Kurt is the Senior Director, Sustainability & Packaging at the Plastics Industry Association where he leads the Flexible Film Recycling Alliance, a self-funded membership group representing the end-to-end flexible plastic film value chain, which serves as the central forum to promote and improve the flexible film recycling ecosystem. He has more than 15 years’ retail experience with Fortune 500 companies Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. He’s held a variety of roles at each of these companies, spanning sustainability operations to supply chain innovation, affording him a unique perspective on how to grow flexibles recycling the U.S.
John Shegerian: Do you have a suggestion for a Rockstar Impact Podcast guest? Go to ImpactPodcast.com and just click, be a guest, to recommend someone today. This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com. This episode of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Closed Loop Partners. Closed Loop Partners is a leading circular economy investor in the United States with an extensive network of Fortune 500 corporate investors, family offices, institutional investors, industry experts, and impact partners. Closed Loop’s platform spans the arc of capital from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps and fostering synergies to scale the circular economy. To find Closed Loop Partners, please go to www.closedlooppartners.com.
John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have with us today, Kurt Kurzawa. He’s the Senior Director of Sustainability and Packaging at the Plastics Industry Association. Welcome, Kurt, to the Impact Podcast.
Kurt Kurzawa: Thanks, John. Appreciate you. Thank you for having me here.
John: We’re happy to have you. This is a critical and important topic with regards to the environment and the future of our wonderful and amazing and great planet, so I’m so happy that you’re here to talk about all things plastic today. But before we get talking about all the great work you’re doing at the FFRA and the Plastics Industry Association, I want to talk a little bit about you. How did you get on this journey? Where did you grow up? Where did you fall in love with impact work, and how did you end up where you are today?
Kurt: Yeah, wonderful question. Long story. I’m glad I can be on a long format podcast to tell it. But I think a lot of people in the sustainability space has a very meandering path, right? It’s never a clear linear line. It’s always wandering, going through all this stuff. So believe it or not, I started my career as a teacher and a football coach. So I taught ninth grade civics and [crosstalk] coached football at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
John: Wow.
Kurt: So through an unfortunate event of a referendum not being passed, my job was eliminated. And I went to the Twin Cities thinking there is more work to do as a teacher there. And I ended up playing rugby for a club team there, where one of the gentlemen there worked for Target. And I told him I was looking for a job. And he said, so you’re telling me you can coach people, train people, and motivate people to do their best? And you’d be a great store leader. So he recruited me to be a store leader, so I started managing Target stores. In that journey, Best Buy recruited me to start leading some of their stores. There I met several people at the corporate level due to just being in the vicinity of corporate headquarters from a retail environment. They loved the way I did root cause analysis, tried to understand, tried to motivate people on how to do the right things in the store setting. So they moved me over to the corporate environment at Best Buy. And then that’s where I was leading the back of the house operations, had a lot of good background in logistics, how to manage things efficiently and effectively. And I stumbled across the recycling program, and I worked with them in how to create and communicate better, what are the whys behind it, what is the value behind this, how does it affect the organization and really drive change around that back room, back of house operations? And then the sustainability bug caught me and started evolving that role all the way, leading all the way up to leading our whole sustainability operations from either our e-waste programs to our sustainable packaging programs to our commodity programs. So I had a little bit of all through that through my journey. Then I went to Amazon to lead a supply chain innovation team, and I was mostly figuring out ways how to reduce costs, but lower the environmental footprint and carbon footprint of Amazon. And then this job came calling. I wanted to come back to the sustainability space. There is this opportunity to lead this flexible film recycling alliance at Plastics Industries. And it really resonated me with some of the projects that we did at Best Buy. And I’m like, what a great opportunity to influence the industry at scale and take the learnings what I learned throughout my career and really implement them through the industry and accelerate that recycling and circular economy growth for flexible films.
John: That’s so wonderful. First of all, talk about three great brands to get to be informed and learned from in terms of Best Buy, Target, and Amazon. I couldn’t think of three greater brands or wonderful organizations. I have the honor and pleasure to work with all three of them. And that’s where I know we met you and Angie Ransom got to meet you. And we built a bridge [crosstalk] over at Best Buy.
Kurt: Yeah.
John: And it’s just so great now that you come over and get to make a huge impact in the plastic recycling industry. So, especially in film. So and for our listeners and viewers, we’re going to put all these URLs in the show notes. You don’t have to write them down quickly. But to find Kurt and his colleagues over at the Plastic Industry Association, it’s www.plasticsindustry.org. But where he’s focused right now is the FFRA, the Flexible Film Alliance Organization. And that’s ffra.org. And you can also be talking about one of your new great tools, the plastic film recycling search engine, plasticfilmrecycling.org. They’ll all be in the show notes. They’re all very important URLs for you to look up and to learn more from and to help you responsibly recycle your old film. But let’s then go into when did you transition over from private industry to the plastics industry organization association? And then when did you then get into the subset Flexible Film Alliance?
Kurt: So, I literally just celebrated my six-month anniversary as an association person. So really not too long ago, but it was right away from the get go of launching this Flexible Film Recycling Alliance, right? So that was the number one reason for them hiring me. And I think the reason I got the job is just from my experience of industry, understanding what problems retailers face, what problems suppliers face, what problems distributors face in the space. So right away, we got started rolling up your sleeves. It’s a very new organization or alliance out there. It’s really just under a year old when it comes down to what we’re trying to do. We already have a lot of key members involved, but we’re really trying to improve that flexible film recycling ecosystem and really build awareness, support through the industry, collaboration, and just overall transparency. I think there’s a lot of issues with transparency in this space. And we just want to be as transparent as possible, let consumers know what they’re doing so we can build back that consumer confidence in this recycling industry.
John: Kurt, help us a little bit tee up the issue. If you and I turn on CNBC or CNN or Bloomberg or read the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, great organizations trying to do their best to parse these, but they’re not typically experts on these information. So they’ll take something that seems very glaring or parabolic and they’ll make a big deal out of it. Are plastics the boogeyman of the environment and what type of plastics are we talking about? Parse out the different types of plastics there are and what are we focusing on here today that you’re working on to solve one subset of this plastics issue?
Kurt: Yeah, I definitely don’t think plastics is the boogeyman, right? I think it’s a very low carbon footprint material that has its place without our ecosystem, right?
John: Right.
Kurt: So, it’s definitely not the boogeyman, but there’s all different types of plastic. There’s rigid plastics. You guys see it in your industry at ERI with all [crosstalk] the materials coming in.
John: That’s right.
Kurt: There’s various chemistries that you want to look at, but we’re really focused on that flexible space. So you think about a plastic garbage bag, a plastic bag that you get from a grocery store.
John: Understood.
Kurt: The bread bag that [crosstalk] your bread comes in.
John: Right.
Kurt: All this other material that’s out there, your cereal bags, your ziplock bags. These are all different types of a polyethylene film and we’re trying to create awareness around the ability to recycle those material. A lot of people aren’t aware that this material can be recycled through many of your local retailers through a store drop off program. You’ve probably seen the call the recycle label on there saying store drop off clean and dry. There’s a reason why clean and dry are in there and that’s to avoid contamination and we’re here to build awareness around the current state industry, which involves a lot of contamination, a lot of things. The reason why people say recycling doesn’t work or all these other things, because there is high levels of contamination because people just [crosstalk] aren’t aware of this and we’re trying to bridge that gap through our directory.
John: Right. So that’s great. So there’s the soft plastic we’re talking about. The garbage bags, like you said, the bag that our bread comes in, the bags that we get at the local convenience store or supermarket, those plastic bags. And when we say we’re recycling them and we’re talking about responsibly recycling them, they’re saying there’s good options out there. And there’s technology out there to do this, so now you’ve built this directory. Talk a little bit about what went into building the directory and what can people find on your directory?
Kurt: Yeah. First of all, it was my first experience with building some kind of directory, so I reached out to the good folks at Recycle Nation to really help understand what all the details need to be done. But we also partnered with a great partner called Recycle Coach to help us build this to be very impactful and very intuitive for users to use, right? So what we’re really trying to do on the directory is inform consumers, first of all, where this material can go. A lot of people think this material is not recyclable. But just for instance, in the state of California, 98% of the people in California are within three miles of a store drop-off location that can recycle it.
John: Wow.
Kurt: So there is a lot of good information and a lot of good stuff. So how do we make sure people know where to go, where to drop off this material? And I think what makes this directory a little bit different is that we’re bridging that gap of what can and cannot be recycled. How do you recycle? And I know you and I were talking a little bit earlier, but if you leave your receipt in that paper or in that bag, that receipt paper in that bag, that receipt weighs just as much as that bag. So you just created 50% contamination of that product, right? So we want to make sure that there is a way to recycle that both chemically recycle and then also mechanically recycle. There’s a lot of ways if the stream is clean enough, you can mechanically recycle a lot of this material as well, which is a very low carbon activity.
John: So less contamination equals greater ability to recycle and more opportunities to recycle. Have the technologies caught up with the time, Kurt? Are we in a great place now where years ago, not that many years ago, though, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, people used to hold up a garbage bag or, like you said, a sandwich bag and say, oh, these are destroying the oceans and the environment and there’s no responsible solutions. You’re saying now there’s technologies that when non-contaminated, we can responsibly
recycle flexible film and plastic.
Kurt: I think there’s always been that technology there to do so if clean and not contaminated. I think that where the technology innovation happens is they understand it’s very hard to change the consumer behavior of everybody in the industry.
John: Right.
Kurt: So that’s where the advanced recycling or chemical recycling comes in. They’re able to handle that contamination in a much better fashion and ensure some of that recyclability. But for 10, 20 years, especially from like a B2B perspective, LDPE film has been recycled over and over and over again, which is one of the reasons why I came here to Plastics is that we were able to create some of these closed loops with LDPE film that we did recycle at Best Buy. So we looked at it as like we have something, it was like three million pounds of LDPE material that we recycle annually every year. How can we leverage that as feedstock to the plastic that we procure? Right. You’re going to need plastic in your industry, whether it’s shrink wrap, whether it’s bubble wrap, whether it’s polymers for e-commerce, whether it’s overwrap or just air pillows to make sure that product goes to your house undamaged, right? Because that’s the most important thing is keeping that product from not being damaged, because that’s the highest carbon emission point, right? So, how do we leverage that? And then we found ways to recycle that material into new material and find those pathways for circularity.
John: That’s tremendous. So, you build this great website. I’m on it now for our listeners’ and viewers. We’re going to have this in the show notes, but it’s plasticfilmrecycling.org. It’s basically find a recycling drop off center for flexible plastic film recycling near you. So is that some of the key points? Is this what’s been the secret sauce are you bringing in now since you worked on the private side before Amazon, Target, Best Buy? Are you now- some of your secret sauce part of what you’re doing at the Plastic Film Recycling Organization to make it, first of all, local, keep it really nearby, because good recycling is convenient, right? Number one.
Kurt: Right.
John: Number two, education. The fact that you’re educating people that, first of all, A, solutions do exist, no matter what the media says, solutions do exist. And this goes back into the circular economy. It’s not going into a landfill. It’s not going into the ocean. When it gets dropped off and it’s not contaminated at one of your drop off centers, it can go right back into the circular economy.
Kurt: Yeah, absolutely. That’s our goal. That’s our focus, trying to make sure to educate people, to get people to come to these stores, it also drives business, right? It drives people who [crosstalk] love recycling to get there, right?
John: That’s right.
Kurt: But it’s taking this, right? And then taking that step further there from an advocacy perspective, right?
John: Yeah.
Kurt: We in the industry know this is happening and one of the initiatives of plastics is recycling is real and being in this industry and having somebody say recycling isn’t happening, that it’s a myth. It’s all being thrown away. I have even friends when I was separating trash at a cabin once saying, just throw it all in the same way. It doesn’t happen. I’m like, that’s what I do for a living and it does actually really happen. So, recycling is real and it’s happening all over the place. And I think you said it best with keeping it local.
John: Yeah.
Kurt: Because that is the key factor here, right? It’s how do you work in a small logistical area? And I think everybody through the value chain is all really focused on their industry and their focus. But how do you really take that step up and look at the whole ecosystem, whether it’s working with distributors and figuring out that they’re delivering you goods. How do you leverage their backhaul to maybe take some of this material back to them and how do you consolidate material to make it more economical, right? So it’s really keeping it local, really working within that ecosystem where you can drive circularity, but also also cost savings, right? So this thing that I keep talking about that we did at Best Buy actually reduced our costs. So we were able to figure out a way to to add recycled content, reduce our overall costs, but then also create this value chain or this circular economy with all of our partners, we’re relying on each other and overall reduce all of our costs. And we have the supply and the demand and that really can develop those consistent operations between all the parties as long as you keep that relationship going.
John: Kurt, how big is the problem? I’m going to give you an example. Let’s go back to something I know well and something you’re actually very familiar with as well, electronics. So when you look at the electronics ecosystem, according to United Nation, these numbers are sort of old, but probably not that far from being the truth. Of all electronics being used on the planet, only 17% or so are being responsibly recycled when they come to the end of life. According to the US EPA, that number in the United States is closer to 12%. So what is the problem with with regards to flexible film recycling? How big is the delta of opportunity for us to really make a dent using your website and the tools that you’ve given us? How little is the recycling rate today when you go to bed at night? What’s
your dream? Where do we get that recycling rate to in the coming years ahead?
Kurt: Yeah, great question. I think it varies all over the world. I don’t think there’s a solid answer to this question.
John: Okay.
Kurt: But I was recently in Vienna at a conference, a flexible film recycling conference in Vienna and in the EU, it’s anywhere from 20% all the way to 55% capture rate of flexible films, which is amazing. I didn’t realize it was that high.
John: Wow.
Kurt: In the United States. There’s varying details, but we assume less than 1% to 2% of all flexible films are really being captured and recycled. So there’s a tremendous amount of upside that we really want to drive. We want to increase those cycling rates. We want to reduce that contamination and we want to see more film to film recycling, right? So, a lot of this material today goes to some film to film, but some of it goes to lumber, right? So a composite lumber made out of plastic [crosstalk] products and all that other stuff.
John: Right.
Kurt: And that’s because the stream’s not as pure as we want it to be. But how do we uplift that? How do we get everybody together and make people aware? We recently just did a consumer study in California. How many people are aware that there’s a separate process to recycling film? And it was 20% to 30% of the people were
even aware that there was a store drop off program. So how do we build awareness around it? How do we work with our peers in this space to build awareness around it? And then how do we increase those recycling rates? I think you said or asked the question of what I would like it to be. I would you to get it in line with rigid. So anywhere from 25% to 50%. How do we get it? How do we lift it? But anything’s better than nothing. And it’s anywhere at 1% to 2% now, right?
John: So, let’s talk about this. Your new website’s out, plasticfilmrecycling.org. It’s beautiful. I’m on it right now. And I encourage everybody to go to it to find a local recycling center near you that you can drop off your old and flexible film or plastic and it’s going to get responsibly recycled. So, education is one thing. You got the website out. Then locality is another making it local, keeping it convenient. Let’s just say that convenience is the other. Is another one of your big challenges the back end? Is there enough pull for the responsibly recycled plastics that get you excited? Is there over demand of the pull or is the pull right now equal or is it less than what you need it to be?
Kurt: End markets are key here, right? Without an end market for this material, things don’t happen. So if we get everybody and get the supply, what does that end market look ? And is there enough end markets for all this material? So we’re working with Circular Action Alliance, the CAA, they’re the pros out in California, Oregon and Washington, trying to get more local end markets out there. So we’re working with industry experts trying to make those connect, also make connections with them with private industry that they might not aware of. Novolex is a member of us and we worked with them with the CAA to identify them as a potential end market for their material for the state of Oregon, right? So it’s really making people aware of those end markets, but also end market development. And this is where if we can get the stream cleaner and cleaner, there will be more end markets available. So we’re getting there, but we still need some more end market development. We need more money to be fed into that, more innovation to happen. But with advanced recycling out there, that opens up a greater amount of material and a pathway for a lot of that material as well. So we still need to build those end markets.
John: You’re constantly doing a high wire act of education, convenience, and end markets.
Kurt: Absolutely.
John: Got it. For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Kurt Kurzawa with us today. He’s the Senior Director of Sustainability and Packaging with the Plastics Industry Association. You can find Kurt and all his colleagues and all the important impactful work they’re doing in flexible film recycling at ffra.org. And also you can look up their new, amazing and great website, plasticfilmrecycling.org. Kurt, talk a little bit about packaging. What are you working on with regards to initiatives and strategies around sustainability in the packaging sector when it comes to plastics?
Kurt: I think packaging is key, right? Realistically, the reason I heard about this podcast and do all that other stuff was you had Martha from Veritiv on there and know her from my days back in Best Buy. But I think packaging is key, right? This packaging, flexible film is needed in this space and it’s definitely one of the highest places where flexible films is used. So I think where we’re focused in packaging is really building that value chain. So we at Flexible Film Recycling Alliance have everybody up and down this value chain from processors to distributors to recyclers to manufacturers, and how we get everybody together to create these closed loop circular economies and working together. So right now, one of our members is Shore and we’re really working with them to determine a location where we can do a pilot around how do we leverage their just-in-time inventory distribution system as maybe a potential backhaul for their customers’ flexible films, right? So how can we get that material back? And then they already having a lane or whatever you want to call it, a logistical pathway to the manufacturer. And then how do we get it back to the recycler? And how do we create all things together and create this circular ecosystem between manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, retailers, recyclers, and then really demand for recycled content will help that. And then how do we drive all that going forward?
John: Got you. How hard is it to collaborate with retailers, policymakers, and everyone in this ecosystem and value chain? Is there more excitement and more energy behind that than ever before, given that 10 years ago, even less than that, Kurt? Circular economy wasn’t part of our lexicon. ESG and all these very, very big
and everlasting, looks like everlasting trends have just emerged in the last five or six years, really, with regards to the energy behind them. So we now catch up to, as you said, Europe, which you never realized was that far ahead. I didn’t either. I knew they were ahead of us. I didn’t realize that far ahead. And some parts of Asia. Where are we now in that journey? Have we passed that tipping point where you’ve got all the different stakeholders really focused on this issue?
Kurt: I think we’re getting there, right? I think collaboration amongst retailers, it’s very difficult, right? In my days, I’ve been on many association calls with a bunch of different retailers, and a lot of people are very hesitant to give their secret sauce, to give the upper hand to somebody else and very tight to the chest. But I think as sustainability has grown, and I think as more and more people in the ecosystem, whether it is the manufacturers, distributors, or everybody in that value chain, I do feel that that’s uplifting and collaboration is beginning to happen, right? I don’t think we’re necessarily there, but it’s starting to tip, right? I think people are now more willing to work together in the sustainability place. They’re looking to have more sustainability because it’s driven by consumers. Consumers want more sustainable things. So industry is trying to figure out ways to make that happen and to move that needle and to collaborate more. I think we’re almost on the descent, but we’re not there yet.
John: How often in a given week of your work do you run across some legacy holdover misconceptions that continue to plague recycling, sustainability, and especially in your subset of plastic film recycling or plastic recycling? How many times a week are you challenged with misconceptions that you’re having to educate people and get them through understanding why what they just said or what they shared with another audience is just plain wrong?
Kurt: I would say in my personal life, quite often, right?
John: Right.
Kurt: It’s an uphill battle around people who are just not in the industry or not in the know. But I think it’s great and refreshing to hear that a lot of people in the industry that we do collaborate with on a daily basis understand that this is a great opportunity. There’s a lot of pathway forward. Recycling is real. How do we make sure we start working more collaboratively around letting people know what we’re doing? Because I think in industry, we’re very quiet about it. How do we let people know? Part of it, it’s our directory and we want to show people all the great recycling out there that’s happening. Part of it is letting people know recycling is real. There’s a part whole list of things that we’re doing on that aspect around plastics recycling. But we are really, really focused on just trying to change people’s behaviors and it starts one conversation at a time,right?
John: True.
Kurt: I just was at a dinner the other night where I had to change people’s perspectives around flexible films and how impactful it is to the environment in a positive way. So, it’s definitely a challenge in the inner circles.
John: When you talk about contamination, it’s really important that people understand this. Less contamination equals greater opportunities to recycle. You gave the great example of leaving your receipt in a bag. What other forms of contamination should we try to avoid?
Kurt: There’s a reason why store drop off says clean and dry. So, if you get your film wet or if you have some kind of, let’s say a ketchup packet fell out or something that, that all contaminates the bags. How do we get anything protein related? If you left a sandwich in there that wrapped in a plastic bag, that’s going to lead to contamination. So, it’s really those things. Or even in the rigid side or the curbside collection, if you have a whole thing of mayo and you don’t clean it out and you put it in there and that causes contamination, there’s a reason why that doesn’t get recycled as well too. There’s a bunch of different things. You can run the gamut on it. A lot of these store collection bins are at the front of the store. They look very similar to garbage cans. People assume that they’re garbage. Even though you’re well-intent with your plastics that you’re putting in there, there’s also people dropping things in that thinking it’s a garbage can. So I think part of the things that we really want to do is take those best practices that I’ve seen from retailers and try to let other retailers know that, hey, it might not be the best to make your recycling bin look exactly like the garbage can that it’s next to or [crosstalk] keep it in your vestibule as somebody’s trying to walk into your store and it’s the last path where they can throw away something.
John: Right.
Kurt: So, these are all learnings that we can share across industry and say, hey, these are the reasons why you don’t want to do it. I could go on to stories about all the things that we had in our recycling bins at Best Buy, and I’m sure it made it to you guys.
John: Yeah, no, it’s been great. On plasticfilmrecycling.org, when you launched it, and again, I’m on the site now and I love it. There’s tons of great information. I highly encourage everyone to go on the site to find solutions near you. Right now, is this covering just the United States or is the United States and Canada, number one?
Kurt: So, right now, it’s just the United States. We’re in the talk of potentially going up to Canada as well.
John: Right.
Kurt: I think when we were talking about North America, I think the ecosystem between Canada and United States and potentially even Mexico is there, right? There’s a lot of recycling that happens on both sides.
John: Sure.
Kurt: And we need to leverage that volume.
John: How many locations now do you have in your search engine for people to responsibly drop off their flexible film or plastic and have it responsibly recycled? In the United States, how many locations are there today, approximately?
Kurt: So, approximately we have 60 retailers, 40,000 locations. We have representation in all 50 states, including Puerto Rico. So, it’s a really vast network of [crosstalk] recycling.
John: Oh, wow.
Kurt: So, we’re transparent in how we get our data. There’s a transparency page that tells you exactly how we get our data. There’s also ability to tell us, maybe if you go into your store and you don’t see a bin there or maybe something happened, you let us know and we’re going to go through and try to validate that. Our first thing is getting this directory launched. Our next thing is going to be creating a verification process to ensure transparency, to ensure customers’ confidence is there and how do we validate these locations and how do we work with retailers to let them know that, hey, maybe a rogue manager took down the bin because they were sick of doing it or whatnot. But we want to have that partnership with us and retailers that are on that list.
John: And if I’m a retailer today and my family owns 15 little grocery stores in Mississippi and I want to be part of this great organization and this great movement that you’re creating with plasticfilmrecycling.org, I can just online request that our stores are added into your database. Is that correct?
Kurt: Yeah. There’s a form you can fill out. They’ll let us know. I think there’s more of a validation of that process, whether it’s pictures or whatever, but [crosstalk] we are definitely more than willing.
John: Right.
Kurt: There’s a place in there where you can send us some feedback. We’ll get you on. We’ll validate and then we’ll move forward.
John: Looking to the future, Kurt, you’ve had a great career already, both in private business and now on the public sector with the FFRA. And if people want to find you, they go to ffra.org. What’s your personal goals now with regards to sustainability and plastics in the next years ahead? Where are you the most excited about? What gets you out of bed the fastest right now?
Kurt: I think there’s a reason why we’re all in this sustainability space. I love collaboration. I love working with people. I have an education background, but I do have two small kids and I want to leave the world a little bit better place than what I came in. An I think that if everybody had that goal, the world would be really uplifted.
John: Right.
Kurt: But as for goals, we want to increase that recycling rate. We don’t have pen to paper yet of what that looks , but we want to launch this directory. We want to have high adaptation, high traffic. So we’re working with marketing campaigns to really start driving that, but what we really want to see is drawing a line in the sand now and how much material to recycle it and then seeing how can we double it? How can we double it again? How can we double it again? And then how can we create a sustainable system for flexible film? Because it is very important. It’s low weight. It’s lightweight. It’s really flexible, right? It does all these things, all these wonders. It’s the reason why it was created. And it really needs to still continue to be a part of that ecosystem because there is good environmental impacts of using this material. So, it’s just really getting this material recycled, driving the recycling rates, and building consumer awareness of it, right?
John: Right.
Kurt: We know only a quarter of the people know this exists today. Imagine if we can get it to 100%. How much that would uplift this recycling rates? Now, imagine if we can reduce contamination by 50%. What does that look like? Now, imagine retailers are using less labor because there is no contamination to it. It all trickles down to a bunch of good things that are all economically and sustainably good for the ecosystem.
John: And I would even argue that per your 25% awareness in California, California tends on the environmental side to be a little bit more aware. So, nationally, that number might even be a little bit lower.
Kurt: Yeah.
John: So it might have a bigger delta of opportunity is all I’m saying. Where are we? Kurt, you and I are sports guys, you’re an ex-football coach, and we’re in the middle of the heart of the football season now, the playoffs. If we were to say, but let’s talk baseball because it’s just an easier sport, where are we in this sustainability journey? At the big brands you work for, you’ve seen a lot. Now, what you’re doing and the impact you’re making at the FFRA. Are we at the bottom of this first inning? Are we at the top of the fifth inning? Where are we in this journey?
Kurt: I would say in a baseball reference, I would say it’s probably the bottom of the fifth, right?
John: Sure.
Kurt: We’re moving on. It’s not at the infancy anymore. There’s all the sustainability efforts going at all the big corporations. And I think we are turning the corner and I think we’re at the top of the hill. And then that at that [inaudible]. I’m not a baseball guy, but halftime.
John: Okay.
Kurt: And we’re going in the third and fourth quarter. We’re getting better. We’re doing these things. And I think everybody individually is working in these spaces.
John: Yeah.
Kurt: And I listened to a lot of your shows before coming on to this one. And a lot of these things is around collaboration.
John: True.
Kurt: Building up this ecosystem, circular economies. And I think what we’re really tipping to the point now is everybody had their individual journeys. And now what we’re doing is creating those circular economies and working together in these ecosystems. And it’s already starting to happen out there. I think there’s a lot of early adapters that are building those circular economies, creating those closed loops. And now, what I think we’re seeing is everybody is getting into this and that’s starting to spread and more and more companies are looking at that complete ecosystem and moving their head. They’re stopping their focus from their four walls and started looking at what they can all do collectively.
John: I love it. Kurt, for our listeners and viewers to find Kurt and all the important work he’s doing, there’s going to be three websites to give out. There’ll be in the show notes. So, you don’t got to write them down. It’s plasticsindustry.org, number one. Now also, flexiblefilmalliance.org, ffra.org and most importantly, his new website with over 40,000 locations where you can drop off your softer flexible film or plastics to be responsibly recycled at plasticfilmrecycling.org.
Kurt, thank you for coming on the Impact Podcast. You and I both know sustainability has no finish line. It’s really a journey. You’re always welcome back on this show to continue to give us updates on the success you’re having in building and driving sustainable plastic recycling. I’m so grateful for the time you spent with us today, but more importantly, I’m so thankful and grateful to you for you and all your colleagues for making the world a better place.
Kurt: Thank you. Appreciate it and just glad I had an opportunity to share all the great things that we’re doing at the Flexible Film Recycling Alliance.
John: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform revolutionizing the talent booking industry. With thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent, for speeches, custom experiences, live streams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com. This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.
We are launching a consumer directory in the early part of 2025. The directory serves to main purposes:
Increase accessibility to plastic film recycling collection points.
Educate consumers on what plastic films can or can’t be recycled, and any steps that should be taken to prepare the material for drop-off
Both purposes ultimately filter into the directory’s overarching goal to increase consumer film recycling rates in the U.S.