Sure, diamonds—including lab-grown—may be forever. But does plastic also have to be? Not so, according to Kristin Taylor, CEO of Radical Plastics. After a multi-decade career in the plastic industry, including working at a small company you may have heard of called ExxonMobil, Kristin decided to take the entrepreneurial plunge and form her own startup, Radical Plastics, to help plastic manufacturers make their conventional plastics actually biodegradable. Radical Plastics is essentially asking the question: what if all that plastic lining our highways or floating in the ocean would actually biodegrade? That's the promise of the technology that they're pioneering. They've discovered a mineral concoction that when added during the manufacturing of conventional plastic—at even less than one percent—will eventually convert that plastic into food that microbes will recognize and eat. In other words, they can make conventional plastic, once it's in the environment, actually biodegrade. It's an exciting story, and one that just might reduce humanity's footprint on the rest of the planet.

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related