Composite plastics from waste

I regularly find incredible surprises through social media. People doing great work, sharing, helping out.

One such surprise was Cibele Oliveira, from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. She got in touch in response to my scoop.it magazine, alerting me to work she has done on the manufacture of composite plastics using a mix of plastic and organic materials. Composite plastics are not particularly new.

The work that Cibele drew my attention to was the production of these composite plastics using a mix of plastics sorted from Municipal Solid Waste and bagasse. A paper presenting her work is contained in a book containing prize winning research into sustainable cities (pdf - go to page 166).

Since the work is published in Portugese, I did a rough and ready translation using Google Translate so that I could get a sense of what the work was about. Of course, any poor writing is entirely my fault, and I invite readers to offer corrections where necessary.

The thrust of the work is that composite materials were able to be manufactured from a blend of waste plastic and bagasse, without affecting too many of the mechanical strength properties. However, the rigidity and thermal stability are considerably affected, a thermal anti-oxidant would need to be used if the recycling composites were to be used in applications where thermal stability is important.

Bagasse reinforced composite plastics, in the proportion of 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% and 25% bagasse 

It is important work, and has many echos of the work being done by Waste for Life, a group that describes itself as:

Waste for Life is a loosely joined network of scientists, engineers, educators, architects, artists, designers, and cooperatives working together to develop poverty-reducing solutions to specific environmental problems. We use scientific knowledge and low-threshold/high-impact technologies to add value to resources that are commonly considered harmful or without worth, but are often the source of livelihood for society’s poorest members. Our twin goals are to reduce the damaging environmental impact of non-recycled plastic waste products and to promote self-sufficiency and economic security for at-risk populations who depend upon waste to survive.

We, ourselves, are not interested in profit, but are keen to disseminate a technology that upgrades waste plastic and natural fibers into composite materials for use in domestic products and building materials.

This is all really interesting work. To be able to take plastics of no value in MSW and make it into useful products, whilst at the same time assisting to resolve poverty, is an impressive undertaking. It is pure entrepreneurship, with very limited safety net in the event that it fails.

So thanks Cibele, and thanks to the contacts at Waste for Life who I've dealt with in the past.

Attempting a map of the future of waste

A previous post described my first taste of futurism through the use of scenarios. That has coincided with some interesting discussions with Eric Garland and Hildy Gottlieb, interesting readings, including Eric's books and a paper "Strengthening Environmental Foresight: Potential Contributions of Futures Research", and interesting further connections to explore.

What this has given me is food for thought on how to think about the future. One approach is to project forward from today, including thinking about the possibility of disruptive events. The other is to look at the future you want to create and reverse engineer your way back to what needs to happen to get to that future. These approaches are probably unfairly opposed. I associate them with Eric and Hildy respectively. Not because Eric or Hildy is a strong exemplar of either (though they may be), but simply because I know of the approaches through them.

Today I want to think about the approach represented by Eric. Actually, I want to set the groundwork for some further thinking to be done in a subsequent post.

Eric's book Future, Inc sets out a methodology for thinking about the future. It is systematic, first starting with:

Data

The first step is to understand the system, its key components. Knowing the system, you can then look at trends (qualitative) that might affect system components, and attempt to put numbers around them to form forecasts (quantitative). This is important stuff, and seeks to narrow questions (forecasts) down to a sufficiently narrow base such that they can be answered.

Implications

Having the data, it then needs to be explored for implications. Two approaches are suggested:

• A "futures wheel", where a single change can be fanned out into primary, secondary and tertiary implications. The example from Eric's book is below:

Futures wheel, page 93 of Future, Inc by Eric Garland.

• A "cross-impact analysis". This is a pretty straightfoward analysis that enables separate trends to be systematically analysed to see how they might interact upon combination.

Scenarios

So all of the above gathers information that is likely to be interesting but boring. And thus useless. Sure, it will capture some compelling factors to consider, but it will be abstract. This is overcome by developing scenarios.

Scenarios are stories we tell about a point of time in the future, preferably at least 5-10 years in the future to escape the orbit of here and now. The stories are not to be likely (as Herman Kahn put it, "the most likely future isn't"), but instead are to be plausible enough to think through what they mean. The stories are also close to home, even prosaic. So it might be "how does a typical family have breakfast in 2020", or "what is the headline of your local paper's 'Year in Review' edition for 2020". By using a story and making it local, you cut through the fog of abstraction and come down to something that people can relate to.

Eric suggests more than one, and preferably four scenarios, for presentation and discussion. Having only two leads to people polarising to one or the other, three permits people to select for a "middle ground" between two apparent extremes, and more than four starts to become too confusing. Four is just right.

The interesting bit comes from the scenarios. They are used (and here I shift in focus from Eric Garland to Nicholas Nassim Taleb) to understand where you are vulnerable to black swans, or low probability, high impact events. You work out how to position yourself, your business, such that these events do not kill you, and ideally you are strengthened through them. That is NOT the same is predicting the events. That would be impossible.

Applying this to the future of waste

For today I won't track right through this process. Waste is complex. Or at least, it seems complex to me having spent a fair bit of time within the industry. So to start, I've done a dump of components of the waste system  into Freemind. It's copied below as a picture, and you can get the Freemind version here. I welcome you to look and play.

Systems map for waste. Find the Freemind version here

From here, I want to explore this system through to understanding trends, forecasts and implications such that I can prepare four (4) scenarios. And then explore how to become antifragile. Of course, my analysis won't be right. It will need significant improvement. But the point is to do the exercise and see what comes of it. To learn through trying.

Building a business - the story continues

In the time since my "Moving from working a job to building a business" post a few weeks back, I've been through a few ups and downs. My day job (CEO of a metropolitan council grouping looking after waste management, called somewhat misleadingly a "regional council") continues to cross over into Garbologie. Moods go up, they come down, they go bleak, exultant, then bored. I think I know what I'm doing, then I realise I never will, and finally acccept I know enough.

It's no tougher than what anybody else goes through.

The sideswipe

A few days after the post, I was summonsed along with all other metro Council CEOs and Mayors/Presidents to a presentation by the Premier of Western Australia of the findings of a Metropolitan Local Government Review. To cut a long story short, we learned that the 30-odd Councils in Perth are recommended to become 12. All of the Councils in my regional council become one, making my job redundant. And, in case you missed it with that recommendation, the review explicitly recommends that all metropolitan regional councils be dissolved. But because this is in fact a long story, there is consultation through until 5 April 2013. Almost 6 months!

Now this shouldn't really bother me. I'd already decided that I wouldn't be renewing my contract at the end of May 2013. I'd crossed the Rubicon, telling Council of my decision. But in thinking this through for the regional council, I'd satisfied myself that a new CEO would be good for the organisation, taking it to new levels. The news shattered that hope for the future, wiping out the work over the past 2.5 years to build the organisation.

Side-swiped! From the AFL. Source: The Age

It also brought out a sense of greed. To recruit a CEO for the role, the council will need to offer a pretty attractive early termination bonus in the event that the organisation is wound up. Six months is not uncommon. "Why?", I thought, "should some schmuck come in to the place I've worked so hard to develop and walk away with the loot? Why can't I have that? It sure would come in handy when I'm trying to get Garbologie off the ground.

I'll be honest. Having the prospect of $50,000 (perhaps) of free money is very tempting, with the only catch being that I have to put my plans on hold a little. The devil couldn't do better.

The yawning abyss

On the weekend after learning that my organisation will be dissolved, I looked at a potential property for Tip/Shop. It was pretty grim, and the area the sort of place I'd rather not be. Seriously. It had a bad vibe, and I tend to listen to those vibes. So I didn't take it any further with that particular place. The challenge is, for the business to work it needs to be in the general area that I looked at. Fortunately there are places that are nice, but they are very hard to come across.

So I faced the abyss. My core selling proposition, a location that is the most convenient offering for a large population, might not be possible to find. Certainly not easy to find leasehold, and I don't have the capital to buy it myself. About $2m for a suitable site. My piggy-bank comes nowhere near this.

The yawning abyss. From Star Wars. Source: Kahri Sampson blog

The bridge

It was not all bad. A meeting with our mortgage broker (we are looking to borrow against our house to finance part of the business) drew really strong affirmations of the business idea from him, and a strong belief that he can find investors prepared to invest in the business.

So we're back to happiness. That parcel of land may not be inaccessible after all. Structure a business such that there is a separate entity owning the land, with most of the funds coming from investors and the entity paid a standard lease. Garbologie is then financed as a straight business, preferably with me holding 70%.

The bridge. Sydney Harbour Bridge from Sydney Showcase

So the bridge and the belief worked wonders.

The fog

The joy of believing that you have a business after all doesn't last a long time. If you're lucky it survives a day. In this case, I got myself all befuddled with thinking about a swirl of futures. Part of that was prompted by my reading a whole heap of really interesting books. Most was brought on by a "future scenarios" session I did in at Spacecubed. I was the faux client for an international consulting firm, and the exercise was intended to train management consultants in how to use the tool. The upshot for me was despair about the challenges ahead, and amazement at the use of future thinking.

The fog. London 1952. Source: Another Nickel in the Machine

The despair has now dissipated, but the amazement has grown. The fog remains. I think I attempt too much, am getting ahead of myself, will find my way back home if I follow the hazy outlines of features I know well. The business. The core offering. The trajectory it is to follow. The rest can come later.

The light

Finally, after the crazy ups and downs, a light.

In my day job, we learn of a project (not generally known) being done by a consultant for the Department of Environment and Conservation to learn what happens to mattresses in Perth, and the barriers to recycling them through the sole recycling plant at Hazelmere. DEC only starts this sort of a study if it is thinking about intervening. The word is that it will contribute to the cost of recycling so that more mattresses are recycled.

Now I'll withhold my opinion on the merits of the subsidy, and merely state that mattress recycling is a core part of what I intend to do. The timing is about right - I should be up and running in time to be in the way of some of the river of money pouring out the DEC.

And so a light. The core offering is fine. Not that I want to be reliant on the Government for my business to be viable, but it will help get the business off the ground.

The light. Source: cFranklinPhotos, Flickr

The light is further strengthened by Eric Garland quoting Clayton Christensen:

First, innovators peel off your least profitable business, increasing your operating profit and making you feel like you got rid of your worst business and that it is not a big deal. Now the smaller competitor is financed, hungry, and ready to go after even more business, perhaps changing the market dynamic for good. The incumbent is left being gnawed at by a ravenous mob of innovators, like some poor wildebeest beset by a pack of hyenas on the Discovery Channel.

And that is me. Or at least, where I want to be. I am taking on the least profitable business of the current waste operators because I know I can do it better and I also know that they won't chase me. They may even help me take it off their hands. After then, well, that's when it gets bloody. I had decided this before reading Eric or Clayton, and so having it affirmed is tremendously empowering. A light beaming through the fog.

Reducing the cost of failure in waste innovation

In my last post "How to drive innovation in waste", I wrote about a foment of ideas being critical to innovation proceeding. From this foment, good ideas emerge and can then be developed.

Having written it, this model of innovation troubles me a little. Not because it doesn't work, but because it glides straight over something really important - and that is how to select ideas. But first, let me go back a step or two.

Publish then filter

I've been reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky lately, and the key point that sticks in my mind is the notion of "publish, then filter". Rather than filtering before publishing, the social model for innovation is to publish first, then let something like natural selection filter.

Now this model works where the cost of publishing is very low. It simply happens because it is cheaper (time, money, whatever) to publish than it is to evaluate. In fact, it is so cheap to publish that you can use the audience to filter for you.

Now how might you run a similar model in a waste processing business? Keep in mind that my aspiration for Garbologie is to make waste redundant. Everything becomes reincorporated into the productive economy rather than being siphoned off into large and growing waste streams at landfill, incineration or whatever.

Top-down and bottom-up

Attempting this through centralised data leads to a particular type of top-down approach. That approach is governed by thinking at a scale it can conceive of (large infrastructure), and is motivated by a drive to achieve targets whilst minimising environmental impacts. If you are in the business for long enough, this seems the only way to proceed.

Top down view, Empire State Building. Source: notmyholiday.com

Frankly, having been in the business for a while, this approach is paralysing and stupefying. It's paralysing because it requires massive capital investment, and this investment means that you have to be right. And stupefying because the only way to be right in waste is to go for the broadest, least value adding base.

My thinking is to attempt a bottom-up solution. It would seek to carve out particular materials from the waste stream and reprocess them. It would, necessarily, be formed of a network of loosely connected operations. Businesses even.

Bottom up view, Empire State Building. Source: Aquirkyblog.com

The challenge in bottom-up

The trouble is, how do you identify the materials to be carved out? And what is there to do with them? In building and sharing a scoop.it resource regarding innovation in waste management ("The Future of Waste"), I've come to realise that there is little shortage of ideas for processing a whole slew of materials.

There is no simple source of data that shows how much of a particular material is in the waste stream, and certainly nothing sufficiently fine-grained to enable decision making. There is no way to get help that isn't mediated by the same professionals who are locked into a "bigger is better" mindset. And the costs of failure are large - to test something you have to build it and hope they come.

So to me, the challenge is threefold:

1. Collect data. Lots of it, cutting across the problem on a range of different angle, and making that data as publicly available as possible
2. Be guided by the wisdom of non experts seeing the data with fresh eyes
3. Make the cost of failure low so that ideas can be attempted easily

My proposed solution

To me, many of the challenges are well on their way to being resolved by starting a business that is both broad and shallow. I have decided to do this through Tip/Shop, a site that is both: 

1. A customer oriented waste facility, clean, friendly and utterly focused on recycling as much as possible. As far as the customer is concerned, this is a place that is nice to visit, nothing like a waste facility; and
2. A test bed and incubator, gathering data on the materials coming in, seeking opinions from staff and customers on which materials could be next processes, and testing out micro-scale ventures to process them/

By having a steady stream of materials coming through, and by having sufficient space to undertake small scale trials, you can tinker until something works. That then develops into its own business, perhaps moves away to develop on its own trajectory. 

If you could do this as a myriad of employee centred ventures, each given support to come up with something that might eventually work and they can own a piece of, then you've created a business that is porous, interconnected and retains that "surface area" of a lot of people testing a lot of ideas on the ground. 

So this is how I propose to reduce the cost of failure in innovation. Provide a space where there is plenty of opportunity, and where experiments can be run regularly and easily. Make those experiments deeply personal to the people running them, and you might, just might, reduce the cost of failure.