In this solo YouTube book review, Nick Hutchison introduces Trent A. Rohmer’s Finding Sustainability: The Personal and Professional Journey of a Plastic Bag Manufacturer. Hutchison opens with stark statistics about the rapid rise in global plastic production—projected to double in 25 years and quadruple by 2050—and frames the urgency of rethinking plastic use. He shares a personal anecdote of reading the book on a beach in St. Lucia, using the vivid ocean‑rainforest view to underscore the paradox of human‑driven environmental damage. Hutchison outlines the book’s dual nature: a biography of Rohmer’s family‑owned plastic‑bag company and an educational guide to sustainable plastics. He highlights two core concepts from the book: (1) a biomimicry metaphor comparing compostable packaging to an orange peel that returns to the soil, illustrating a circular life‑cycle mindset; and (2) the three end‑of‑life diversion strategies—reuse, recycle, compost—presented as a framework for moving products out of landfills and oceans. Hutchison emphasizes the pivotal role of small businesses, noting they employ roughly half of the private U.S. workforce, and argues that widespread adoption of these sustainability principles hinges on small‑business education and action. He concludes with a call to listeners to apply the ideas to Book Thinkers’ own packaging and consumer choices, urging immediate, incremental steps toward a more sustainable future.
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Book Thinkers family, we all know how terrible it is when the plastic that we use ends up in the ocean or in a landfill. But did you know that plastic production is expected to double in the next 25 years? And it's actually expected to quadruple by the year 2050. So we could spend our time thinking about what if we could go back in time and stop using plastic, but here we are, it's 2021, and this is the reality of the world. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the next best time is today. So we need to start thinking about how to sustainably use and produce plastic so that we can stop the destruction of the beautiful world around us. Book Thinkers family, I just finished up reading this beautiful book right here, Finding Sustainability, and the subtitle reads, The Personal and Professional Journey of a Plastic Bag Manufacturer. This book was written by Trent A. Rohmer, and it's part biography, the journey of him taking over his family's plastic bag manufacturing company and starting to think about the impact it's having on the environment. And it's also part educational journey, learning about sustainability, especially in the plastic space, and how we could start to fight against this bad problem that we've created as human beings. I really, really, really enjoyed this book, and I actually read it Sitting on the most beautiful beach in the south of the Caribbean on an island called St. Lucia. And so it had a really big impact on me because I was looking out over the ocean and I saw sort of the rainforest roll right into the ocean. It was picturesque. And I thought, how in the world are we consciously ruining this planet? And so I've started to watch some more Netflix series on sustainability and some nature documentaries and things like that. I'm really starting to think about how Book Thinkers as a business can have a positive impact on this term right here, sustainability. Because in reading this book, I realized that private small businesses employ almost 50% of the private workforce. That's 1 in 2 Americans walking around that's employed works for a small business. And so unless small businesses step up and start to educate themselves, well, the problem is going to continue. So what I'd like to do is read a couple different sections of this book. I don't want to give everything away. There's a lot that you can learn by reading this book, but I'd like to give you a little introduction to some of the concepts that I read about so that you can determine if this is going to be a good fit for you. The first concept is a metaphor about an orange peel, and I thought this was really clever. Here we go. I'm going to read right out of the book here. Compostable packaging reflects a natural biological life cycle. Using the analogy of an orange peel, an orange peel is a package for an orange, and when an orange is opened, the package/peel can be composted and made part of the soil in order to grow more plants. Compostability at the end of life ultimately metabolizes the compostable material into carbon dioxide, water, and a fertilizer for plant growth— compost. Which are used to grow more compostable material. Thus, the cycle continues. So you see how that works. We need a deep paradigm shift from viewing nature as simply a source of raw materials to a source of answers for what we want to do. Thinking in these terms is a foundational mindset for any sustainable movement. In the packaging world— Like Trent. In the packaging world, a biomimicry mindset is in alignment with the new plastics economy. So I thought about that. Wow, an orange. I mean, it delivers the food that you're sort of purchasing and that you're going to consume, but it's biodegradable and it goes back into the environment and helps create more of what you were going to consume in the first place. And there are actually plastics that can do this as well. I really loved that example. And so the landfills— how do we get more plastic out of landfills? This is another thing that I really loved reading about. So here we go: reusable, recyclable, and compostable. As packaging manufacturers, we must do all we can to divert packages away from landfills. Diversion from landfill can take one of three general forms, and this was the big takeaway for me because I've never really thought about this stuff before. Number one: reuse. Design the package to be reused over and over. Recycle. Design the package to be recycled at the end of life. Or ideally, compost. Design the package to be composted at the end of life. So he goes on to say which option is best, and it depends. It depends on what's being delivered. It depends on what's being produced. A lot of different variables. But at the end of the day, if we can be more conscious about those 3 options and make sure that what we're delivering fits into one of those buckets and not into our oceans or our landfills, we are going in the right direction. And so how can a company like Book Thinkers start to implement some of this stuff? Well, number one, I can be more conscious of what I'm buying on a consumer level, but on a business— and as a business, a small business owner, but also start to think about, okay, the books that we're sending out to people, the packaging that we're using to send people books and stickers and bookmarks and stuff like that. This book is the first book that has really given me a wake-up call. So thank you, Trent, for writing it. I'm excited to continue to follow your journey and to help distribute this book so that people can become more educated on not only what plastics are doing to the world, but also how we could take steps in the right direction. To go back to the Chinese proverb that I used at the beginning of today's video, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today. So all of us have the opportunity to move the needle a little bit to spread awareness and to make a positive impact on the world. Again, thank you, Trev, for writing this book. And that is today's book review. Go read something. Bye.
