‘Planet vs. Plastics’: You don’t have to be a climate scientist to make a meaningful difference

Growing up in Silicon Valley as the son of an entrepreneur, my brother, Desi, and I always had the entrepreneurial bug. As we were thinking up our first startup idea, it was our father, Dado, who gave us the advice I’ll never forget: “No matter what idea you pursue, make sure you contribute something meaningful back to your industry.” 

Desi and I made a conscious choice that no matter whether we were successful or not, we would always feel good about ourselves if we dedicated our time and resources toward making things better for people and the planet. Eventually, we pivoted our ideas into what would become our first company, Entropy Resins, which develops high-performance, lower-carbon, bio-based thermoset plastics for some of the most well known consumer and industrial products in the world.

As we helped companies to make better choices around materials, we began to realize that all this stuff was piling up at the end of its usable life. Along the way, we met Dr. Stefan Pastine, who showed us a new chemistry he was working on that could make all the materials we were selling recyclable for the first time. Fast forward seven years: Our second venture, Connora Technologies, was acquired by Aditya Birla Chemicals, and we’d developed the material for the world's first recyclable windmill blade.

On my sustainable materials journey, I learned about the world’s plastic packaging waste problem, and the massively negative impact it has on the environment, ecosystems, and society. And in most places like the Philippines, where my family is from, there continues to be limited solutions for recycling, while the plastic keeps piling up in landfills or leaking into waterways and the oceans. 

The fact that 99 percent of all plastics come from petroleum only makes matters worse. And considering waste often ends up in the Global South, it’s not only an environmental problem, but also a matter of social justice. I realized that as a materials scientist, instead of focusing on making new materials, I’d have a bigger impact figuring out what to do with all the materials the world has already made. So when by chance I met the folks at X, the moonshot factory, I knew that I’d found a place where like-minded, mission oriented people could help me launch my next moonshot. 

At X, we’re working on accelerating the circular economy for all materials. Our goal is to radically reduce global waste, starting with plastics. The theme of Earth Day this year is “Planet vs. Plastics,” a poignant global reminder of the scale of this challenge and its impact on every facet of society. 

It will take a village to solve this problem. There is no one solution, intervention, or even moonshot that can take it on alone. We must collaborate more closely with one another as we develop solutions. At X, we partner very early on with industry and academia in our moonshot explorations. Last year, with our partners at Berkeley Lab, we published some progress toward new, more futuristic approaches to tackling mixed, unsorted, and contaminated plastic waste, and then upgrading it to become more bio-based.

You don’t have to be a scientist to help combat this problem, even if it feels a whole lot bigger than one single person’s actions. While it may not feel like it, sometimes the simplest things help ease the friction. Buy less plastic and reuse more, but also recognize that plastic is an important performance material that’s essential to keeping our food safe, healthy, and economical. So get educated about your local recycling rules, and if you don’t have recycling in your community, think about what you can do to advocate for it. 

It might even be as simple as picking up trash from the ground when you see it. I’m excited to share that members of my team and I will be rolling up our sleeves and cleaning up ocean plastics that have traveled across the globe and accumulated on the shores of remote Alaska, led by the Ocean Plastics Recovery Project (OPR), a NOAA funded initiative. OPR will then be working on recycling those ocean plastics into new products.

I encourage you to make a choice to help the planet versus plastics in your own way. Happy Earth Day!