 And with all the fancy introductions out of the way, welcome to the podcast, Amarie Mohan and Matt Reynolds. Welcome, Amarie. Nice to be here, Sean. Welcome, Matt. Thanks for having me in my own office. The pleasure is all mine. Now, because I'm a very well-read individual, I'm familiar with the latest in recycling advanced chemical molecular. But for all of our listeners out there, can you guys kind of, I don't know, give us some bullet points, some 30,000-foot view on exactly what it is and, I guess, sort of the differences between advanced chemical or molecular recycling? Sure. So currently, the most common system of recycling is called mechanical recycling. But what's emerging right now as a technology is what's called advanced or chemical or molecular recycling. In fact, advanced and molecular are pretty much synonymous. They mean the same thing interchangeably. Chemical recycling is sort of a subset within. But the big picture is that through advanced techniques, sometimes using meat, sometimes using solvents, various other chemical or molecular techniques, folks are able to reduce plastics or actually anything down to its basic building box. So we talk about plastic. We're talking about polymers. We're reducing them down to what would be called a monomer, like a single individual unit that can then be built back up into whatever the product might be. Now, one real great advantage of it with mechanical recycling, you tend to have what has to be downcycling. So if you have a milk carton, that's polycropylene, for instance, that might be recycled. But it won't be recycled into another milk carton. It'll most likely be recycled into, say, a swing set or a durable one, something like a decking that might be another one that's pretty frequent, because over time, it degrades. With molecular recycling, using the most basic building box, taking any material, including, let's say, ocean plastics or degraded plastics to degraded materials, you're able to basically push those down to the lowest building blocks and then build them back up to potentially upcycle to have equivalent convergent plastics or something that's been ocean plastic or anything that's been degraded can still get built back up by these scientists, essentially, to become PET, equivalent one-to-one replacement for PET. So that's great. I mean, consider uses for food contact, for instance. Years and years of mechanical recycling for given plastic, eventually, some degradation is going to occur where that plastic after recycling is not going to be suitable for food contact. But if you're able to take even lower grade plastic waste and then recreate virgin plastic food contact ready plastic out of that, then that's a wonderful silver bullet type of technology to have. And then also consider the ease of use for, I mean, there's some of these technologies are what's considered, I guess, would be mixed waste. So it could take all sorts of different kinds of waste. And the ease of use or the ease of recycling for the consumer and the more the likelihood of the consumer to successfully recycle is much greater. So that's kind of the big picture. I won't get into the weeds on the molecules there, but that's what's going on. One recent example where a brand owner, and it was Unilever, was able to use a recycled polypropylene for a food product, whereas in the past with mechanically recycled polypropylene, it was not approved for food contact, was for their Magnum ice cream tubs. Sabic is a chemical producer, and they produce the feed stock for those tubs from recycled materials done by plastic energy through pyrolysis. So they're using advanced recycling to create the building blocks for this polypropylene. And it has the same functionality and properties as a virgin polypropylene. And even one step further, which is very interesting, is for this product, there's a chocolate shell around the ice cream inside. So they had to retain that iconic feature. I've had this. This is good. It's well worth retaining. Yeah, I've had one before. So they had to make sure it had the same flexibility, and they were able to accomplish that. But they could not have used recycled polypropylene for a mechanical process. So it did open the door for recycled materials in that application. OK, cool. So then I guess with that in mind, that kind of segues in perfectly, is there potential to replace? And I'm not even going to try and pretend that I know what MRF is, but I don't know what the MRF stands for. Is that machine? Materials Recovery Facility. Materials Recovery Facility. Why is there an A? We don't know. It's MRF. We're just throwing the A thing there, so it's an acronym. I'm like a two-year-old sometimes. All right, MRF. So I understand the technology. I understand how it works. Is there potential for using that magnum as an example for this to either replace or take some of the load off of the traditional mechanical recycling, which is MRF? I think the intention is definitely to take some of the load off, at least as it scales up. Now, 50 years from now or 100 years from now, maybe that's different. But right now, it's definitely meant as a complementary technology because there's some things that mechanical recycling can do quite well. So why don't break what's not broken? So it's not an A or it's kind of what I was talking about. It would be supplemental. I could imagine a MRF or the future having an arm that was doing mechanical and an arm that was doing advanced recycling or within a given municipality, you could have both with the different materials following the streams. But right now, in terms of it scaling up, it's definitely complementary in nature. So with it being complementary for people that are attempting to do this now or is it more of a, boy, this is a great goal to have? I think it's both. There are some companies that are using molecularly recycled plastics at the moment, like Magnum. There are some technologies that are still at a stage where they're not available or they're not at scale. But there are definitely examples in the market. Another one is also done by Sabik and it's with Mars. It's their Shiba cat food pouches. And this is an interesting application because, well, it's food contact safe. But it also can withstand the high heat of the retort process. So they really made a huge step in that regard and it uses mixed waste. So you can use all kinds of plastic packaging to create, through pyrolysis, the building blacks for new plastics. So I think you kind of answered this, but is it just one way to do this, break all of this down, or is there multiple ways to go there? No, there's a lot of ways to skin this cat, molecularly skin it. So just to go off, I mean, there's like a list. So I mean, we just met a cat and now we're harming a cat that we love cats. We have no problem with cats. It's shooting your cat. So I mean, they can use things like enzymes and microorganisms to basically break down. Solvents are used frequently. You mentioned pyrolysis, so heat can be used. There's a term, flash jewel heating is one. But they all kind of ladder up into three major categories. And one of those is purification. One is depolymerization and one is convergence. Those are the three primary ones. We're seeing probably the most early legs with depolymerization just in terms of numbers of cases. I know another big one is Eastman does a version of this. And they work with Procter and Gamble on herbal essences. So that's a pretty big branch on a bottle that is entirely made from molecularly recycled depolymerized PET. So again, I don't know if that was coming from. I don't know if the feed stock was there. I don't know if that was PET to PET, for instance, or it could have been anything. But regardless, the end product looks identical to the existing bottle and functions the same as well. That's one example. I know there's a Korean cosmetics prestige brand that I cannot name because I would butcher the pronunciation of it. And a Terry Korean, as of yet. As of yet, I'll work on it. But that's another, Amor Pacific is the brand owner, at least, and that's another Eastman category. Honeywell has a few of its own. There's one technology, and I can't recall which of the three main categories it falls under, but they use enzymes to recycle these materials. And one very interesting application that I talked about recently or wrote about was one with a company called Lanza Tech. And they worked with L'Oreal on a prototype bottle for a personal care product, where they're actually capturing the emissions from a steel mill and using enzymes to then create, they call it a trash to treasure process, where they turn that carbon waste into new products using a biological process. So that to me is fascinating. It's still just a prototype, but they are working on other applications that are in market now. Lanza Tech, that is not L'Oreal. Although L'Oreal is working on other things as well. So I get, and we kind of touched on this with the food grade earlier, but those are a bunch of personal care. So it sounds like, OK, we can get this in products that you're going to use on your hair, on your skin, things like that. Are there any other examples of ones that we can use? We know food is the biggest thing that's packaged at least in our, that we deal with food and beverage. Are there other examples of where it's making its way through contact type packaging, besides the Magnum and the Cat Food that you mentioned earlier? There is one that uses solvents. And this is Emmy in Europe. They do a ready to drink coffee product, chilled coffee product. And they're working with another company called Borealis to create the cups out of chemically recycled plastic. And they're just using 30% chemically recycled plastic. And their hope is to increase that amount as time goes on. So yes, it's another. People are starting to delve into it a little bit more. Are there other technologies or emergencies in this space that are out there, or is this kind of the top of the tip of the iceberg? Yeah, is this the tip of the iceberg? And there's more coming, or you guys know what I'm trying to say. I think as far as we know, it's just those three major classifications. And everything is done slightly differently. And it depends on the input, what the output is going to be, and different methodologies. Like we mentioned, chemical solvents and so on might be one side of things that would be really purifying of the existing plastic, whereas others might be using enzymes or microorganisms to eat away at them and then what's on the other side is then those original building blocks. So there's a lot of different ways to do it. But as far as I know, it's all within those three channels. There is one technology, and it does fall under these three categories. And I think it falls under conversion. But it's a technology that's really being touted by Professor Bruce Welth at University of Florida. It's called regenerative. Gasification. Regenerative, robust gasification. And that's kind of like the holy grail. It can take any plastic. And every output of that process can be used for something, perhaps not packaging, but for other applications. And what results from this process is called pyrolysis oil. And any kind of plastic that you want to create for packaging will be able to be made from this process. And he's now working with the Flexible Packaging Association to do trial runs at the University of Florida to kind of see they're doing it by ton of waste to see what the output is. So that's what we say every aspect. We're talking like it's every emission that comes from breaking it down, it being broken down. Like everything, like this bag is going to be completely repurposed into something else is basically what you're saying. Yes. And that's what the good doctor is working on. Yes. Meanwhile, I mentioned Honeywell earlier. Honeywell's another one, again, falling within these three categories. But instead of going strictly with the pyrolysis route, they do some of that, some of what they use. Different chemical and solvent ways about it, they call it upcycling, which is it's the accurate term. Because again, it could be garbage in that you get virgin PET or virgin material auto. And that virgin material is sensibly the same. I mean, it is virgin material. And they've got a new plant that's actually opening in Spain coming soon. So you're seeing definitely some early adopters getting on both from the brand side and from the provider side, supplier side. Do you guys think, and again, this is opinion, not a fact. This is something that will continue to roll out slowly, or do you think it will be something where it falls over the edge once it kind of catches on? Or is it something we're probably going to continue to see sort of slow rollouts of? I believe the rollouts will be slow because it requires such a huge investment for these chemical recycling plants or molecular recycling plants. So I think there is a lot of energy going into R&D, a lot of pilots, but it'll take time for these to scale up. But I think it's the future. I think it definitely has legs and it's something we'll see more of. That's awesome. Think about all these brands that have, they're scrambling to get to meet their 2025, 2030 goals and so on. This is just another tool in the toolbox when these facilities all come online. And think about the pressure it could take off of things like films and so on, that right now it's a great program to score drop-off. But what if you don't have to do that? What if that responsibility that's currently on the consumer is removed because everything goes into, let's say, mixed waste and it can be chemically recycled or... Get my terminology right. It can be molecularly recycled into something that would be equivalent to virgin. So a lot of the owner shifts there and there's a lot of reasons, a lot of very interesting parties and stakeholders that could greatly benefit from that. And I would think it would also make it easier for the consumer, which is gonna kick off all these recycling to begin with, to have one way to be able to do that. So that's a good way to kind of put a button on this discussion of, was it advanced molecular and what was... Chemical? Chemical, advanced chemical molecular recycling. So once again, thank you, Anne-Marie. Thank you, Matt and I. Sure, all the listeners at home that we love cats. We love Pete. We're very pro-cat here. And though cats are skinned, they're harmed in the making of this podcast.