Episode 4: ShareWares - Boldly growing the circular economy in Canada of reusable packaging for food

Hello listeners and 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 sustainability 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-friendly, sustainable brand in an unsustainable society. On today's episode of Eco-ish Podcast, we are really pleased to introduce our listeners to the CEO of ShareWares, Cody Irwin. Cody was born on a remote farm in Manitoba, raised in Toronto, and studied mechanical engineering at McGill University. He now calls Vancouver home sweet home, where he is a 2x founder and a 2x father. He sits on the Technical Advisory Committee for Metro Vancouver's Solid Waste Management Plan, as well as the Green Industrial Innovation District Steering Committee. He is also a big-time circular economy nerd. I'm so excited to talk to him. ShareWares is a pandemic pivot on a mission to end the world's waste crisis. They have launched a tech-enabled citywide reusable cup and container share program to replace the need for single-use packaging. And according to them, this is just the start. Their software is industry agnostic, so it can allow almost any non-consumable product to be bought, returned, tracked, and processed for resale. The deposit-based platform is plug and play, so it's rapidly scalable. And as a result, ShareWares has already partnered with notable organizations like Tim Hortons, Skip the Dishes, and the City of Vancouver. They believe the end of the world's waste crisis is not only possible but could happen in years instead of decades. Hi Cody, it's so great to have you here with us today. I've been really looking forward to having this interview with you, and I'm really looking forward to learning more about what you're up to with ShareWares. And could I start off by asking you where you're calling in from today?

Yeah, we're calling in from the upstairs of our warehouse in Vancouver, just near Olympic Village, where we have our office and washing facility.

Wanted to start off, I just, I was so impressed by you all the time when I have conversations that you just exude this like, let's do it attitude. And I'm really excited to dive into what that means for you and ShareWares. And so to start us off, I was hoping that you could tell us in your own words what your company ShareWares does.

Right. Well, I'm an engineer, so my words might not be as good as a marketing professional, but I will do my best.

It's all about you.

We provide cafes, restaurants, grocery stores with reusable packaging that their customers can borrow for a deposit, and then they can return to any one of our 60+ best drop-off sites, or we even have home pickup and office pickup. Yeah, so we make it kind of easy and convenient for reusable packaging to replace single-use packaging. So I guess to best describe it, the scenarios like you go to a coffee shop, you order a cup of coffee and you ask to borrow a Shareware's cup, you pay a $1.50 deposit and off you go. And wherever you are in the city, when you're finished, you can scan that QR code on that cup. And it will show you all the return locations around you. Those QR codes are unique to every single product so that we know who to refund. So when you do drop it off at at one of our collection bins. We even have like streetside bins in like downtown Vancouver. You would scan the QR code there too and then pop it in. And because that code's unique, we know who to refund the cash to when we get the products back. And we do that through email, money transfer, or actually you can donate it to one of our charity partners through our platform too. Wow. Yeah, there's a lot.

No, it's great. There's so much to unpack in there. And before we dive in, I also really like to ask founders, and you're a CEO and a founder, what your driving factor was, or the inspiration or spark behind starting your business. And I find that there's so many stories behind the scenes that we don't get to hear about. And that's what I'd love to encourage you to share right now. What made you start this?

Right, it was a Christ-attunity, if you will. We're, we're pandemic pivots. So before the For the pandemic, we were a corporate food service company, primarily, uh, helping out technology companies manage their in-office kitchens. So all the goodies that would be in a Google or Facebook kitchen, um, you know, all like the fruits and snacks and drinks and beer on tap, wine on tap, kombucha on tap, cold brew coffee, like all those fun things, uh, we would help these companies manage all that. So we're basically like this logistic company, um, and replenishment And then when COVID happened, all offices closed and we dropped 98% overnight, uh, because yeah, there was— yeah, those were our clients' offices and, and they just didn't exist anymore. Um, but then with the wage subsidies and rent subsidies came online through the government, and so now we had like a fully functioning business with all the right people in the right seats, uh, tons of lovely staff, you know, delivery vehicles, 5,000-square-foot warehouse, all the software systems, manuals, everything for a logistics company. We just didn't have that, that, that business model anymore. So we kind of had— we had to pivot. And we were doing a lot of stuff with zero waste with like tap systems and bulk food systems in the offices. And that's where we were kind of driving the food service, the office food service industry into this kind of zero waste realm. And so we decided to lean into that as we saw there was a lot of waste being produced because of COVID Everything was single use, everything reverted back, and we knew that it would, it would rebound. And, you know, we would hopefully go polarize the other way when people were like, oh, this is crazy how much garbage you're creating. Now we're seeing it. Now we have more of an awareness. And so then when, you know, everything kind of came back to a little bit more normal, then we could, we could get to work and, and, uh, yeah, help end this waste crisis that we're, we're in right now.

Oh my gosh, completely. Um, first of all, congratulations for being a pandemic pivot that's successful. I can't even imagine how stressful that must have been to just overnight your business model just evaporates. How long had you been working on the corporate side with the food replenishing prior to COVID?

10 years. So we had 10 years of resources to replenish, but actually like it was, yeah, it was stressful at the beginning 'cause I was just, I was worried about my team. Like where's every, what is everybody gonna do? Like how do we, how do we get the everybody paid? How do we get people on these subsidies? How do we do all those things? Because really the, the people are what matter in it all. Um, but then, you know, kind of getting out of that and everybody's taken care of, and suddenly like we could, you know, hire everybody back, or most people that weren't on delivery because we had no one to deliver to. Um, then, uh, then after that it's just like fun. It's like, all right, we have— it's an entrepreneur's dream. You have like 10 years of resources that have already been built and we don't have to start from scratch. I don't have all that, that crap that we deal with. Um, I could just get like right into the business part. So actually It was, it was, it's been so much fun. Okay, bleeding edge market. Circular economy is just, it hasn't, isn't even like a blip on the radar yet, but it's where we need to be to be sustainable on this planet. We can't keep wasting. So yeah, yeah.

Well, one, thanks, that's amazing. Thanks for sharing that. And, um, you know, I hear the stress and like, I really appreciate your care of your employees because I had my own business at one point in time too, and they really are the lifeblood of your business. You can't do it alone. So I'm glad that you were to find solutions. And just in your intro as well, you shared something that was so prevalent with COVID which was waste and the single-use waste and how everybody was like using Skip the Dishes and, you know, Uber Eats, wherever, you know, wherever we were geographically using takeaway systems. And it's a great point that I think a lot of people don't think about. They maybe saw all the waste and concentration about face masks and the disposable masks and all the statistics about how many of those are gonna end up in the ocean. But you just pointed out a really great point, which is we weren't able to sit in restaurants and use cutlery and plates and ceramic things that could be rewashed and reused. We started increasing the amount of takeaway containers. So yeah, entrepreneur's dream. And probably also like, well, like you said, what did you call it? Not a crisis opportunity, but a Crise de tunité. Crise de tunité.

That's from like The Simpsons. It was like that. I mean, I think it's actually like this word anyways.

It's—

anyways, um, well, I appreciate it. I learned a lot from The Simpsons growing up.

Well, they're oddly, uh, really on point with a lot of things way back then. So, um, yeah, I'll date myself.

Almost 40. Still 39. I'm still in my 30s.

Okay. Well, yeah, I'm a little bit older than you, so I remember the first— yeah, I remember watching the first Simpsons coming out. So super fun. Uh, yeah, they're, they're really on point on so many things. Uh, crase, crase-attunity. I hadn't heard that. So that's a new one for me with The Simpsons.

Thank you.

Um, so basically this is, I think, perfect segue into what my next question was, which might seem simplistic and I'd love to expand on it with you. In what ways do you feel that your company and your services are helping consumers make eco-friendly choices?

Uh, well, it's basically just making it easy. Like, we, we looked around at all the different other platforms and how, you know, reuse could work in the world. And, and, you know, I didn't think like any of them was really there yet, and it really wasn't super easy to, to do it because like really humans need convenience. They need things to be— everybody's so busy. I like— they just like, you're too busy even for sustainability. Like, even like people that are like hardcore, you know, deep greens that are carrying their stuff, you know, their glass jars, walking them over to the refill store or something like that, still at points, like, they just, they're just, they're too busy to be able to make the sustainable choices, even though they lay into it. But that's only like 0.01% of the population. Everybody else is just like, no, it's not easy enough for me, so I'm just going to go with whatever is easy. And I don't blame them. That's just our culture. We've been That's what we need. And then also, it's been pounded into us for 70 years of this throwaway culture that it's okay to do that. So we don't have any like social norms saying that it's, it's bad. You know, you have garbage cans every, you know, corner or whatever to kind of help you with those things, to help you enable the throwaway culture. So yeah, but just by making it easy, we saw that like, it has to be the easiest thing. It has to plug into existing infrastructure. There has to be like almost no systems or behavioral change at all. And with, with the deposit model, that's possible. Like, uh, it's ubiquitous around the world. Everybody's pretty much using it right now. If you're in BC, you're using it. Like, every can or bottle or anything, like juice or drink bottle or whatnot you buy, even like milk cartons and stuff like that, now are all on a deposit model. So you're, you're already doing it. And with deposit model, you can just, you can slip it in right at the manufacturer level to do it, to distributor, to retailer, to customer, and then to a depot at the end of life. The only problem was that that's not as convenient as it could be. So what we saw was that the— we need to make it easy for customers to get their money back, to return it and get their money back. So creating a network of return locations, so anywhere that there's a garbage can or a collection service, so whether it's in an office, if it's on a street corner, if it's in a, in a business, or, you know, getting home pickup, every one of those areas where there is waste being generated and picked up, or not generated but picked up, there needs to be able to have a collection system for reuse as like a new utility in the city for like reusable products. Um, and so yeah, we just built the tech to be able to make, make it happen. So, um, you can conveniently return, and so it works both easy for our— say our customers are like the businesses that buy from us, and then so we're like B2B2C. So then like the— but you know, the end user, the customer on the— on of the business is also kind of part of the whole ecosystem. Um, and it's easy for them because they're just paying a deposit and they're there's no memberships, so there's no scanning at checkout or anything like that. You just pay like a pan of pop, you just— it's already in the bill, you pay it and you leave. And then if you brought that back to a depot, you can get cash back for it, um, with cans right now. But even with our products too, like, it can be totally techless through the whole thing. Like, the— you could bring all your reusable products, like all our takeout containers, grocery containers, cups, everything like that, right back to us, and we'll give you cash for it. So it's completely like inclusive and accessible to everybody in the community and works just like bottle deposit model. So basically making it easy and convenient is, is, is the, the way we've, we've been working.

That's how you're helping. I love it. There's a lot of things in there that I was like, would like to touch on. First of all, do you have— I can imagine when you say you have recycling depots around the Vancouver area or drop-off locations, When you talk about besides a garbage can, do you actually have like cans on the side of the road where people are like besides a normal garbage can, for example, maybe in the downtown district where there's like a big population of people? Is that how it's worked?

Yeah. So we're like Return-It is the, I guess, deposit collection. Like there's Return-It depots that you can bring your cans and bottles to. So we're in partnership with them with these streetside bins that they've, they've procured with industry. Like Tim Hortons is a, is a partner in the project.. And so they're a collection bin that are on streetside corners. They, you know, they're like next to all the collection bins and it's basically for right now it's just for reusable cups. So you just go there and you scan the code on the bin, scan your cup, put it in and off you go.

And so yeah, that's awesome. And so I'd imagine it's interesting when you talk about how there's deposits built in that lots of people don't think about, like pop cans. Let's use pop cans or beer cans. Which stimulates the collection of them. Have you ever had any challenges of people like pilfering through the Return-It cans looking for things? I guess you're— I don't know, how am I trying to articulate? My tired brain is— Have you had any problems with people going into those cans and pulling out your materials? Or is it because immediately it's like an instant transfer? Folks that might be maybe going for pop cans or beer cans for their own return activities just wouldn't think twice about your, your container right now.

Right now they, they wouldn't think twice about it. I mean, but it wouldn't matter if they did. So they're— as soon as you return an item, it locks it to you. So the value is immediately gone. So if they did get stolen from the bins, they would be bringing it back to the depot. Which is us right now, we have one, one depot. And they would try to get cash for it. And we would scan it here and say, this was returned to that bin over there. It's, you know, stolen property. So, like, technically, you know, sorry, we could call the police on you or something like that. So, and yes, so there would be no point, we would be giving no refunds in that scenario. But the great thing about it too, is like, if they're not claimed to have been and they're not returned and they're just on the street, that it's an income opportunity for the collector economy. So it's not only giving marginalized people more income for our convenience, because people will pay for convenience, it's— it also can grow that, that side of the thing. So like our technology isn't just limited to packaging. We could be putting our codes on mattresses. Mattresses are a huge concern of of Vancouver. So like, not even an item that can be— I mean, because it could be reused, but it could be just recycled too. So, um, you know, if you had a $50 deposit or $20 deposit on a mattress and it ends up in an alleyway, which this, you know, in and around Vancouver they spend $1.5 million cleaning up every year, um, and like there's like 10,000 mattresses, it's like, or 100,000, I don't know, there's a lot of mattresses that just get ditched in alley and then they get rained on and they turn to crap because they don't get picked up. But if those had a a deposit on it, that thing is getting, getting to where it needs to go. And the collector economy can grow. And these are all just like entrepreneurs that are out there doing this work, and it's, it's very effective. In, uh, in BC, it's like a 75% return rate on cans. In Alberta, it's 86%. Um, and in Germany, they have a 98% return rate on deposit items. Um, they just— yeah, they did some studies in Ireland recently with same— it was like 94%. So like, there's, uh, Yeah, there's the opportunity to get it up to a really large level where everything is going back and so that you don't have leakage into the environment and stuff because these have instant value on it. Like if you had like a, an antique item that was worth $10,000 and it was sitting in an alleyway, no one would know how to get the money from it or if you even knew who had value for it and since they took it somewhere or whatnot. But if they saw something like a can or one of our, you know, codes on something, they would instantly know that there's value there to be had and we can get cash immediately for it. So it, it basically like it creates this, uh, this problem that would be like waste is actually turning out to be an opportunity. Um, and you know, they're like the, the last, last resort. And if it did even get into recycling and into like the general recycling system, like Recycle BC, we could have people picking these off on the line. Maybe the, the optical sensors could be picking them up altogether and bringing them out. And then that's an income opportunity too for Recycle BC to be able to be making money off that. They can even be an employment opportunity communities. They can be employing people with barriers to employment that, you know, need jobs. And there's so many of them. Like, we're employing, um, people in our washing facility, um, and we see this, you know, this, this great market of people that are ready, willing, and able to work, uh, and we can create these like great, fulfilling, safe jobs. Um, so it's like this goes hand in hand. So like you could have people on, on the line picking these things off, and that could be the input. They could be making the money off of that. Maybe there's like their contractors that come in and like, you know, keep what you find kind of thing. And, you know, a $1.50 cup here, $2 item there, you know, things that can add up. So not just 10 cents like a can.

Yeah, you bring up so many great points. Um, I remember going to, um, like an eco green festival in, I think, like early 2000s in LA, and I met this gentleman there that was from— had partnered with a technology company from Japan, and they had this system that would basically fit in the back of a truck, and it was to take plastic bags and plastic overwrap, and it had the ability to fractionate out fuel out of those plastics and turn it back into a diesel fuel fraction. And my brain kind of went off at that point because I was like, oh, because I lived in Mexico for a year as well. And at that time, Mexico— I don't know what their system is now, but they certainly, you know, there's always the joke about the the plastic bag trees, or you go down to the beach and there's just like plastic bags floating around in the ocean. And when you take the steps to turn waste into something that's value created, or it's creating value in the sense that they're going to be incentivized to collect it, I thought, oh, that would impact so many countries from a plastic perspective if they were paid to do it. Or made something that was usable at the end that would offset a fuel cost, for example, going to the pump, it just makes so much sense. And you and I have had this conversation a lot about textiles, which are kind of tricky and like longer term because they're in, they're in circulation for so long. Like I just ripped my coat today on a fence post that I've had for 30 years. And, uh, I'm so sorry. I know it was kind of a bummer, but I'm really good at repairing things. So I will sew it it up.

But yeah, I'll talk about— I'll talk to that for a second because like, I think like if people— like the way that things are going and the way that it has to go for us to be sustainable on this planet is going into the circular economy. And then I just got this like this image. So all these movies that you see with like into the future.

Yeah.

And you see them all with their like ripped up clothes on or like patchwork and everything like that, and you're like, oh, they're just surviving. But I actually see that as like the fashion of the future. And people seeing those things means that, you you are, you know, a part of the solution. And it's, it's cooler to be that way. And if we need to get towards making sustainable lifestyles cool and sexy and engaging and fun, and, and then that can start those social norms that start driving those things, because then, you know, that's where we're going to be. So yeah, in the— I, I could see that, you know, in a couple years from now, people might see— you might even not want to do a good job of that patch just so people see it and be like, oh yeah, yeah, you fixed that.

Good job. Actually, you bring up— I'm, I'm not sure if you met Katie Wilson, who's the director of sustainability at Arc'teryx, because you and I were at Coast Waste Management Association's conference in October last year, and Katie told stories about how they've opened repair cafes, or they were about to open one, I believe, in New York. And she was saying that it's almost like a badge of honor to have, say, an Arc'teryx jacket, for example, with different colors of zippers on it because it means you've had that jacket for so long that it's gone through like multiple repairs. And it's like, I thought that's such a great, uh, cultural shift and it's exactly what you're talking about. So yeah, I might put like a little heart on my, my rip of my jacket and like I did this with, with heart and repair and I thrifted the jacket anyways. It's from L.L.Bean. It's like a $100 jacket I got for $4 and I'm gonna make it last for like another 20 years.

Do it.

But I'd like to go back to the, just really briefly touch base on the mattresses. And I feel like it's a great, a great opportunity to talk about something from a consumer's perspective that like life happens, like poop happens. Like say you're moving out. Like let's say that those, you were able to partner with Sleep Country Canada, for example. And anytime somebody buys a new mattress, They pay a $50 deposit fee. They know about it upfront. And I mean, like, $50 is no big deal when you're buying like a $4,000 mattress or even like a $1,000 mattress. I wouldn't even blink at that personally, cuz I know that I'm investing in the responsible disposal of that product at the end. And the part I wanted to talk about is like, maybe you're, maybe you're in a really bad life situation and you're forced to move or you have like something very emotional happen, like a relationship ends. And you literally— I think we've all been there in moves where we're just like, you get to the end and you're like, I am so done. And you have the pile of stuff that you're just like, what the hell am I supposed to do with this? And that's, I think, how a lot of mattresses probably just end up in the alleyway because it's like that one thing that isn't convenient, or, you know, the delivery truck didn't come pick it up on time and you got to go. And like, life just happens.

And you make that narrative in your head. You're like, I do so much good in the world and I do so much all the time that like this time I have to do this for myself. And honestly, like, that's just how humans are and it's okay. And to do those, you know, it's not okay to do that, but it's, you know, it's, it's, it's understandable.

Well, yeah, sometimes crucify you for that. Yeah. And sometimes I guess the point is sometimes life hands you circumstances that we're all just trying to do the best we can in the circumstances that we're under. And that's partly why I called this podcast Eco-ish, because I really wanted to discuss the real life things that people have to manage and trade off. And I love that what I'm hearing is that you've started with reusable containers and cups, which just makes so much sense to me, that are able to be in a smaller system. Say someone's in a neighborhood and they constantly go to their favorite, uh, coffee shop, or maybe they're at a meeting on a different side of town and like, oh, I forgot my coffee cup. You're giving them the opportunity to invest in something that's going to be reused. I did talk to Jen Henry from Perk Eco and learned all about coffee cups, which is like a whole nother rabbit hole in itself, how difficult they are to recycle. So she's providing solutions, you're providing solutions, but I'm also hearing that your QR code technology is very transferable. And in your intro, I loved that you called it business agnostic. So could we talk a little bit about that? Like, I'd love to learn a little bit more about Tim Hortons because now you're taking it out of a neighborhood or like a restricted geographic location, like say the Metro Vancouver, and now you're potentially expanding it into like a national chain. And I really want to hear about that and what kind of hurdles or challenges that you might have been talking to them about, if you can share any of that.

Yeah, well, I guess the— there's not really hurdles for— well, I mean, it's like the hurdle would be for global expansion is having washing facilities set up in every city. Like, we— like, right now we're the— I guess the own— like, we're— we have the MVP for, like, minimum viable product for a, like, the circular city washing facility, like a new utility. I'm sorry, I can't talk. I don't know why I can't get this out. Um, it's a washing facility that's like the new utility for a circular city, and that we have It's like, you know, it's about 800 square feet and it's all dedicated to just washing reusable packaging. We've been certified to be able to wash for, you know, Tim Hortons, or who's a current partner, and we are washing for them. But then that opens up the doors to like every big brand that wants to wash here. So we have this kind of like an initial facility, but we need that like everywhere. And so So if there isn't that for a Tim Hortons to scale, because they're not going to really wash in their own facility, where like an A&W can wash in their own facility, but they'd only really be washing their own stuff. Like we've launched in Sechelt and just doing a pilot, a remote pilot there, where like a small community can be working off of their own infrastructure. So like our, our technology works with like a centralized washing facility, but you can also wash yourself. And so if you get like in Seashell, there's, you know, a few cafes there. There's one online right now and another one's coming on very soon. And then they want to have like the whole community on it and they all have their own dishwashers. So we just basically sell them the cups, or they could have their own cups and they did. We just sell them the codes and, and then they can run it themselves. They get cups back to their thing, they wash themselves and goes back out again. If Tim Hortons had their own washing facilities in-house, they could be doing doing exactly the same thing. Um, it's just adding infrastructure that might not be there at that time.

Yeah.

Um, and, and also it works kind of things like you could have, like, having a centralized washing facility, you could have, um, public bins, you could have pickup from all different areas that go to this centralized washing facility. So like Body Energy Club in, in Vancouver, there are 15 locations. They accept their own cups, uh, they have their own custom branded cups with our technology on it or our QR codes on it, and you can return those to Body Energy Club. They they could wash it. But if you, hey, say, get it picked up from NADA when you get your grocery deliveries, then it comes back to us, we wash it, and then we sell it back to Body Energy Club. So it can kind of work both ways. So the centralized washing facility is good for scaling it up, but in a small community or just a small pilot just to start it off, um, a city could just have a few cafes or restaurants, you know, working on it. So I guess the hurdle would be like building these, getting these washing facilities online, and it's not like crazy infrastructure that it's like new technology. We're going to build all those sorts of fun new technology because I'm— yeah, that's what I like doing.

Um, well, I'm sure your engineering brain too is thinking through this. And you touched— you did touch on a point earlier I wanted to, um, bring up, which is social enterprise. So here in the Okanagan, we have PACE, which is P-A-C-E, and they're in Penticton. And they actually manage a lot of the mattress recycling, and they also have a depot for electronics And they, they specifically focus on helping folks with barriers to return to work of all kinds of reasons and give them meaningful work and work opportunities. And so we've seen this starting already with them, and I had the chance to meet her and tour the facility about a month ago, and she was talking already about creating more of like an industrial hub. Hub and an ecosystem that could, could foster other social enterprise models or streams that they would be managing. And one of the things that's often talked about for us circular economy nerds is a fair and just transition. So we want to make sure that we're bringing everybody along as our society is transitioning into this area. And I love what you're saying, and it feels feels so appropriate that so many small communities could easily set up one of these systems as you grow. So I hope that I can be a bridge that way and connect you. And I'm curious, with your engineering brain, are you operationalizing those systems and getting a guidance document together that would help a community or a social enterprise replicate your model as you grow?

Yeah, that's exactly what we're doing. We started out with, yeah, just having all these jobs and we're like, well, where do we find people just to do these quick jobs here and there? Or these types of jobs that maybe people wouldn't want to be doing for long periods of time. And like, who's looking for, you know, to get in? Who needs work and who's eager for this? And so we worked with BCIT to see how we can hire people with barriers to employment. We have what's called Cash Corner, it's right at the end of our street. And there's like a whole bunch of people that just hang out there waiting for people with cash jobs. And I had the jobs, but I didn't know, like, I was just like, I just need people to stamp this, or I need people to sort these, or I need people to do these things. So I don't have to do it. Like, I'd love to pay them to be able to do that. But I don't know how to do that. And I don't know what my legal obligations are. And, you know, all these things like, and how vulnerable it leaves us, I just didn't know. So I, we engaged BCIT, and work with some other partners like Share Resource Repair Initiative, and We create the manual for how we could start, or I guess there's a guidance doc to, to get us off level. So we had these 5 like amazing bright students that were working on it for like 6 months, and now we are hiring and working with people with barriers. And then now we're doing the next step of that, which is we hired a co-op student to work for the next 8 months to create this man operations manual, manual with like SOPs, its operations and HR of how we can continuously hire train, maintain, and, you know, support people with various employment and keep those pipelines going. And, you know, work with like, say, like the Connect Autism Network and like things like that. Just like, um, yeah, like super wonderful. There's a huge job— there's all these people waiting for jobs, and it's just like, how can we tap into that? And then we can share that, what you're saying, like share that. So the— all the washing facilities that start up will have something that is, uh, yeah, they can immediately be a social enterprise and help out the community locally and building economies and blah, blah, blah, all those good things.

Triple, triple, quadruple beyond wins. And I love that you also inserted an extra letter in the B2C acronym. I think that that's— you said B2B2C, and I, I was thinking as you were talking, I'm like, yeah, you know, as we invent new ways of doing business, of course we're going to invent and create new acronyms. So I just wanted to—

I didn't, I didn't create that at all. That's, uh, that's an actual, uh, I think so fair.

I don't want to take credit for that. Well, thank you for bringing it up. I'll say that because I think that maybe many listeners might not know what that means. It's business to business to consumer. So, um, I love it. So, uh, so we've talked a lot about opportunities and impacts that you're having, and I'm curious if you have any hurdles or trade-offs that you're managing right now as you continue to scale and grow?

Uh, yeah, the, the major, I guess, hurdles are awareness. Um, people don't see and feel the waste crisis or the climate crisis in their day-to-day lives, so there isn't the action that would happen in an urgent situation, say like COVID. It's like as soon as that happened, everybody was making hand sanitizer. We even were making it, or like we were bottling it from the local source or whatnot. Like, you're like seeing the opportunity. People need this, it's going to happen, but people don't, you know, like demand this, that kind of thing. So it's not going viral, or like it's not just like going— I mean, it's kind of good because the— we don't have a washing facility that can wash all the city's dishes because that's like millions of units a day, and that's what we're working towards. Uh, so it is, it is like a good level But, uh, yeah, like the hurdle is really getting the awareness out there because even people that are sustainable, um, you know, they haven't tried. They might have heard of our program, they'll be, oh, that's nice, but you know, that coffee shop's 2 blocks farther than the one I go to. And really, is there, you know, is a cup really that bad even though there's hundreds of millions of them going to the landfill in Metro Vancouver every year? Like, our incinerators, like, it's, you know, it's all over the streets. It's like, it's more than half the city cleanup just, you know, cups, like takeout containers and things like that. So, but that gets cleaned up. We live in beautiful Vancouver and we do not see a waste crisis at all. It's just everything's just out of sight, out of mind. Recycling works, compostable packaging works, which is all a farce, and no one really knows, or they just, they just trust that someone else is going to figure it out. And so that's the basis. So we've made it like as easy as possible to to make that choice and, and to switch over. Um, yeah, so we're just gonna have to grow it and make it easier. But the awareness piece, marketing is a huge thing. No, the— like, the government's putting all this money into sustainable business, like clean energy, clean all these kinds of things. Um, but if they put $10 million into a fund to fund marketing for— like, it was like, hey, digital marketing agencies, you know, send us your proposal, you'll get $10 million of resources to do a Canadian-wide campaign, or maybe $1 million for each city or something like that to run this campaign. Pitch your campaigns to us to make it cool, sexy. Like, I mean, it doesn't have to be sexy, but it'd be cool and trendy and like, it like in, and like, you know, people have FOMO and create these social norms and all this kind of— create a culture around it because it's really not hard to do it. And I guess one of the trade-offs that we've been doing is like, you know, like, it's not efficient right now. So like, if you have a few cups in a bin, you know, we're going and cleaning those things out, when really, if it was at scale, those bins would be, you know, brimming all the time. And we would be fitting in infrastructure, like waste management companies would be picking those things up for us, because that's just part of the program. Because you, you'd have less other waste, you'd have more cups. There's just like, it's just moving from one type to another. So you'd still have to pay a waste hauler to take that stuff away. So it's not going to cost the business anymore. They're replacing one with another and like city pickups, like all this kind of thing. So like it fits into the top of the supply chain, goes all the way down, and then the collection infrastructure is already there doing all these things already, picking up, you know, compost and recycling and garbage. Like these can be picked up from your house on like a curbside collection weekly or biweekly or however the system works in, in BC or Vancouver. Yeah, so it, um, yeah, it could be. So right now it's just less efficient And we're just, you know, doing that so we can get up to that level where it can rapidly scale.

I love it. Thank you for your dedication and vision on this. And like, really, you feel like you're on the precipice of exploding. And it's— you and I and others have talked about this— waste is just a different lens that you wear. And when you're aware of the problem, you see a lot of the opportunities. And I feel like we need to have some incentives to kind of push all the innovation up even further. And we talk a lot about that in sustainability. When you have constraints or limits, you have the ability to be more creative. And when I was speaking to Jen Henry from Park Eco, she said when the ban on putting, um, biodegradable or compostable material in the landfills from garbage collection was put in with the City of Vancouver, she said she just saw the whole industry jump up because now all of a sudden this is a banned substance at the end of the line. And so the innovation happens as we work backwards and find all the places along the way to intersect and be entrepreneurial. And it's exactly the same with you. And so what kind of role do you see that playing? Like, we call it extended producer responsibility, or is it like a landfill ban or additional eco fees on things that would help your company make that big jump into better efficiency?

It honestly goes back to the awareness side of things because that's exactly what you're saying. Like, where you got those limitations, that's when, uh, these things come into play. Like, when you see demand, when you have, you know, COVID with hand sanitizer, with masks, with all that kind of stuff, as soon as people want it, it'll happen overnight. And like, the government won't have to fund fund these things to start up. And they are starting up, and they're like— there's a lot that are not doing well and are all going out of business. They're just, you know, um, yeah, extinguishing all over the place. And they're getting all this grant funding, it's all getting burned because people aren't demanding it. Is if you— if people demand it, you won't have to pay for businesses to start up because they'll see the opportunity and they'll take that risk and they'll take that chance and they'll take that loan and they'll, they'll get that— they'll like persuade their friends and to give them the money because there is opportunity and there is money there. So if you start out with the people then everything else falls in line. Policy falls in line. The politicians just want what the, like, the people are demanding of them. So it won't be a 25-cent cup fee, it could be a $5 cup fee if everybody's demanding it and seeing a, like, a single-use cup like a cigarette butt. Yeah, boom, you know, then people be like, yeah, $5, that's awful, get that out of here. And then everybody will fall in line. Like, there will be the fringe people that I will be fighting it because they're there just don't want to do that. But if you can make it as easy as possible to not have a single-use cup, then they're just like, whatever, it's just a cup. I'm just trying to get a cup of coffee, and it'd be easy to get that. And they'll have those businesses come in line to, um, yeah. So yeah, the politicians doing these, like, like 25 cents was like, oh my God, you're crazy, or whatever. But like, really, it's bad. Like, it's, it's, it's waste. Like, it's garbage you're creating. You're, you're extracting resources to make something to just destroy it, devalue it, and then like create more garbage. So like when you think about it, single-use cup or container or packaging, anything that's single-use is going— this is, is awful. It's just absolutely insane. And if you had a different, different avenue of it, if it was another avenue was just as easy but, you know, that thing just kept circulating and wasn't going into landfill, then that's the thing. But like, the city, if they were like, we're banning all single-use products from the market, the infrastructure couldn't handle it. Like, and like, people wouldn't— like, yeah, no one would get that vote passed. They would get lynched to do something like that. But if all the people did it, it would happen in years, not decades.

Yes, I totally agree with you. And it's, it's the carrot and the stick analogy, and it's the, you know, the folks on the bleeding edge cutting edge thinking through these solutions, but we— the reality is, is that unless it becomes painful or not convenient for the average consumer, change is hard to effect. And yeah, so there's a role of all kinds of, all kinds of things that you've been just sharing about, about the eco fee, but also the bans. And sometimes I wish that they would happen more in conjunction with each other and more timely. So it'll be remain to be seen how that pans out. I know that there's some, some turbulence in the Vancouver area about the eco fees. And really, when you think about it as waste and you think just a little bit outside yourself, like, wow, if one person a day is throwing away these cups times however many million people live in the Lower Mainland, When you just start to take those little baby steps with your thoughts, you start thinking like, oh wow, no, my actions do have impact because I could divert this and change it into something that's going to be reused. And if everybody did that across the system, it would be a very impactful shift.

So yeah, but they just need to see it first. And once you see it, once you really fully understand it, you, you get it. And then, and then you can start seeing it kind of elsewhere. But I mean, not everybody has to see it. It's just the, the, the influential people, the, you know, in that marketing to get that going. Because every— most people, like 90 or 80% of the people, just fall in line with how everything else is, is going, and then they adopt that as their behavior. So like littering, like, you know, we don't litter anymore. It's so like— we just— well, we do. Like, there is people that do do it.

Yeah.

But in Vancouver, if you see somebody throw something on the ground, in— and, uh, you would say something. You'd be like, hey, what the heck? Yeah, don't like pick that up, you know? Like, it's— yeah, it's not cool, man. Um, it's become part of our our cultural—

I can't say that word— our cultural norms. Yeah, my tongue isn't working. I know that we're, um, we're coming to the end of our time together, and I wanted to ask you, um, a couple more just short questions. One of them is, if you could pick up a paintbrush and paint your ideal future for ShareWares, what does that look like to you?

I guess a centralized washing facility in every town or every city working off of, you know, reusable packaging and it bringing customer delights as single-use packaging does now, like the same types of experiences. And actually, I probably could bring better value and not have just this unnecessary single-use stuff going on because like things can all put— like, things can be designed to be reused. Um, and if you have the network and the systems all set up for it or whatever, you can make it just as, as convenient. Um, so yeah, just like, I guess, awareness that the single-use stuff is bad.

Yeah.

And a feeling of that, so people actually like have that as a social norm. And then reusable packaging flowing— yeah, flowing through economies and cities and stuff like Thank you for that.

I love the vision, and it's— it also, I think, really highlights that even though things are made out of plastic, you just brought it up and brought it forward, even though things are made out of, um, materials that we might deem unsavory from a sustainability perspective, when you find solutions like ShareWares that use them over and over and over and over again, that's also a great step towards sustainability. And so I love your vision, and I really I truly hope that this podcast at least illuminates for some folks what opportunities are out there. And it's a perfect segue into my final question, which is, if somebody is listening to this and they say, hey, I really want to implement that in my café or my restaurant, or maybe it's just a listener who's a customer, how do they connect with you and how do they bring those ideas forward to their favorite café?

Right. Well, first I wanna touch on that kind of unsavory side of things.

Sure.

Like, I mean, there is like all the stigma around it. I'm not saying like using petroleum products is like good and we have to use more of it or anything like that, but like the foundation of plastics, you know, like the hydrocarbons, these, they can be made from alternative sources. Like there is bioplastics and bio things or whatnot. And, you know, from our research and talking to our or the, you know, partner sciences, um, you could be making, you know, polypropylene out of, uh, like sargassum and like seaweed algae, like blooms, like invasive toxic things. You could be making this stuff out of— it's just right now it's made out of those things. So, um, there's kind of stigmas and there's all these, you know, misinformation around these things. And like things— yeah, like things that's like toxic and all this kind of stuff. It's like, yeah, if you drink out of a PVC cup, you're gonna get cancer. You know, it's just like if you put— if you drank out of a lead cup, you know, you would get lead poisoning. You know, it's like there's, there's all these different things like how, how people are framing things and, and fear-mongering and stuff like that. So, um, there's a lot of this education that needs to, to go out there to make people feel safe and secure, and we're happy to provide that information, anything that they need, because what we do is safe and scalable and convenient and on all that. So check Connect with us at, uh, on Instagram, uh, share.wares. Um, you can get like Cody at sharewares.ca. Um, our website's sharewares.ca. Um, yeah, I, I don't know if there's any other. I think we're probably on TikTok soon.

I think that's many people's statement. And, uh, just back to the unsavory, I certainly didn't mean to imply that using plastic is, uh, poor for your health or puts your health at risk in any way. And I love that you just brought that forward because there's so many material scientists that are looking at alternatives for shifting, okay, what is made out of a non-renewable resource like petroleum and how can we make the same product with durability and flexibility and safety for folks, but completely out of a different source.

It's not perfect right now, it's eco-ish.

Eco-ish. And you know, one of the things that gives me absolutely so much hope every day to get up and continue doing the work that I do and, um, you know, putting my passion energy into stuff like this, like my podcast, is that there's just millions of people out in the world that you don't even know about that are working on solutions. And I'm just so grateful to connect with you as one of those passionate people and just want to say thank you so much for being on the podcast and And I hope to have you on again, maybe in a 6 to 8 month update, because if you got Tim Hortons on board, I can only imagine where the expansion might be going for you. So congratulations.

Lots happening in the industry that nobody sees, but it can get— it can be, yeah, amazing. And yeah, if there's— if anyone's listening in Vancouver, please give us a try, just, and give us feedback. Like, we're— this is first steps. This is brand new industry. All your help, even like the, the worst possible stuff you could say, we want to hear it so that we can fix it. As, yeah, we're problem solvers. Let's just, uh, let's all work together to, to get there.

Amazing. Thank you for that invitation. And for listeners, I'll put everything from Cody's contact information and website and social links down in the show notes as well. So Cody, I wish you a wonderful day. Thank you so much for your time. Deeply appreciate it and just honor the work you're Awesome.

You too. Thanks so much.

Hey listener, thank you so much for tuning in to this latest episode of Eco-ish Podcast. We're very excited to bring you new content every other Wednesday throughout the year. You can follow along at Instagram @eco.ish.podcast. If you'd like to find out more about the Sustainable Living School which produces this podcast, you can look at the website sustainableliving.school. You'll find information about courses and a free guide that you can download to learn more about sustainable living and how to get started. 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.

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