Plastic Bank aims to reduce marine debris, help people

With a plan to clean up litter, reduce marine debris, and help poor people, David Katz, co-founder of the Plastic Bank, is monetizing plastic waste in Haiti and looking for the next locale for his social enterprise.

The Vancouver, British Columbia-based organization has a business model that starts with turning discarded plastic into currency — cash, goods or services — for those who pick it up from beaches, canals or streets and take it to a collection center for recycling.

The Plastic Bank then pays the center above-market rates for the recyclables — some of which are being ground into flake and injection molded into containers.

Lush Cosmetics, also based in Vancouver, was the first to use the recycled feedstock called “Social Plastic” in their Sea Spray bottle line. The company has a green policy to protect people, animals and the planet in the production of its makeup and toiletries.

After a 2014 pilot program, the Plastic Bank's first real, wide-encompassing loop has come full circle. Businesses can get ethically sourced plastic. The recycling center in Haiti gets “price buoyancy” and an increased plastics volume. The Haitian who collected the items gets cooking fuel, Internet access or cell phone minutes. And, a poverty-stricken pocket of the world upcycles plastic that could make its way to the ocean.

Katz, 46, and co-founder Shaun Frankson, 32, are using social media to create demand for the feedstock. The Facebook page Social Plastic has more than 1 million followers and Twitter users publicly ask major corporations to buy it and to do their part to reduce poverty and plastic waste.

“The millennials and next generation are looking to be associated with corporations that make positive change and it's very simple for the manufacturers and the packaging producers to do,” Katz said in a telephone interview. “They just have to use a material that can help people transcend poverty, send their children to school, and stem the flow of plastics into the ocean. When they have that opportunity to do it, why wouldn't they?”

A couple big companies are pondering that question right now. Katz said he and Frankson are in talks with companies like Unilever that are interested in being part of a social plastics movement.

Recognizing value

A beach bum at his core — “even the flip-flops are optional” — Katz said growing up near the coast of western Canada instilled in him a desire to protect the environment. He also is a fan of plastic and how it can go from a PET bottle to a T-shirt to a car component. He raves about its versatility and durability. He sees solutions in its ability to change form and be used over and over — if properly handled.

“I love plastic,” Katz said. “I'm an absolute advocate for plastic, but I'm not an advocate for the creation of virgin plastic when we already have 4 trillion pounds of plastic sitting on the face of the earth. There are certainly people who are motivated to create new resins but I think there are far more people who don't want that to happen.”

Katz contends that plastic is such an amazing material, people have lost sight of how valuable it is.

“That's indicative of the way we dispose of it and don't care for it,” Katz said. “We endeavor to show people its real value so it isn't wasted.”

To spur change, the Plastic Bank is creating an incentive for people to share in that value by recycling plastic in exchange for money or something else to make their lives better. So far, the Haitians seem to prefer charging their cell phones and getting charcoal briquettes to cook.

“The population feels like they're getting a tremendous value,” Katz said, explaining that the country doesn't have consistent power so charging batteries is important to them.

As for cooking fuel, that can eat up 30 percent of the household budget, Katz said, and some parents have to choose between feeding their children and paying the $50-a-month tuition cost for their education.

“If we can eliminate that pressure for cooking fuel, and then they can afford to send their children to school, that's a profound impact,” Katz said. “That's social plastic.

Plastic prevalence

Like many places, there's a very limited solid waste infrastructure in Haiti. About 1,500 metric tons of waste — 14 percent of it being plastic — is generated daily in just the capital of Port-au-Prince, according to the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA). A lot of the garbage is dumped in the streets, scooped up by shovel and taken to a dump where it's burned. But most of it doesn't get to the dump. Even if all the equipment is working, only about 20 percent of the waste is disposed of on a daily basis, SWANA says.

Some of the waste that's left behind is burned in open piles. Some of it spills into the canals and when it rains it gets washed out to sea and adds to the Atlantic gyre — one of the five ocean garbage patches.

Of the 300 million tons of plastic created every year, about 7 million tons of it ends up in the oceans, according to the Plastic Bank.

Katz said the people supplementing their income by collecting plastic waste in Haiti are taking PET, high and low density polyethylene and polypropylene to the recycling centers. The Plastic Bank works with the recyclers.

“We try to provide a business system for them to increase their rate of collectibles and their price on those materials to make them profitable,” Katz said. “We give them price consistency and price buoyancy.”

Banking on change

The Plastic Bank sells the clean and sorted feedstock to manufacturers. Social plastic costs more than commodity plastics yet it could give product brands a competitive edge. In effect, the businesses are paying a premium to be able to promote that they are part of the solution to reduce poverty and waste.

Katz said other potential social plastic customers are thinking about using it as an additive.

“It doesn't have to be 100 percent material from Haiti or anywhere we're offering,” he said.

The company is looking for new partners and has received inquiries from 75 countries, Katz said.

“There are dire needs around the world,” he added. “We endeavor to be everywhere but we're trying to make business sense of our next location.”

The Plastic Bank also is testing the feasibility of helping the people who collect the recyclables to become micro-entrepreneurs by supplying them with an extruder to make ethically sourced filament as well as a 3-D printer to make products from waste plastics.

“We just shipped an extruder and printer to Haiti,” Katz said. “I'd say in the next 30 days we will be producing items there. That's an incentive as well.”

The Plastic Bank also is working on a crowd-based platform where poor people can submit problems in their community to the global community and get design ideas that can be printed or manufactured locally. Maybe it will be a tool or part of some sort to filter water.

“The ideas will alleviate some of the symptoms of poverty,” Katz said. “And those ideas, as they're created, get to be shared around the world. It's exciting.”

In the meantime, different plans by other organizations are underway or in the works to cull garbage from the gyres. The various plans call for using water wheels, nets and even a floating 62-mile V-shaped boom that would direct garbage to a mechanical extraction system.

Katz said he thinks those efforts put the cart before the horse. He recalled a riddle told in school: When your sink is overflowing and you only have a pail, a mop and a bucket, what do you do first? The answer, he said, is turn off the tap.

“There are too many people who want to go and clean the ocean,” he said. “It's too big of a dialogue. It's captured too much attention. It's such a loss to focus our attention on that. I think what we need to do is make sure the plastic doesn't get there to begin with. You have to turn off the tap first.”