Transforming Plastic Waste into Useful Products with Taylor DuBose of SUS

Hello and welcome to this episode of Conscious Design. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and author of the Conscious Design book. And today I'm excited to have Taylor DeBose. He's the founder of Sus, recycling bottles into products. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Ian.

Absolutely. Well, I'm excited to get into this. So before we talk about what you're doing now, how did you get into this? What was your spark that said, I want to start a business and I want to do sustainability? Where did this origin come from?

I want to take on a challenge that, a very difficult one. Yeah. So I always knew growing up as a kid that I was creative, wanted to be creative, you know, not just kind of do your typical 9 to 5. Position, I think honestly it started with something as simple as like building and playing with Legos. Like I was always like, like doing a simple thing. Yeah, there you go behind you. Yeah, very, very simple. Like I think that's where I started to as a kid just build an imagination. And people will tell you that like I have a kid's imagination and create kids' creativity, which I take as a, as a very good compliment. So I think a little bit of that. Right, exactly. Yep. So I do well with like toddler and up to probably like age 18 is usually my sweet spot. Like I think that as well as when I was young and a kid as well, both my parents being teachers, we were able to travel during summers. So traveling, I think builds in a huge perspective for people. For me, it was great because When we went by before our exit to get back to Albany, New York, because I'm based in, or I'm from that area, upstate New York, there was a car junkyard. And I always thought to myself, why can't we reuse that material? There has to be something that we can do to reuse that material. And that was at the age of 7 to 12-ish where I just thought, going back to Legos, you can build with these simple blocks. Why can't we build with that material that's just lying there for no reason? And so That's kind of my initial spark of why I wanted to start a business and why I started to want to start something more on the sustainable side. So we established in 2020, but going into COVID, I mean, you see, especially in the beginning, you dealt with it, everyone dealt with it. You have gloves that you need to wear for your groceries. You need to spray down your groceries. You need to wear a mask. All of these different things that, hey, these are all plastic things. Being living in Boston, you see all these things on the street being washed away into our waterways, being thrown into our garbages and filling up our garbages, filling up our landfills. And again, it was one of those situations where I was like, I know that there are solutions out there. It's just going to take a level of effort that not everyone is going to necessarily have. But I know if I start down this path, there are people that, that are passionate about it like myself and you too. Like, you know, you talk about conscious design and being able to take a plastic bottle and make it into something that has more shelf life is super important.

Yeah. Extending our resources, right? It's already, there's a lot of people that make the argument, oh, we'll just stop making plastics. And that's cool. Like, yeah, if you want to do that, great. But also We have a bunch of plastic already. It's already been made. Too late. Like, let's figure out how we can use that as a resource instead of having wasted the energy it took to make it in the first place.

Yeah, right. All these big businesses and conglomerates, they're going to continue to use virgin plastics. It's just cheaper for them. They look at what is the bottom line for us? And if it's cheaper to use virgin plastics and not worry about where it goes after, they're going to continue to do that. It takes some creativity and Patagonia or Cotopaxi, it takes those types of businesses where they are willing to take that extra step and put in that extra level of effort in order to do something that I personally, and I'm sure that you do too, think is right. for our future on this planet than ourselves, right? So we know that bigger businesses are going to worry about the bottom line first. We know that other businesses that are more sustainably minded are going to worry about the bottom line. Obviously we do too, but there is a conscious consideration to your name, to that conscious design. There's a conscious consideration in there that one, people are going to understand that value. But 2, our mission is to reduce and remove waste from landfills, waterways, and oceans, regardless of— it could be a plastic. We want to reuse all of our— repurpose our plastics and use maybe even biodegradable materials in order to make it industrially compostable or even compostable materials, whatever we can do to Make it so either the shelf life is going longer for plastics that are going to be around for 500 years or make the shelf life shorter or make the life of that product shorter and also able to like fertilize soil or whatever it may be or be compostable just in general.

Right. So I got to ask the name Suss, how'd you get there?

Yeah, 2 things. So we were really kind of, I didn't even think about it at the time of Among Us, but obviously anyone that's played Among Us knows that sus is, is definitely a thing in that game. So there's 2 thought processes that I went through. One, we know that our plastic and like landfill and waste issue, it can feel pretty bleak, can feel like a challenge that's like insurmountable. So SUS is a— can be short for sustainable, or long name is Sustainable Utilization System, because we not only want to just design and create bags and backpacks, but we want to do things like our Reborn initiative, which we can talk about a little bit. But we want to be able to give back and utilize as many different opportunities to, to our point, to my point of plastics, other materials that we can reuse long-term. So Sus is the fun play on— Sus stands for something that's more of a system, not just products. And then Sus can be short for sustainable. So it's kind of like a triple threat.

I love it.

Love it.

Tell me more about Reborn Initiative. I know you and I have talked about it, but For everyone who doesn't know about that.

Sure. Yeah. So the Reborn Initiative, something that we started earlier this year, and essentially its basic foundation, we want to take bags and backpacks that people no longer use, whether they're ripped, dirty, whatever it may be, they leave in their basement, they leave in their closets, they don't want to throw out, but there's still some use to them. We take those, we clean them, We repair them and then we donate them to people in need. So we're working with the YMCA in our area. We're working with Boston Has— I'm working with a program that has 30 homeless shelters in the Boston area. And we clean, repair these bags and backpacks, and then we give them to the people that truly need them. So Reborn Initiative is putting our money where our mouth is. We don't charge. For this, it's truly a donation of these materials and of these bags and backpacks. And we work with volunteers that help us repair these bags and backpacks. Plus, I put in some own manual labor on my side too, in order to make things happen. So it's truly like, let's actually repurpose and reuse the material that we have out there. These donations can be any brand of bag and backpack. Nike, Adidas, you name it, we take it. And if it's ripped, we can repair it. If it's dirty, we'll clean it. There's enough industrial commercial washers out there that you can throw quarters into that will clean a bag or backpack just as well as doing it by hand. So it's a super exciting thing. We have some different collection bins that are in stores like REI locally and some of our partners that are refill stores. And so if there isn't one in your area today, the goal is to get those in your area. So Ian, if you think about different stores that you would like to see something like that in, please let me know. We're trying to slowly expand out of the greater Boston area. There are aspirations to take that as a nationwide thing because there are plenty of people that need help that I see every day in Boston and in a lot of other cities. Just in general, right? There's a lot of people that have and have hard times that we can help for sure. Yeah.

Well, I mean, if you're working with REI already, they're— and they always come to mind. Columbia is always a good one too. They do some work on sustainability. So REI is like really, really good. So.

Yeah, they're awesome. They've been a great partner. Yeah. Yeah, they're—

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and they're kind of everywhere up there and they're always the hippiest, most sustainable, but getting real gear too. Like it was, it was, they didn't joke around about, yeah, it's real gear and we care about the environment and you can actually use our stuff.

Right. Yeah. There's some really awesome values that we align with there that I think will take us a good way in as far as the partnership we've had. I've had great experience with the people at the stores, you know, not only like as managers, but also just like the people that are on the ground answering questions, giving suggestions. They're super knowledgeable. And, you know, it's a space where I'm super happy to be a brand that's in their store.

Yeah, well, it's a, that's a good vote of confidence that they're working with you. So Amazing job with that. I wanted to jump over to your product. You have a few products that you guys are having made. Tell us a little bit more about what goes into these products. How do you get them made? What's the story there?

Yeah, sure. So our biggest, like, bread and butter outside of what I'm wearing on my, on my body right now is our bags and backpacks. And It's anything from your travel backpack to what we're working on building, which is like a crossbody bag and a fanny pack. And any of these and all of them are made from some sort of a mixture of recycled polyester, recycled ripstop material, or even recycled nylon material. So to that point earlier, we make our products either from reusable, recycled, upcycled organic cotton, for example, or biodegradable material for our coffee cups. So you'll see on our website, and you'll see just in general, the way that we message our bags and backpacks and our other products are by bottle count. So you will see our 19-bottle backpack. And the reason why we call it 19 bottles is that's the amount of plastic that equals the material that goes into our backpack. So every bag that you buy recycles that, those amount of bottles. So that's a very easy way for people to understand their impact every time that they get one of our bags or backpacks. And I think everyone knows what a plastic bottle is.

Yeah.

So it just makes it a little bit more of a like physical representation of, of the positive impact that you're having each time you purchase one of our bags or backpacks or just one of our hats. Like, our hats are made out of roughly 3 plastic bottles worth of material. Our socks are made out of 2 plastic bottles worth of material and so on. I'm super proud about that. The number of bottles is important. Being sustainable is important. And then also being affordable and accessible from a price standpoint is also incredibly important. So We never think about us being direct competitors with Patagonia. We think that they do an awesome job and aspire to be at their level. I think one of the biggest pillars—

Absolutely.

Yeah, exactly. Yep. So one of the biggest pillars for us is sustainability, but making sure that sustainable products are accessible for more people. I think that's one of the biggest things that Are, is going to make like maybe even the biggest impact, especially from a standpoint for us, is like, we want you to be converted from a Nike or Adidas bag that isn't made from recycled polyester without having to spend over $100. Like our backpacks range from $50 to $120, but the $120 backpack is a travel backpack that's made from 35 plastic bottles worth of material. All the way to our total backpack, which is one of our more popular. That's a $55 backpack, and the more demand that we have, our goal is to get closer to the price point of a Nike backpack. That's your thirty or forty dollar. Like we want to be able to not necessarily like get well if we can that it's great, but we want to make it hard for you to. purchase those bags and backpacks that are just made out of virgin plastic, like just as hard as possible. That's going to get to the most population that is going to use sustainable products. That's the end-all goal. Get as many people to use sustainable practices as possible.

What is your biggest hurdle in getting there? Is it supply? Is it demand? Cost? Like what's, I guess, what's keeping Nike or Adidas from just doing 100% recycled materials? Is there something in the way? Or is it just they don't do it?

So I think personally, the challenge for us is, in every other small business, is awareness, just making sure that the word is out there that we exist. I don't know how often people, you know, that are in your customer or your audiences have heard about Suss. And then as far as Nike or some of these bigger conglomerates, I think the biggest challenges, effort, and that hit to their bottom line to build something that's more sustainable. I think they're, which is great. I think customer values are starting to change and they're looking at sustainable products as being more important. So they're probably doing their predictive models on like, how long can we sell at this high margin for virgin plastic-built products instead of going to sustainable products. So they're probably doing like, hey, in 5, 10 years we're going to have to really like revamp our products in order to make them more sustainable. Again, we go back to their number one priority, which is driving sales and revenue. That's how businesses on the stock market are going to operate because they have people that they need to, or they have their bosses. I'm the founder. I am here to make a positive impact as well as make sure that, that our margins are strong, but I can prioritize things much differently than some of those other businesses do.

Right. So with your materials, you mentioned that you're, you guys work with a few different ones, some upcycled cotton as well, you know, plastic bottles, of course. I guess, how do you approach finding, are you look, always looking for new materials? How do you work through that? Because I imagine kind of that supply isn't necessarily going to always be there, right? If you're secondary, you got to hope that it's got to be there. So how are you dealing with that?

Yeah. So I guess the best way to answer that question would be we have businesses that have been vetted by myself and by my team to make sure that they have the correct certifications to start, for one. So we have ISO certification or standard that our companies that we work for, bags and backpacks and others, BSCI, which is Social Compliance Initiative, which is no child labor, especially for our businesses that we work with that are based in Asia. And then one of the biggest things is GSR, which is Global Recycled Standard. And that's pretty much saying, hey, look, this is third-party vetted recycled material that, you know, you renew certifications for. And we make sure that our partners have that certification before we work with them. It did not— like finding vendors and suppliers that we trust and are willing to work with was not an easy process. Like I was working on things like that and still working on it to your point. Like we are always looking for suppliers or partners that, that we're, that we can work with. But it does take a long time to vet these different potential partners. And we started in 2020, but I was definitely working months prior to that in order to figure out and find the right suppliers that we trust. Not only do they use sustainable products, but they also make quality products. So one of the things that we stand on too is having a lifetime warranty on our bags and backpacks. So If you have a rip or anything like that, we have you ship it back, we make the repair, and then we send it back to you. So if you get a rip in your bag or whatever it may be, we'll make the repair and send it back your way. So some businesses do that, but we definitely want to make sure that that material gets reused. We don't throw it out. We repair it and send it back your way. So you still have that same bag. You don't have to worry about— Hey, where is this material going to go if I ship it back to us?

Right. Is it just going to get thrown away and I'll get a new, a new one? Right.

And a lot of businesses will do that, which is unfortunate.

Yeah, that's a really important thing. Making sure you're actually repairing what you get back and not just tossing, toss and throw a new one in. That is important. What are you guys looking at? You mentioned you're always looking for materials, right? That's always, I feel like sourcing materials is just an ongoing game. It doesn't end. You just gotta always be doing it. You have a pretty good product range, right? You're not just bags. Are you looking to expand? Kind of what's your goal long term? Where do you want this now that you're here? Where do you want to go next?

Yeah, I feel like it's a perpetually moving target, like an ongoing cycle of Just being creative and like thinking about what the customer need looks like. So, you know, to your question of what we're looking at next, we're building, I got prototypes a few weeks ago, but we're building, you know, a fanny pack that's gonna be made out of recycled polyester. We're building the crossbody bag that's gonna be made out of recycled polyester. And then later this year, Call it like summer timeframe. We're looking to build a lunchbox and a backpack that you can bring to the beach or bring on a picnic that's made out of that has some insulation built into it, but is also the exterior is made out of recycled ripstop, which is essentially a more durable version of polyester and nylon together, where the rip and tear and abrasion resistance is what you want it to be at that level. When you're on a boat, you can get it caught on a rope; it'll be also water. waterproof and have that resistance where, you know, it's gonna take a lot of punishment. It's gonna be filled with water, water's gonna be around it, food, et cetera, drinks. And so I'm personally like being in the Boston area and being close to the water, how often do you see, you know, this plastic floating around? Hey, can we make that useful? Can we instead bring our backpacks that are made outta recycled material to the beach or to a picnic? Maybe even pick up some plastic bottles or some plastic on our way. But having different materials like the recycled nylon, recycled polyester, recycled ripstop in our material wheels will be really awesome and creative moving forward. We've even made something along the lines of a custom bike bag. And so that's a different space that I think could be really cool for us. Like we built ones specifically for Onyx e-bikes. That we have with a partner. There's so many spaces that we can play with and play in that just a lot of opportunity. I had a conversation earlier today, believe it or not, with coffee roaster, and they have burlap bags that sometimes they don't know what to use, use for. Like, they do a great job of sending those burlap bags either back or being able to compost some of them. But there are some that end up having to be thrown out, whatever it may be. Can we take those burlap bags, repurpose them, and make them into tote bags? Can we make them into pouches, wallets, or something else that's useful versus putting it into the trash? So like, there are opportunities out there with burlap. There are opportunities out there with hemp, some other organic materials that I don't see why we can't play in that space and why we can't use those materials. But definitely the lion's share of our business is focused on the polyesters because we know how long they last. We know that there's an abundance of this material that's being thrown out versus some of the other materials that, that are in our landfills today. So let's prioritize the materials that we know are used the most and make them or give them another longer shelf life, another life.

Yeah, well, I love that, Dale. You're, you're open to those things. Yeah, the burlap bags that coffee beans come in. There's a lot of coffee beans.

I get a lot, a lot of coffee. You have all the America runs on coffee, uh, especially in this area with, uh, your Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks for sure in your area.

See, and then Starbucks on the West Coast, and that's So much, so much burlap.

I don't know, right?

If you enter that space, you might have more, more than what you can deal with.

That's a good problem to have. Like, the awareness is growth. The demand, knock on wood, will continue to get demand. Where this material hasn't been used or won't be used, like, we want to be able to prioritize that material that's the least recycled, which in our case with plastic in the US, only about 5% of Statistically, only about 5% of is ever recycled. So your blue bins that are around the office that are, that you put your trash into at home, 5% of that is, is being maybe recycled. Like the other 95% is either being shipped somewhere, being burned, or being put into a landfill or ends up in your ocean or waterways.

Yes. Here or somewhere else where you ship it to for them to dump it in the ocean. That way, right?

Right. Out of sight, out of mind is a fortunate thing that we do, and it's a good coping mechanism. But I think we have to be aware of where this plastic is going. We have to be more educated about that. So while SUS is a fun thing, like, we want to make sure that, like, SUS has a fun feel to it. We also want to be realistic and know, like, hey, if we're all doing this as a community and we're more focused As far as reusing materials as a community, it can go a long way.

Yeah, there's a lot more power in being able to do that than people necessarily give credit.

Right.

You can affect some change, just not a huge change by yourself. But, you know, get some people together, start a company.

Right. It takes a collective.

Yeah, it does. And it seems— well, I guess I would love your take on the market as you see it. It seems from my standpoint and people I've talked to that there is this growing shift in that people are really expecting more sustainability out of companies. And I think that's obviously great for companies like you, but I'm curious what you've seen starting in 2020. It's been almost 4 years now. What are you seeing customers, What's your, are things shifting?

Yeah. Yeah. Inside looking out or outside looking in, I see the passion that people, we do pop-ups, markets, farmers markets, whatever. And just being in stores, like doing demo days, we're happy to do that. But being able to have a customer or a potential customer walk up to me and say, I love what you're doing. Continue, keep doing that. We need more people to do things like that for us and for the world. That gives me a great feeling of like, hey, just from a personal level, there are people that are passionate about this, recognize that it's a challenge, recognize that something needs to be done about it. So I think in my past, in the past 4 years of running SUS, I've found that There are more people passionate about that and more educated about that than ever, which is a really glass half full view and optimistic view that it makes me excited for where we're headed in that space. Yeah. And I think that comes along the lines of e-bike users, electric vehicles just in general, businesses that are more willing to Use compostable coffee cups, use compostable plates. Many people that bring reusable bags to the grocery stores now, more so than ever, there's people that are— there's grocery stores that are banning using plastic or getting rid of plastic just in general. REI doesn't give any tote plastic bags or plastic bags at all, obviously. So there are big businesses and small communities and that individual person That I think just is more aware about the impact that they specifically have on waste, which makes me happy and very optimistic for where we're going.

I like that. It's really easy to fall into the doom and gloom, and I think that's a mistake to do. I think you should be realistic. Like, yes, there's a problem and We can solve it. I think that's the— if we keep, if we keep that attitude, then we can solve it and we'll, we will keep moving forward. So yeah, it's, it's nice to see that.

So Ian, I'd love to hear a little bit. I would love to maybe ask you one question. I'll do a real little roles reverse. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your business and what your team and what you are working on now, just out of curiosity for myself.

Yeah, well, there's, there's kind of 2 things. One is my design firm. And so we focus on sustainable products. We work on solar projects. We work on pretty much— we'll take on basically any client because there's so much out there material-wise and things like that that people just aren't aware of. And so we actually do a lot of educating and guiding. our clients over. And so somebody's— people will come to us even and they'll go, okay, I want to design this product and I want it to be sustainable, but they'll have no idea or a very limited view. They're like, oh, we can only use this bioplastic, or, well, we can only use aluminum because it recycles easy. And so there's a lot of kind of sitting down and going, hey, this is what you want to do? Okay, well, here's the 100 materials out there, or here's all these other options.

Right.

Here's other things that we can incorporate, you know, and really just changing how people think about sustainability, that there's more than just, can you recycle it? Like, that's easy. That's cool. It's basic, I guess. Can you— you can do that. But there's biodegradable, there's reuse, there's repairability. There's— we've been talking about longevity. Like, this, this is gonna last forever. Well, maybe actually design it to last forever instead of— if the material can, why not use it?

Yeah.

It'll last, right? Don't, don't intentionally make it fall apart. after 3 years if it could last 100, right? You know, making those, making those decisions and thinking about it, because there's, like you've mentioned, there's so many other materials out there. There's, you know, you mentioned hemp fiber and there's canvas bags. There's all these, all these things out there you can use. And it's really just being super open. So it's, it's always exciting because we'll, we'll take our project and we'll go, okay, how about We'll give you some ideas on like how we can make this more sustainable. And so we have a lot of clients that we help kind of just that transition over of, okay, well, maybe they weren't even thinking about sustainability, but then we go, hey, it's not going to change the process really. We do these few things. It's going to be way more sustainable. You just got to think about it. You got to think about that at the design stage. That's actually what's led to my run. We just launched a few months ago, Conscious Design House, as an organization. focused on helping designers to think circularly, think about—

Okay. Yep.

And this is how you started. You're like, hey, I want to do— I want to be sustainable. I want to remove bottles out of waste. I want to take waste out there, turn it into a product. The only reason you're able to do that is because you thought about it first, right? You designed it that way. And there's just so much reactive sustainability where it's like, oh, we got a product. How do we make it sustainable now that it's a product already? Instead of going, it'd be way easier just to start ground zero and design it to be sustainable, design it to be the most efficient, most profitable, efficient, useful, sustainable product. You can do that if you, if you think upfront. So that's all, right? That is awesome. That's why I do this podcast. It's all focused on like showing people, here's how you can, here's, here's what he's doing. This is, this is possible. You can do it. You can make a business out of it. The more people realize that, the more people will go, oh yeah, I can. That's totally doable.

Right. It's definitely an awareness thing. Internet is great now, especially more so than ever. You have your ChatGPTs and everything else in the world, and you can always ask them a question and they can give you an answer on, hey, how long does a plastic bottle last in, in a landfill? Oh, 500 years. Oh, okay. Yeah, we need to do something about that.

Yeah.

No, that's cool. It sounds like there's some interesting and potential parallels, like for both of our businesses. So we look for opportunities to work with you. It would, it would be pretty cool to work together maybe at some point.

Absolutely. To wrap up for everybody listening, first, where can people find you? What's the best way to get ahold of you, partner with you? And you do partnerships with all kinds of companies now, hopefully more. So where do people find you? And then Yeah, anything, any last pieces you want to add in?

Yeah, so thank you. The easiest place to find us on is our, is our website, which is susmade.com. So susmade.com, similar to TaylorMade. So if you're a golfer, you can kind of, you know, that's a way that I always tell people to remember. That's sus_made.com. On Instagram, @sus_made1 for Facebook. So we're on your typical socials. We have a YouTube as well that we store videos, but easiest way is definitely to go to our website, susmade.com. And then honestly, I think the last thing for me that I'd love to, love to just use as a refresher is with the Reborn Initiative. We're looking to grow, grow to more than the city of Boston, New York City, etc. We just want and need volunteers and partners, whether it's places that you would suggest to set up our collection bins, to being a person that wants to volunteer to help do some of the repairs on our bags and backpacks that we are collecting. We're trying to build a community of people that are willing to give a little bit of their time to do collections both individually and also partners to make that difference in someone's world, whether it's a homeless person or a kid that goes to the YMCA that wants to play football, hockey, lacrosse, basketball, you name it, soccer. They need bags and backpacks to store their, like, all that sports equipment. And I know as a kid, I played 3 sports growing up. It's expensive for the kid, expensive for their parents. So the fact that we can give them something for free can mean the world to that kid, that parent, that person that's homeless, that's on the street. Like, these things go a long way. And know that as far as those bags and backpacks or just the material that you think doesn't have an actual use anymore, We can rethink it and know that it does have an actual use. We can, we can give that to places like SAS or others.

Amazing. Well, definitely everyone keep that in mind. We will have links for everyone that's listening. You can just click on that, make it easy for you. And Taylor, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for being on the show.

Ian, thank you. Yeah, thanks for inviting us on.