Plastic. Climate. Future.

"If we have biodegradable and naturally-sourced plastics, why are we still struggling with plastic waste?” Join our discussion with Brad Rodgers, the Vice President of Danimer Scientific. Danimer Scientific is a biotechnology company that works towards transitioning fossil-based plastics to biopolymers, particularly, specializing in PHA-based materials. Biopolymers, such as polyhydroxyalkanoates (...

On our first 2023 episode, we invited 2 experts, Mesbah Sabur and Phil Brown from Circularise. We had an inspiring discussion about supply chain, product traceability, transparency and collaboration between companies. Importantly, we dived deep into the talk about industrial challenges, and how Circularise helps to solve this problem through its blockchain technology. Check out more about Circular...

Literally one day before Christmas, we came together as the entire team, meaning Saskia, John and Mat, to give some quick thoughts about the best and most interesting episodes of 2022. We also prepared our wishlist of topics and guests for next year and... Yes, we actually managed to get three of our former guests from previous episodes to conclude this year with us. Kidus Asfaw told us how Kubik...

 Jason Robinson is a chemical engineer, born innovator and technology lover, who has been involved in the climate-tech field ever since his early career. He is also the CEO of Evoco, a cleantech innovation company based in Canada, that produces plant-based chemistry to replace petrol-based chemistry. The company's mission focuses on closing the carbon cycle in the most natural way, not only b...

Merijn Tinga - also known as the "Plastic Soup Surfer", is a biologist, former teacher, surfer and activist from the Netherlands. He turned his passion for surfing into a strong voice for a more sustainable future with plastics. To make his point he started building surfboards from plastic waste and surfed them throughout the many trips that lead him to drive systemic change. Find out more about T...

On the 13-14th of October, for the first time the entire PCF Team attended the Annual Conference of Chemical Recycling Europe (CRE), which was focusing on the Circular Economy and how to achieve circularity with plastics. In this episode, we interviewed some of the guests: Maëlys Makotta from EuPC; Jasper Munier from Clariter; Jan Hommen and Laszlo Szekely from TOMRA; Phil Brown from Circularise;...

Despite known for having a “bad” reputation in society, plastic is and will continue being part of our daily lives and economy. Hence, it is important to find sustainable strategies for avoiding the negative consequences and still being able to profit from the benefits of plastics. In this podcast episode, we had the amazing opportunity to speak to Virginia Janssens who is the managing director of...

Have you wondered how to recycle dirty plastic packaging? Meet Samantha, an aspiring organic chemist who is also the co-founder of a start-up company that depolymerizes plastics, DePoly. Together with two other PhD students, they combined their different expertise to develop sustainable and simple solutions for PET recycling. We also talked about chemical recycling, the current bottlenecks, and ho...

Have you thought of converting plastic waste into affordable building materials? In this podcast, we invited Kidus, the CEO and Co-founder of a Nairobi-Based start-up that creates building materials from plastic, KUBIK, Inc. As a son of Ethiopia, Kidus tells us how his memorable childhood experiences got slowly disrupted by the adverse effects of urbanization, which motivated him to act and look i...

Imagine yourself launching a biobased plastic start-up company by starting the experiment from your own kitchen, isn’t it cool? Jessica Farda is the co-founder of Noriware. Her fascination for algae-based materials was born when she went to Mexico for vacation and saw a lot of algae on the beach. Then, it develops into an idea to create an algae-based packaging material and made her learn about it...

They saw the plastic waste in the Jordanian sea increasing, and did not only stay silent.. In this episode, we have our first guest from the Middle East, Beisan AlSharif. Beisan is a marine enthusiast with a passion for diving and the environment. During the pandemic, she found a traumatizing amount of waste underwater caused by the skyrocketing plastic usage. This then led her to co-found Project...