Engineering Our Way Out of Single-Use Plastics: Troy Swope and the Footprint Story

Troy Swope: [00:00:00] If you're gonna take this journey, you have to be 100% sold on the journey. If you have a plan B, you can guarantee you will be in your plan B it's gotta be there's plan a and it's plan a, B and C D E E, and F it's all that plan. If you have a backup plan, if you're entrepreneurial strategy fails, you're gonna fail.

You gotta be all in because if you have one foot or even a pinky toe out the door, You're not gonna succeed.

Paul Shapiro: Welcome to the business for good podcast to show where we spotlight companies, making money by making the world a better place. I'm your host, Paul Shapiro. And if you share a passion for using commerce to solve many of the world's most pressing problems, then this is the show for you.

Hello, friends and welcome to the 82nd episode of the business for good podcast. Before we get onto this episode, I want to thank those of you who offered feedback on our last episode with Doug Evans of Jero. Some of you wrote in just to say that Doug's now got you on the sprouting train while others said you [00:01:00] were inspired by his perseverance, even in the face of such trying circumstances in his life.

I know I certainly feel that way for sure, myself, on both of those counts. So if you didn't get listened to episode 81 with Doug Evans, I do recommend going back and checking it out. Now, as you know, you can get a shout out on this show. If you leave a review on apple podcast for us, for the business for good podcast.

So let me say thanks to Hector for writing in and with a review. Hector says, quote, every time I tune in this is a really good show. It's how everything is put together from subject matter and how it's put together show to show. It's really great. Really re. Well, thank you, Hector. And to the rest of you, please feel free to leave your own apple review too.

It will be much appreciated now on to episode 82, you know, when you get a food product and instead of plastic it's in one of those biodegradable bowls or trays, have you ever wondered how they do that? I mean, the bowl needs to repel oil and water from its surface without getting soggy, but it still needs to be actually [00:02:00] biodegradable seems impossible.

Well, it turns out that this feat isn't only a great technological in. That helps to reduce plastics, especially single use plastics. It's also a great business as Troy SW has now proven sometimes life just doesn't unfold in the ways that you expect it will. It certainly didn't for Troy who spent 15 years making semiconductors for Intel as an engineer.

Only to become obsessed with making biodegradable packaging. Troy calls himself an accidental environmentalist, but his journey has been far more methodical than accidental. After weaving Intel, he founded footprint, a B2B company seeking to help other companies move away from single use plastics.

Founded in 2014, the company grew from humble roots to now having 4,000 employees, 50 million in annual revenue and production facilities around the world beyond meat uses their biodegradable trays for its sausage lengths. ConAgra uses them for its healthy choice line of frozen dinners and sweet green uses them for their fast casual salad offerings.[00:03:00]

With all of the success the company is seeking now to go public later in 2022, reportedly with evaluation of 1.6 billion, it's quite a story. And one that proves that some of human's most pressing problems like plastic pollution may just be some of our best business opportunities too. I hope you enjoy Troy SWS story.

As much as I did Troy, welcome to the business for good podcast.

Troy Swope: Paul Paul, thanks for having me.

Paul Shapiro: Hey, it is awesome to be talking with you. I'm really looking forward to it. You know, I learned about you because I was talking with my wife about our beyond meat sausages, and I said, you know, it's pretty cool that they have this tray in here that isn't plastic.

And I didn't know what it was made out of. And I thought, what is this? Um, it seemed pretty interesting. And so I started Googling around to see what their plastic alternative, what that tray is made out. And indeed it's made by you. And that led me down this whole rabbit hole to see more about footprint.

And I was so impressed that I just [00:04:00] knew we had to get you on the show and talk to you. So first congrats on being associated and, and providing a product for beyond meat. That's pretty awesome.

Troy Swope: Thank you very much. Yeah, we're very proud of that. We're very proud of beyond meat. Very, very proud of all our customers, frankly.

Indeed.

Paul Shapiro: Well, I wanna get there, but before we do, you've been at this now with this company for about seven years or so maybe a little bit. But you were not always the guy who made trays and bowls and cups. You were one time working as an engineer at Intel. So what made you think, you know, doing semiconductors?

I should start

Troy Swope: making bowls. Well, it's kind of an interesting story and frankly, and I, I think I trademarked this or if I have an I, I will, I'm an accidental environmentalist, Paul. So when I was working at Intel, I worked in R and D for 15 years, sort of our co-founder Yung. In the last eight years at Intel, I ran a materials organization.

And one of the projects we were working on was actually Intel's products was getting contaminated in shipping. And what we found out is actually plastic through plastic [00:05:00] outgassing. So the best way to describe outgassing is your new car smell. When you open up a new car and you smell that that's all plastics and glues, and maybe even leathers that are out gassing.

And some of it couldn't be in, in high levels, toxic. What we're finding is very short shipment time from Japan to Intel's facilities across the globe, we are getting contamination and then Intel would have to clean the product, clean this contamination off. And as we are investigating that contamination, we, you know, we're going well, man, everything in the supermarkets and plastic is there the same PHS and fallates, and this contamination on food.

So I know it's a pretty, probably a pretty big no-no, but, uh, we started taking food product into Intel's lab in Santa Clara, California. And just saying, Hey, can you test this to see on these pineapple Spears or this macaroni cheese, or is there contamination? And the, the data was alarming and this was 2004, 2005 timeframe.

Paul Shapiro: So you're still at Intel when you're taking pineapple Spears

Troy Swope: into the web. I mean, [00:06:00] just a curious engineer and going, you know, is there the same contamination in lo and Boulder? There is, and there's great data that came out rolling stone, came out with an article, I think in 2019 that says we eat a credit cards worth of plastic a week.

And then Bloomberg, I think this year, this last year in 2021 came out and kind of validated that, yeah, we're eating about five to six grams of, of plastic a week. And then through a lot of it is most of it through plastic out gassing and contamination. Is it stores your food? It's leeching onto your food, and then you ultimately eat it.

And as a father and the father of, of four, I just couldn't get over it. And so I started grabbing really smart people in Intel and said, Hey, we gotta go develop a technology that eliminates plastic and gets plastic away from food. And there's some key indicators you're gonna pull somebody from Intel, a really good engineer or scientist from Intel one.

The challenge has gotta be really. It's gotta be a really big opportunity, right? Intel thought and massive billions of, you know, dollars or billions of units. And it had to be a real compelling, [00:07:00] you know, story and, and a win for the environment, uh, to get people to leave Intel. And we were fortunate enough to, we were able to rally up a good crew of engineers and scientists that took a completely fresh approach.

The problem and said, okay, let's go to develop an alternative. So

Paul Shapiro: Troy, were you viewed negatively then by your colleagues at Intel? I mean, you're basically sitting there saying, I need to go figure out some way to poach other Intel people to leave the company. How was that viewed?

Troy Swope: You know, I'm sure that there's probably some people that viewed it negatively, frankly, Intel in the nineties in early two thousands had so much talent and I was fortunate enough to, I was recently at a summit for Goldman Sachs in the bay area.

And I actually ran into other former Intel engineers and scientists that own their own companies and were doing some amazing things. And we started talking about it and we're just going, Intel just had so much talent in the late nineties, early two thousands that they didn't know what to do with all that talent.

And so I think of in Intel, more of a, a university or college in that timeframe that taught all these [00:08:00] people. How to design of experiments, how to innovate, how to innovate quickly, how to fail, how to learn from failure and gave us a great launching pad to go have huge impact on earth. I am so thankful for Intel in that environment and the unbelievably talented, very smart people that surrounded me every day really is where I grew up.

And, and did you have

Paul Shapiro: entrepreneurial experience? Prior to starting this company, or were you just working on semiconductors and you thought in addition to engineering, some pretty cool plastic alternatives. I think I'll also be a CEO.

Troy Swope: Well, based on your podcast, you, I think, you know, this, that entrepreneurs that's in their blood.

And so regardless of what your journey is, it never quite leaves you. Right? So I think I always had this itch inside of me that I wanted to tackle problem, give back and control my own destiny. And I think that's. The real thing about entrepreneurs and great entrepreneurs is that they want to be in control of their own destiny.

And I wanted to have greater control of my own destiny, and I wanted to [00:09:00] have a, a huge impact on the planet. I was so proud of the work that we did at Intel, especially in the nineties. And, but I wanted to go out and create my own team, my own product. And once I saw what we could do for the planet, and we were really premature before everybody else saw the issues.

But once I saw that this was gonna be a huge human health crisis, forget pollution. This is a human health crisis. I just couldn't let go of the opportunity.

Paul Shapiro: So you saw an opportunity, you saw an opportunity, not only to start a business, but to do good in the world through that business, but where'd you get the money for this?

I mean, you're talking about bringing on really great talent from Intel. That's not cheap. Did you self fund this? Did you go to VCs? Like how did you actually get this thing started?

Troy Swope: We built the business plan. And then we went out and just started selling and said, Hey, this is what we're gonna do. And we had a brief stop where we had a, a material supplier at Intel that kind of was a distributor and we pitched it to them.

They liked the idea and we, we started it there. And we had a lot of success, [00:10:00] but we were replacing plastic packaging for consumer electronics guys. We knew like apple, HP, Dell, but the vision never aligned with that company. So we, we knew we needed to get into food and we had to build manufacturing nearshore.

So ultimately we, we separated ties and there's a key learning for your entrepreneurs that are listening. I took the first money I could get when we left and that was the bad decision. So we left that brief stop as a company called Unisource global. So. We met the founders of sprouts or the founder of sprouts, Kevin Eastler, sprout supermarkets, and Kevin had just taken sprouts public and had a vision similar to ours that, you know, as he was, you know, built this healthy supermarket chain wildly successful, he always knew plastic was a problem.

And the waste of plastic was a problem and it contradicted what he was trying to deliver to his customers. So when we met him, it was a match made in heaven. It's probably who I should have started with, you know, key learning as an entrepreneur. And so he was our first funding and funded us for a great deal of [00:11:00] time for the first five years of the business.

So

Paul Shapiro: all of your money came from one person for five years.

Troy Swope: He started a family office called Z infinity capital. But yeah, first five years all came from Kevin.

Paul Shapiro: So a very small cap table for five years there. Correct.

Troy Swope: We spent a good fair amount of money, not

Paul Shapiro: small amount of dollars, but a small cap, small number of, uh,

Troy Swope: correct.

Yeah, it, it was Kevin and, and me and my co-founder for quite some time.

Paul Shapiro: Wow. So what were you doing? Like, you know, so he's funding this thing, but then you have to actually figure out how to make bowls and cups that are both gonna be suitable for food production and food storage, but are gonna be biodegradable.

What were you doing? Like, were you testing a lot of different materials? Like what was the actual process of creating your prototype here? We

Troy Swope: were failing a lot. Right. But like I said, you know, Intel taught us how to fail. So we found a customer in ConAgra, which is, you know, healthy choice, power bowls, frontier brands, PF chains in a phenomenal leadership team, unbelievable leadership team.

In in fact, today I'm still amazed by how much talent they [00:12:00] have in their company. They had a vision early on before, you know, a lot of other companies do today when we're seeing a lot of customers now clearly have a vision to eliminate plastic, but ConAgra saw it early and they saw that in the frozen food section that millennials and gym Zs, weren't gonna microwave plastic.

And this was a real concern for them and, and they dominate the frozen food space. And so we heard them speaking at a conference many, many years ago. And so we went to them and basically said, we're your guys, this team before. To this big multi-billion dollar CPG. And luckily they believed us, right. And we told them that we knew how to design experiments.

We knew how to fail, and we were gonna develop a solution. And we started out with, we were a codings company. We developed an amazing coding technology. Bio-based coding technology, but ultimately we couldn't get over the waste that was at, you know, Walmart distribution centers, sprouts, distribution centers, target all this corrugated waste from your home.

I don't know about you, but my family is like Amazon addicted. So I have all these boxes every weekend. Fortunately, I have a [00:13:00] place to take 'em now, but I was going, man, there's gotta be something we can do with it. So we felt if we could take that box, that the waste from that box build a technology that can actually protect food shelf stable for the same length of time.

That is in plastic. Don't add anything to it. That's harmful that it breaks down to the planet. Ultimately it's nature digestible, but if we could take that waste, it was gonna be the best solution for the. So

Paul Shapiro: is that, so is that what I'm getting like when I buy beyond meat sausages and they come in that tray is that former cardboard boxes.

Troy Swope: It's a percentage of former cardboard boxes or it's the building box of a cardboard box, the same paper materials. But by the end of this year, we're targeting to be 60% of cardboard box.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. First, what's the cost difference between that? Like, if I'm Ethan Brown, the CEO of beyond me and I'm saying, all right, Troy, you know, we like environmentally what you're doing, but compared to a plastic trade, is this gonna cost us more or is it gonna cost us the same?

Well,

Troy Swope: when we went into our long term contracts with customers, so we have [00:14:00] about 580 million of annual revenue under contract for, you know, average length, six. Those contracts generally were about a 20% premium to plastic. And it keep in mind, you're talking about an 8 cent part, so a 20% pretty small premium.

But what we're seeing with inflation is that our raw materials cost hasn't been in our, you know, input costs have haven't really been as affected as much as plastic has. So what we're hearing in our cost models are showing is that we're at parody with plastic. If. Probably a little cheaper, which probably is an opportunity for us to increase pricing here.

Why is

Paul Shapiro: inflation causing plastic prices to increase, but not cardboard? Well,

Troy Swope: because we use a lot of recycled material, but our recycled material or our, our input materials, if you will, is about 15% of our cos. And so everything else is within our innovation window, right? So it's how much energy does it take us to process?

How much labor does it take us to process? That's all within our, you know, what chemistries do we [00:15:00] add? That's all within our innovation window. So we can control that we can innovate and reduce costs through that in the plastics industry, 55 to 65% of their cost is just pure res. So just to harvest the plastic is just pure residents.

So when you see fluctuations in resin pricing, you know, oil pricing going up, you see has a much greater impact on the plastic piece bar price than it does at footprint price. Interesting.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. So correct me if I'm wrong here, Troy, but so is a cardboard box biodegradable, like when I gather cardboard box from Amazon and I put it in the recycling bin, could I also just put it in the compost?

Troy Swope: For the most part, keep in mind. I there's a lot of boxes out there with a lot of pretty prints and finishes and things on it. But the vast majority of the cardboard box you get from Amazon is biodegradable and co compostable. That's why we like that material a lot. And when you talk about produce boxes that you don't see, right, those are in, in your sprouts and in something, those have a coding on them that makes [00:16:00] it very difficult to recycle in body.

And so your

Paul Shapiro: products though are not only biodegradable, but they will also hold up to things like MWA. So how do you do that? Like how do you make it such that it will biodegrade? Is it only biodegradable in industrial composting or if I buried it in my backyard, is it gonna also biodegrade?

Troy Swope: It'll break down in industrial composting and it'll break down in your backyard as well.

We actually believe the future of waste is a home appliance that you will, you put, put your food waste in and your, your new material feed, stock, you know, your new footprint material feed, stock all together. It'll break down and actually be a nutrient. For your garden or you could, you know, sell it back into agriculture environments, to farms as a, a nitrate and a nutrient of fertilizer.

Right. So we believe that's the future of

Paul Shapiro: waste. Interesting. So, you know, if you think about like the mockery that came about for the compostable straws, right? Like people were putting them in their drinks and they were melting and the drinks and they're getting mangled and it became kinda [00:17:00] like this meme, obviously you all don't have that problem.

What have you done that has enabled you to create something that actually works in both cold and heat? That also is biodegradable.

Troy Swope: You're bringing up a great point, Paul, and that's where a lot of the value in the business comes up is, you know, how do you develop a technology that breaks down to earth, you know, within 90 days, but protects the food for a potentially up to a year and a freezer.

It takes a lot of engineering and science, right? So we actually have chemistries that actually are there just to help in the breakdown process. So once you put it in a microwave end or an oven, it'll help breaking it down. It's really just a lot of understanding how to refine fibers, control the fiber form it.

And then we have secondary coding and. We have patents around the entire process. When we started this business, we envisioned of just being the coding supplier, just a chemical company, a chemical company for good. Right. But we found that controlling the entire ecosystem and the refining, the fibers and forming the fibers [00:18:00] was critical to the overall value proposition we were providing to our customer.

So we, you know, like Intel control the whole ecosystem. Oh,

Paul Shapiro: that's really interesting. So you all now, uh, from what I read, you have 1200 employees. You got facilities, both in the us and Mexico. You just indicated you have over half a billion dollars in revenue. So what was that journey like for you? I mean, you started out with a few guys who were basically thinking they're gonna create a B2B chemicals company.

Now you're running an empire that most entrepreneurs would only dream of being able to run. You're talking about going public with reportedly evaluation of 1.6 billion. So apparently three X your revenue there. What has this been like for you as an entrepreneur to see this growth and managing, and to go from being an inventor to a

Troy Swope: manager?

Yeah. Real quick. We're at 50 million in revenue. Uh, we have, did I miss here? You, what was the five 80 we're 580 million revenue under contract. So you can see we're chasing this massive demand, right? Okay. Got

Paul Shapiro: it. Sorry. Under contract over a multi-year period.

Troy Swope: I [00:19:00] see. And that continues to grow every month as we execute our development cycle with customers.

So I think I go back to your question is, you know, how do we look? And frankly, I think the data is probably old on the website too. I think we have close to 4,000 employees. We have a, a factory or a R and D solution center in the Netherlands. Now, uh, we have a team in, in same solution center in China and we're building another factory in Poland.

We have 1.5 million square foot factory in Mexico, Mexico, and we have a factory in South Carolina and Arizona. So it's interesting is we don't ever, you know, my business partner and I had this discussion the other day, somebody asked us and said, Hey, do you ever kind of stop and smell the roses? And you know, it's really hard.

And Paul, you know this and you're did you talk to entrepreneurs? We almost always only see the work that's ahead. So we never really have stopped and said, wow, we have 4,000 employees or, or, wow. We have 500 million, you know, dollars, annual revenue under contract. We only see what we need to do the next 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, it's hard for us to stop and go, wow, [00:20:00] look what we've accomplished.

You know, maybe in five years, you know, I'm hoping that we we'll do that, but I mean, we love it. I mean, I, I am, so I. I'm so proud of our customers. You know, we, we support ConAgra. McDonald's sweet greens beyond meat, just about every major CPG on the planet. And every single one of these companies now they're resourced differently and they have different innovation teams, but they all want to change and do the right thing.

The business gets such a bad name. I don't see any customer that doesn't wanna do the right thing. It's they need a better supplier. That's what footprint's all about being a better supplier.

Paul Shapiro: Why aren't there other competitors you're saying you're selling to nearly every CPG McDonald's and ConAgra and all these others.

Is it just that your patents give you the moat or do you have some other advantage that you were first to market? You have the most scale. So the cheapest prices, like who are your competitors and why haven't they captured more of your market share? Well,

Troy Swope: I think you said it all right. We're first to market.

So we got a significant [00:21:00] lead there. We have a very unique, you would have, we have a team. Semiconductor scientists that have a very unique approach to solving the problem and have very unique skill sets and, you know, frankly, millions of dollars of R and D and time invested in solving this problem. So we're first to market.

We have a very unique technology team, very diversified, interdisciplinary technology team, very similar to a 3m approach and their directed innovation model. In fact, if in the key takeaway from this call, Paul, I want you to think that if you're thinking about what is footprint or who is footprint, I I'd say that we're very much like a 3m focused on doing good for the planet, which I think frankly is gonna be the future of business.

Right. It's gonna be pro business pro planet. And that's who footprint is very unique, interdisciplinary skill sets that have been focused on this problem for a very long time. So a very unique lead today, and we're paranoid, you know, coming from Intel we're paranoid. So we, we IP the credit out

Paul Shapiro: of everything.

understood the smart strategy for sure. So I just wanna ask [00:22:00] you, I, I read that you all have these six pack rings for soda and for beer that biodegrade in a mere 12 hours, once they're in salt water, which is pretty impressive since I know that there's obviously been a lot of concern about these, uh, six pack plastic rings going into waterways and so on.

Uh, so has that been picked up by the market? I imagine it must be really cheap to make a six pack ring outta plastic. So is that something where there's a greater cost disparity between your product and the conventional

Troy Swope: product? Yeah, we're actually fairly competitive. Price-wise where we need to solve.

And we're working to solve for a massive adoption is application. So today the Hy cone rings are applied on a roll, right? So very quickly applied, they come rolled up. So our technology today, you can't roll, but by the end of this year, we'll have a technology that will roll up and you could apply it very similar.

As the rings today. And then at that point, it becomes very, very cost

Paul Shapiro: competitive and it won't work in freshwater though. If the thing goes into a river, it, it will not degrade until [00:23:00] it hits the ocean.

Troy Swope: Oh no, it'll degrade in a river too. It'll just take longer saltwater in an ocean and agitation in an ocean.

It just accelerates the breakdown of the park. I see. But we don't want it to break in freshwater too quickly, cuz we want you to put your six CAD six pack rings into a cool cooler, a footprint cooler. Fold with ice in water. And we wanted to be able to hold at least for, you know, quite some time, again, everything's a balance, right?

The balance of performance and planet.

Paul Shapiro: Got it. Okay. So you all are apparently getting ready to go public now, right? And reportedly, this is a evaluation of 1.6 billion. So when can we expect your

Troy Swope: IPO? You know, we're filing all our documents this month and it's really up to the SCC. Then we anticipate it's probably gonna be around may, may of

Paul Shapiro: 2020.

Cool. Uh, well, I look forward to seeing how you perform. I know a lot of companies, uh, right now, um, in 20 21, 2 thirds of the companies that iPod by the end of the year were trading under their initial offering price. It was a really [00:24:00] bad year for the performance of new iPod companies. So I hope that you're able to break that trend there.

Troy Swope: Yeah. You know, one of the things, when we looked at Paul on this is in our approach, this is we became really, really conservative on our financial projections. So what we're projecting to the market and our growth rate is in some cases draconian to what we think we'll do or in some cases actually doing.

So I think that we saw that and we saw a lot of, it was, there were a lot of spa sponsors and there weren't a lot of really good businesses to take public. And so one, we got a really great sponsor and we're, we're a real business and we're selling hundreds of millions of units. We have 50 million in revenue.

It's not one of those things where we're gonna say, Hey, in the future, we're gonna have revenue or in the future, we're gonna have these product. Our products are in virtually, in every supermarket in the country today, you know, for us, it's just an expansion story. And, and we were very, very conservative on that.

Certainly with this current environment in COVID on, on how fast did we commit to expanding versus how fast we think we can. So I think what you'll [00:25:00] see, or we're, you know, we anticipate is by this summer, you'll be talking to me and then, you know, I'll be able to tell you, you know, how we really think we're gonna do, which is, you know, hopefully far greater than what we're anticipating, what we've con committed to.

If you will, fingers

Paul Shapiro: crossed, that'll be. So how much money has the company raised since inception to date now?

Troy Swope: Uh, if you count through the spec process about 1.2 billion. Okay.

Paul Shapiro: And if you don't count the, the spec process,

Troy Swope: uh, about 400 million.

Paul Shapiro: So essentially your earlier investors are looking at like a three X return or even a four X return for some of them, I'm sure.

Troy Swope: Correct. Yeah. Hopefully they, they write, they hang on for a little bit. I, you know, I think we really strike a nerve in the marketplace and we get a lot of exceptional cheerleaders if you will. And, and consumers and customers that reach out to us all the time and say, thank you for what you do. And so I think the story will resonate with folks and what we're doing.

And, you know, again, we're focused on transforming the supermarket so you can see the results of our innovation every day. Or if you, if you like sweet greens, you can go to sweet greens and see it or [00:26:00] in, in McDonald's and, and some other customers as well. You'll see the transformation of the supermarket and footprint is leading that

Paul Shapiro: well, I can assure you that I do like sweet green.

In fact, uh, I, I was actually commenting just the other day. I, I live in Sacramento, California, but I used to live in DC. And so I would go to sweet green quite often. And I'm sad that we don't have a sweet green here.

Troy Swope: Oh yeah. Same here. I'm in Arizona and I don't have one. I, and they're one of my favorite customers as people, just their vision, their culture, their values are so clear.

They wear 'em on their sleeve. Just just great humans. Just absolutely great humans. So I think their success is warranted. It's just what a great business. Yeah,

Paul Shapiro: it really is. And it was like one of those places where I would go and I would always get the same thing. They have like AAMI bowl where it's like basically mushrooms and rains and so on.

It's like really awesome. Loved it. So we asked you about the broader picture, Troy. Going back to, let's say, beyond meat, if you look at the problem that they're trying to solve, animal agriculture is a weaving driver of deforestation and climate change, and so many other problems, and they are trying to solve this by offering something that is a better alternative than [00:27:00] meat.

And they've had a lot of success as a company, a very successful IPO, but the broader picture is that meat consumption is still going up. And that plant-based meat on a volume basis is still less than 1% of the total meat market in the us. And even less globally speaking. And you just see per capita meat demand going up in China, going up in India, going up in Brazil, all the places where it's gonna matter.

The most per capita meat consumption is going up. Despite the popularity of companies like beyond and impossible foods and others, something to me seems similar in plastic, plastic demand is going up, not down and your company has had great success. And so it's a wonderful success story for your business, but what is it gonna.

To actually start seeing plastic go down that the pounds of plastic that humanity is producing will actually decrease, like your company will have to grow. So exponentially you'll probably need numerous competitors of yours to grow. So exponentially, I'm just wondering, like, when do you predict that that might happen?

That we could actually see reductions in the amount of plastic that [00:28:00] humanity is grading. You know, I'm not

Troy Swope: for sure if I have a it's time based, but you're absolutely right. And especially with COVID, I think COVID and everybody buying more from the supermarket and more takeout containers and you're seeing more and more plastic used and in accelerated short term accelerated growth.

The good news is everybody wants out of it. So I think your point on competition, I actually ask, get asked this question all the time on competition. And my answer is probably surprising, but I actually think somebody that has a similar technology to footprint will actually help us. We're talking about a 400 billion, $500 billion market.

One guy coming in two guys, five guys, 10 guys is gonna help versus hurt. And right now footprint's way ahead. But we need others for sure. And I think the way we're gonna accelerate is partnerships. As we get into Southeast Asia, India, Brazil, we're gonna develop solution centers there, but have manufacturing partners so that we can get to these regions quicker.

Our [00:29:00] multinational customers need support everywhere. They don't need support just in north America and Europe. They need support everywhere. So we plan to support them, but to accelerate that support globally, accelerate our revenues in our margin. I think you're gonna see us do that with some sort of joint venture around manufacturing footprint will license our technology and our codings have solution centers in the area.

Working with our customers, support them in that unique geography, but that's one way we're gonna have to have some strong competition. Aluminum short term is being used as a solution. I'm not a fan of aluminum because just pure CO2 emissions compared to any alternative it's massively high energy use and box site.

Mining's terrible for the planet, but. You're gonna see alternatives like aluminum glass, those kind of things being used. And I think another one I'm not a huge fan of governments getting in the way of business and telling 'em what to do. But I think there needs to be the appropriate tax on the end of life of plastic.

Right. It doesn't get [00:30:00] recycled. They're trying to use this word recyclable to make you feel guilty and all that stuff, but it doesn't get recycled. There's not enough value for it. Plus it's contaminating your. There should be the appropriate tax for the end of life and storage of it short term. And I think you'll see that'll accelerate alternatives.

Well,

Paul Shapiro: that would be quite nice to see we've experimented with lots of taxes on gas, on all types of things, luxury vehicles, gas tax, alcohol tax, tobacco tax. Maybe one day there will be a plastic tax soon as. Speaking of taxes, you know, there's people obviously who are arguing for a carbon tax. One of the things that I've been intrigued by is that there's a huge amount of effort to try to figure out how to put less carbon into the atmosphere.

However, even if we stopped emitting today, if we went down to zero emissions, there's still too much. We still have to remove some of the carbon from the atmosphere that we've put in there. So there's a lot of effort now going into from some startups to figure out direct capture carbon and carbon removal from the, at.

Is the same true with [00:31:00] plastic that even if we stopped producing any plastic today, if we went down to zero pounds per year, there's still so much plastic out there that we need to figure out ways to degrade it. Like either with some type of a chemical company or, or some enzyme that we can figure out. I know there are some plastic eating fungi out there.

What is your thought on finding ways to degrade plastic that has already been

Troy Swope: created? I don't think it's, plastic's not releasing a ton of methane when it breaks down. So that's a positive thing. But one way we believe in, in footprint may play in this space as well, is that there's hydrogen and carbon locked up in plastic.

That's not recyclable. Right? So if you can efficiently put a factory with, you know, maybe with the alternative energy sources, And efficiently unlock through heat, unlock the hydrogen and carbon that's in there. And you could use that carbon to make things like graphing and things that support ed batteries, et cetera.

That's a real opportunity. I think that's a real unique opportunity and probably the, the greatest value for the planet. Now we're gonna have to figure out [00:32:00] how to do that. Heat up the plastic and do it in the most efficient way, but there's real value in that hydrogen carbon that's captured. I hear you on

Paul Shapiro: that.

That would be quite a win-win. And I, I wasn't suggesting that all the plastic that's polluting the planet is emitting carbon, as much as it is just polluting and creating a danger for wildlife. And it'll be there for centuries, maybe even millennia. And that's quite a legacy for us to. And there's gotta be organisms that can consume it.

Troy Swope: Well, yeah, I mean, I just, my experience alone in, in my business partner and I talked about this is, you know, we were for work in Intel. We used to go to Malaysia quite a bit and we'd go to Indonesia and Bali and on the weekends and stuff. And we had time off. We recently went there three years ago, two, three years ago prior to COVID.

And I had to explain to my kids what the ocean used to look. What it used to look like there before all the plastic pollution was there. And we've talked about this over and over again. Just about all the different places. My business partner, I've been in the nineties versus now going. It's heartbreaking.

And [00:33:00] the good news is everybody's focused on it. Paul, I thank you for highlighting it today, giving me the opportunity to stand on this platform and, and talk about the issue. But the good news is people wanna change. The number. One thing that drives change the fastest is when you're in the supermarket and you have a choice between of technology that's in plastic or a technology that's in a plant-based solution by the one that's in the plant-based.

It's the fastest way to drive change. Once our customers see that the consumers responding to it, you'll see a mass market adoption and acceleration of the technology. That's very

Paul Shapiro: cool. And so just to be clear, if I take one of your footprint products, let's say the beyond meat tribe. And I just put it in my recycling bin.

Like I don't have to compost it. I can put 'em in recycling bin and it'll be recycled. Is that true? The

Troy Swope: beyond Metra. Yeah. Will go back as a, as a box. Now, keep in mind again, the focus shouldn't be on the that's a plastic term. They want you to focus on recyclability and regardless of the cost of the planet, let's talk about recyclability.

That's therefore you get things like aluminum, [00:34:00] you know, gonna be an energy crisis, right. You know, and, uh, CO2 emissions crisis. We wanna focus on the, the full thing. Is it nature digestible? Is it, what is the CO2 emissions to produce it? Because again, the rear recyclable, if I take my customer's waste, And it's the last life.

It it's a leaf that falls off a tree, if you will. And I reuse it, that fiber quality could be so poor that no one wants to use it again. The best solution for that is to, to dissolve back into the planet. But,

but

Paul Shapiro: let's say Troy, I'm, I'm living in an apartment in a city. I have two options. I can either, well, I can throw it in the street, I guess, but I have two legal options.

Throw it in the trash or throw it in the recycling, or maybe it's a city that has a composting program. But if those are my only options and I put it in the recycling bin, what happens.

Troy Swope: It would go back into a box again and again, with food waste, we recommend that you clean it out. Right? So, and then it'll be a box again, but we really Jen, because of food waste, when it gets food contamination, we don't control if it gets recycled.

So with [00:35:00] footprint, I think what you're gonna see Paul, the future of waste is these you're, everybody's gonna have a home appliance that you'll just put in this home appliance. It's gonna dehydrate it. It's gonna break it down. Little powder with your food waste in this material, and then that's actually a nutrient back into the earth.

Okay,

Paul Shapiro: cool. Yeah. I've actually seen ads for those type of things before. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So before we reach, uh, the end here, I do have to ask you, we are shortly coming up on the super bowl and apparently there is some connection between footprint and the super bowl. So tell us, right. What.

Troy Swope: Well, I don't know if I can give it away yet, but we have a partner in the stadiums, multiple stadiums.

I, I know, I think, you know, that we're, we're a sponsor of the Phoenix suns and, and the naming rights of the footprint center. Uh, we've been using that as an incubator to test technologies and get people's opinions on mouth feel and making sure our utensils work and those kind of things or water bottles, et cetera.

We hope to have our technologies. At the super bowl as well, replacing traditional plastic technologies, that'll be

Paul Shapiro: exciting. I'll be [00:36:00] looking forward to it. Uh, thank you. So Troy, lemme ask you, you've had quite a while right here. You've gone from having an idea to quitting your job. Starting a company, raising millions and millions of dollars.

Creating a company that now has thousands of employees, tens of millions of dollars of revenue and is about to go public. It's such a tiny little portion of people who have an idea ever go through all of those steps that I just enumerated that you've been through. Have there been any resources that would be useful for you?

If there's somebody listening, you saying, man, this Troy dude sounds like a really awesome guy, really admire what he's accomplished. I'd like to try to do something similar. Are there any resources that you would suggest that have been helpful for you along your

Troy Swope: own journey? Yeah, for sure. I think people around you every day, anybody that's an entrepreneur that's done it.

And my example is, you know, Kevin Eastler. Was the founder of sprouts and him and his, his partner were the founders of sprouts. So he shared a lot of experiences and, and often we stepped in potholes that he stepped in before and immediately goes, oh yeah, I've done that as well. Right. And. There's people around you.

That is [00:37:00] definitely a resource that if you've seen them have done what you want to do, ask them questions, be around them, be open to learning. I think of course I'm a phenomenal re I can't stop reading. I'm afraid of what I don't know. So there's really good books for me, you know, scale or fail was a great book.

Uh, good strategy, bad strategy was an excellent book. I liked big potential. You know, I think that just Sean AER, those are all just off the top of my head, but I wouldn't stop ream. There's so much stuff. I mean reading Obama's book, I think inspired me quite a bit and things on leadership. I think again, number one, if you're gonna take this journey, you have to be 100% sold on the journey.

If you have a plan B, you can guarantee you will be in your plan B it's gotta be there's plan a and it's plan a, B N C D E E, and F it's all that plan. If you have a backup plan, if your entrepreneurial strategy fails, you're gonna. You gotta be all in because if you have one foot or even a pinky toe out the door, [00:38:00] you're not gonna

Paul Shapiro: succeed.

Understood. So final question for you here, Troy. So you are somebody who has been really driven to succeed as you're just mentioning. You're totally booked up doing footprint. I'm sure though, that you've thought about other companies that you wish would exist, that you just don't have the time or the bandwidth to do.

So if there's somebody out there thinking that they would like to start their own company to do something good for the world, what do you think it should.

Troy Swope: I think there's a number of things. Again, I think the future of the planet and the future of business is our, our businesses that are supporting the planet.

So there's food businesses around. How do we brew hiss nuts as an example, Darlene's company where they're actually harvesting, you know, B's nuts that actually protect the rain forest. That it's great for the planet. It's a great food. Good for you technologies around that. I'm an advocate and a nut about nuclear energy.

So, you know, I think that's gonna have to be done in the private sector. I know that's a big, that's probably not an entrepreneurial journey, but well, some

Paul Shapiro: of these [00:39:00] nuclear fusion startups have raised hundreds of millions of dollars

Troy Swope: lately. I'm a hundred percent supportive. Those are two areas that I'm for lack of a better term, I get geeked about I'm looking forward to those technologies.

What I mentioned to you earlier, and, and footprint may play in some of these spaces as well is how do we unlock the value in plastic? You know, that's been thrown out for trash. I think there's true value in that. And how do you do it efficiently and, and positive for the. Footprints developing technologies today in our factories to reduce our energy, to capture some of our energy that, you know, recapture and reuse some of our energy through our ovens.

I think there's a lot of exciting work in that space as well. Well, you may

Paul Shapiro: wanna check out just Google, plastic, eating fungi. Um, it's pretty amazing to see that there are actually, uh, many species of fungi that have been shown to consume plastic. And there may be, uh, there may be, uh, some pathway for you and all of your smart, former Intel people who, uh, wanna go check that out and see if there's a, a commercialization strategy for that.

Cuz when, presumably I don't know this for a fact, but presumably it's like some enzyme that the, those fungi are producing. And so maybe you can [00:40:00] synthesize that and, and apply it in an industrial. Anyway, Troy, I, my hat's off to you. I really appreciate all that. You're doing to try to reduce humanity footprint on the planet here.

And I really admire the success that you're having. So good luck with the super bowl. Good luck with the IPO. And I look forward to following your journey. There are many resources that you ma named in here. We're gonna list them all on the website business for good podcast.com on this episode page. So you can go there and check it out.

If you don't remember all the things that Troy was recommending books and otherwise. Go to the website, check it out. And Troy, thanks again. We're we looking forward to continuing to root for your success. Thank you so much,

Troy Swope: Paul. Thanks

Paul Shapiro: for listening. We hope you found use in this episode. If so, don't keep it to yourself.

Please leave us a five star rating on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. And as always, we hope you will be in the business of doing

Troy Swope: good.