 Oh boy, four o'clock. Now usually this is Hawaii the state of clean energy at four o'clock. And we talked to Elemental Accelerator, and they put us in touch with Tristan and Saul. And now we're slightly off that. We're talking about sustainability. We're talking about preserving the environment and our planet, which is really important. So did I rename the show? Did I rename the show? What are we calling it? No, the name. Oh, think Tech Talks. So this is a tech show. We're doing tech. That works. OK. And the title of the show is UH Breakthrough Innovation Challenge. It's pretty ambitious. Thank you, Lauren, from Elemental Accelerator. Tonya Kaua, thank you for putting us together with Tristan and Saul. So I want to know about you guys, because you represent a generation that maybe could save us, save the old guys, save the new guys, save the planet. It's very noble what you're doing. So first, who are you? Take one minute. I don't want more than that. OK, Tristan, you go first. OK. So my name is Tristan. No, my name is Tristan. I go to the business school, Shidler Business School here on Oahu. I'm in my last semester of finance international business. I'm originally from Maui. And I have always wanted to create some kind of sustainable or environmental project that could lead us towards something better. And now that I've met Saul recently, we've actually started working on something of that nature. Wow, I hope you can carry that forward. Maybe we can carry it forward here today. Tristan Iver, yeah? Yes, sir. And Saul Barnel. Yes. Saul, can you explain your half of this? And how much of what he said do you agree with? A lot of it, yes. I'm Saul. I'm currently doing my master's at UH in learning design and technology at the College of Education. And I moved to Hawaii in 2015, which coincides with the time when Hawaii established the sustainability goals of 2045. So when I first got here, I got really excited of this new wave of sustainability. And the past three years, I've been working on my bachelor's, now on my master's. And I've been looking at the issues around the island. And there is a big issue with trash. And so we want to do something about it. OK, so you started out with the notion at the Innovation Center on UH campus? Yeah. Space. Started out with the notion that you wanted to do something about it, do something about the planet. Correct. Which is noble, but difficult. There's lots of resistance points on that. And so you start out from a huge, ambitious idea. So take a minute and tell me what the idea is and exactly what is your breakthrough innovation challenge. OK. So I will explain the idea in easy terms, I guess. And then he will explain in a more technical term. So what we're trying to do is we want to track trash. And we want to do that in order to change people's behaviors on trash production and to help with management companies handling trash. Today, trash is being collected. We're paying $0.05 for each can of aluminum and plastic. Yet a lot of it is getting burned and that money is not getting back to us. We want to make it to where that money goes back to our wallet and it's not wasted. You mean the $0.05 per can? Yes, the high $0.05. What about all the other trash? I mean, regular non-can trash. Yeah, so we want to start with the trash that shows the most profitability potential. So plastic is one of them. One of the issues right now with plastic is that it's not being sorted. It's all being collected in one container. So we want to start sorting plastic in order to start reusing the plastic. I mean, there's more than one kind of plastic out there. That's correct. There's many out there. There's organic plastic. There is plastic that has already been recycled before. Plastic that is brand new. And it all has to be handled differently. The birds and the fish, they collect plastic. They collect quite a bit. They know how to do that. Yeah, very sadly. It lands right there somewhere and it kills them before we came. We're actually watching a video that depicts that. And it's not a pretty sight. Although it does give a lot of insight into how the plastic is moving throughout our oceans so that people have a better understanding. Yeah, as do you see that as well, where we actually consuming quite a bit of microplastics and all our meals and drinks and stuff. So going back to what Saul was saying is that you're right. So there is the plastic problem. There's a pollution problem. There's this trash problem. But the biggest problem behind this whole circular economy, behind this whole triple R, behind this whole movement towards something more environmentally sustainable. It's a triple R. Reduce, reuse, recycle. I knew that. I think it's better to put it somewhere around here. But the biggest problem as well as what you were saying when you honed in on how you're going to do this when you have a lot of pushback, the money's not there. So that's, yes, the actual problem with the trash is hard. But behind that is the problem is how do we rework this whole concept to make it viably economically? Just to give an example, $90 to $180 billion worth of plastic packaging is just thrown away each year. That's a lot of value that perhaps if some system was created, could be incorporated into another system. So how do we tackle this? How do we look at it and then not run it through deficit, not run it through government money from the taxpayers money? How do we do it so it can over time sustain itself? And that's kind of where we got our brains working. That's why Saul mentioned this aspect of the five cents because we have to start somewhere where we can be at least partially self-sustainable at the beginning. And so I'll speak a little bit more, okay, so there we have the economical problem, which is probably the biggest driver of what we have with plastic right now because it's cheaper to make virgin plastic than it is to recycle. We only started in the 1950s or so for mass production and we've created over 8.5 billion metric tons. You remember the graduate? Graduate? Yeah. He was talking to his girlfriend's father. His girlfriend's father, I forget the actor. He, the girlfriend's father was giving him advice and he said, plastics, young man, plastics. The world is in, the future is in plastics. How wrong that guy was. Yeah, he don't remember the graduate. Or sadly right, or sadly right perhaps. Because. But that was the promise. The promise was that plastic was gonna change the world. The only problem is that we didn't recycle the plastic that was being produced. If we kept recycling that plastic, it would be a great solution but we just keep making more of it. Yeah, and just throwing it out, throwing it into the environment where it does terrible things and it lasts for a thousand years. Correct. It would have ruined the planet. And up to 2017, we were making good money out of it. We were exporting it to places like China but after 2017, they changed how those rules work. What do they do now? Now they have a really high level of contamination requirements basically. So you can't use plastic. It makes it really hard to. You can use plastic except China won't buy anything with contamination levels higher than 0.05%. In the plastic or in? In, so to give an example, they'll send this huge bale of plastic all compressed but there's a tire in there and that tire will raise the contamination level of the entire bale and then it's worthless and they won't buy it. So the way we have our single bin recycling system here, it doesn't work because there's too much admixture of things and they stopped receiving it. So we used to sell it and it was a profitable economy but now that they stopped accepting it, we're just throwing most of the stuff in the landfill. I mean, only 10% of plastic right now is being recycled. So we know that trash is a huge big problem, including here. But you're not focusing on old trash, focusing on what, cans, bottles, plastics. Is that what you're focusing on? So initially, yes, with time, we want to look at all of solid waste management. So let's take the beginning. Let's take the initially part. How do you reduce the amount of plastic that is going out of our communities and into the wild, so to speak? How do you do that? How do you do that? The first step is by bringing awareness to people. The same way today, your cell phone tells you the usage per week, tells you you've been using your phone for five hours a week. So I shouldn't buy anything in plastic. We just want to make you aware of how much plastic you're consuming. You want to change my conduct, right? Make you aware of it, and then if you want to take a step. Okay, so what happens to my Coke? This is product, this is called product placement. How much are you getting paid? Nothing, nobody ever pays us anything. So, okay, so you want me to stop using plastic. Is that the mission? We want you to start reducing your usage of plastic. By how much? What's your target? You have to start somewhere and... 50%. If you could, that would be wonderful. But, so I'll give an example going back to what Saul was saying about this dashboard. So if we could potentially show how much you're throwing away and what material each of these items are. You know, you have your credit card that can give you the little dashboard. You know, you spent this much money on restaurants, this much money on this, this much money on gas. And you look at it one day, you're like, I spent that much on restaurants. I must be crazy. Okay, next week, next month, I'm not spending that much. We could potentially create a reaction at like that from the plastic usage or from the trash usage. I threw away 10 pounds of plastic last week. Yeah, or the last. I can't do that. I can't do that. That's ridiculous, you know? And then perhaps that would slowly bring a change of consciousness. And it could be even a game within yourself as in, oh, I did this much. Okay, let's see, next week, perhaps I can do this much. As you, there was this viral challenge that, well, this challenge that went viral, which was these people that were living months with only one little Tupperware, one little container worth of trash. So, and it just spread and it actually had some impact on the world. So potentially with this awareness, we could get change from people. Yeah, well, okay, that's theoretical. But, you know, the question is, lock and hobs, you remember, lock and hobs. Is humankind perfectable or imperfectable? Okay. You're very optimistic to think that people. This is the genetics now. I don't mean genetic wise. In terms of a species, can we live in a perfect society? Can we achieve that? Or is it always going to be impossible for us? It will always be challenges. No system is perfect. But again, we want to start, for example, first bringing awareness. Once we've become, we've made people aware of their consumption of trash, we're going to be able to sort it. So we're not going to be able to get rid of all plastic consumption. We're conscious that there's still going to be plastic out there. Don't you see this as a crisis? I mean, you guys got together, I'm sure you have a level of crisis in your collaboration. I mean, the globe, the world, and climate change is crisis. 11,200 scientists said that a couple of days ago. We are in climate change crisis. And likewise, we are in environmental crisis with all the species dying off and plastics is right in there. Why don't you find a way to tell me, Fidel, no plastics, you may not have the next diet coke out. You have to stop right now. Cold turkey, no plastics. What about that? I mean, that could be a solution, but that would be, that wouldn't work in the US. How long do you think we have before we run into a wall on this? I don't believe in infringing that strongly on people's personal aspects and going back tracing our law and laws and natural law and these aspects. I believe that, you know, as long as someone isn't harming someone else or someone else's property, they should relatively be within the right of doing what they're doing. So I'm not saying I'm going to come and prohibit your usage. I'm just trying to make you aware so that, you know, that higher self within you perhaps wants to reduce your usage. Because let's not kid ourselves. We all have that gut feeling or that voice. Yeah, probably I'm going to have another diet coke. You know, we had no effect on you whatsoever. All right, let's go. Look at that water over there. That's plastic too. Okay, so now we have decided that you're going to try to affect my conduct and you're going to try to do this by showing me how much I am contributing to, you know, the decline of the planet and everything on the planet. So how do you do that? This is a psychology question. It's an education question. Maybe it's a software question. Yes. What's the answer? So we're going to use a combination of hardware and software to create a solution that can track your trash. So it will be a device that you can place on your trash can and you will look at nothing but trash. So any item that you put on the trash can we're going to be able to track it and give you a report of the trash contained in that container. With that information, we're going to be able to distribute how companies like waste management companies go and pick up trash. If there is not a lot of trash being consumed in that street, we don't have to go that week. Maybe we can go next week. So it's also trying to reduce cost on how we handle a trash today, how we pick it up, how we split. How are you going to get to me? Are you going to use social media? Are you going to send me an email? How about a big sign on the highway? Don't use heavy trash. How are you going to get to me? You're going to change my way of thinking, my conduct. This is one of the most difficult things in the human experience. Change my conduct. And legislators have a big problem with this. Incentives and disincentives, taxes and credits and exemptions and all that. And nobody knows how much or how long or in what way how you would impose it and so forth. So I can do it. Make me stop. Make me slow down. By showing people the potential of what they are changing. What's the mechanics? If we show you that by sorting your plastic, not stop using plastic, but by sorting your plastic, we can now make fuel for jets and airplanes here locally instead of having to import it to the island. Good thoughts, good messages. How are you going to deliver them? It's like Jay Scheidler calls this the via. Okay. The via, the method of delivery. Really important for him. Absolutely. So how are you going to do it? We're going to create a social media. It means social media, of course. Stop me in the street corner. But are you saying how would we get you to implement this within your home? How are you going to get me to know that I can do something or that I'm overstating, I'm overusing trash. I'm not handling it correctly. How are you going to get me to integrate that information? Okay. So I'd say at a base level, we all have that awareness that we live in an extremely convenient society. My previous experience, we all know at some level that there is something perhaps not truly correct with the way we're interacting with consumer goods. But if we're able to get to you exactly and show you, hey, we can do something that can give you a reward at the same time, allow you to see what your usage is and perhaps compete with yourself and compete with others to bring it down, then we can get you interested in this solution. So how are you going to tell me about it and how are you going to deliver the reward? So it would have to be all virtual. So the same way that this could initially be virtually sorting the trash so we know how much of each kind is in your trash can, we could then, so let's give an example on a little bit more of a macro level than an individual home. So if we have at UH Manoa, we have trash cans and we can see that 60% of all plastic bottles are from the Coca-Cola company and the Coca-Cola company has this huge mission right now of trying to use, I think it's 60% recyclable bottles by 2035, 2025. So they're putting tons of money to this are seeking solutions, they're putting money out there. So if we go to them with their and show them, hey, 60% of all plastic that's gonna end up in the landfill or burnt is from you guys, perhaps we can create some partnership with the corporate incentive that we don't have any data whatsoever. And that goes back to the fact that, so I'll give you an example, the EPA right now tracks the trash in the United States through seeing what was purchased, how long that lasts and then making an estimation because as I was saying earlier, trash is measured or is worked with, solid waste is worked with at a city or county level. So there's no aggregate of all this information. There's a serious lack of data on the solid waste stream management side of things. So with more information, you can make more accurate predictions and decisions that could then potentially create a system where we can recycle. I'm having a vision, I wake up in the morning, I turn my phone on and it comes up with a dashboard. I tell you are using too much trash. Here's your trash quotient, you should be ashamed of yourself. You are a disgrace to the planet and to the species. You've got to stop doing that. Here's what we recommend, cut this, cut that and so forth. Is that how you're gonna change my conduct? That plus then we'll give you money back. Money? Yep. Money? Yep. Oh my God. We're gonna take a short break. We're gonna consider money and we come back and we tell you how much money and how that's gonna be delivered. Okay, that's all interesting, we'll be right back. Thanks to our ThinkTech Underwriters and Grand Taurus, the Atherton Family Foundation, Carol Mun Lee and the Friends of ThinkTech, the Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education, Collateral Analytics, the Cook Foundation, Dwayne Kurisu, the Hawaii Community Foundation, the Hawaii Council of Associations of Abarbon Owners, Hawaii Energy, the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, Hawaiian Electric Company, Integrated Security Technologies, Galen Ho of BAE Systems, Kamehameha Schools, MW Group, the Shidler Family Foundation, the Sydney Stern Memorial Trust, Volo Foundation, Yuriko J. Sugimura. Thanks so much to you all. Okay, let's talk about the money first. All this is gonna take money. I mean, developing the message, you know, I have to say, we didn't cover this, but saying the message, the words, the concepts, to reach people, you can't bore them. They've heard all this before and you have to take them to another level of understanding and appreciation. It's poetry, it's the language, it's many languages. So, but after you get by that, you know, like making it clear to them and their level of consciousness, then you're gonna add a kicker. You're gonna add some money. How much money? Where's the money gonna come from? How are you gonna deliver the money? You have messenger? What? Well, first of all, it's, we're not giving you any new money. It's, we're just giving you back your money. There's money that you initially deposited when you got those containers that we are going to recycle now for you. So, the concept is, instead of having to go to a location to recycle your plastic, we know what trash you have at your home. We were just saying you a notification, saying that we're gonna go pick up the trash today. You just gotta have the container ready for us and you get your money through an app. So, once we pick up your trash, Where does it come from again? It comes back from your deposit. Oh, deposit on the can and the bottle? Correct, on your purchase. Okay, but you have to, then you have two transactions going on, the in and the out. When I bought the can and the bottle, maybe you don't care about that. No, we don't. You can just deduce that because I have the can and the bottle. So, it's one transaction. It's when I throw it out, then you can make some kind of calculation about how much should come back to it. How does it come back? PayPal? Something like that. Yes, that needs to be worked and there's a lot of research that needs to happen, but that will be the goal, that you get it through an app and then that you can buy stuff on the internet, get a gift card or just send it back to your bank account. You have to make sure that you do collect the money at the front end. I don't know if all states do collect the money from the cans and the bottles. Maybe some do and some don't. Right, so that's one thing about Octa which is our business. We are a local company trying to fix the Hawaii trash problem. We will eventually expand to other states but we first want to fix the problem in the islands. How are you going to live? Which ties... Oh, well, how are we going to live? How are we going to eat? How are we going to survive? Oh, well, you know, we're two resourceful chaps over here. We'll figure something out. We can always work and we have a large attention span so we can multitask. But I think that Hawaii just really supports us. Well, I'm, you know, I'm from here. Saul's been living here for a long time and they have this very strong sustainability goal going forward and there's no one trying to create a system of this manner here. There are some systems of similar capabilities but most of them are focused on the robotics aspect of the sorting of the plastics specifically. So we would like to do... You're not into that. In a future moment, perhaps. But first we want to aggregate all of this data and have a deeper understanding and then perhaps it could be extrapolated to many different fields. But at the very base, we want to start here in Hawaii and then create the consciousness here that may give us the impulse to go and go forward other places. Well, Hawaii is a good laboratory for a lot of things. But you'd have to... You'd have to weigh the trash or measure the trash and somehow. Who's going to do that? You guys going to put your, you know, overalls on and go out and do that? How are you going to measure the trash? I'm sat by my back door. Oh, well, that's what the visual software would be able to do. It knows what each qualities of each can or bottle possesses. Is it going to look through the trash bag? No, so I have to sort. No, basically the camera or the sensor will be installed on the trash can. All you have to do is throw away your trash and every time you throw something away we're able to capture it and detect what it is. Okay, but usually my wife and me when we have a can or a bottle, we tie the trash up neatly. We put the trash in the big trash bin out in the street and the truck comes and takes it away. There is really no place in that sequence where a camera would be able to look, except if you put a camera in my kitchen at the place where I might throw the camera. Watching you drink your beer in the back, which my wife actually may resist having a kitchen camera. And as we were saying, the aspect of the actual collection that is further along of the roadmap, initially it is just this straight awareness aspect of, I know for myself and I know a lot of people in my cohort and my generation, just within having that awareness would change behavior because it's easy to hear these things on a macro scale that there's this plastic out in the Pacific gyre that's the size of Australia. I know it's not that big, but it's enormous. There's a guy trying to rope it in, you know. Yeah, there's this young guy from Holland. Yeah, it's encouraging. It's a very inspiration. He hasn't actually succeeded yet, but he's got hardware. I think these are all projects that are gonna take time and they're gonna take commitment and they're gonna take support. And I do think that what we have on our side is I don't necessarily believe in panicking people into these changes in their lives and to telling them you're gonna die in 10 years if you don't do this, but I do believe in a slow conscious movement forward. Evolution. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So let's go back to Coca-Cola, who says they wanna make, you know what we call it, plastic-free or plastic-free bottles. They wanna, not plastic-free, they wanna have a large percentage which I'm pretty sure is 60% of their bottles from recycled plastic. Oh, they'll recycle the plastic. They wanna recycle the plastic and reuse instead of using virgin resin. Is that doable? I mean, technically? It is doable, but they don't have accountability. So they set a goal in 2005 of being at 25% by 2015. Yet by 2014, they were only at seven or 9%. They're not rushing because it costs them extra money. It's more expensive to do that than just make a new bottle, I guess. Right, and because nobody is tracking the trash. And so we want to have that data. We can then approach these companies and help them with their goals. They want to do this, but they don't have an understanding of the trash consumption either. Well, if Coca-Cola went along, that would be a big leadership point. And a lot of other companies that use plastic bottles would come along. What about the cans? Is there a similar possibility with the cans? As far as recycle, well, aluminum is recycled at a much higher rate than plastic. Already, now. Now, yeah, it's not as expensive a process. But you need a lot of energy to do that. You do need a lot of it. Well, the thing is just to get raw aluminum and that manufacturing process is enormous amounts of energy as well. So it's not the same as with plasters. So here's the thing, an aluminum can is all aluminum. You can just throw it all together and it works. Plastic, your cap is a different material. Your label might be a different material. You might mix in a bottle from type 1 plastic, then from type 2 plastic and you can't just recycle those together. And that's where the sorting aspect comes. And yeah, there's more nuances to it. And with the aluminum can, easy to crush, you know, like that. Crush it right away. Yeah, hopefully empty, right? Skull yourself, but... And it comes down to the chemistry. John Belushi. Oh, it comes down to the chemistry because there's basically one type of aluminum, but there's different types of plastic. So that's all it is. Okay, so you guys have a very admirable and noble mission in mind. And here we are, it's the fall of 2019. You know, the US is like not really attending to this on a national level. I'm sorry, you must know that. And we're not involved with the Paris Accord. We are not really doing anything to advance protection of the environment or species that are going extinct and the like. So what's your next step? What's your next step in advancing this? I mean, first question, do you see this as a long-term project? Do you see this as you're gonna hang together for the next 20 years and do this? Yes, so Hawaii needs more than... This is on tape, you know. No, I'm just saying. So Hawaii needs more than one solution to really fix the sustainability issue. So we have created a corporation that will bring more technologies into life that will accelerate towards that goal. So the first one is helping with the biggest problem, which is trash. But eventually we want to move into more problems like education, just education about biology and basic things that we are not doing either and can help educating those new generations. We wanna also help with the energy management. So creating technologies for battery storage. So we do have a long-term plan. Right now we're doing the solution that needs to happen today and that can be worked on today as well. Yeah, so important to educate the world. I mean, look around, you find that people do not know enough about this, can you say? Yeah, I was gonna say that we, you know, it may be true that at a federal level there hasn't been a huge push towards the things you were mentioning previously, but since this national sword policy, which is the China policy of not just discriminately buying all plastics, the recycling industry in the whole United States is revamping quick. They're looking for solutions that help them bring down their costs so that they can start taking on this enormous load that used to have to be shipped out. So even though right now we are in crisis and most of it is going to the landfill, I do believe that with enough time we will have to adapt our infrastructure to be able to accommodate this influx of plastics and recyclables. Well, would you agree with me, big question, would you agree with me that in order to effectuate this plan, make this come true, you're gonna need to develop governmental policies and have the government spend money on infrastructure one kind or another. Because it strikes me, and you can disagree, it strikes me that you cannot do this either as a straight business matter or as an ill-emotionary, you know, charitable effort. So if I'm right about that, you can disagree. That means the government has to come in. Now, this administration will last forever. And maybe when we get around to the next administration, they'll be more receptive to policies and incentives that I think would be necessary. Reaction. Reaction is, I do believe you're right in certain aspects, but the thing is, so most of solid waste management is private companies. About the United States, I mean Alliance and Waste, Waste Management Inc. They're 60% of the market share and they're of course for profit businesses with shareholders and you know, they have to maximize the profit of the shareholder. So right now it's cheaper for them to put it in the landfill than it is to recycle. So they have to raise rates. So there may have to be some government incentive, but see, I'm not a great believer in change through subsidy. I do think that if there is disruptive enough innovation or a system that can change behavior massively, then there can be a shift without having to use massive amounts of our taxpayer money inefficiently to bring about the change. Okay, but you are right. I need your view of that. You're right, we need your support, the government support and everyone because right now we're already making a change. We're informing people that they need to sort their plastics better. And policy will have to change and even if we don't do it, policy will change by itself. You just saw it on the big island. They are not taking as many recyclables now. So the policy has changed without solution. So the solutions will have to need some policy support, but we also see a big awareness on people today on wanting to make a change and they taking the cost of that change. We'll get in electric cars, people doing the little things that they can on their everyday life. Good for you guys. Good for you, it's admirable, it's noble. And I hope you can hang together and do something notable over a period of time. You can do even just a little, it'll be a great contribution. Tristan. A pleasure meeting you. Okay, thank you for your time. It's all great to have you guys down here. Thank you for coming down. And may I say that although some would say this has been a very good discussion and a good show here on Think Tech, which you know, you can play it and educate people, and other people might say it's been trash. Pretty much, yeah. That's how we're all about it. We have that trash extension all the time. Thanks guys. Thank you. Thanks so much. Have a good one.