say lease, I mean at a very, very, very low cost, and we retain ownership of the machine.

Mm-hm.

And, um, and they just start buying paper from us. And we found that that is our business model that works really well, because if you don't own the machine and something happens to it, It breaks, it needs to be fixed. I can just come and bring you a new one and take your old one and fix it back at, you know, back home at the shop.

Right. Keep your downtime low.

Yeah, it keeps downtime low and it allows us to take back machines and refurbish them and send them back to—

You don't have anybody messing with it and breaking it more.

Exactly. And making— exactly. But what that means for the customer who wants to shift to paper is there's little to no upfront investment required. Right. You're not buying machines. We're showing up, we're bringing you machines. And you're just buying the paper that you're using. So it's actually the ability to shift, I think, comes back to— it's this idea that somehow we've always done it this other way. And we, you know, and it's shifting that mindset. And we're seeing a lot of companies increasingly shift that mindset, which is wonderful. But that's always the first step, much, much more so than the technicalities of, you know, the required investment or the technicalities of getting the machines there and setting everything up. I mean, we've got people who can organize your fulfillment center and do it in a snap. And, you know, that's all easy peasy. It's really getting people to change their mindset, which I think is super interesting. And it's also generational. It takes time, right?

Unless there's, you know, excruciating pain involved with something that forces fast change, really fast change. Yeah, it takes, it takes some time. It takes some time to, to show that, yeah, this is the way it's going. Or, you know, customers expecting it more?

That's the key. And therein is the key, right? That is the key at the end of the day, right? Because we're thankfully getting to a point where people kind of expect this, even regardless of the politics, regardless of everything that happens kind of on the surface level. As you know, we can chart the politics, stateability is up, stateability is down, whatever. But all that aside, There's just a mindset that's taken over, which really is a very old mindset. It's back to what we said before, waste not, want not. Like, why waste, right?

Right.

And the people— I mean, I see it. I always refer to my own family. I mean, I see it in my mother, but you know who I really see it in is in my children. I mean, my kids are in their 20s and they have no patience at all for anybody who doesn't have this mindset, for any company that isn't willing to see the future the way they see the future and the importance of these things to their future. So I think it ultimately comes back to customer demand in making this shift.

That is a really good point too, is generational kind of expectation. It has started to come online. And that's what, when I'm talking to companies even too that are like, if any of 'em are thinking long-term, which as a company you should be. If you're not, you need to be. But if you are, you're paying attention. And anybody that's paying attention knows that the generation that early 20s now, our teenagers are in this. They, you know, ours have jobs. They're spending their own money now. They think about these things. They really think about these things. They were doing thrifting because they're like, this is, Cool. And it's better.

And then it's better.

So there's, there's more and more, and I can only imagine the generation after them.

Right.

There's gonna be zero— any wiggle room right now that exists is gonna be gone. It's gonna be gone one more generation. I, I can't imagine any of the things that companies were selling and doing in our—

Exactly. In our generation when we were kids. Absolutely. The forward-looking companies know this. They recognize this. I mean, you know, you saw Amazon a year— has it been a year now? I can't remember when they put out their— not quite a year. I think it was last summer, last June, July, announced their whole shift to paper from plastic. And, you know, for an organization like that, I say it's an easy lift. It's in the mindset. It is. But when you're an organization like that, anything is a heavy lift, right? I mean— Yeah.

Everything's a billion-dollar lift.

Everything's a heavy lift, right? So, we We see that with forward-looking companies who are doing this, and we see it, not surprisingly, our business is a global business, so we do about 45% of— rough numbers— 45-ish percent of our sales are European, 45-ish percent of our sales is North American, 10%-ish Asia Pacific. And we see, as a global business, we see it happening in Europe at a much faster pace.

Right.

Or I shouldn't say at a much faster pace. They're just a few steps ahead of us here in North America as to how to think about this and the seriousness with which they approach these questions. Which is good. You know, it's good. Yeah.

I mean, someone's always going to be faster and everyone else will catch up.

We'll catch up. Yeah. So, so to me, the first big question, as I said, is the substrate. And you just kind of get your head around that. And if we were deliberately planning it, We would be choosing a substrate. But then there's so much, and I know this, this podcast focuses on design. There's, there is so much what I'm going to call that kind of making widgets design going on, which is so interesting. I'm not an engineer. I'm not a technical person. I do not have a technical background or an engineering background, but it's amazing to go into our R&D facility and to see the Awesome ways that our, you know, our engineering professionals think about how to basically form paper to do new things, to package new things, to cushion things better. And we put a whole lot of effort into both improving those business, you know, those machines that we have now. There's interesting design questions in shifting to a more recycled paper, right? There's the kind of general view, and I subscribe to this, is that recycled paper made from recycled content is better from a sustainability perspective. And, but the thing is that as you recycle paper, the fibers get shorter and shorter and the paper just gets softer and softer, right? So when you think about, you know, something like this, which is a really hard, you know, it's just a virgin printer paper. It's a really stiff paper as opposed to say a, you know, newspaper, old-fashioned newspaper, if you still touch newspapers, right? Which is heavily recycled. If you're not looking online, right? And that's an engineering problem and a design problem in and of itself in shifting, trying to figure out ways to, the way I think about it, have the recycled softer paper kind of migrate up the chain into the applications that have typically needed more rigid paper. As a kind of rule of thumb, the cushioning applications that are designed to cushion heavier things, heavier pieces of equipment that you're shipping, the rule of thumb is you typically want a more rigid paper because you're dealing with a heavier object. But that's a— Super interesting design question that our guys are working on constantly. And then there's— we've rolled out in the past 6, 7 years this automation business, which is all about engineering and design. And, and that's super, super interesting because that's about— if you imagine like our Evo Cut-It, which is one of our flagship machines, it's a very large piece of equipment, about the size of a minivan, maybe taller than a minivan, maybe the footprint of a minivan. And basically a Product comes in on a carton and machine vision looks at it, computes the amount of the void needed around the product, and then it goes into the machine and the machine cuts the box down to meet, to reduce the box to fit the package, to fit the product basically. And that's like, talk about an engineering problem, getting all these interfaces together with the machine vision and the AI background and the brain and everything talking to each other to both reduce insert tonnage and to happen at a super fast rate that works for a large high-volume customer is a massive engineering— I'm going to say problem. It's a massive engineering challenge in the best kind of ways. And it's a challenge that we've pretty much perfected. I mean, our machines are— we're on the—

It'd be great to have— if Amazon boxes could have those, that would be good.

Yeah. Shorter, smaller, right? Yes. A lot of more, again, more in Europe. Europe has some regulatory things going on that there's a regulatory reason for them to reduce the voids, but reducing voids And reducing the size of the box has, first of all, cost less because people typically ship on a dim weight, right? Dimensions of the box times a weight factor. So you're literally shipping smaller boxes. So you're paying less to ship. You're putting less void in. All of that's great. And all of that is important. And as business people, we love all of that. But what else it does is from a sustainability perspective, right? You're getting more of those boxes on a pallet, right? Because if you've got smaller boxes, they fit on a pallet. What does that mean? You're sending out fewer trucks. You're sending out— when you scale this up, For these large companies, you know, for these large, large shipping companies that ship millions of boxes a day, if you can get on 2 trucks what you used to get on 3 trucks, you're really significantly cutting the environmental effect.

Hey, it's your host, Ian. I'm really glad you're enjoying this episode. I absolutely love highlighting amazing brands and founders for the awesome things they are doing. I've helped hundreds of entrepreneurs and businesses like yours turn their boldest ideas into powerful purpose-driven brands. So if you're serious about building a brand people love, like our guests and clients do, and one that you're proud to stand behind, I invite you to dive a bit deeper with our book Conscious Design. Inside, you'll discover the exact framework and steps we use to help entrepreneurs like you turn purpose into a powerful impact-driven brand, brand that stands out, attracts loyal customers, and drives sustainable growth with social and environmental responsibility woven into its DNA. Grab your copy today. You can find it on our website, consciousdesignhouse.com, or just find the link below in the show notes. Enjoy the rest of the episode and don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. Well, 2 of the biggest problems in shipping, the biggest wastes, are when we ship air and water. And, and that's why companies are coming out with, you know, there's versions of soaps and there's versions of other things that, yeah, you don't need to ship the water because water, water is super heavy.

Yeah.

And air just takes up space.

You're shipping— Just takes up space. Exactly.

So, and combined, that's a lot of wasted space on your truck. And like you said, if, if you're— and even, you know, the last, especially when you get to the last mile, It's not the weight that kills you, it's the space. If half of your truck is air because of the air in the package, that means your driver can deliver half the number of packages they could. They have to go out twice.

Absolutely.

That's double the fuel cost, it's double that.

We should sign you up. This is— that's what EvoCut, it's all about. That is what it is all about. And yeah, I mean, those are the problems that this machine is designed very deliberately to fix and to make better. And it's exciting because everything you're saying is 100% true. And it's nice to have something that both helps on the cost, on the labor, on the difficulty, and is also just more sustainable. It's like this trifecta of— Well, of terrific— go on.

The on-demand part too, right? If you think about being able to— there's The other, you know, another huge waste space is, well, how many size boxes do you have to have? How many pallets of those boxes do you need to have on your floor? How much are you paying a month in what, utilities or rent or any of the above to have all that square footage to store the boxes?

Yep.

That you hope that you are calculating, you know, it's all based on forecasting, guessing at 100% how many you're going to sell of each thing. To magically have the right, which means you're going to end up with some— there's going to be some pallets somewhere of just boxes you'll never use.

Just sitting there and never used. Absolutely. So, I mean, I'm going to get all this wrong because I'm not on the technical side in its detail, but it's going to be correct.

Ballparks.

Exactly. We've had experiences with customers with our automation equipment. So our Evos, basically there's like a footprint box size and there's like kind of small, medium, and large footprint box size, and they cut down the height of the box. And we have this software, PreCubit, that helps analyze what they used to ship and helps predict how they could transition to our equipment and give that and fit in for optimization box, you know, pallet optimization and all that kind of stuff. And where we've had large customers, they'll start and they'll have, they'll carry literally like 10 or 12 box sizes. So you go into their fulfillment center and there's just, you know, 10 different box sizes all the way down from like this to this, right?

That you have to inventory, manage, bring in on a pallet, then make it easy for somebody to get because you're telling them to get the right box.

It's all crazy, right? I mean, I shouldn't say it's crazy. It's just where we've, you know, it's the way the evolution came, right?

Well, it's just expected now.

That's right. It's expected. So we've come in and we've said, hey, listen, we've done the analysis of what you ship out. We've found that you can get One Preak, one Evo with the smaller footprint, two with the medium footprint, and one with the larger footprint, right? Now we've reduced those 10 box sizes to 3 footprinted boxes that each one goes through a specific machine, and all of the rest of the sizing can happen just on the vertical plane by the machine's natural box sizing. You know what the machine does, it's, it's what it was designed to do, to size the vertical plane of the box. So you go into someplace where they've got 12, 10, 12 different box sizes, and they come out with 3 footprints that they run through these 3 machines and they end up with an infinite number of actual box sizes coming out because the machine, it doesn't— it's not like a full cut, medium cut, small cut, you know, large cut.

That's not the pre-punched ones that you can buy.

Right. No, it's not perforated or anything. The machine vision looks at each box, determines how deep it needs to be. So they'll end up with an infinite number of box sizes, theoretically, that are all perfectly suited to their needs. Again, more boxes than on the pallet, less air shipping, less tonnage inside, fewer trucks on the road, fewer vans for the last mile. All of these real-life economic and kind of what I'm going to call sustainability, making a better world ramifications. It's a pretty amazing piece of equipment and line that we have.

How long has that line been out?

Oh, it's been out for, I want to say, a couple of years. I mean, we're on our version Yeah, it's pretty new, but I mean, it's within the last 5, 4 to 5 years. I think our initial ones were about 5, 6 years ago, but the ones that we have now that have evolved and gotten much, much better. I mean, we have an automation facility that we built in Shelton, Connecticut, where they're all assembled there for the US market. And we have a terrific showroom that has— you can look online and see the Cut-It and see what the machines look like. They're really amazing pieces of equipment, and it's wild to sit there And watch them run when the boxes come in and you get these boxes of all different sizes. You know, it's wild.

That's awesome. And it can, I'm assuming it can do this, but if you put like a collection of, like, if you're thinking Amazon, right, where you're going to grab off the shelf 3 randomly shaped items, put it in a pile and then send it through and it just goes, yep. Box it.

Yes. 100%. The way the, again, I'm not a technical guy. I'm going to get this wrong probably. And it's very specific. But basically the camera, the machine vision both can take a picture of the inside of the box, which is super helpful for quality management, for quality control, for everything else.

Right. Make sure you're shipping what you're supposed to.

Right. Make sure you're shipping what you're supposed to do. But that's like the easiest, simplest thing. And then there are other cameras or other eyes, I guess, that create these pixelated dot maps of what's in the box. Which then feeds to the machine to tell it exactly how much dunnage to put in. So it doesn't matter if it's 1 thing or 5 things, it just reads what's in the box.

It just says, here's the space.

Right. Here's the space, and this is what's in it, and speaks to, you know, communicates with the cutter head and the dispenser so that everything comes out perfect.

And I would imagine this also reduces your— I don't know what the correct term— maybe tertiary packaging? But like all the paper you would stuff in in order to fill the void, you're You're reducing— you're not having to pad it, put stuff in, pad the sides, pad the—

Absolutely. 100%. 100%. Obviously, it depends on what you're shipping. Some things need more packaging if they're— Well, yeah, don't do that for glass.

Don't skip it.

But 100%. I mean, it absolutely does do that. The other cool thing about— and this is kind of more of an engineering problem and it kind of leads to kind of the bigger question, right? I mean, we talked about the substrate, we talked about the widgets, what I'm calling the widgets, the machines. And the bigger question is kind of this ecosystem and how we put together this whole ecosystem of fulfillment, these machines, in looking at what's in the empty— what's in the box, the packed box before it's closed up, they collect an incredible amount of data. Incredible amounts of data.

And as we know, data is super important.

Super important, right? When you're shipping millions of boxes a day.

Have you seen the value of Facebook? That will tell you.

That's exactly— when you're shipping— well, I don't mean it's not valuable like Facebook's data. We're not taking back the data and selling it.

I'm just saying. All data is valuable if those companies exist.

So what those machines then tell is our customers, right, who have the machines, who own the machines, they're able to collect all this data about their own fulfillment, analyze it, make it more— figure out ways to make it more efficient. There's in Europe, there's actually, I don't know how familiar you are with the kind of European sustainability regulation, but right now in Europe, there's packaging directive that isn't quite fully in place yet, but it mandates void. It says to everybody, you cannot ship a box with more than 50% void.

I mean, 50% would make sense.

No, no, it's great. It makes great sense.

I was expecting like 20% or, you know, like really just be like, no air, guys.

I want to say they started at 30 or 40, but then it all went into the whole rigmarole and it ended up— they negotiated it up, right? They ended up there. But the point is that these systems, what we call the decision tower, which is the tower, it's basically like a doorframe that the conveyor belt runs inside. And it has all of these— this equipment up there that can sense all the sensors that sense the inside of the box, collecting that data to allow people to calculate with certainty what the void is of everything they're doing. You're not guessing. It tells you exactly what the void is.

Right. They can ensure that they're compliant in case somebody is like, you're shipping 51%.

They go, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, here it is. But when you think about the future and the ability to collect all this data, and that's just a regulatory response, that's responding to kind of an externality that government is saying you gotta do in Europe. But the crazy thing about data, right? And as you say, data's so valuable because we can't even imagine what we could be using it for, right? We collect the data and then we let smart people, not like me, smart people who knows how data works and how to—

Let the data engineers do all that.

Right. Let the data engineers do it. And then who knows what they're gonna to figure out about making it more efficient and these fulfillment centers being more efficient. And that to me is the most exciting thing, is when I think about the future, is the ability to really see in a different kind of holistic sense and to collect this holistic information in a way that will allow people who are much smarter than me figure out how to make it ever yet more efficient, which then goes right back to what we were talking about at the beginning. Efficiency at the end of the day Brings you right back into sustainability because you're doing more with less. And that's super exciting to me. And that Rampback, we're at the leader of— I mean, we're at the forefront of that. Our decision tower is amazing. Invite you all to look online, check it out. And it's a really simple piece of equipment in the sense that it's just a frame that reads the boxes as they're going through. And when you're shipping millions of boxes a day, you end up with a lot of information to figure out how you can make it more efficient.

Well, and for me, the Taking a little bit of a step farther, it's exciting when you have bigger companies like that doing that because you have, right? Because 100 data samples is okay, but if you're doing a million a day for 2 years, you have real data. And then what it means is that companies like yours can go, okay, show us your average, you know, anonymize it, whatever, do all the security stuff, but give us that data. And then that allows you to build better machines, and then it's able to trickle down. So like, you know, you work with small mom-and-pop size store, right? You work with the small ones. You're not gonna get enough data from 2 people working out of a garage to be able to improve it. So you're able to— that data, yeah, it's super value for them, but it also ends up, when you're doing it right, be able to develop better and better equipment and then It becomes accessible to smaller companies. And now the efficiency actually goes the whole way up and down. Big enterprise, Fortune 500 to never heard of them person with a garage. And that efficiency, because if I were like UPS, it doesn't matter whether who's shipping it. If the small mom-and-pop is shipping boxes of air, it still impacts my—

It's still impacting my— right. Absolutely. It's still impacting my van 100%.

Right. Well, that's amazing that what you're able to do with that and the improvements and meeting EU regulations is always— I think it's always a good thing to be able to do that because then it trickles. It helps. The more we can trickle that into the US faster, the faster we'll catch up. And then if it's efficiency stuff where nobody loses.

No, absolutely. And I mean, I guess at the end of the day, that's where it really all comes down to is that They're properly done. And I'm saying properly done because I'm trying to take my hat off to a lot of what's happening in the world right now. But properly done, sustainability is really an endeavor that nobody loses on.

No, everybody wins.

Everybody wins. And this notion that there has to be a loser, there's got to be a cost. I think certainly in some cases it's true, right? I mean, there are costs to everything, but there are myriad ways that we every day that We as individuals, that companies from the smallest to the largest, choices that we can make that really are no-lose situations. It's just about, again, changing the mindset, believing that it can happen, believing that it's possible, convincing yourself that it's possible, right? Accepting that it's, that it's possible. And then once that happens, then the doors are wide open and there's so many ways that we can affect We can change what we do at little to no cost. That's really just a win-win for everybody, for us today. And at the end of the day, like I said, I think I said earlier today, for our kids. I mean, who doesn't love their kids? Who doesn't want their children to have it a little bit easier than they had it, right? I mean, like, that's like, if there's a universal thing, that's gotta be it, right? Yeah.

Even if you don't have kids, you should still want the next generation to not—

Maybe you have nieces and nephews, or maybe you've got, you know, You know somebody with a baby.

You don't want that baby to have a rough life. Come on.

All things being equal, wouldn't you prefer that that baby has it a little easier than a little harder? Of course, we all want that.

You know, absolutely. Yeah, I think it's a good point too you brought up, is that I feel like we've— culture-wise, we're used to like, oh, where's the cost? Where's the expense? You know, more of the pay the piper kind of expression. And We need to be more of the rising tide rises all boats, right? Like if we can switch over to that one more.

100%. Well, it's like all medicine doesn't taste bad. Yes, there's bad tasting medicine, but all medicine doesn't taste bad, right? And there's medicine we could take today that isn't going to taste bad at all. It's not going to increase anything for us. And we're really just going to do that little bit to make the world better.

Absolutely. Well, this has been a pleasure talking to you.

My pleasure too. I appreciate it, Ian.

Absolutely. And just for, you know, wrapping up here for people that want to find you guys online, reach out, where's the best places to go?

Best places to start at our website, www.ranpak.com. We've got all of our products there. We have our sustainability reports. We didn't even talk about that kind of corporate sustainability stuff and lots of information there. And if you're interested in reaching out, there's a place on there that you can reach out. And we have somebody who looks at all those emails that people send in and divvies them out to me or to whomever, depending on the question. So somebody will be looking if you should send something in.

Perfect. Well, amazing. And for everyone listening, watching, we'll have links in the show notes. So take a look there too. And, you know, David, I really appreciate your time. Thanks for being on the show. This has been fun.

Yeah, it's been fun. Thanks a lot, Ian. It's been my pleasure.

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 7-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.