Episode 10: Brad Scott - Transmutation: Innovations in Plastic Recycling from Rural Australia

Hello listeners. How many of you have a container, a drawer, or a collection of small little plastic bits like juice caps or bread tags lurking around your home? I know I sure do. This is an example of those really hard to recycle plastic items that while small tend to pile up and have no good place to go. Our guest today has found a way to transmute those plastic bread tags into usable, durable items. And to expand on this, or more accurately to shrink on this, he's also found a viable solution to make expanded polystyrene reusable. Stay tuned to hear more. Welcome to the Eco-ish Podcast. I'm Tracy Lydiatt, founder of Sustainable Living School and your host today. The purpose of Eco-ish Podcast is to illuminate the good work towards sustainabilities that companies are doing Honestly discuss trade-offs they might wrestle with and share their interesting stories to help listeners like you make informed choices. Eco-ish Podcast honors the imperfect journey towards creating an eco-conscious brand in an unsustainable society. On today's episode of Eco-ish Podcast, we're super pleased to introduce you to the founder of Transmutation, Brad Scott. Brad Scott left his corporate job, sold everything, and then traveled around Australia with his wife for 18 months in until they ended up in a small seaside town in remote southern Australia. It's there that they decided to build their recycling and manufacturing business from scratch in an old shed they bought in the industrial area. They now make artisan upcycled homewares for Country Road Australia, have their own range of upcycled bowls from post-consumer Styrofoam, which I'm really interested to learn about how they do, and they're about to embark on a new product that will be the world's first to get rid of an industrial a waste product. What a teaser. It's super interesting to learn that they started making their housewares from used bread tags and work with a charity that collects these around Australia. And so far, just in this category, they've recycled 9 tons of plastic and the charity has purchased 70 wheelchairs for kids. Hi Brad, it's so great to have you on the podcast today. I'm really excited to learn more about what Transmutation does and what you've been up to. And before we start, could you share where you're calling in from today?

Thanks, Tracy. Uh, calling in from regional South Australia, so, uh, Robe, a little place halfway between Adelaide and Melbourne on the coast in South Australia.

Oh, I'm kind of jealous. I, I wish I could transmute myself there. Uh, I lived in Australia for 2 years, and that's the one part that I didn't get to, so Maybe someday I'll be able to come visit you and see what you're up to in person. And hopefully in the meantime, I was hoping that you could start us off by just sharing in your own words, what does your company Transmutation do?

So Transmutation, an alchemical word really, the changing of lead to gold. We transmute or we change plastic. So we take our waste plastic, single-use plastic, and make it into homewares. So we're right into upcycling as opposed to sort of recycling or downcycling. Um, bread tags, the little bread clips that you have on your loaves of bread, little plastic clips, is one of our main product lines. We have a charity that collects all of those around Australia, get them to us, and we upcycle that to a food-grade, microwave-safe, dishwasher-safe homeware that goes into some fashion lines in Australia as well. And we also look at Styrofoam, so the white foam, and upcycle that to a food-grade product as well. So we're sort of taking single waste plastic and upcycling as opposed to recycling.

Oh, it's, it's so fantastic. I've been really looking forward to this podcast because I have a lot of questions that I think probably listeners do too. And, and before we double-click on some of those things, I'm just so I was so curious. Your background was really interesting to me, and you know, you and your wife uprooted and sold everything and traveled around, and I'm imagining somewhere in there, there was some kind of driving factor or inspiration that sparked you wanting to do this.

Yeah, there was. I was ex-Army, and then I went into corporate life and did a lot of logistics, heavy logistics sort of stuff. And then business turnarounds, which was good. I enjoyed that, but they're quite exhausting. So for about 10 years, you're going in and, you know, turning workforces around and doing all that. Your children had left home, so we're empty nesters, and I was just exhausted, actually, just mentally sort of exhausted. And Narelle, my wife, basically said, well, why don't we do something else? And we decided now's the perfect time to do something. So we sold everything basically and got Brisbane, bought a van and started traveling around. So that's how we got on the road. We'd never heard of Robe before down in South Australia, and we'd never really pictured ourselves going to South Australia. But after traveling around for about 18 months on the road, we, we fell in love, I guess, with the coastline down here. And Narro wanted to stop, so we picked a place, and that was Robe, and that's where we stopped.

That's amazing. And I know that you said Bread Tags. Uh, so I'd love to start talking about that. Um, and thank you also for sharing your story. I feel like travel, travel is so nourishing in so many ways and gives you such a different perspective. And I can imagine going from Brisbane to rural South Australia is a little bit different. I've been to Brisbane before and it's a really fun, vibrant city, so I'm sure that was a really big change for you and Um, in your intro, I talked about how we all have those junk drawers in our house that have a collection of things. Like, mine has like elastic bands and like dead, uh, pens that I need to recycle and random little bits of plastic, including a whackload of bread tags. And so I was really interested to hear that story, and I can imagine you need a lot of bread tags to used to create containers. So can you tell us a little bit about that and how you got into working with this charity?

Yeah, it's really good. It's a good story because one thing has sort of led to the other. You don't sort of pre-plan where we are at the moment, but it's been a very good collaboration. So when we first got to Rogue, the deal I had with my wife— because I actually still wanted to be on the road, I wanted to keep traveling and she didn't. So we can see who won the argument. But the deal that I got was my wife said, I'll go and support us, you go and buy a shed and figure out something to do. So that's where the inspiration, if you like, came from the plastic recycling. I've seen the Precious Plastic movement on YouTube, so the Dave Hackens movement. I went and built the 4 machines that he had on his YouTube and his website.. And then we started collecting plastic from the general public. So we had bins out with the different types of plastic, just making, you know, doorknobs and small type molds from the precious plastic universe, if you like. And then the charity Aussie Bread Tags for Wheelchairs, who were collecting around Australia, not a whole lot of collection points, but they had some definitely going, they came down from Adelaide to see me and said, We're sending all of our bread tags to South Africa because we can't find a recycler in Australia to take this type of plastic, which is polystyrene. It's a hardened polystyrene, high impact. So I trialed it. It's a fantastic plastic to recycle. And then our collaboration was born. So because of the publicity from both parties, from us and the charity, the charity is now up to about 600 collection points all over Australia. Wow. Yeah, I get 250 kilograms every month. So we've done over 9 tons of bread tags, and the charity has now purchased 77 wheelchairs. So it's been a very successful collaboration, but both, both parties couldn't function without each other, so it's quite good.

Wow, thank you for sharing that. That is an incredible amount of volume. I was curious, and like 9 tons in total of bread tags is kind of staggering to think about. From a volumetric perspective, could you just share, do you have an estimation of like what that looks like? Is that like a semi-truck worth or an elephant or?

Yeah, so it's probably 2 dump trucks worth. It's quite a bit. You've got, um, I know them all personally as well, so I've processed every one of the 9 ton through, uh, through the workshop here, and we use compression. The other good thing about it is the way we do it with compression molding is I can maintain the, the visual effect of the bread tag. So in the end product, you can still see the original bread tag and the use-by dates and the labeling that's on the tag. So When you first see them, they look quite stunning as a piece of art, and then you sort of— it's one of those things where you look closely at it and then you realize what you're looking at. So they've been a really great plastic to recycle with, or great product we've come up with. And because I've upcycled to food-grade, microwave-safe, and dishwasher-safe, we've able to get into homeware shops and stores. And Country Road Australia, which is a big fashion brand here has done a collaboration with us as well. So we do a line of products for them that are just white bread tags. So they're white, they're designed by Country Road, so they're very, you know, they're a beautiful piece. And we've had our things featured, you know, in a high-end fashion sort of distribution in Australia. So that's, that's been great for us as well.

That's, uh, I really appreciate you sharing that too because I was think— I was curious about how that all happened. And you know what a big step for from wondering what the heck am I gonna do to thank goodness for your wife for saying that she wanted to be the, the support person, because look at the impact you've been able to have, um, and how you've, you know, traveled this road. And I feel like it might be before— I have questions around a couple of the claims and statements that you've just made about your end output, but I feel like maybe could we take a few steps back because maybe some listeners aren't familiar with Precious Plastic and what that kind of system might look like. I stumbled across them a long time ago and I've been watching them grow and I think they're just brilliant and I was wondering if you could, you know, tell us a little bit about that, about what their system is, you know, is it easy or difficult to set up and what's your experience been with it?

So it's quite inspirational really. Dave Hakkens is a Dutch guy, designer, He's since moved on to the new, a new project in Portugal, but what he's created is quite sensational. He's designed machines that sort of replicate big industrial plastic factories at a very small level. So compression machine, an extruder, an injection machine. They've added a sheet press machine and also a shredding machine that you can sort of build yourself You don't need— you need to be able to weld pretty much and figure some stuff out, but it's quite small scale, but you can, you know, recycle plastic and manufacture to a fairly high standard using some molds. So what he did was he open sourced all of his plans on the internet. He gathered a team of volunteers around him, and over a couple of years, they basically put together The Precious Plastic Universe, where you've got tips on how to start a collection point, tips on how to be a processor, how to be a manufacturer, retailing, how to start a business. So the sort of complete kit out there if you wanted to get into sort of micro recycling and a marketplace as well to sell your goods back on. So really, you know, an excellent sort of movement that has spawned around the world. I was the first one to build all the machines in Australia, but we would have 10 to 15 groups in Australia now doing it for Europe, and Europe and a bit of Asia are ahead of us, and now America as well. So it's all over the world, and Australia's, you know, one of the more junior countries to take it up. It's probably about 6 years old now, I suppose.

Okay. That's a great summary. I appreciate and thank you for sharing. And it's interesting, um, because when I first stumbled across it, they were mostly focused on going into developing nations and had some African, um, examples. And I think about that a lot, the difference between the recycling systems, say, that Australia or Canada would have versus a developing nation that might not have any I spent some time in Mexico, I lived there for a year, and at the time they didn't have bottle deposits. I don't know if they do now, I haven't actually looked. And I know in Africa, many places don't. And so one of the things that really struck me of the power of this system was that exactly what you just said, it's like simple, there's 4 or 5 different machines. You know, he was highlighting how they're made from common pieces that you could find, like alternators from cars and motorcycle pieces, like parts of equipment that would be laying around and easy to access, which is removing a barrier. And then the other part that was so fascinating is exactly what you said, is the commerce side, where even in Africa, they would pay a certain amount for, say, the people of the community to go out and collect these pieces of plastic and bring them to the shop that had been set up. But it was still even paying to have the plastic show up. Was still economical because they were able to make things and then sell them as a reused product. So like you said, is total genius. And, um, so cool to hear that you were the first in Australia and that you're the first that I've heard of in a developed nation setting this up and that it's expanded so much. That's really exciting to know that there's probably municipal and This is a question: is there municipal recycling in your area, or are you covering that load for that area?

No, there is municipal. Just to clear up, Precious Plastic, Monash University, they did build variations, if you like. What they did is build all the 4 machines sort of together as an educational sort of piece, and I think they beat me by about 12 months. And then I'd be— I was the first one to build the machines as per the Precious Plastics sort of model. So just in case, yeah, just in case someone comes on from Monash University and says, I'm pretty sure we beat this guy. But anyway, uh, we were there.

Good to clarify, good to clarify.

Yeah, we were the first to do the whole set. And, um, since then, yeah, like I said, probably around 10 to 15 that I know of, um, in Australia sort of doing the same sort of technology. Um, there is a a bin pickup system where we are, and most councils sort of have that in Australia. But what we need to understand, I think, and I think most people in recycling do understand this, is it's only catering for a select segment, if you like, of the waste plastic. Most, you know, PET, polypropylene, HDPE, but things like PVC and polystyrene aren't really part of that, that system. And generally I'm picking on niche sort of parts of that that aren't being recycled, I know aren't being recycled commercially, and trying to pick that slack up. But you can still decentralize— really, that's what I'm trying to do is spread these types of micro-recyclers all over Australia. We've just started our own association here called the Australian Microcyclers Association. Well, yeah, network us all together so we can see who we are and help each other out. Yeah, because there's lots of mistakes you make obviously on the way that you can share with newcomers to, as you said, get the barriers down. So the lower we make the barrier for someone to get in, the more successful they're going to be, and we can start growing micro-recyclers everywhere.

Yeah, it's exciting, and, um, I feel like with decentralized systems, you brought up a great piece about collaboration. And if you're thinking about doing this as a business, of course you're probably looking at the market thinking, you know, can I be competitive? Who are my competitors? Am I going to make money? Like your, your standard business assessments. And I feel like with the amount of volume of plastic that exists in the world, like I couldn't even, I should have looked this up. Prior to the podcast, so that's bad on me, about how many bread, loaves of bread are produced, say weekly or monthly. It's a lot. And Canada is probably the same way. And so there's so much waste that doesn't go through these systems. I feel like every community could probably have one of these and still not be in competition with each other. And I feel like you also shared an excellent point about there's different kinds of plastics and that our blue bin or collection systems are really only geared for certain types. And there's others that certainly fall through the recycling cracks and end up in landfills or worse off in our waterways and oceans. So—

Yeah, it's a double whammy. Things like lids and whatever. So logistically, the systems are set up to transport plastic to a location and lids and bread tags and whatever slip through cracks, as you said. So they don't particularly— don't like transporting them, even though they're highly recyclable. And then the other thing is, people— if you've got a bread tag in your house, you might have one a week or two a week, you put them in the bin because they're so small, as opposed to— and if you put them in your recycle bin, they're not going to be recycled anyway. So they're that type of item. So without the charity and the collection points and everything that's been collating them, that's been great. But we need to start thinking about our collection systems, but then also our processing and our manufacturing. I mean, we had an example here in Australia with Redcycle, who were too successful to a certain extent. They've collected so much soft plastic and now there's nowhere to process it. There's not enough places, if you like, processing it. So they've got warehouses full and they've had to stop the production for a while, or stop the collection for a while. And all that's done is put a negative recycle story out there, as opposed to, you know, they've been very successful. They've been doing what they're designed to do so well that they've got so much and we can't process it in Australia with the current infrastructure we have.

So, which is also frustrating because it could potentially erode the good work that's been done on the training and education side where folks know, oh, I can put this somewhere and it's going to go somewhere and get recycled. And then if you stop that, I can imagine there can be a negative effect. And you've just highlighted an excellent point about, I think, any type of system. And one of the things that I feel like our systems are currently struggling with is how to expand and contract to match the demand or the need and space. And there's so many variables that come into that. I know power, you know, decentralized renewable power is another one that has this challenge about storage. And so yeah, it's maybe heartening to hear that it's a similar challenge that translates across other industries. So maybe there's ways we can find solutions that way.

Yeah, definitely does. And because we're into this sort of black and white divisive, I think, phase of history, it's probably been there for most of history, but I think it's a lot more prevalent now. It doesn't matter what you do, there'll be a group of people who are shouting it down and saying how stupid it is and trying to wreck it for whatever reason. And it's the same with the recycling. And you get a story like that, and we have a lot of people coming into our retail outlet that we have here at the factory. That's the first thing that comes out of their mouth, you know, Recycle have failed. And you're going, well, no, they haven't. And trying to explain it, but that's all you hear in the media, you know what I mean? So people have a stigma, if you like, with recycling that you can't make money out of it or it needs propping up, you know, it can't work effectively, and those stories don't help that. So it's really one of my tasks is to show that we've built a successful business from nothing, from an empty shed, in recycling It pays two wages, myself and my wife. It's a small business in a small country town. So it's done all of those things and it's recycling. It's this industry that, you know, people consider you can't do anything with. So I really want to sort of stress, stress that business side, I guess, as well.

Well, thank you. I think that's really important, especially decentralized business models. It's just, it shows that we need to start rethinking how we're using our systems and creating another layer of enterprise, which is, I feel like, what you and I are talking about right now. Um, I'm really curious though, one of the things earlier on I wanted to really double-click on and get into is, for some re— for some reason, my brain is having a hard time going from expanded polystyrene that maybe my chicken or my meat comes on, and I'm washing that, and I'm I'm able to recycle it at one of my local places, but if I couldn't, my brain is having a hard time understanding how you go from that type of a product to a food-safe, microwave-safe plastic, let's say, bowl or plate. I'm not entirely sure what you make out of them. So can we talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. So you've got, um, high impact polystyrene, which is basically a hard plastic. It'll feel and look— it's a bit more brittle, but it looks and feels like a milk bottle lid, that type of HDPE. It's a bit more shinier. So, say your bread tag, so that type of plastic in a bread tag is a high impact polystyrene generally. Depends on the manufacturers, but I haven't seen any in Australia that aren't anything but that type of plastic. And we have the cardboard ones coming in to replace them now too, which is good. So people don't have a vision of polystyrene in their head as the hardened version because of the success of the Styrofoam brand, if you like. So expanded polystyrene is out in the marketplace, everyone knows it as the white foam, and because it's sort of ubiquitous, as soon as you say polystyrene, which is actually the type of plastic, you think of the foam. So if you just think of two different versions, Both are polystyrene plastic, but one has been expanded using a sort of pentane blown into it and airing it out into a foam, whereas the other one's just in a hard plastic that you're used to with most plastics. So they're both polystyrene, they're just in sort of different formats, if you like.

That's a really great point. I had no clue, so I just learned something new today, and I really thank you for sharing that. And, um, I'm sure, yeah, the trays is something that are so common in this country, and it was really exciting to me to hear you say you've learned how to turn them into something that's reusable over and over again, and I'd love to hear more about that.

Yeah, so contamination in recycling is the main issue that you have. So basically you're trying to find a plastic and know what's happened to it, really. Food is a bit trickier with the food trays, and yes, you can definitely recycle them into a product, but I would not choose that. I wouldn't upcycle those types of stuff coming from that industry. I wouldn't try to upcycle that. So I'm picking on basically the foam that you have around all of your items. You get hot water systems and fridges and anything you get on eBay or whatever that's packed in styrofoam. Yeah, that is a lait en misère. There's so much of it, and you know it's clean, and you know it's not from the building industry, which has bromine in to make it sort of fire resistant. So it is a bit about the chemistry and knowing what your source material is. In fact, it's very much about the chemistry. So if you can— I guess people think of recycling in the bin system, and, and the general public There is so much industrial waste that is out there that to me that's the low-hanging fruit. It's actually not the— the bin system is taking care of a fair bit, if you like, of that stuff. And contamination, I think, sort of leads a lot to waste-to-energy and those sorts of solutions, or recycling back to an oil-based sort of substance that you can then get rid of the contamination and remake into something. Whereas industrial waste, clean sources of huge amounts of waste plastic, that's the low-hanging fruit, I think.

Yeah, so where would you, um, what kind of products do you make out of your bread tags and the polystyrene?

So the bread tag products are basically bowls, different variety of bowls and serving boards. And sort of lazy Susans, those sorts of homewares. And most of those have been designed by Country Road. So the collaboration I have with them, which is excellent, is they design a new product for the season. I make that product range for them out of white bread tags and go to their stores. And then after that, I'm allowed to use the same shape with my colored range, which is just colored bread tags. So therefore, my range of homewares has grown up year by year. Around a Country Road designer, which is great because they're a lot better at designing homewares than I am, obviously. So that, that, that's how our bread tag range grew up. And then I've— with the styrofoam, the expanded polystyrene, some councils have a thermodensifying machine which will take the air out of it, if you like, and reduce the size back to about 90 times smaller than what it is. So if every council in the world just had one of those machines, you're taking— what you're basically burying now is air, and you're taking that volume right down to about 10%. So even if you just did that and landfill it, you're going to be saving a humongous amount of landfill space. But if you do that process, then I can take that foam after it comes through thermodensifying and make something out of it. So I can recycle that Generally, the market for that at the moment in China anyway is coat hangers and picture frames will be made out of that sort of material and come back at you. I'm upcycling that to a hard bowl, and that when people see it, exactly what you've just said about the picture in your mind, when I tell people that this black hard bowl that looks really funky is made out of Styrofoam their head just goes, you know, I don't get that. It's not soft, it's not foamy, it's not, you know what I mean, it's not light. It's just like a plastic bowl. So that's the problem with the marketing, if you like, is people don't get that connection. So when you get the story behind that bowl, you will buy it because that's fantastic. But unless you get that story and get that, the concept, it's just another bowl, if you like. So That's the problem, I guess, with the marketing side of that, is that exactly what you said. As soon as I say polystyrene, you're thinking of foam.

Yeah, and to be honest, I feel like, who— why would they do a marketing campaign to tell you about the different kinds of polystyrene, expanded or not? It's, it's so fascinating to listen to you talk and hear the differences. And really, as a consumer, I think so many of us are just exposed more to that form, whether you've, you know, bought a new television or you have a printer or, you know, an appliance like you shared. So much of this is packaged in a way that it, you know, doesn't damage the goods, which is important, but then you always have this leftover piece of plastic that— what the heck do you do with it? And so amazing point about that pieces of equipment that local municipalities could invest in. And so that's really neat to learn about. Is that something that you talk to them about prior? Did they have that? Did that— how did that evolve?

No, that's, um, they had that and they had the market. There's only, that I know of anyway, and there's probably more, about 20 that I know of councils in Australia. There's about 500 something, councils in Australia.

Yeah.

So there's a very small amount that have one of these machines, and generally they're selling that to, to China to make, you know, coat hangers and, yeah, and picture frames. But so they're quite progressive councils, if you like, that have found that market as well as other markets for their recycling stuff. So, um, so there are, you know, a very small percentage starting to go down that track. But if every council in Australia, like I said, went and bought a a $30 grand or $40 grand thermodensifier, and even if they didn't send it anywhere else, they would save themselves a huge amount of landfill space just by doing that. So, but I would obviously recommend that they go the next step, and once they do it to that, get it recycled and then create a market for the products you can get out of that.

So that's, uh, I think an important point about, uh, return on investment and that there is markets. I work in textiles right now, and one of the challenges with textile recycling is that there aren't a lot of established end markets for products, and that's a barrier for that technology to become more widespread. And it's really nice to hear that there's this, uh, growing group of municipalities or shires in Australia that take this on. And one of the things I think a lot of people don't think about is that landfill space is expensive and there's a— it's an enduring challenge to manage. There's constant problems, contaminations and fires and dealing with how do you actually structure a landfill so that it will help things break down. Even though we, we all agree that it's not great to just bury everything as a solution. So that makes a lot of sense to me too. And I just wanted to clarify, I heard you say 90, like 9-0%, so these machines will shrink the volume down to 10% of what it originally was?

Yeah, so the figures, it's about 97% air styrofoam, expanded polystyrene. Yeah, when you do, um, the densifying down, the figures I have anyways, it's 90 times the volumes reduced. So yeah, so if you work on about 10% of the size, then it's a huge amount of volume reduction. I mean, I've got other stuff, work we're doing now with other corporations. Our sweet spot that we're finding, and we're starting to sort of grow quite quickly into that space, is I'm able to take whatever waste you sort of throw at me in sort of volume and come up with a product and a market for it and transform it in, or transmute it if you like, into that sort of space. So that's the big thing about the circular economy. You've gotta, we've gotta sell the stuff that we're making. It really is about pushing out something else either that's in that space or creating a new market with what you're making, because if you don't sell it, it's not a circular economy.

Totally. Let's talk a little bit about Country Road for a minute. I think that's a great opportunity talk a little bit about that, creating a market. What is the— what is that? Or maybe you can't answer this. Hopefully you can. What does Country Roads, um, what is their market response to your product? Do they give you that kind of information? Obviously it's going well if you're in your third season of having them create— or fourth season.

Yeah, it's going really well. I mean, we're sort of at our infancy, I guess, with that relationship. So from their point of view, a big new step for them is to reach out to small-scale manufacturers like myself and, and try to make something work. So that's not their general business model. So they've obviously gone on a journey now with whether it's ESG or changing their mix in sustainable sort of products that they're putting forward. They've made that conscious decision at the corporate level and now they're trying to figure out ways how to implement that. So I got a phone call out of the blue from Country Roads saying, "We'd like to do a collaboration with you," and I immediately hang up because, you know, I thought it was a scam. But they rang back, which was good, and we weren't in any way at that stage ready to do any sort of production, and it really wasn't on my mind at that stage to get back into sort of manufacturing. It was really an educational piece for me, but I saw the opportunity and they worked with me, which was really good. And the arrangement we have is I can basically say what I'm comfortable producing for them for the yearly sort of for the season, and they work with those figures, which is good. So we've been able to, to grow comfortably with each other over the 3 or 4 years. And I actually, coming from the the other side coming from corporate, I am very skeptical and cynical, so I gave them a big nod because I think the way they've approached that and brought a small company sort of into their fold has been very good. So I think more companies doing that, and I think they obviously with ESG and other things coming in, there are more people steering their corporations that way. It's probably a good example to say you've just got to You know, don't, don't look at your current models and how you do things because that's why you, that's why you're trying to change it. Don't keep doing the same thing. And I think the way they've handled the, uh, the chain with me, if you like, or the, the supply and demand issue has been very good.

Yeah, that's an excellent point. I feel because so many, especially if they're a national company, which it's, I'm not familiar with them personally, it sounds like they are a national company. They would probably be used to having really large supply chains. And internally, that's just a planning process within itself about how do you incorporate a smaller producer into your supply chain and how does that market it effectively. And so absolutely kudos to them for working to figure that out and not crushing you in the process by, you know, potentially demanding like, hey, we need a million units, and you're like, wow, that'll take me 10 years to to make, but no problem.

Yeah, I was quite realistic with them at the start too. Like, I actually chased them away for probably 6 months because I didn't think I could— I knew I couldn't produce what they really wanted, but they came back and kept working with me until we came to a happy sort of medium. This is a bit of an off story about logistics change because that was sort of my old job as well before I left corporate. The first pallet we sent of goods to Country Road, we didn't have any boxes, professional boxing or any barcoding or anything done up. We had, you know, used oven boxes and anything that came in here, used toilet paper boxes, all packed with our goods and sent off with— well, we had proper labeling, but obviously the boxes were a hodgepodge of recycled bits and pieces on a pallet. And of course, that immediately got lost in the distribution center because Poor old forklift driver looked at that and goes, "I don't know what this is." So when they found it, everyone had a bit of a chuckle, but it's those sorts of things that you're trying to fit into a, you know, a well-oiled machine, if you like, with stuff coming from all over, from highly mature and advanced sort of supply chains. That is an issue because we're a small-scale operation here working for 5 or 6 weeks just to make one pallet worth of stuff. You know, put it in some recycled boxes and send it off. So it's just different sort of scale and operations that those two systems need to meet with each other.

What a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing. And I can imagine the look on that forklift driver's face who's probably used to unloading like huge shipping containers or semi-truck loads of one item. So I'm glad they found it. That would have been really— that would have been really heartbreaking to go through all that work. And again, just really grateful for you sharing that story because what it highlights for me is how a small-scale grassroots initiative can link up at some point in time successfully with a larger corporation that has the ethos and has the mandate and they're following specific environmental values and trying to create those changes, and that it actually is a successful chain in getting a totally recycled product out on commercial, in quotations, levels. And just another example for me of how business can be a very good driving force for change. One of the things that we talk— I talk a lot about on this podcast is that you have to be financially sustainable to actually do your good work, and the businesses that are also selling these products have to be financially sustainable. And that's why I called it eco-ish, because little bit by little bit, we're actually going to shift in the right direction. But it takes time, and it takes time to change all of those systems. So congratulations on your perseverance. And this is an excellent example, again, I think, of how your company is helping consumers make eco-conscious choices where maybe they're going to Country Road or they get the newsletter or somehow come across your product and, and choose differently.

We had a, um, a really good experience too where we, uh, one of our customers— we get so many different sorts of customers come through our little shop here and from all over Australia. But one of them said, I listen to podcasts a lot, and they heard the CEO of Country Road on the podcast talking about governance, I suppose, as far as ESG. It was more the procurement side of their fabrics, their cottons, and their wools, and knowing where they come from. But in the middle of that podcast, she mentioned my name, this little Brad in South Australia that's doing the BreadTag stuff, which was fantastic. But she also said that because of the things like the recycled boxes and stuff that I'm talking about, they've put in now a new thing to all suppliers on packaging. So you have to say how your packaging is moving from being unsustainable to sustainable and compostable and all of those sorts of things. So basically, a couple of months after working with us, they've sent out this, this change, if you like, to their supply chains and saying, we now need you to look very carefully at all of your packaging and make sure it comes in ticking the boxes of either recyclable, easily recyclable, or compostable. And she mentioned me in that sort of conversation, so that's a great— what felt really good for us, that we had some sort of influence on that sort of thinking. And that's how change is made, from small to big, really.

I feel like you could write a kid's book about the story of the little lost pallet and how it's now trickled down into this, the supply chain changes. Congratulations. That's awesome.

We immediately had to go and listen to the SED podcast. But yeah, that was good. Our customers bringing that to us anyway. Yeah.

And power to the podcast. We were talking a little bit offline for our listeners' reference. About how both of us were skeptical at some point of the value of podcasts because we have, you know, YouTube and videos and radio. And we were both reflecting how we like— we're doers and how we like to do things and listen. And it's such a great alternative versus sitting and like reading a book, for example, or a magazine, which I personally also like to do. But I also really like listening to podcasts. What's one of your top podcasts that you like to listen to besides—

probably, uh, I did The History of Rhyme. Mark Duncan is really good. But, um, I'm a bit of a history buff at the moment, so, um, The Rest Is History, the British one with, uh, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. I think that's my top one at the moment. But we go through different phases and, uh, ESG ones and all sorts of different, um, segments, I guess. But yeah, history, I guess, is is what I'm into at the moment.

Awesome. Well, fantastic shout out to them.

Yeah, sorry, a free plug.

Oh no, no, it's totally fine. I'm not in a competitive space. I'm just here to use my voice and to be of value.

That's all right. But I did listen to the eco-ish first two that you put out as well. So that's great. Thank you.

The next one's coming out next week, but it'll far pass by the time this one gets published. But yeah. So exciting meeting such amazing people and having awesome conversations that I'm learning so much from and really hope the listeners are learning too. And, um, everything so far that we've talked about has been really positive and exciting, and I never like to dampen the mood, but I also really wanted to kind of get real for a minute about like challenges. Have you had any trade-offs? And one of the trade-offs I mentioned commonly is, say you make a really good granola bar, but you have to— it's all eco-friendly and, um, you know, organic, natural ingredients, but the trade-off that you have to make as a business is wrap it in a plastic wrapper to be cost competitive. So I'm curious if you've had any trade-offs that you've had to manage in your, in your growth.

Definitely. I mean, there's trade-offs all the time, and, and I was very disheartened, I guess. I did a video, and it's probably still out there, well, will still be out there on YouTube or one of my feeds, of granulating the plastic up that I'm reusing. So basically, I'm using the bread tags, and then I'm taking the excess of that process, if you like, and I'm granulating up to make my lazy Susan. So I'm actually not wasting anything really. I'm going all the way through and using waste again and again. And I put the YouTube out of me granulating the plastic, and I had a barrage of comments from people commenting on the bits and pieces around the machine, like, you know, the stuff that had flown out of the machine and was sitting on the ground. And I'll go, you are kidding me. I mean, seriously, I've just done 9 tons of plastic and someone's making some big deal about the stuff that's outside my machine or whatever that I'm going to sweep up later and potentially put in, or I'm going to put in a bin. You can't let that sort of thing get in the road of what you're doing and those sorts of comments, because that's bizarre. You know what I mean? Like, you're saving 9 tons from Breg tag and people are talking about whatever, 250 grams or something of waste. Come out of that process and making a comment about it. I'm going, you've got to be kidding. But there's other things too, like manufacturers at the moment put white sticky labels on their bread tags. So the majority of them don't, but there's some brands out there that still do that, and that's just an absolute nightmare for a recycler. So I'm trying to go through processes of getting it off and washing it off. And in the end, because I'm handling so much volume just on my own I can't waste time on that. So that's a portion of the bread tags that I get that I will just granulate and put inside boards or use as fill or whatever if I can. But otherwise, I can't use that because it just takes too much time and stops me doing all of the other stuff that I need to do. So there's always, you know, there's always trade-offs to get your operation running. But you've got to make them. I mean, if you— you've got to be quite pragmatic, I feel, in this space and not worry about those sorts of comments from people who probably haven't saved a kilo themselves but want to get on a comment line and say, oh, what about the stuff coming out?

Yeah, I feel like maybe you need some clever t-shirts that say something like that while you're making your videos. Like, I've recycled 9 tons, have you?

Um, that's right.

Yeah, the armchair critics are always the loudest, and, um, sounds like you're able to take it with a grain of salt.

I am. But it's that sort of, um, mentality where we, we, we— perfect wrecks, you know, don't let, don't let perfect wreck the good, basically. So, um, take, take the wins that are there and, and don't be overcritical about the trade-off because at least you're doing something, you know.

Absolutely. Um, it's— it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to get going is one of my favorite mottos. And it's so easy to criticize from the outside when you don't understand the volume or the impact that you've had and the relativity scale between 9 tons and a few hundred grams, which as you've shared gets used anyways. So But yeah, great resource.

Most of it does, but I will get my broom out and my dustpan and I'll clean my workshop up and I'll put that in the bin. That's what I will do, you know. And if people think that that is somehow, you know, not ego-friendly, I just nod my head. I go, you know, what else would you like me to do? Basically, I've just processed all of this stuff that was going to get buried anyway. And because a couple of hundred grams of that is now in my waste bin, you know, that's the sort of thing that gets you down at the start, but it soon is water off a duck's back.

So yeah, fair enough. And of course you're being conscious and doing incredible things, Brad, and it's sad to hear that people are going to be that critical about a tiny little bit that is out of the main thing. Of 9 tonnes at this point, and I'm sure you're— that's just the beginning for you. So that's the point to focus on.

It is. And to be fair, there's a hell of a lot of support out there for what we do, so I tend to focus on that more. But if you're talking about sort of trade-offs, I guess there are definitely trade-offs. It doesn't matter what you do. I think in life generally there's trade-offs, especially in the recycling. You can't especially at this stage. We're in a crisis. We have so much plastic getting thrown at us. To think that we're going to have it all worked out perfect at the moment is fancy land, you know what I mean? So we've got to start somewhere and do everything at once. We've got to reduce, we've got to recycle, we've got to come up with new tech, we've got to do basically everything. We can't just think there's a silver bullet.

Yeah, absolutely. That's an excellent point. Thank you for making it. And you are part of that solution and you're doing amazing things. So I, I'm just— so many kudos to you, to you and your wife and your team and everybody involved with your organization, um, whether they're volunteers or partners. It's just, it's very inspiring. And, um, one of my favorite questions to ask, which is maybe a perfect time to ask it to wrap up our time, is if you could just paint your favorite picture or wave a magic wand— we'll use that one— wave a magic wand over transmutation since you're an alchemist, uh, what would your future, your ideal future look like to you?

I'm trying to create it actually, so I've pictured this quite a bit. My, my ideal future is to have, um, I'm building another shed here, but I have my little R&D batching facility here and corporations bringing me a problem and me solving it for them and then taking that out and getting it commercialized at scale, basically in the existing infrastructure. So I would like— I really enjoy that space where you're sort of taking something that hasn't been, or people think can't be recycled, and then working out how it can go back into a market, if you like, in a usable form, new product, whatever. And we've had some success at that at the moment, but I I could quite see myself just sitting down in my, you know, my little shed and working those things out. I might have to grow a big long grey beard and put a hat on, but otherwise we should be fine.

Awesome. Well, that's a great future vision, and I feel like a call out to anybody in your local area, or maybe that's listening to this podcast that's in Australia, to get in touch with you to give you a challenge. So speaking of which, how can listeners get in touch with you? What's the best way to connect?

Probably the website. So www.transmutation.com.au. So everyone loves that word. They— some remember it, some call us transportation or, you know, transfiguration or all sorts of things. But if you can get transmutation into your head, then that's the best way to find us on the website.

Okay. That's excellent. I appreciate you sharing that, and I hope that you are flooded with lots of problems to solve. It sounds like your brain is ready and we could use your help.

Yeah, again, if you can make a business model that has me just sitting there tinkering away and figuring stuff out, then I'm pretty happy. But, um, we'll see what the future holds.

Well, keep me posted, please, and maybe we should do a 6-month update.

No worries. And well done to you too, Tracy. It's great having a vehicle and a new podcast in this space as well. I think the time is right for that and the circular economy and what we need to go forward.

Wonderful. I appreciate that so much. This is a big passion project of mine, so it's nice to hear it's of value. Hey listener, thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Eco-ish Podcast. We bring you new content every other Wednesday throughout the year. If you're a regular listener of the podcast, there's a really easy way to show your support and to help us grow. Download the Fountain app on iOS or Android, follow Eco-ish Podcast, and start listening. You can share your thoughts on this episode by sending a boost, like a payment with a message, and see what other listeners have to say, or create clips of the best moments. Getting started is easy, and you can top up your Fountain wallet with a bank card. Oh, and also, did I mention you can earn money just by listening on Fountain to other podcasts too? It's kind of a no-brainer. Check it out. Visit fountain.fm to learn more. Did you know that we offer a free guide called Sustainability Decoded, designed to help you get started or advance your personal sustainability efforts. It's free, it's 12 pages full of tips and prompts to help you get going. Just hop over to www.sustainableliving.school and grab your copy today. The Sustainable Living School is also partnered with Your Healthiest Self on a 5-day free Sustainable Living Made Easy Challenge. You can register at any time by going to the website sustainablelivingmadeeasychallenge.com. Thank you again, and we hope you'll tune in again soon. Bye for now!