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Innovation Matters' end of year roundup part one: technologies
91 Plays1 year ago
With 2024 rapidly approaching, Mike, Karthik, and Anthony reflect on the top technologies of 2023. Which technologies were the winners? What's Anthony's go-to McDonald's order? All this and more: from nuclear energy to reusable packaging, the team highlights the most important technology shifts from 2023.
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Transcript
Introduction to Innovation Matters Podcast
00:00:11
Speaker
Innovation Matters, it is the podcast about sustainable innovation, brought to you by Lux Research. I am your host, Anthony Schiavo. I'm joined as ever by my two co-hosts, Kartik Subramian and Mike Holman. This is the podcast that records quickly so that it can go watch cricket. Isn't that right, Kartik? Yeah, I mean, I was quite surprised that after the World Cup, you're going to have games so quickly, but then there's been a game every three days or something.
00:00:40
Speaker
Yeah. And Karthik for the audience here is wearing what I am assuming is a India cricket jersey. I am wearing an India cricket jersey, yes. And I have my name printed on the back, so custom shirt. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Oh, the custom swag. I didn't realize that.
00:01:01
Speaker
You'll be pleased to know, Karthik, that my niece and nephew who live in Minnesota both own India team cricket jerseys because they lived in Mumbai for a few years. Nice. Their mom was working over there. Good going, yeah.
Year-End Technology Trends Review
00:01:19
Speaker
So, you know, before we fully pivot into doing just cricket content for 2024, we figured we would end the year with an episode or two really focused on kind of wrapping up, identifying some of the big changes, some of the big trends, some of the big just sort of shifts, vibe shifts, if you will, for various technologies. And I think this, you know, today we really want to keep it focused on
00:01:49
Speaker
the technologies themselves before we get into what we think is likely to happen for 2024 or anything like that and I've asked the group I've asked the fellows the boys to
00:02:01
Speaker
Just think about what technologies they felt like had the biggest changes or had a breakout year or really were important, just at the highest sort of level overall this year.
The Future of Nuclear Energy
00:02:16
Speaker
And I think we wanted to start with nuclear, which has had a really significant year. There's been a ton of nuclear news, not all of it positive. We had a lot of great conversations about nuclear on this show. I think my favorite maybe interview we did
00:02:33
Speaker
was with the Fusion Industry Association there. Gartek, I guess I'll kick it back over to you. If you had to sum up this year for nuclear, what would you say? What would you tell me? When am I going to have fusion power? That's the big question.
00:02:59
Speaker
Yeah. I think this year, if you were to use one word to sum up nuclear, that would be resurgence and a big one at that. The year started off with announcements from Korea on floating nuclear power. And then all of a sudden we started seeing a lot of SMR news with new scale, getting a lot of funding and then new scale canceling projects because they were so scared that no one's going to subscribe to the project.
00:03:26
Speaker
Nuclear fusion was doing its own thing. We had the second time that a net energy gain was obtained, so it was much higher than the previous one. And then we ended the year on a high note. I mean, the year is not yet over, but I would still say that with the holidays coming in, I guess this would be the most significant piece of news that a lot of nations agreed to triple nuclear energy capacity.
00:03:52
Speaker
by 2050, if I'm not mistaken, for nuclear, along with renewable energy capacity by 2030. So big positive momentum for nuclear. And it was also surprising, or maybe not surprising, to see the United States specifically call out nuclear fusion at COP, talking about how they want to advance nuclear fusion, even though our outlook on it is a bit meh, to say the least. But yeah, resurgence would be that word.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, but I think we were sort of the nuance within that, though, is that we were talking about this earlier. You think the fusion you've actually gotten a little more pessimistic about, it sounded like over the course of the year, even as the fission stuff, particularly the small modular reactors are building momentum.
Is Fusion Overfunded?
00:04:40
Speaker
But what's got you down on fusion? I mean, the one thing I've been noticing with fusion is a lot of funding has been going in, and that is
00:04:49
Speaker
obviously required given the state that fusion is in at this point. But I mean, we are actually talking about harnessing millions of degrees Celsius or Kelvin, whatever you want. And you want materials that's able to withstand that. And that's physically impossible. So you need advances in material science. You need advances in digital technologies. And that is going to take time, even if digital is moving very quickly, which is why I think the promise of fusion is great.
00:05:19
Speaker
but you shouldn't put your entire money on it. I still believe, and especially as the year has progressed, I've realized that momentum is actually quite slow despite the number of announcements we see in the space.
Small vs. Large Nuclear Reactors Debate
00:05:32
Speaker
The real milestones in fusion are only going to be seen by 2025, 2027, or between that period. I won't be surprised to see revisions in timelines because you need materials that can handle a fusion condition, which is not straightforward.
00:05:47
Speaker
So the magnitude of the challenges is why I'm growing pessimistic by the minute with fusion. So when we had that conversation, one of the points that was made by, I think it was Andrew, was that, you know,
00:06:08
Speaker
There's been a lot of funding for other technologies and he basically made an argument for why fusion should be one of the technologies that gets funded or R&D resources given to it. Do you think we're overestimating? Do you think we're over-investing in fusion right now?
00:06:31
Speaker
What would the appropriate level be, I guess, given? The questioner is leading the witness here, I think. No, I genuinely am not sure that we are. I really don't necessarily think we are.
00:06:48
Speaker
I mean, I think obviously there's a part of me that's like climate Stalin just wants to build bike lanes at gunpoint and expropriate coal plants or whatever and turn them into solar farms. But there is a role for a long term innovation year.
00:07:08
Speaker
This is a technology that does have some potential. So I'm just curious if you think we're over indexing into it right now and how big that investment really is, is part of the question there as well. I don't think we are over investing in fusion as such. I think that the magnitude of the challenge is so that you need to invest in it and you need to spend a lot of man hours, not just money. So it is understandable that you're investing in it. And the promise is very clear, right?
00:07:39
Speaker
But again, I mean, that should not be your only focus. Fusion is not going to be the silver bullet for the energy transition. And we shouldn't discount the other technologies, is what I would say. Maybe Mike or Anthony, you disagree. And maybe Anthony specifically, because I know you're a DAC hater. So maybe you become a fusion hater with this. Oh, DAC is real different from Fusion, though. I feel like DAC, to me, DAC doesn't even make sense at a baseline.
00:08:09
Speaker
but you don't see that with fusion though I guess the thing that's if fusion works it is basically free energy and that's pretty useful even I am NOT immune to that argument whereas DAC
00:08:27
Speaker
doesn't have that kind of upside. It just will always be energy intensive and it will always be the worst way to do carbon removal. And it will always be so far down our list of priorities that I just really don't think it's that worth investing in at any particular point.
00:08:52
Speaker
But, you know, we talked about fusion. I guess I'm curious for your read on the rest of the nuclear space, the more conventional fission space.
00:09:00
Speaker
I was reading an interesting argument basically recently that even small modular reactors don't make a lot of sense and that our big conventional nuclear reactors actually work really well. They have 95% uptime and a really incredible safety record, right?
Critical Minerals and Metal Extraction
00:09:19
Speaker
Few notable incidents aside, right? So I guess I'm curious as to how you see that playing out. Is small modular really the future of nuclear or does it look more like
00:09:30
Speaker
vocal to as the blueprint? Yeah, I think with small modeler, the one thing people should realize is that small modeler is not the answer to replace large scale nuclear, like it is going to be more expensive. But what you can do with small modeler reactors is maybe you could call it a smaller large scale reactor as such, and you could deploy smaller units for remote power generation or onsite power generation where, you know,
00:09:57
Speaker
Maybe you have a thousand households and you only need that much nuclear power, so you don't need to have a large one gigawatt reactor. Those are the places where I feel SMRs can be useful. A lot has to go in the favor for SMRs to become cheaper than large-scale nuclear. You need to produce 100 units a year. You need to have that supply chain sorted out.
00:10:21
Speaker
You need to have the higher up times. You need to prove that advanced reactor concepts can be licensed quicker. You can get type approval from the regulatory commissions and stuff, so it's going to be quite challenging. I was having an interesting conversation with a professor from the University of Illinois, and he was talking about how the NRC in the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, they really have no clue about
00:10:47
Speaker
advanced reactor concepts. So if you go in with even a new reactor concept, they would be like, okay, here are 10,000 pages that don't make any sense to me. Get me 5,000 pages more. And then you're going to have this back and forth where you're going to take a long time licensing the reactor. You're going to spend a lot of money doing that. And specifically in the United States, fuel supply is a big problem.
00:11:08
Speaker
So if you go to the DOE and you say, I would like some fuel because I want to build a nuclear reactor, the DOE would say, show me a PPA, show that you have a customer who's going to purchase nuclear electricity. And then you would go to a potential customer and you say, can we sign the PPA? They're like, show me you have the fuel, then I'll give you the PPA. So how does that work? So I am skeptical that they're going to replace large scale, as I said, long story short. But yeah, there could be some value for remote power generation.
00:11:39
Speaker
How about putting them on boats?
00:11:42
Speaker
Oh, that's a whole other topic, I would say. In keeping with our podcast theme of having to talk about it every time somebody does something crazy with a container shipping vessel. Yeah, in China. Correct. Yeah, in China. What's it? Jiangnan. Unveiled the world's largest nuclear powered shipping container ship design. Correct.
00:12:11
Speaker
With a molten salt reactor, it was quite exciting to see. I mean, floating nuclear is- Is that a thorium-based reactor? Correct. Yes, it is thorium-based. I feel like thorium energy is a real engineering crank type thing. Every engineering crank I know, myself included, is really into the concept of thorium-based reactors.
00:12:35
Speaker
Yeah, thorium is more abundant as well, especially if you're in India, you would be jumping at the side of thorium because I think India has the largest reserves. So you basically control the market. But yes, I mean, in terms of just floating nuclear or nuclear on boats, it's not a novel concept. We know submarines that power on nuclear power. We have nuclear powered ships in Russia that's actually supplying power, like the ship can move and you can connect it to the grid.
00:13:05
Speaker
So I see some value there, but the question would then become, can this translate to nuclear power for shipping, maybe like actually powering a boat? And that's where I see some challenges with, you know, crossing international waters, concerns with proliferation.
00:13:20
Speaker
Is the shipping community going to agree having a nuclear vessel just waltzing around? Isn't the challenge in particular? The Navy is very, very good. The US Navy, I should say, is very, very good at nuclear power, but almost all their reactors are single use basically. Once those reactors are decommissioned, they have a 30 to 50 year lifetime and then
00:13:44
Speaker
They're basically the whole reactor is like buried deep underground as I understand it. It's never really, it's not really a sustainable model as such. Yeah, exactly. That's what they do with any reactor actually. So you just take the waste and you put it underground so that no one sees it for the next 300, 100,000 years, whatever would be the case.
00:14:06
Speaker
So I mean, I think the thing about the nuclear ships, it does make sense, more sense with thorium in particular, right? It's, it's non proliferative in the sense that you it's a lot harder or maybe impossible to make weapons out of it. And you can do a lot longer duration with the molten salt reactors, you can theoretically do
00:14:26
Speaker
refueling, continuous refueling. There was actually, I don't know if you guys know this, the first molten salt reactor was developed for a nuclear powered bomber in the 1950s. The idea was they would have a
00:14:39
Speaker
have a nuclear bomber that they could keep in the air for I think like basically indefinitely as far as that goes. Some real good early Cold War, I don't know, technological theorizing there. But I don't know. I think that just seems so unnecessary to me, the whole nukes on ships thing. It just is like
00:15:04
Speaker
If we're really getting there, if we're building that many nuclear reactors, if we're that good at building nuclear reactors, just put them on land, man. There's plenty of places to put a nuclear reactor on land before you get to putting it on a boat. That's true. Yeah.
00:15:19
Speaker
But nuclear was not the only thing that made the news, right? I guess, Mike, you wanted to also highlight some developments that caught your eye. Yeah. Mike, when we asked you this question, you talked about, or you wanted to bring up the whole critical mineral space. We talked on the podcast about Exxon, their move into lithium. There's some interesting stuff on the biobase side.
00:15:49
Speaker
the group from BioMADE. And I think just more generally, these issues with critical minerals have been something that we've been very interested in at Lux for the last year or so. So I'm curious why you flagged this up and where your head's at now with these critical minerals and metal extraction technologies.
00:16:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think part of what's been driving it too is the policy environment, right? I mean, we had the news with China's export bans on gallium and germanium, which is relatively small stakes, though important for some sectors.
00:16:40
Speaker
people looking at that and other developments in the sort of trade war dynamics between US and China or China and the West, making it, I think, a lot more real for people that we could be facing some real serious challenges potentially with supply of a lot of these critical minerals.
00:17:08
Speaker
And at the same time, there's been a lot more concern also around the environmental impact of some of these materials and like with the battery passport regulations, you know, what's the sourcing of your nickel or your cobalt obviously is and how are you ensuring, you know, kind of clean supply of that both from an environmental and social impact.
00:17:32
Speaker
So we've done some pieces looking at different technologies for nickel refining and extraction. There's a lot going on with copper as well, where there's this need for going to be a huge need for copper export, for growth in copper production for the energy transition at the same time when there's
00:18:03
Speaker
you know, more and more challenges for copper extraction. Like I was talking to a client who has been working in this area and they say, we've been we've been extracting producing 2% copper ores.
00:18:17
Speaker
for many years. And now we're kind of running out of those and we're producing one and a half percent. And we think in 10 years, we're going to be producing one percent. So technologies that can improve both the mining and extraction of those kind of critical minerals are getting a lot of attention too.
00:18:37
Speaker
And then finally, and this is something you and Anthony and I have been working on for a bit for another client project, is just thinking about alternatives. If some of these concerns about critical mineral supply come to fruition, where the trade wars or whatever factors are leading to
00:19:03
Speaker
restrictions on access to some of these these critical minerals in certain geographies is going to be a need to invest in new alternative technologies that can can help to to address that and you know so something like the momentum we've also seen this year around sodium ion batteries as an alternative to lithium ion batteries is also a critical minerals story because you know
00:19:29
Speaker
you can, if you don't have access to lithium, then maybe you've got to move to sodium even if that's not a, you know, even if maybe you wouldn't do that on purely techno economic grounds.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think what's so interesting about this is the sort of intersection of so many of the themes that we've been talking about this year. You know, the technology development angle is really important for chemical companies and a lot of our clients, because I do think it really represents an opportunity for new innovative chemistries to sort of take the spotlight, right? Particularly this issue of sustainability and
00:20:13
Speaker
you know, not just the current chemicals and approaches that are used in metals extraction, which are pretty uniformly not good. But there's this huge opportunity as well to address things like mine wastes and mine tailings where you have these this large body of
00:20:32
Speaker
very low-quality natural resource that's been created, which has significant metals and has a lot of stuff in it. It's just been considered a waste product for a long time because it's not economic with current technologies to access. And if you can do that, if you can find a way to cost-effectively pull copper or nickel or whatever out of these existing tailing ponds, they're just sitting there, right? And you've unlocked this big new resource.
00:20:59
Speaker
At the same time, though, from a consumer perspective, there's a real risk here when you think about, oh, we need people to transition to sustainable technologies or support electric vehicles or solar.
00:21:16
Speaker
I don't think electric vehicles are that sustainable for the correct reasons, which is that cars aren't that sustainable. You should take a bus. But one of the big concerns people have about EVs is the mining and the metals. Fairly, right? Cobalt mining in Africa is really disastrous from a labor and human standpoint, for example. And environmental, yeah.
00:21:43
Speaker
And environmental, yeah, not just that. So there's a real opportunity to improve those things here. And again, if climate Stalin cannot expropriate your car and force you to ride a bike to work, then we at least need to make sure that people are willing to buy in and they feel confident in the actual sustainable offerings that we do have for them.
00:22:06
Speaker
I think there's just a really big opportunity to make that happen here. So I'm really excited, positive about the opportunity here and the use of new technologies, especially some of the biological approaches.
Sea-Based Mining Economics
00:22:19
Speaker
But what do you guys think about C-based mining? I know there was a lot of chat about C-based mining this year. Yeah, I mean, one of the ways we talked about framing this is technologies that you've changed your mind on. And I think that's something I have. I mean, I heard about that.
00:22:36
Speaker
I had always sort of assumed and thought that that was really just kind of pie in the sky, you know, it's like in the same category as asteroid mining almost. But, you know, through some work that that some of just kind of talking to colleagues who've actually done some work on this,
00:22:57
Speaker
this year, I think there actually is a pretty significant opportunity there. It's really, and the technology to do it is a lot more viable than I had thought. It's really more of a regulatory question, right? How can you allocate the mining rights and how can you, if you can, address the concerns about the
00:23:19
Speaker
the environmental impact on the deep sea ecosystems, because a lot of these technologies, you're stirring up a lot of sediment. It has a big impact on those marine ecosystems that we don't know that well, and we haven't studied the impacts of those. Of course, the flip side of that is, is it worse than what we're already doing on the surface with conventional mining in terms of its environmental impact?
00:23:48
Speaker
I don't know, it may or may not be, but that's really where the uncertainties are around it. I actually think just as far as can you get an economically meaningful amount of metal up off the bottom of the ocean, actually, I think you can.
Advancements in Battery Recycling
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting you bring up the environmental angle here because I think this is a problem we're going to run into a lot next year.
00:24:13
Speaker
and going forward where it's like the general benefit of not killing the planet with climate change relative to the specific benefit or negative cost of disrupting whatever ecosystem of deep sea starfish or whatever the hell is just going to be a constant pain point for any group. And I think we're really going to see some
00:24:42
Speaker
pretty well-meaning people do some real harm in terms of their impact on the overall sustainable transition by bringing up these issues. Obviously, it's tough because there is a real concern, if you will. There is a real challenge there, but at the same time, ocean acidification,
00:25:06
Speaker
ocean temperature is going to have such an extraordinarily negative impact on marine biodiversity that deems dividing by comparison, I think is a pretty small issue. Yeah, and I guess the other thing on the critical minerals front, I didn't mention already, but of course, is a big part of the story is the recycling element, particularly for batteries.
Reusable Packaging Challenges
00:25:34
Speaker
with the lithium, but maybe more relevant, the other critical cobalt magnesium, or manganese, pardon me, and nickel. Though there's also magnesium. Magnesium is another area we've gotten into. There's companies like La Trobe that's extracting magnesium from fly ash and
00:26:05
Speaker
other non-traditional approaches to more sustainably producing magnesium is actually kind of a whole interesting area in and of itself too, but we're getting a little bit into the weeds here. Mike, when you think about this,
00:26:24
Speaker
How do you think about the opportunity for tech development? Because I think this is one of those things where our clients don't have a clear view. And even for myself, it's challenging. Is this something that's going to happen next year? Is this going to be something that's really near term and there's a lot of opportunity to really drive things forward?
00:26:47
Speaker
quickly? Or is this something that's actually going to have a lot of false starts, a lot of missteps, a lot of long-term challenges for this type of thing? Well, I definitely think there's going to be a lot of challenges. I mean, mining and metals production is one, very well established and two, often for very good reasons, conservative industry. So you're not going to be seeing
00:27:16
Speaker
Rio Tinto going whole hog on bio leaching or whatever anytime soon. But I think there are some areas where things are happening now. There's some real opportunities and direct lithium extraction is probably the best example of that. Some of the big projects that we talked about Exxon and some of the other players are engaging in. And there is a whole set of
00:27:45
Speaker
There's project development opportunities there and there is a lot of need for some of the membranes and sorbents and other enabling technologies that go into those kinds of projects. So I think that's a good opportunity around lithium. I think there's some good opportunities and a lot of scale that's going in.
00:28:09
Speaker
particularly in battery recycling right now as well for some of those other elements. But I think if you kind of get into something like alternative nickel processing or the bioleaching sort of stuff in general, that sort of stuff is definitely going to be further out.
00:28:31
Speaker
All right, the last thing that, and this is my particular choice here that is, we actually had a lot of conversations this year about reusable packaging and reusable products in general. You know, we talked most recently with Yannick from Zero Waste Europe,
00:28:53
Speaker
We had a good conversation there about packaging waste in Europe. We had an interesting conversation a little bit earlier on with Jonathan Tostevan from Muse. I think, I guess what I would call out here is I was such a hater. I was such a hater when it came to reusable packaging.
00:29:13
Speaker
Not that long ago, you know, it's just one of those things where I really felt like the the upfront costs and then the upfront sustainability issues, you know, you have to invest a lot more carbon emissions into any of these these. Reusable products, right, combined with my pretty dim view of like human nature, VV, this type of this type of activity, you know, really, I think
00:29:43
Speaker
put me in the perspective that this is not going to be something that was really meaningfully part of the solution. And that combined the logistics challenges, just made it sort of a waste of time, a diversion, right? And I think I'm a lot more sensitive to the opportunity that this could make sense now, right? Especially for food service, there are these applications where it definitely makes sense.
00:30:11
Speaker
And I think what we're seeing is that there is a lot of regulatory support, a lot more than I expected. It's something that gets fairly good support across the board, even from people like Yannick. And then you see oil and gas producing companies and countries supporting it at the UN level. So it's a pretty broad spectrum of support.
00:30:32
Speaker
And I think we're developing the business models and the approaches that help it make sense. And it's not going to be a solution for everything, but there are some real opportunities there.
00:30:43
Speaker
I guess I'm a little worried that it's got such broad support because it's fake, right? Because we're really underestimating the challenges associated with it. But I would say this is probably the thing that has... I've changed my mind the most on this year as well. What do you think's driven your change in mind there? Is it just because you see the economics, it working out, or just because you're seeing the interest in it from some of these retail food service players?
00:31:13
Speaker
the regulation, the economics, the failure of other good options, I think, or like the failure of pyrolysis and other plastic recycling efforts. All those things are part of it for sure. I think the biggest single thing is that I am more aware of the business models and the environments where it actually makes a lot of sense.
00:31:36
Speaker
and that those environments and business models actually occupy a larger part of the overall landscape than I thought. I was really skeptical on food service, like fast food. I was like, this will only work for stadiums. You know what I mean?
00:31:54
Speaker
It's like, actually, I think your average McDonald's could potentially get away with this and occupy a much larger part of its overall packaging consumption in this way. I guess the challenge will be in America where we do everything through the drive-through. Is it actually going to make sense for us? But putting that aside, I think there's a lot of opportunity here.
00:32:17
Speaker
If you were to choose between reusable packaging and recyclable single-use packaging, what would you choose?
00:32:25
Speaker
I think if they both worked the way they claimed, I would choose reusable packaging. Not only is it effective in terms of its emissions, but importantly, it puts a very low burden on the waste ecosystem, and that's something I'm increasingly sensitive to. The biggest opportunity we have to improve recycling rates is really by taking stuff out of the recycling system.
00:32:48
Speaker
You know what I mean? Like preventing material from flowing into it in the first place and making sure what material does flow into it is more thoughtfully selected. Right. So to me, the reuse packaging is really something that can improve both the recycling approaches and whatever it's actually being used for. Right. It makes everything better by making the system, the waste system, you know, less burdened by material. And that's something that, you know, even the advanced recycling technologies aren't really doing right there.
00:33:18
Speaker
in some ways they're burdening the waste ecosystem more by asking for higher levels of separation. So that's driving a lot of my thinking here. Do you see these technologies actually working out better from an emissions standpoint though? Because I mean, some of the models that I've seen, we collect these and then we take them off site somewhere and we wash them and reprocess them and then we bring them back. There is a lot of logistics.
00:33:45
Speaker
can be involved in that and the energy in the washing process and yada, yada, yada does that. And of course, each individual article for reusable tray or cup or whatever contains a lot more plastic than the single-use version, such as the total volume of material. And if you use it enough times, obviously that
00:34:04
Speaker
that mitigates it, but does it actually consistently prove out from an emissions standpoint, even with all the other energy for washing and logistics and everything factored in?
00:34:16
Speaker
I think you have to get to a point where you're doing everything on site. That's the biggest thing for me is that the logistics, the assumptions around the logistics and the assumptions around the loss of material, the loss of product is really important. Those are the two things that they kill you with reuse. So that's why I'm a lot more skeptical around it for something like reuse like mailers for Amazon or whatever.
00:34:42
Speaker
That's a lot more challenging. That's a much more open environment. There's a huge opportunity for a loss there. So I think the system we have to move towards is something that is everything is being washed and reused and managed on site in a pretty closed loop. And you're limiting your opportunity for these things to wander away as much as possible. Because the difference between a 90% and a 95%
00:35:09
Speaker
you know, reuse rate or like loss rate is huge, huge. You know, one of those is very worse, I think, in terms of carbon emissions footprint. And the other is a significant improvement over the current state. So you just have
00:35:24
Speaker
really significant opportunities to mess this up. True of every technology, but maybe particularly true and the biggest risk for reuse is just that there is such an opportunity to screw things up. Sorry, Mike, before you go on. Do you think hygiene is going to be a challenge among consumers with reusable packaging?
00:35:53
Speaker
For example, in India, I know people who are vegetarians and they wouldn't go to a restaurant that serves both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food, even if they have options because they are scared that they use the same vessels and the same spatula and whatnot for just cooking. Do you see that kind of a thing with reusable packaging being a negative driver?
00:36:11
Speaker
Not really in the sense that I think people are already acting that way. I think if that's your baseline for making decisions, then you're probably already not going to those restaurants.
00:36:30
Speaker
don't then you aren't. We use washed plates all the time. Anyone who goes to a restaurant is eating off a plate that has been used by a lot of other people. This is not really that big of a deal in that context. It's really more about extending a pretty normal restaurant experience
00:36:51
Speaker
back into areas and, you know, economic situations like Panera, right? Or like, you know, your McDonald's where we've moved away from that traditional experience. So if anything, I think, you know, you'll see companies like McDonald's making the argument that this is like something premium, that this is a nice experience that people, you know, want to have. And I think you'll see that that argument could definitely resonate with
00:37:20
Speaker
with a lot of different people. And I really want McDonald's breakfast right now. There's a McDonald's that's like literally right downstairs from the from the New York office. So I usually only go to McDonald's with my kids. But since we've moved here to this office, it's like I could grab a sausage, egg and cheese on the way into the way into the office. I haven't had McDonald's in a year and a half, I think so.
00:37:45
Speaker
Wow. I haven't had McDonald's in a week and a half. You didn't hit up McDonald's in Japan? No, I did twice. The shrimp patties or? I do not go for the shrimp patties. The McDonald's Japan breakfast in the Tokyo station is so hot. They do such a good job there. It's like one of the most high quality McDonald's I think globally. And I've eaten at a lot of McDonald's globally. But let me tell you what.
00:38:15
Speaker
two meals, a sausage, egg, and cheese meal, plus a chicken McMuffin meal with the hash browns with two lattes for drinks. That's game fuel. I can do an infinite number of meetings after consuming that particular meal.
00:38:36
Speaker
calorie bomb. Let me tell you what, that is seriously good. I think the last thing on the reusable packaging though is sort of the same question you asked me, like what are the opportunities for the plastics or material or other sorts of suppliers as well, right? Because it's something we get asked a lot, right? There's all these chemical companies, they produce a lot of
00:39:01
Speaker
polyethylene or PET or whatever that goes into single-use packaging, it's like, well, you can make a good plastic that's used for reusable packaging. But the whole point of that model is there is not as much plastic in it. So what do you think about as some of the opportunities or business models or something that could make it?
00:39:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think what I would say about this is that I'm really interested in not just for reusable, but in a kind of leasing model for materials, right? Because I think we're going to increasingly have a class
00:39:35
Speaker
class of materials that are used have relatively high performance characteristics, and then have an end of life management situation. And I think you see this in everything is diverse from reusable packaging, but also like, you know, tanks for hydrogen, right? Like,
00:39:52
Speaker
you have increasingly materials where they are straddling the sort of traditional single use definition, right, with some sort of longer use lifetime, but still not that long and a meaningful amount of waste being generated.
00:40:09
Speaker
So like automobile waste, you know, these reusable plastic objects are not going to last forever, right? They're probably gonna only last maybe a year in service, maybe a few years, right? Like, that's just like, if you if you use a cup, like a, you know, plastic cup in your house might last for a couple years. But you're not using that 100 times a day, right? You're not
00:40:33
Speaker
putting it through four or five wash cycles in a day. You're using it once a week, maybe. And those things still get broken pretty quickly. So reusable plastic products will generate a meaningful amount of waste. And I think there's an opportunity for materials companies to really build a business model where they lease the cups as opposed to selling the material. And they take that back. They provide for the end of life services for those cups as well because they're
00:41:02
Speaker
you know, those are going to have meaningful end of life management issues that are going to be distinct, very different from, you know, your single use packaging, right? Where the form factors are going to be different, the materials are going to be different, the things like the quality of the
00:41:21
Speaker
They might be colored plastic and might be all these different things are going to be different. So it's going to really require a significant end of life ecosystem layer. And again, I think the value of the whole reuse approach is that we don't burden the waste ecosystem. And if you want to actually make good on that promise, you have to
00:41:40
Speaker
have I think a separate sort of take away, end of life option for these. And I think a lot of materials companies can build business models there, but it's a lot of stuff that's not as familiar for chemical companies, right? They like selling tons of material and this is very much a different approach.
00:41:57
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, even sort of supplying the logistics services around those, right, including end of life, you know, and the washing systems or you could imagine a company, but it'd be a big company doing that, but it would be a big, big shift in business model and skill set. So that would be challenging.
00:42:19
Speaker
But I think you'll see somebody try it at some point. I think we'll see people try it pretty soon for sure. All right, fellows, I think we'll leave it there.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:42:29
Speaker
We're at the top of the hour, cricket, soon reach. And Mike and I, we have our own work to do as well. Who's Indian playing right now, Garza? South Africa. South Africa. All right. Go get them.
00:42:43
Speaker
Go get them, yeah. We're all- That's what I hope. And I guess you will be off to have your sausage egg and cheese from the McDonald's downstairs. I am so tempted. Holy cow. My partner and kid are out of town, so I'm really goblin mode this next couple of days.
00:43:06
Speaker
The 1030 run to McDonald's might be in my life for sure, which just kind of shows you how far I've fallen. Thanks for joining us. I want to encourage you to subscribe on whatever app you use. Just click that button. It does help us out. So we really appreciate it. And we'll be back next week for a look forward to the next year.
00:43:33
Speaker
Innovation Matters is a production of Lux Research, the leading sustainable innovation research and advisory firm. You can follow this podcast on Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you want more, check out www.luxresearchinc.com slash blog for all of the latest news, opinions, and articles.