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Why AI and healthcare won't be Apple's new killer app
66 Plays2 months ago
Karthik and Anthony tackle the latest releases from Apple - and why the pace of groundbreaking products from tech companies seems to be slowing down, despite the rise of AI as a supposed force for innovation. Plus, Anthony shares his findings from the Advanced Recycling Summit as the hosts wonder if recycling will really ever get done.
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Transcript
Introduction to Innovation Matters
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Innovation Matters. It is the podcast about sustainable innovation brought to you by Lux Research. I am your host, Anthony Schiavo, and I'm joined by my colleague and co-host, Karthik Subramanian. He is joining us from Amsterdam, as always.
Weather and Apple's Fall Event
00:00:24
Speaker
Karthik, how's things in Amsterdam? Good. Yeah. ah The fall has finally set in.
00:00:31
Speaker
Okay. And which is a bit colder. And of course the Apple event always you know kicks the fall off, I suppose. So now we are in the mood of the fall, you know. The classic, the the historical longstanding tradition of of kicking the the fall season off with a major Apple event. I guess it is a tradition for you at this point.
00:00:50
Speaker
Yeah, I always keep following them because, um, as you may know, and most of our listeners, uh, will also know that I am like drowning in the Apple ecosystem at this point. So, uh, always, uh, keenly following what's going on with the company, even though they have, uh, what's the word, uh, underwhelming or disappointed me in the last few years with their product launches, but yes. ah still followinging So it's just card taking myself today.
Impact of COVID on Inspire Event
00:01:15
Speaker
Um, we actually had our major.
00:01:18
Speaker
event, our Inspire event. We bring the whole company or at least everyone in North America together. We do this in other regions at Lux as well. ah But that was this week. So Mike um very respectfully and thoughtfully got COVID um and thus could not join us. um He managed to not make it to the event though, which was good of him. So we we avoided, hopefully avoided a super spreader situation. And Amy and Alina were I think too much going on to to hop on the podcast, which is, as far as I'm concerned, a huge dereliction of podcasting duties. We will have to put the podcasters jail for a week or two as a you know punishment for
00:02:00
Speaker
for lowering us down the list of priorities. But me and Kartik are here, and yeah, we're gonna talk a couple of
Preview: Apple News & Recycling
00:02:05
Speaker
different things. We're gonna talk some Apple news, and we're gonna talk about recycling. I had an interesting time at a ah the Advanced Recycling Summit a couple weeks ago, which I had discussed on the blog, but you know it's worth chatting about here. I think it was ah there' some some interesting things that I learned and and saw there.
00:02:22
Speaker
But Karatek, what's going on with Apple? Because I saw they had this new set of products, I think the iPhone 16 maybe, but I'm not sure what I'm really supposed to think or feel about it. So why don't you let why don't you let me know? What's what's going on?
00:02:39
Speaker
So ah like I said, I think it's customary that Apple always launches their iPhone in in the
New Apple Products Discussion
00:02:46
Speaker
fall. um And of course, along with that, they release the Apple Watch and and and a bunch of other accessories, which has always been the case. um And again, the the iPhone to me is not the most interesting bit from this year's release. And a couple of things I thought would be interesting to discuss from an innovation standpoint was number one, the Apple Watch 10.
00:03:07
Speaker
And so now the Apple Watch 10 includes sleep apnea detection and it's gonna collect data over a period of 30 days and consumers who are wearing it during their sleep, the health app on the iPhone will show you which is of course paired to the Apple Watch if you're having you know sleep apnea issues and whether you should consult a doctor or not.
00:03:27
Speaker
And this, it does so by only using the gyroscope. um I actually thought initially that they were going to also use the micro you know the microphone, maybe also listening to snoring patterns and things like that. But it turns out it's just going to use the gyroscope and wrist movements during interruptions in sleep. And it is going to notify the user whether they are having sleep apnea or not.
00:03:48
Speaker
So that I found was very interesting. I'm not sure if it still has FDA approval yet because they there was another product as well that they launched, which they said needed FDA approval. um But this was the first interesting bit. And the second one was with the AirPods Pro 2, which is not a new product, of course. i think I think they launched this about a couple of years ago.
00:04:08
Speaker
But the H2 chip, which they use in the AirPods 2 Pro, is now capable of um you know running special software that they have now integrated, which allows to convert the AirPods into clinically-proof tested hearing aid.
00:04:24
Speaker
So if someone requires hearing aid, you can just pop it on. And I think they use the transparency mode and the other software ah features on the AirPods to convert it into a hearing aid for people with loss of hearing. So those two are the interesting aspects. The phone, of course, was meh, as usual for the last two years, it has been. So it's funny because I want to dig into the health stuff, but it does seem like the reaction in general to these products has been pretty meh and lame.
AI Delays in Apple Devices
00:04:56
Speaker
is it the the the The AI stuff has flopped, I guess it's safe to say, right? There's not a ton of interest. That's certainly not seen as a killer app in any particular case. Were they pushing the AI elements? Was that part of their branding? I mean, you watched, presumably, and and read the announcements. To what extent was that even part of their branding or part of their marketing push in this new iPhone?
00:05:24
Speaker
So um the one thing to note though, is that I believe the AI features are not coming on to the phones yet. Really? Yeah. So it turns out that wait it will be, so the iOS 18.0, which of course they marketed with Apple intelligence, their AI, you know, software.
00:05:40
Speaker
is not coming on in, you know, out of the box. So I think it's only gonna be released with 18.1, 18.2 and subsequent releases. So you're not gonna be able to use the features right away when it comes in. But of course there is an element of AI that they will be using to, you know, help improve the performance of their devices moving forward, for sure. Especially with, you know, wrist movements, tracking, you know, ambient noise detection with different ambient noise. So you're gonna use AI to teach the,
00:06:09
Speaker
does the the the computational algorithm or how to detect you know what kind of noises can a person hear or if they're having hearing loss or not. So AI is definitely, of course, a part of it, but unfortunately not available to consumers in the short term. That's wild because AI has just been such a top story. It's been such a big thing for the industry as a whole. You've seen you know Google, their competitors, Google, Microsoft get so heavily involved. And they had this big partnership with OpenAI.
00:06:37
Speaker
And I just assumed that they would have been pushing that as hard as they possibly could in those new phones. And the fact that it's not even coming at launch is kind of wild to me. I mean, I guess the other way to think about it is, you know, AI isn't that special to begin with, or since you can already go to, if you really want it on your phone, you can go to like chat GPT website, but you know, you can already do a Google search. There's already these ways to access AI in a lot of different form factors. So pushing it to the phone isn't maybe that differentiating,
00:07:11
Speaker
you know, but yeah it's still kind of I don't know, it seems like a big
Wearables as Health Tech
00:07:17
Speaker
whiff, right? Like they hyped, they did this big announcement. They hyped their shit up like a lot. And now it's like, who knows when it's even gonna come out.
00:07:25
Speaker
But I think the software will still work. Maybe its capabilities are not you know fully, and but oh to rephrase, I would say, I think it's not going to work at the best of its capabilities. I think that's going to be the big issue for consumers, of course. But at least within um you know the circles that I interact with, they were quite excited with the Apple Watch introducing a sleep apnea, this thing. And they were like, this is dope.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, so let's let's talk about that. Let's talk about some of these more medical applications. Because I do think it's interesting that we've been talking a lot about the convergence of the sort of consumer wearables and the health wearables over the years at Lux. And I think it's happened maybe a little bit more slowly than we would have thought. I think we would have maybe expected to see more fully featured health devices or health use cases from these devices earlier, right? And I think maybe we maybe would have expected to see things like the Fitbit move into that more medicalized or or create more of that medicalized space earlier on.
00:08:32
Speaker
What do you think, like, I guess that my first question is like, what do you think is caused it now? Is it AI, right? Is it this? We've always had the ability to access this data, right? You know, we've been able to put gyroscopes and stuff in these watches.
00:08:48
Speaker
sensors. But now the AI, we've gotten to the point with the data analytics that we can actually do the large-scale data analytics. We can build the robust models. We have enough data in the tank already right yeah to to analyze. And we have you know these new capabilities with you know the scale up of compute. We can do large models. Is it that? you know Because it doesn't seem like from a material or from a physical sensing standpoint, as you sort of mentioned, it doesn't seem like there was a big change or really maybe even any change. So what's really, yeah, what's creating these capabilities in your view?
00:09:31
Speaker
um I think it's ah somewhat of a mixed bag, I would say, because if you look at, for example, I think a couple of years back, Apple was so keen on introducing diabetes, blood sugar monitoring with their watch. But again, you know, typically you have to, you know, get a droplet of blood or something to detect, right? Which you don't have to with the watch, but they have been struggling to do that for quite some time.
00:09:52
Speaker
And I think there were other wearables as well, if I'm not mistaken, that tried to introduce something similar, but couldn't because it's so difficult to detect blood sugar by just you know sending um you know through the soagnetic radiation through the skin. So it's it's not straightforward. So I think there are some issues we still have to overcome when it comes to the hardware side of things, just pure data collection.
00:10:14
Speaker
but AI will definitely make a huge difference in terms of just the chipset that is used. you know You're going to have a smaller form factor. The cooling is going to be you know ah a different beast, if i would I could use that word in terms of it's not going to be that much of a challenge. um Or maybe it adds a new set of challenges. The same animal, but a different kind of beast, Karthik. It's true. Indeed. It's still an animal, though. So if you think about it, I think the software capabilities, of course, make it much easier to manage all the data that you're collecting and then process the data to give you meaningful information. So I think that push will definitely help, you know, introduce more capabilities. But I was just thinking when this, um you know, when the launch came out and I was like, what more can an Apple watch do or what more can a wearable do? You know, I think we have already hit the limit and and maybe
00:11:09
Speaker
I'm kind of short sighted in my way of thinking because I'm not thinking about other use cases of the top of my head, but what do you see in terms of what are the new capabilities that we could see moving forward with these wearable devices?
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. I think the big thing that has always been an issue has been retention, right? And the appeal with some of these more medicalized use cases is that they're a more consistent value proposition, right? Like diabetes monitoring is a good example where you can sell health monitors for fitness and you know people sold Fitbits for a long time, but the you know average user was not using them by six months, right? They were, they were no longer using them. They were no longer trying anything. And of course, if you, if you get into one of these more medical conditions, you're going to keep tracking that. Um, I think the, the challenge or when when you think about the, where do we go here? Or what's like the growth opportunity, right? For Apple, it's already the most purchased watch in the world. I think like it's all Apple watches are like, like totally disrupted the watch category. Right.
00:12:19
Speaker
And so I think it's going to be challenging them for them to find more growth in, you know, even if they push to diabetes successfully, let's say. That is a big pool of people, but Apple is already the most leadingest watch in the world. Right. And It makes a lot more sense, I think in a lot of cases, to try and sell Apple watches to everyone with the money right than it does to try and target these these medical applications or these these smaller pools of people who have these medical conditions, even if like diabetes, it is a big pool of people.
00:12:57
Speaker
and And so that's where I really struggle. you know Having these capabilities for a startup or for you know Fitbit or whatever, one of these companies who's got a bit of a smaller pool of purchasers is a good thing and it makes sense. But I don't know that it's gonna be like enough to really turn around the woes or like to really grow the sales of a company like Apple, right? Where they have this this such a large user base already. and And I think it kind of just sort of
00:13:28
Speaker
ah speaks to a broader issue of like Apple saturation, which I think you were kind of hinting at earlier, where the people who want an iPhone at this point have an iPhone, right? Yeah. And the people who want an Apple Watch probably have an Apple Watch. And it's pretty difficult to get them to change, right? If you want an upgrade, you need some kind of killer application to drive that upgrade, right? And the AI stuff. you know We talked about it. It's it's not a thing that's going to get people to get rid of their old iPhone and get a new iPhone. right yeah And i think I see this a lot with the medical applications as well. Even if you're talking about expanding the pool of diseases that are covered, like sleep apnea, that's great. um Diabetes you know in the future, maybe that that could be good.
00:14:13
Speaker
but like none of this will move the needle for a company like Apple. And I think it speaks to a sort of, and I think that's true of like tech in general. We're really saturated with a lot of tech products and tech solutions. And I think that that saturation is just going to continue to drag down these companies and they're going to have to increasingly sort of either do data collection and and sell data to juice their profitability or just do more rent seeking,
Consumer Anxiety with Wearables
00:14:39
Speaker
right? Just charge more, find ways to charge more.
00:14:42
Speaker
for the things they already do or the things that they used to do for free. And so I don't see this changing that. you know, so much. I'm curious. yeah what What do you think? Yeah. It also got, got me thinking from a consumer standpoint. So data collection is great and a lot of people want to, you know, collect data, monitor what's going on, right? So you go to the gym, you're seeing, you know, what are, you know, how many calories are you burning? How good is your workout and things like that. So that's all great. And when you have it in these nice, colorful charts, you know, showing trends and stuff, it's amazing.
00:15:16
Speaker
But one thing I have noticed is that too much data collection and presentation is also not good to some types of consumers, where they get too stressed seeing that something is wrong. you know And the watch and the health data is pointing out that something is wrong. So not everyone processes data the same way, right? ah Or some yeah kind of information. So I know a lot of instances where ah ah people have come up to me and said, you know my heart rate is just going up. Why is it telling me but that my heart rate is going up, even though you're just sitting down?
00:15:45
Speaker
So it can create some kind of anxiety that your body is actually doing something it's not supposed to do while it is perfectly fine. And so a lot of people have just said, you know what, I'm not going to wear the watch anymore because I'm so anxious that it's going to give me this data that's going to make me worried. So yeah the more capabilities you have, I think it's going to create more fear in the public that, you know, it's going to detect something wrong in me when I don't want to think about it.
00:16:14
Speaker
<unk>m I'm just curious. I don't know if that's something you would you think would happen. Yeah, no, definitely. I think the behaviors are very interesting. We recently got my daughter, not an apple a lot, but like a Fitbit type thing, track steps. And so there was a lot of interest in in steps and step tracking and all this stuff.
00:16:35
Speaker
ah for a couple days. But there was pretty quickly some like step based guilt, you know, that surfaced more or less immediately. And we're like, Oh, hey, you know, it's not like, you know, we tried to say, like Oh, it's not like something that you need to be worried about, right? It's a goal. It's good to like, get some steps in during the day. But like, you don't need to like, be upset if you don't hit the goal. But you know, pretty quickly or pretty easily, there was that, that guilt. And I'm pretty sure the first time she didn't meet that goal on one day, she just like took it off and it's not what it says. I don't know if she's still wearing it, but I think that, you know, these goals are good. And my wife really, uh, uses one of these step kinders and really focuses on a ah lot and it's part of her overall health regime, which involves a lot of other things working out. You know, it's part of this holistic routine and it's helpful for her.
00:17:29
Speaker
But it's pretty interesting to see someone who, you know, is is a little less mature, right? Just take it and kind of run into some of these pitfalls more or less immediately. Yeah. So that's why, to your point on that. So again, not sure exactly how much more capable these things would get or how that would be perceived by, you know, the consumer market.
00:17:50
Speaker
But as you said, they are reaching this point of saturation where there is only so much you can do um But I don't think I would be buying the Apple watch this time around because I already have an Apple watch which works for me and you know if i what would it take to issue the upgrade what what What would you need in order to upgrade?
Consumer Hesitation to Upgrade
00:18:09
Speaker
ah Well, I think I think to that point maybe Maybe I don't have some of the issues they're trying to tackle so much which is why it doesn't appeal to me as such and So for example, if I hope I don't have sleep apnea, I don't know that. Uh, but if, you know, if someone comes and tells me we have the sleep apnea monitor, would you like to try? I would be kind of iffy about that because I think I don't have sleep apnea. So only when they say that you do have this problem and you need this to solve it only then would the consumer want to buy. Right. Um, so I don't think at this point it's addressing any pain points for a lot of people. And I'm not sure if the Apple watch can hit that point, you know,
00:18:49
Speaker
I think the only thing that would push a consumer to buy a new Apple watch would be, you know, my Apple watch is slow. I have to charge it all the time. It's just not cutting it out. So it's not reliable enough anymore. So, and I want to stick to the ecosystem because I'm used to the ecosystem and it's very hard to get out of it. Now I will make the switch. So I think that's the trend we will see from the consumer side. Uh, I think it's time for a shift in pace here.
Advanced Recycling Summit Insights
00:19:12
Speaker
Um, I was in Ohio recently.
00:19:18
Speaker
everyone's favorite place in the world. Were you in Springfield, Ohio? No, I was not. in a not string We're not doing any any Trump debate discourse on this podcast.
00:19:30
Speaker
No, no. I was in Ohio for the Advanced Recycling Summit, which is a good event. um I did ah did say the phrase, Ohio Riz, Skibbity Ohio Riz, cycling to my daughter. She's 10. All her classmates are on like the Skibbity stuff. It's like very, very popular there. And so she was very like ashamed of me, you know, saying, let's give you a high order for a week. I got a lot of mileage out of that, but I also got a mileage out of the actual trip itself, which was good. A couple of interesting things that jumped out of me. One is I actually got to visit an advanced recycling facility, um operating advanced recycling facility.
00:20:17
Speaker
is Alterra's 20,000 ton per year plant in Akron, Ohio. And I found a couple of things interesting. One is, you know, we've talked a lot about advanced recycling. They're doing a form of plastic pyrolysis, pretty basic, I would say pretty standard um stuff. They're only really able to, well, I don't know if I should say it this way, but they're sourcing, you know, 20,000 tons of of waste a year, but the waste they're sourcing is pretty high quality, right? It's pre shredded.
00:20:47
Speaker
it's predensified in a meaningful sense. So they're not bringing in, you know, loose plastic bags to this facility or even bailed plastic bags or anything like that, right? The only stuff that's coming in has already been pre-processed by other people somewhere else. And I think that's really what it takes these days to run a facility successfully. You know, you need to have a significant supply of really high quality waste. So they're able, they've been able to secure that, which was great. Um,
00:21:17
Speaker
But it's pretty clear that they would have a lot of challenges securing that in a larger facility. um And maybe even they wouldn't be able to do it at all, right? They would have to build their own recycling. They would have to build their own how it spoke.
00:21:34
Speaker
um So that was was very interesting, um just that they're really kind of at that limit at 20,000 tons. And that's much smaller than the chemicals industry wants to build. So just having that capability is it's going to be pretty challenging for the chemicals industry.
00:21:51
Speaker
right So ah if I may just ask a question here, I was just curious. So but because they are limited in size and you know you you say that scalability is a challenge, is that just because and you know to get that high quality waste input or feedstock, if you will, can't they just integrate a a sorting facility of sorts to sort the waste and get it higher quality? Or is there some other form of pre-processing that has to take place before it goes into this facility?
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's all sorting, obviously, um because you do want to take out anything that's mechanically recycled. But then it's it's really about shredding and densification. So one of the big challenges, there's an interesting presentation at the conference um from ah Scott Treanor, who's the he's a senior guy with the Association of Plastic Recyclers. And they did a study on what it would cost theoretically to collect plastic bags from people's homes, right? And the basic issue is that they're so light, they so the the density of this is so low that they came up with an estimate that was around $1,000 a ton, just to collect
00:23:08
Speaker
that bad, right? um That doesn't include anything else. Because you have to send out a billion trucks, right, to to get, yeah you know, you fill a truck up, but you just don't have that much material in there. So a lot of it is um just fine. It's less technically challenging. like I don't think the like sorting and the shredding and the densification they're doing is that impressive, technically. But it's it's what they've done is they have found enough suppliers who have this waste on hand and who are willing to get it to them. right Because they basically can't collect it post-consumer. And like some of it is probably coming from like drop-off.
00:23:45
Speaker
right like those ah
00:23:49
Speaker
in America at the grocery stores, we have like these these, you have the drop off bins. Yeah. But you know, a lot of it is coming just from other sources. Right. Um, so it was just a big, you know, it's technically not that impressive, but like logistically, it was really sort of at the edge of their capabilities.
Recycling Logistics Challenges
00:24:06
Speaker
Right. Because these people can't, you can't be paying $150 for this feedstock, let alone a thousand dollars. Right. but So yeah.
00:24:16
Speaker
So I wanted to say this. I'm not sure if we should, um, maybe I just wanted to say that maybe we need to have a miniature Wally sized robot in our house that, you know, just compresses waste just so that you can put it on the trucks. Well, yeah. Well, you think, you know, I was actually, I was at this, I was at this activate, uh, like happy hour last night. And I was talking to this guy there. It was named like totally blanking on. Um, but they're developing like.
00:24:43
Speaker
basically garbage, not like garbage can, but like a trailer sized, so dumpster sized sorting and collection and maybe some shredding and densification, maybe just sorting systems, right? um So they're trying to put that presort on that that level. And the idea, you know, for them is really like,
00:25:06
Speaker
People are increasingly talking about like a hub and spoke model for plastic waste collection and sorting. The idea being that we're going to do a lot more sorting at smaller sites, whether that's sorting landfill feeds. So basically, the material that is brought to a landfill today in America is basically not sorted. right no It just goes straight do little into the landfill.
00:25:28
Speaker
um So, okay, at every landfill site, you have the potential, you can put a hub there. That's still a pretty big hub because that's still like, you know, 50 to 70 tons a day, I think, maybe more of material that you have to sort. So that's like a pretty big hub. But then you can go, and this is what they were thinking about. This company is like, oh, we're going to go to much smaller hubs. um You know, baseball stadium, a corporate campus, right?
00:25:56
Speaker
a large office building. you know Our office building has a dumpster in the basement, I'm sure. right Let's put ah some sort of capability into that dumpster, right? College campuses.
00:26:09
Speaker
you know small manufacturing sites. So I think that there's something to that idea in the sense that that's where the waste is, that's where the waste is cheap. But on the flip side, the efficiency is very challenging. The reason why we bring everything to an MRF is because This is one of the other things I heard is you know the new um MRFs that are brand new that are really capable, they are capable of a lot of very impressive sorting. ah There's a guy from Rumpke Recycler in Ohio, or I should say this waste operator in Ohio, and they're talking about how they are capable now of separating PET rigids from other materials. It's not just bottles anymore. They're really expanding the capability of the footprint of what it's possible to do yeah with waste sorting.
00:26:54
Speaker
by That required 18 optical sorters. It required like this new build facility where everything could be laid out you know in a really nice flow of materials through the site. They started with a plancks school ah blank slate, and they had a lot of space, and they had a lot of room to work with. right And they were able to produce a very high-functioning sortation site as a result of that. But trying to shrink that down into a you know, a single dumpster is pretty difficult. Um, so I think it really remains to be seen if there's, um, an opportunity to actually make that work. And if the, how small we can really get these, these hubs and spokes to actually be. So is there a challenge with modular recycling solutions? Uh, that's something that people could look at because that modularity would then, you know, um improve the ability to, you know, have these up and spoke models implemented.
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's the question is to what to what extent you can get away with standardized equipment right versus like standardized and modularized versus like something that needs to be custom. Because for a materials recovery facility, for example, for separating 2D and 3D materials, you need sorters designed for either 2D or 3D, right? and You cannot just run your 2D and 3D through the same sorting, right? Now they're doing that at a much higher volume, a much higher speed than maybe what you need. But it's a good example where it's like, okay, um if you have an office environment where you're getting a lot of paper mixed with, it's like mostly paper mixed with other things. Can you get away with just a 2D sorter, right?
00:28:39
Speaker
Do you need a 2D or a 3D sorter? And then like can you sell the same system you know to Fenway Park as you do to our office building? right Because Fenway, it's going to be almost all food packaging. Cans, bottles, P-E-T. Food waste. yeah Food waste mixed in there.
00:28:59
Speaker
You know, and so can you really, because really what you'd like is one system, right? You just like the one thing that like fits on the dumpster or whatever, right? Or the dumpster 2.0, whatever it is. But it's very challenging. Like the waste day to day and then ah particularly site to site is just not the same, right? yeah And so it's not really clear to me that that's like possible.
00:29:29
Speaker
And so modularity can help there, but it does drive up the cost compared to just having the one thing. I had nothing else to say actually. Um, but it was quite fascinating. Um, any other yeah insights or something you want to
Microplastic Leakage in Manufacturing
00:29:41
Speaker
share from? Yeah. I mean, the last thing I'll call out is, uh, operation clean sweep. This is a, uh, I believe an ACC or America, maybe an America's plastic makers, um, program. It is basically a microplastic.
00:30:00
Speaker
It's a lot of things, but it's it's basically sort of this this it's a plastic industry association program, I believe. that The idea is to prevent plastic resin being lost as pellets, as flakes, and as powders during handling. so Basically, microplastic leakage during the manufacturing of this process.
00:30:24
Speaker
and the ah place, the pyrolysis facility I went to was part of Operation Clean Sweep. And it was very interesting because they had basically everything, the whole site was tilted in where it's like the, everything was on a slight gradient towards like a central drain. yeah um So whenever there's water, rainwater, everything gets washed into um a central drain and then that's sent to a pond and they're able to do, you know, filtration and processing there. So they're they're really controlling the water, the wastewater that they're producing. And, you know, they're taking significant pains to
00:30:58
Speaker
prevent any leakage of plastic into the environment. microla Which is great. Say again? Microplastics as well, I presume? Yeah, that's one of the big concerns. this is one of the big This is all one of the big sources of microplastics, right? Everything from pellets, but flakes, dust, all that stuff, right? yeah ah they had They had big dust handling equipment there.
00:31:19
Speaker
um
00:31:21
Speaker
That's a fire concern as well, the dust. So it's not just about microplastics. um But again, it's something where you know this is a new build facility. right um I think it would be pretty difficult to do this in a retrofit model. like They did landscaping basically to make this happen.
00:31:41
Speaker
and you know That's just going to be challenging to roll out to a lot of sites across America globally. and There's a lot of legacy infrastructure, a lot of legacy sites.
00:31:55
Speaker
And so it was impressive. i was I was impressed by the level of thoughtfulness that they had displayed there. um But I was also, I would say, pretty intensely aware of the fact that I don't know if that's really a sustainable solution for industry long term, you know, isnt or better solutions are going to be necessary. And also, it's not an alternative to investing in the remediation part of the microplastics issue because those microplastics are definitely going to continue getting out into the environment. and It's hard to imagine that that stops anytime soon. so Even though I was impressed by what Altair had going on, i was I would say intensely aware that it was not going to work for her everyone.
00:32:40
Speaker
Are there other projects that are trying to do something similar, the new build ones? Because of course, retrofit. Yeah, Clean Sweep is this big program that a lot of people are involved in now in the chemicals industry. So I think they're going to see a lot of this going forward on new sites, certainly from the big companies. I think they're pretty heavily involved in this. But again, like I said, again, like I said, there's just so much legacy equipment and sites out there. that's It's just hard to imagine this really working for ah the industry as a whole.
00:33:08
Speaker
Is there any room to convert this into a retrofit type solution? Yeah, I mean, there's some things you can do. Certainly, I think you can add if you're already collecting wastewater, some of these places are already doing wastewater management yeah from a chemical safety standpoint. If you're doing that, I think you can go a lot further on the microplastics part. I don't know to what extent ah companies are really like what percentage of sites are already doing that.
00:33:37
Speaker
And I would imagine a lot of small sites, a lot of like small manufacturing hubs or recycling sites are not doing that, right? Because they're not really working with like liquid chemicals, right? If you're just doing polymers,
00:33:47
Speaker
um you probably don't have that type of of of system set up. um And it's just very hard to retrofit. If you're not already doing the water management, if you're not already doing that type of ah build, um it's tough to it's tough to retrofit. Yeah.
00:34:06
Speaker
Uh, but I still think in terms of the plastic recycling issue, I think you also wrote, uh, a piece on how the Biden administration has done quite a bit on the plastic recycling side of things.
Future of Plastic Recycling
00:34:15
Speaker
So, uh, I think from a trend standpoint, I think this will continue, right? I think plastic recycling, there is always an issue, but it seems that we don't know how to solve that issue. Like we're just trying to find various ways to solve it, but we're just not unable to stop demand or, you know, find the sorting ways a bit, find economic ways of, of.
00:34:35
Speaker
you know, implementing advanced recycling steps. So in terms of, it just seems that we are struggling to find ways to get over this problem. And I don't know if you see there will be much more room for innovation or if we're just going to settle. That's I think there's a lot of room for for technical innovation on the microplastics remediation side, but I also think it's going to be a problem that's still not solved even 25 years down the road. I'm doing this long-term forecasting report, and just the tech development efforts are not not there to support it yet.
00:35:05
Speaker
So, we're going to be all eating microplastics for at least the next, you know, at least the next three, four decades, I think. So, just get used to that. Yeah, not great. But at least the hearing aid will help us listen to any cries of help, if needed, I suppose.
Conclusion and Promotion
00:35:23
Speaker
How about the Apple Watch will detect the level of microplastics in our blood? That would be great. if that If that happens, I think you should go there, actually. Yeah.
00:35:31
Speaker
Yeah, we'll go we'll go with that. um If Apple rolls out a microplastic detecting watch, we will talk about it here on this podcast. If you like the podcast, you can like and subscribe. but We're on your favorite podcasting platforms. We're on Spotify. We're on Apple Podcasts. Shout out to the Apple Corporation. We love you. Don't take us off your platform. um Please leave us a review rating. We have in-person events coming up. We have the forums coming up. ah Check out the forums in Tokyo. Check out the forums in ah Silicon Valley. Check out the forum in Amsterdam. um We'd love to see you there.
00:36:05
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 podcast if you want more check out ww ww ww dot luxresearchinc dot com slash blog for all the latest news opinions and articles so