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Speaker 1: ESG is constantly evolving. Over the years, it is shifted from socially responsible investing to impact to sustainable finance. While the terminology continues to change, what hasn't changed are the underlying science market pressures, tangible physical and financial impacts of the climate crisis, as well as increasing regulatory scrutiny and rising consumer expectations. We aim to filter out the noise by speaking with industry experts to identify what is really driving value. Welcome to ESG Currents, brought to you by Bloomberg Intelligence.
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Speaker 2: Welcome to today's episode. I'm Grace Osborne, your host, and a mere ESG integration analyst. Today we are joined by Rodrigo Garcier Gonzalez, co founder of Knoppler, a company leading the charge against one of the biggest environmental challenges of our time, single use plastic. Every year, more than three hundred million tons of plastic are produced, generating massive waste, polluting ecosystems and increasing regulatory risk for businesses around the world. Knopler is tackling this crisis head on. Whether it's innovative regenerative packaging materials made from seaweed and plants. The company's impact is already being felt, partnering with major food delivery services like just Eat and featured events ranging from Coldplay concerts to Wimbledon. Their groundbreaking work has earned global recognition, including the prestigious Earthshop price and a bold commitment to replace one billion units of plastic by twenty thirty. Rodrigo's journey is a powerful example of how design, science and entrepreneurship can come together to reshape industries and build a more sustainable future. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Thank you so much for joining us, Fredrigo, And perhaps could you just start by sharing Knoppler's origin story. What inspired you to start the company and how did an idea that I believe started from edible water bubbles evolve into a full company.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for having me. So yes, my background it's not too related with what we're doing now. But I was an architect, but I was always fascinated with waste, especially plastic waste. So I was initially building structures with plastic bottles. So I did that for a few years, and then I realized that, like even if I managed to reuse and connect thousands of bottles, that was not moving the needle enough. I came back to Academia and I met Pierre Pasalia, who is the co founder, who was a packaging engineer in Loreale, and we started to ask the question of how nature package things, and we found in nature and inspiration of how fruits, for example, are done right. That is an amazing piece of packaging because it's not only that it's edible, but it's regenerative to the way that you can throw away what is left and a new tree will grow with more fruits. Manly, if you could do that with a plastic bottle, through a plastic bottle and a new plastic bottle tree will grow, that's the ultimate product design, experience or system. We have not been able to do that yet, but what we were able to do as a first product was this product that we call it Oh. We call it in that way because it was the sound that people normally do when they see this product, they do.
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Speaker 4: Like whoa oh.
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Speaker 3: Basically, it's like looks like a little water bubble. We make it zip size. You can drink the content and if you want, you can eat the packaging around. The packaging is made out of seaweed and it's a main mem because nature use members to contain any type of liquid is the most efficient way of using this. And yeah, initially we did it not with the mission of making a company. It was a project inside of the university. But slowly and slowly it started to get some traction and we were able to get a bit of funding initially from the European Union to push this project with some post dogs in Impederal College. And then we got some funding through crowdfunding to build machinery to be able to make this at larger scale, and then we were able to scale it up to do things like the London Marathon where we replace in one of the stations or plastic bottles for this product. But we have done many other different things and now we are working with other big companies to do replacements for things like energy gels, the success or the packaging outside of the energy gels. But we have done things like sauces, alcohol shots, et cetera. We have not done need done this product. On this journey, we started to work quite a lot as well with takeaway packaging. As you mentioned. In that case, what we replace is the liner or the coating inside of the takeaway packaging. So normally I don't know if people are conscious of, but like when you buy something to take away, normally it looks like cardboard outside, but internally it has plastic. And that plastic is there in order to protect the paper from the grease and the water of the food or the liquid that you have inside, which is a functional parameter that you need to on the packaging. But at the same time that plastic it makes the paper not recyclable, neither of the plastic, and it makes quite a lot of kind of like challenges.
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Speaker 4: In many different ways.
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Speaker 3: So we started to work initially with that company called just takeaway dot Com that throw us a bit this challenge of how you can you see weed to solve this problem, and we started to work on solving it.
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Speaker 4: And now that's one of the products that this.
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Speaker 3: Had bigger scale because now we have done over thirty million units of plastic replace and we are in quite a lot of places where plastic is used, from stadiums to canteens, to theme parks to yeah, places where there's consumption on the goal. And then we have been keep pushing the limits of what we can do with seaweed with this material, and recently we have been pushing to do. Let's see the form that plastic gets transform and modify in order to make products like flexible films or cutlery. And now we started to make cutulary out of seaweed and some flexible films out of seaweed with the idea that they are natural and they could be postable or in some cases are soluble or even edible. So for example, we have now some of the film supermarkets in the Netherland where people eat salad, so they wrap the salad in this film and they can eat the salad.
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Speaker 2: You need the whole thing.
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Speaker 3: It's not the purpose that all the packaging needs to be edible. For example, the windows that we do in our carbo packaging is the same material so or originally you could eat.
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Speaker 4: That is not the purpose.
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Speaker 3: The fact that this edible is the absolute proof for us that is not plastic. That's where the name comes as well of the company of not Plasts for not.
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Speaker 2: I love that. I feel like people now getting your bonus to the takeaway meal because they can eat their packaging. It's amazing to hear actually how the product has evolved and all those different use cases and those things that we are interacting with every day. I think, even if I'm going to go and buy my lunch in the middle of the day and you have that packaging, and see, the volume of waste is just huge. So it's really fantastic to hear how you're kind of evolving and solving for this massive problem. And I love that you're taking that and from nature and hearing that story. I think, actually, when we look at some of the big innovations in the whole of history, they've taken a lot of inspiration from nature, and this is like such an important way of doing that to solve this problem. And of course seaweed has been at the heart of the kind of material innovation, and you have touched on this to an extent. But I'm just curious, why did you initially go for seaweed and what makes it such a game change compared to like other biodegradable or compostible packaging.
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Speaker 3: That's a really good question. So seaweed is the first organism on Earth. You could almost argue that we are all are made out of seaweed.
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Speaker 4: Real seaweed, Yeah, exactly, And.
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Speaker 3: These have wonderful material. It's like saying plants, but plants of the sea can go in every coastline. There is normally three big families like red seaweeds, brown seweds, and green seaweeds, but there is much more difference between the DNA of our red seaweed and brown sewed that my DNA and a massroom, so it's a lot of.
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Speaker 4: Variations inside of each of the species.
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Speaker 3: The advantage of seaweed against any other kind of crops, for example inland, is that you don't need fresh water because they grow on the sea. You don't need any fertilizers, you don't need to match human intervention, and it grows really fast, so some of the seweds can grow up to even a meteor or two per day. Wow, it is the faster or simon on Earth as well on that front, so that means that you can have as well, several crops per year, so it's almost like capping grass more than kind of like waiting for a crop that will take a year or a tree that.
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Speaker 4: Will take forty years or more to grow.
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Speaker 3: Advantage as well of seaweed or planting seaweed is that you can decidify the ocean, You can create new habitats as every type of as well human intervention if you are farming seaweed, you need to do it consciously and not making the same mistakes that we have done in land, so avoiding things like invasive species or monocultures. But we do believe that if you do it in a conscious way and sustainable way, it could be one of the main resources that we have, not only for packaging, but for many other things. At the moment when you see it as well, even if we are not conscious in quite a lot of areas, like in pharma, in food, I don't know graes, but like if you had the brass your teacher this morning, you had been using seaweed or creams have seaweed, yogur, have seaweed, beer, half seaweed in the home. So almost all the processed food have seawed in one form or another. So we're not conscious. But we had been using seweed for many different things, initially for making glass. In the UK, it was used to make gunpowder. It was one of the second weapons of the Allies in the First and Second World War. Seeweed production in California to get gunpowder and get iod in as well. That it was used to to kill and to cure at the same time, see it and nowadays it's used as I mentioned, in the textile industry, in the farmer industry.
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Speaker 4: But we want to get is a seaweed grade for packaging.
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Speaker 3: It's a bit like our ambition and it's what we have been working and trying to bring sewed into into other uses. We use seaweed, or we started to use seweed as well from ilga blooms. I don't know if you have heard about this phenomenon, but as well, one of the cost concess of using fertilizer inland is that some of these leak into most of them lead to the rivers and then to the sea, and then they generate these kind of like really big seaweed blooms that it happens for example in the Caribbean with sargassum, and then that creates a big, big problem. So seaweed could be something really really sophisticated because it can be used for growing DNA for example, or it could be something in this case, for example, of the sargassum that you get paid to collect. So it's all the all the spectrum.
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Speaker 2: Wow, it's like a super super plan.
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Speaker 3: It's a super plan. And then that depends how you use it. You can get different properties from all the different serwis, but even from the same plant of the seaweed, you extract things from the from the roots or from the steam, or from the leaf, you get different flexibilities. And for us, the main application that we give to seaweed is that we don't need to modify the polymeer structure the seaweed offers in order to create certain films, certain members that we can use for packaging. What that means is that nature knows really well as well those polymers. So the same way that you can eat it, nature can process it really really easy. Because it is one of the problems I have been there for the longer periods of time.
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Speaker 2: It's amazing. It's so versatile and used in so many different areas, obviously packaging, pharma. And I was going to ask you, obviously there's more pressure on companies to manage their impacts on nature, and I was going to say, what role do you see seaweed cultivation playing in restoring ecosystems contributing to carbon catcher But actually did answer that to an extent in terms of even you're not only on one side of the coin, minimizing plastic waste with what you're producing. But when you're saying you're leveraging things like algal blooms and things like that, you're solving so many problems through the use of seaweed in the packaging. But are you able to kind of expand on that a little bit more? Is it a particularly good at carbon catture as well?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, so seaweed when it grows one fare of the biomass gets sync into the ocean. So they had the moment quite a lot of priyets of them funded for example by basis of growing seaweed to sink it in order to capture carbon. We believe that like you don't need to just grow sewed to sink it, but like by just growing seaweed, as I mentioned, like one fair of the biomass that grows gets into the ocean anyway, into the bottom of the ocean, and it's one of the most effective way of capturing carbon. There is another element as well to capture carbon in the ocean that like we are working now with Plymouth University on a project called pred plastics in that basically we are trying to as well quantify because at the moment around like one fair of the carbon emissions get captured in the ocean, and most of that is thanks to microplacton as well. And the way of capturing that microplacton has to capture carbon is basically by defecating, so it goes into the bottom. But because of microplastics, it had been observed that some of that who is going up instead of down, so that carbon gets released again. And it's one of the effacts of plastic that no one accounts for, and it could be quite could have quite big implications not only for carbon, but as well for human health or ecosystems, etc. So we're trying to kind of like push more research into these areas in order to have the real impact of plastic. Because at the moment plastic is certain for example, life cycle analysis, et cetera, it comes quite well in terms of carbon, it's because you don't account too.
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Speaker 4: Much what happens after the plastic is consumed. So we're trying to compare like like we like on that front.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so interesting because I think actually in nature, we have all these systems in place that's meant to be regulating our carbon, but we're doing things that are actually reversing some of these feedback looks that we have, and that's highly problematic. So it's interesting just having these solutions that are working with nature rather than against nature in many ways. Shifting slightly, we've actually seen a lot of some regreatory updates, such as the new epackaging and packging waste regulations, and for some larger packaged food companies this could be creating some headwinds for them. What is the opportunities at here for not planned to be able to enable clients to meet these incoming regulations.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think this had been really good for us. We have been actually making even a group or a consortion of companies. We call it the natural Polymer group because this regulation as well had been able to define really well what is and what is not a plastic. And there is two criterias. In order not to be a plastic, you need to be a polymer that is aboundant in nature, and you don't need to as the first criteria. A second criteria, you don't need to chemically modify it. Because you can start with something that is for example corn, but then or potato, but then you chemically modify it and you come up with a plastic and then nature don't know how to deal with.
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Speaker 4: That chemical modification.
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Speaker 3: So that have been really good because in the in the market there is quite a lot of confusion right from consumers and even brands.
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Speaker 4: They don't know what.
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Speaker 3: Everything has a leaf or everything has a kind of like a symbol of sustainability, but it's really hard to differentiate. And thanks to these regulations, for example, in some markets they started to tax really clear all of the produce that they are considered plastics because under that criteria, and we have been validated, for example by the government in the Netherlands as one of the only materials that is not a plastic. And it had been really good because in some countries, as I mentioned, they start to introduce, for example, modulated fees where they charge you in the same way that they charge you in a supermarket if you want to get a plastic back. So for every item that contains plastic, they can charge you up to thirty cents for example, which is something that is quite significant. So it's a good way to put some headwinds across some of these natural solutions that otherwise it's quite hard to compete against quite a lot of the big lobby and establish kind of like solutions that plastic represents.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really interesting to see how this growing regretory, including those modulated fees that are set to come in twenty twenty six to twenty seven, to shift to more environmentally sustainable packaging design where they're using recyclability as the indicator, I believe, and of course the extended use of responsibility for packaging scheme, which is putting fees on plastic packaging I think up to about four hundred and twenty three pounds per ton as of twenty twenty five to twenty six. So this is very material to companies. And I'm curious beyond regulatory push, how much you seeing a pull from consumer demand, because we have seen a growing awareness around the negative impacts of consuming too much plastic exactly.
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Speaker 3: I think it's both working together, right, and we have seen some really good examples or Casey studies for example on the reduce of the plastic back in the supermarket. Is a bit of a combination of regulators, consumers, supermarkets working together. And yeah, nowadays if you go to a supermarket, it's really i will say, like reduce much more the consumption of like the plastic bag. What is a bit kind of funny on that example is that like all the shopping is still rubbing plastic. So even if you save the last plastic bag, everything else is. But like the case study is there that like by even if it's put in a small kind of tax or visualization of the problem that there is there like everyone is able to make their actually change that behavior or that that plastic that otherwise is going to be really hard to do anything with it. There is different solutions for the plastic problem. We don't believe that like you're going to solve everything with no cloud or natural materials. The first thing that we need to do is to reduce the amount of packaging.
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Speaker 4: So that's the step number one.
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Speaker 3: The step nambage is to reduce as much as we can so we know the certain context, like if you are at home or if you are in a restaurant, it's better to use things that you are going to like metal cutlery and plates and glass. That in the society that we live where convenience is one of the items and consumption and they go is a reality if that two things cannot happen. We believe it is where we have to say recycling is another of the solutions that had been there for a while have not been proving too successful. The race of recycling had not been going up, even if it's a solution that we know from decades and nowadays it's less than ten percent of the plastic gets recycle, and when they get recycled, they don't get recycled in the same value products. They get down cycle into things that have less value. And it's one of the things that like the plastic industry or the plastic producers, they always say it's the solution, but it's quite hard to believe because it's always going to require more plastic input into the system. And yeah, certain items, I think it's good to have that end of life and to have that way of circularity, but for other items it's really really hard. Small sashes for sauces or chocolate or flexible films that they have like multiple materials embedded into it and doesn't have too much value and they are dirty. It's almost an utopia to be to recycle those.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so interesting actually, just I feel like just the other week I was noticing how quickly I fill up my recycling bin, and it's all obviously food packaging predominantly food packaging ways from the supermarket, and it's true as even if we take away that shopping bag, everything's covered in plastic. And then, of course, as you mentioned, the actual rate of recycling is quite low, and I think someone was telling me recently about the concept of kind of wish cycling, so people putting things in their recyclement that they hope gets recycle, but actually very little of it actually does. And I think you alluded to this earlier. It's not just the environmental impacts of plastic, but there's a lot more kind of awareness around microplastics, chemicals and packaging that can actually be harmful to human health. And we are seeing things like upcoming restrictions on food contact packaging containing pfas, such as the E wide band on the Forever chemical impacting I think from twenty twenty six. And I think it's interesting you were saying that in takeaway foods there's often that layer of plastic. I can know is that most people probably not aware of. I actually was not aware of that layer. How is not a place in aiding clients to meet these regulations as well?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's good that you that you mentioned. Yes, for the people who are not aware, the face is this. This is called forever chemicals. So it's really similar to teflon and it's one of the things that accumulates in the environment but as well in our bodies, so it could be quite toxic for us. And some of the consequences of accumulation of these forever chemicals are really unknown because they are relatively recent, but we know have been There's a really good movie called Dark Waters with Marc rouf Falo that I really recommend for everyone to watch.
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Speaker 2: This will be my weekend watching.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, around this problem of forever chemicals. And it's crazy that it's something that is in our pants but it's in our.
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Speaker 4: Foot packaging as well, and the.
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Speaker 3: Consequences for health it could be it could be quite quite big. It's interesting as well because we have seen in the last couple of years with a change as well, for example in the US, of political changes regarding how the word sustainability really polarize there. But like the health aspect is something really appealing for both sides. And if you may, microplastics or acrolytes or pfas or for our chemicals is something that everyone aligns that we should be able to control and we should be able to know what it goes into our foods and what goes into our bodies. So I think it's definitely something to look out for us because we use things that they are completely safe even to it not only to be food contact. We do believe that like non toxic and natural materials, natural polymers and maatural pacnion, it should be one of the ways to go. So yeah, definitely align with that part of legislation from regulators and consumers that will help to make a bit safer the way that we consume.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's really interesting what you said that around like in the US, where obviously we've had a bit of polorization around the state ability to actually pople can get on board with health impacts microplastics, and I think from a broader consumer perspective, often there's toots that there's more demand from consumers for like sustainable products, which I think there is, but we're kind of self interested and sometimes it's still placing your money where you feel like getting the highest return and actually aligning at with health impacts. People kind of bring it back to themselves rather than maybe think about a broad impact on the environment, so it's usually might shift patterns even further, I think pivoting slightly. I think last year you raised your Series A plus round at twenty three million euros, a doubling of your initial target, and with part of this being used to scale up your operations in the US. And I'm curious, what are the main differences that you're seeing between growing operations in the US and versus growing them in Europe.
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Speaker 3: So at the moment, yes, we are mostly person in the UK and bet you and in the US is quite complex, is quite big as well as the price and as we were mentioned before as well, the economic or the political climate is quite different from where we were when we did that fund raising as well. So we are starting to initially to ship some products from the UK and some materials to make the product in the US, And for example, we have the Losles Clippers and NBA Stadium in it using US and a few mir stadiums that they're starting to kind of like get interested with our packaging. So I think that's the stage one. I think Bloomber as well in some of the offices in the US kind of like trial or packaging.
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Speaker 2: That's that I'll be testing it on over there next exactly.
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Speaker 3: That's one of the first steps to start to create a bit of demand, right, and then we are at the moment in conversations with different type of converters and partners to.
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Speaker 4: Start to produce as well the.
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Speaker 3: Model that we wanted to do with dog Plug, especially with the food takeaway packaging that doesn't make sense to ship obviously makes sense to produce quite locally. So that's a bit what we are trying to do in Europe. We have managed, we have a few convertors previously locally and in the US. I think it's something that is going to happen over the next couple of months. So it's something quite exciting. And yeah, quite a lot of difference between the US market and the European market in terms of maybe to start with the portions, so as you can imagine, like the size of the boxes in the US are quite different, the type of as well of packaging that they use in the US, it's interesting, but like they use recycling more, which is really good in the sustainability point of view, but in Europe is not allowed to use recycle board for food contact challenges, so it's slightly different all of the legislation and different type of supply chains and how people work. For example, in the US as well, stadiums normally they have censorship deals with packaging companies. So there is even as Stidium what's called Footprint that is one of the companies of packaging, so it's quite powerful. When in the UK we normally try to sell our packing interstitiums to pay them to have.
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Speaker 2: Our not the other way.
00:25:09
Speaker 4: Right, business, different ways of working.
00:25:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a different business model, but it's interesting to see the different kind of regional nuances and different pathways to growth. And I feel like it's a very exciting time of growth and just seeing all that I love, like flicking on my news feed and seeing yet a different event. I think I mentioned in the intro the Coldplayer concerts at Wimbledon. Every time I look out for packaging for my strawberries. So it's amazing to see what Kno Player is doing and all the kind of evolution in the products. And perhaps maybe a forward looking question. You have the pledge to replace one billion units of plastic by twenty thirty, What in your view is needed to develop sees packaging at the scale to kind of displace all the semi use plastic in our lives that we probably consume, so we don't even register how much we're consuming it every day.
00:26:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, first we don't have, as I mentioned, the ambition that like see, we can't replace all the plastic applications and we do. What is that plastic is really good in certain as a material. It's really cheap, it's really light, has amazing barrier properties. But the main superpower that it has that is really long lasting is the main weakness as well, especially for those applications where the shelf life of the application is really short, because it's a big mismatch. You are using a skin that is going to last for centuries and a content that is going to last for hours. So it's where we see an opportunity inside of that. We are focusing at the moment mostly on things on the goal or food service, and we believe that we have a room to say on the world of packaging. The scale is one of the main things that like give you as well competitiveness in the surprice and volumes, and it's quite hard to do things in the small numbers. So it's good we're getting We're getting there, especially with the boxes and take away food. For now, as I mentioned, we are now in over fifty stadiums and nine countries and doing things in the millions, which is really good. We hope to keep growing in terms of volumes and that could affect as well, like reducing our prices more and more. So last year as well, we did quite a big price reduction of thirty percent. While everyone was going higher, we were going lower because we had more volumes that could help us to kind of like lower the cost that we in order to gain adoption. We try to pass that wins over our clients. The second thing is in performance, so trying to make being able to do more things with our materials. At the moment, for example, we have the new Holy Grail for us to see if we can make coffee cups.
00:27:42
Speaker 4: We're able to do that, it will be really good, so that's good.
00:27:46
Speaker 3: And the last thing that we are working on is seem to expand on the range of applications that we can kind of like cover. So this last year we launched windows so you could see through our films. We are testing the cutlery mentioned and we have ambisions to start to be able to make more things. So that's quite exciting on that front, because, yeah, sometimes it's even the challenge with these material you can make so many different things to focusing one thing or to know what is the thing that is going to have more impact as next step is one of the things the material as well, as I mentioned, it's not able to do everything that we will love to at the step by a step. Hopefully we can at least start with those applications that there are short term consumption and the natural materia will be a fit.
00:28:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's absolutely amazing, and I think where we're talking about an investor standpoint and financial materiality, if you're able to offer not plug customers a thirty percent discount on the not plus packaging as you begin to scale, while others are experiencing price rises on packaging and faced with regulatory headwinds, it feels like there is a clear choice that they might want to go with as they move forward. And I think it's amazing to hear all the different ways you're evolving the product as well. I would love to have a coffee cup. I feel like coffee cups are my particularly bad habit where I will use single use coffee cups, so it would be fantastic if that was one made out of not plumb materials.
00:29:15
Speaker 3: We are going there, like you said, like thirty percent on what they are paying, just to make sure that we did the reduction of our pricing. That doesn't that we are thirty percent cheaper than plastic. That's really hard. Not too many people know this, but like tariffs at the moment of plastics. We were in Geneva learning about this with the World Trade Organization. But like if you import plastics because they are petrochemicals and normally countries.
00:29:37
Speaker 4: They don't have petroleum, so the taxes.
00:29:38
Speaker 3: Are really low, while if you import natural fibers doesn't need to be seen with but bamboo for example, or other things, normally the taxes and the tariffs are double what you will pay for plastic. Really it's a bit of a nonsense. We're trying to kind of like see how we can change that, but it's not easy. But this is one of the m first advantage of plastics. So one of the ways that we subsidize petro chemicals in this.
00:30:01
Speaker 4: World that we live.
00:30:02
Speaker 2: So we've seen some positive regretory movements, but there's definitely still some hurdles to overcome. By the sounds of things, it has been so fascinating to hear the journey of Knoppler and what you're doing with the company, and just to hear how nature is inspiring design that's solving some of the largest challenges that we're definitely facing around waste and single use plastic, and just amazing to hear how I feel like it's multifaested in the way that's solving this problem by using natural materials through from how it's grown to end of life. So thank you so much for joining us today.
00:30:36
Speaker 4: Thank you, Grace Pleasure.
00:30:38
Speaker 2: You can find more information by going to BI ESG go on the Bloomberg terminal. If you have an ESG quandary or burning questions you'd like to ask bi's expert analysts, send us an email at ESG Currents at bloomberg dot net. Thank you,
Speaker 1: ESG is constantly evolving. Over the years, it is shifted from socially responsible investing to impact to sustainable finance. While the terminology continues to change, what hasn't changed are the underlying science market pressures, tangible physical and financial impacts of the climate crisis, as well as increasing regulatory scrutiny and rising consumer expectations. We aim to filter out the noise by speaking with industry experts to identify what is really driving value. Welcome to ESG Currents, brought to you by Bloomberg Intelligence.
00:00:38
Speaker 2: Welcome to today's episode. I'm Grace Osborne, your host, and a mere ESG integration analyst. Today we are joined by Rodrigo Garcier Gonzalez, co founder of Knoppler, a company leading the charge against one of the biggest environmental challenges of our time, single use plastic. Every year, more than three hundred million tons of plastic are produced, generating massive waste, polluting ecosystems and increasing regulatory risk for businesses around the world. Knopler is tackling this crisis head on. Whether it's innovative regenerative packaging materials made from seaweed and plants. The company's impact is already being felt, partnering with major food delivery services like just Eat and featured events ranging from Coldplay concerts to Wimbledon. Their groundbreaking work has earned global recognition, including the prestigious Earthshop price and a bold commitment to replace one billion units of plastic by twenty thirty. Rodrigo's journey is a powerful example of how design, science and entrepreneurship can come together to reshape industries and build a more sustainable future. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Thank you so much for joining us, Fredrigo, And perhaps could you just start by sharing Knoppler's origin story. What inspired you to start the company and how did an idea that I believe started from edible water bubbles evolve into a full company.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for having me. So yes, my background it's not too related with what we're doing now. But I was an architect, but I was always fascinated with waste, especially plastic waste. So I was initially building structures with plastic bottles. So I did that for a few years, and then I realized that, like even if I managed to reuse and connect thousands of bottles, that was not moving the needle enough. I came back to Academia and I met Pierre Pasalia, who is the co founder, who was a packaging engineer in Loreale, and we started to ask the question of how nature package things, and we found in nature and inspiration of how fruits, for example, are done right. That is an amazing piece of packaging because it's not only that it's edible, but it's regenerative to the way that you can throw away what is left and a new tree will grow with more fruits. Manly, if you could do that with a plastic bottle, through a plastic bottle and a new plastic bottle tree will grow, that's the ultimate product design, experience or system. We have not been able to do that yet, but what we were able to do as a first product was this product that we call it Oh. We call it in that way because it was the sound that people normally do when they see this product, they do.
00:03:20
Speaker 4: Like whoa oh.
00:03:22
Speaker 3: Basically, it's like looks like a little water bubble. We make it zip size. You can drink the content and if you want, you can eat the packaging around. The packaging is made out of seaweed and it's a main mem because nature use members to contain any type of liquid is the most efficient way of using this. And yeah, initially we did it not with the mission of making a company. It was a project inside of the university. But slowly and slowly it started to get some traction and we were able to get a bit of funding initially from the European Union to push this project with some post dogs in Impederal College. And then we got some funding through crowdfunding to build machinery to be able to make this at larger scale, and then we were able to scale it up to do things like the London Marathon where we replace in one of the stations or plastic bottles for this product. But we have done many other different things and now we are working with other big companies to do replacements for things like energy gels, the success or the packaging outside of the energy gels. But we have done things like sauces, alcohol shots, et cetera. We have not done need done this product. On this journey, we started to work quite a lot as well with takeaway packaging. As you mentioned. In that case, what we replace is the liner or the coating inside of the takeaway packaging. So normally I don't know if people are conscious of, but like when you buy something to take away, normally it looks like cardboard outside, but internally it has plastic. And that plastic is there in order to protect the paper from the grease and the water of the food or the liquid that you have inside, which is a functional parameter that you need to on the packaging. But at the same time that plastic it makes the paper not recyclable, neither of the plastic, and it makes quite a lot of kind of like challenges.
00:05:02
Speaker 4: In many different ways.
00:05:04
Speaker 3: So we started to work initially with that company called just takeaway dot Com that throw us a bit this challenge of how you can you see weed to solve this problem, and we started to work on solving it.
00:05:17
Speaker 4: And now that's one of the products that this.
00:05:19
Speaker 3: Had bigger scale because now we have done over thirty million units of plastic replace and we are in quite a lot of places where plastic is used, from stadiums to canteens, to theme parks to yeah, places where there's consumption on the goal. And then we have been keep pushing the limits of what we can do with seaweed with this material, and recently we have been pushing to do. Let's see the form that plastic gets transform and modify in order to make products like flexible films or cutlery. And now we started to make cutulary out of seaweed and some flexible films out of seaweed with the idea that they are natural and they could be postable or in some cases are soluble or even edible. So for example, we have now some of the film supermarkets in the Netherland where people eat salad, so they wrap the salad in this film and they can eat the salad.
00:06:12
Speaker 2: You need the whole thing.
00:06:13
Speaker 3: It's not the purpose that all the packaging needs to be edible. For example, the windows that we do in our carbo packaging is the same material so or originally you could eat.
00:06:22
Speaker 4: That is not the purpose.
00:06:24
Speaker 3: The fact that this edible is the absolute proof for us that is not plastic. That's where the name comes as well of the company of not Plasts for not.
00:06:32
Speaker 2: I love that. I feel like people now getting your bonus to the takeaway meal because they can eat their packaging. It's amazing to hear actually how the product has evolved and all those different use cases and those things that we are interacting with every day. I think, even if I'm going to go and buy my lunch in the middle of the day and you have that packaging, and see, the volume of waste is just huge. So it's really fantastic to hear how you're kind of evolving and solving for this massive problem. And I love that you're taking that and from nature and hearing that story. I think, actually, when we look at some of the big innovations in the whole of history, they've taken a lot of inspiration from nature, and this is like such an important way of doing that to solve this problem. And of course seaweed has been at the heart of the kind of material innovation, and you have touched on this to an extent. But I'm just curious, why did you initially go for seaweed and what makes it such a game change compared to like other biodegradable or compostible packaging.
00:07:27
Speaker 3: That's a really good question. So seaweed is the first organism on Earth. You could almost argue that we are all are made out of seaweed.
00:07:36
Speaker 4: Real seaweed, Yeah, exactly, And.
00:07:39
Speaker 3: These have wonderful material. It's like saying plants, but plants of the sea can go in every coastline. There is normally three big families like red seaweeds, brown seweds, and green seaweeds, but there is much more difference between the DNA of our red seaweed and brown sewed that my DNA and a massroom, so it's a lot of.
00:07:56
Speaker 4: Variations inside of each of the species.
00:08:00
Speaker 3: The advantage of seaweed against any other kind of crops, for example inland, is that you don't need fresh water because they grow on the sea. You don't need any fertilizers, you don't need to match human intervention, and it grows really fast, so some of the seweds can grow up to even a meteor or two per day. Wow, it is the faster or simon on Earth as well on that front, so that means that you can have as well, several crops per year, so it's almost like capping grass more than kind of like waiting for a crop that will take a year or a tree that.
00:08:28
Speaker 4: Will take forty years or more to grow.
00:08:31
Speaker 3: Advantage as well of seaweed or planting seaweed is that you can decidify the ocean, You can create new habitats as every type of as well human intervention if you are farming seaweed, you need to do it consciously and not making the same mistakes that we have done in land, so avoiding things like invasive species or monocultures. But we do believe that if you do it in a conscious way and sustainable way, it could be one of the main resources that we have, not only for packaging, but for many other things. At the moment when you see it as well, even if we are not conscious in quite a lot of areas, like in pharma, in food, I don't know graes, but like if you had the brass your teacher this morning, you had been using seaweed or creams have seaweed, yogur, have seaweed, beer, half seaweed in the home. So almost all the processed food have seawed in one form or another. So we're not conscious. But we had been using seweed for many different things, initially for making glass. In the UK, it was used to make gunpowder. It was one of the second weapons of the Allies in the First and Second World War. Seeweed production in California to get gunpowder and get iod in as well. That it was used to to kill and to cure at the same time, see it and nowadays it's used as I mentioned, in the textile industry, in the farmer industry.
00:09:42
Speaker 4: But we want to get is a seaweed grade for packaging.
00:09:45
Speaker 3: It's a bit like our ambition and it's what we have been working and trying to bring sewed into into other uses. We use seaweed, or we started to use seweed as well from ilga blooms. I don't know if you have heard about this phenomenon, but as well, one of the cost concess of using fertilizer inland is that some of these leak into most of them lead to the rivers and then to the sea, and then they generate these kind of like really big seaweed blooms that it happens for example in the Caribbean with sargassum, and then that creates a big, big problem. So seaweed could be something really really sophisticated because it can be used for growing DNA for example, or it could be something in this case, for example, of the sargassum that you get paid to collect. So it's all the all the spectrum.
00:10:31
Speaker 2: Wow, it's like a super super plan.
00:10:33
Speaker 3: It's a super plan. And then that depends how you use it. You can get different properties from all the different serwis, but even from the same plant of the seaweed, you extract things from the from the roots or from the steam, or from the leaf, you get different flexibilities. And for us, the main application that we give to seaweed is that we don't need to modify the polymeer structure the seaweed offers in order to create certain films, certain members that we can use for packaging. What that means is that nature knows really well as well those polymers. So the same way that you can eat it, nature can process it really really easy. Because it is one of the problems I have been there for the longer periods of time.
00:11:10
Speaker 2: It's amazing. It's so versatile and used in so many different areas, obviously packaging, pharma. And I was going to ask you, obviously there's more pressure on companies to manage their impacts on nature, and I was going to say, what role do you see seaweed cultivation playing in restoring ecosystems contributing to carbon catcher But actually did answer that to an extent in terms of even you're not only on one side of the coin, minimizing plastic waste with what you're producing. But when you're saying you're leveraging things like algal blooms and things like that, you're solving so many problems through the use of seaweed in the packaging. But are you able to kind of expand on that a little bit more? Is it a particularly good at carbon catture as well?
00:11:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, so seaweed when it grows one fare of the biomass gets sync into the ocean. So they had the moment quite a lot of priyets of them funded for example by basis of growing seaweed to sink it in order to capture carbon. We believe that like you don't need to just grow sewed to sink it, but like by just growing seaweed, as I mentioned, like one fair of the biomass that grows gets into the ocean anyway, into the bottom of the ocean, and it's one of the most effective way of capturing carbon. There is another element as well to capture carbon in the ocean that like we are working now with Plymouth University on a project called pred plastics in that basically we are trying to as well quantify because at the moment around like one fair of the carbon emissions get captured in the ocean, and most of that is thanks to microplacton as well. And the way of capturing that microplacton has to capture carbon is basically by defecating, so it goes into the bottom. But because of microplastics, it had been observed that some of that who is going up instead of down, so that carbon gets released again. And it's one of the effacts of plastic that no one accounts for, and it could be quite could have quite big implications not only for carbon, but as well for human health or ecosystems, etc. So we're trying to kind of like push more research into these areas in order to have the real impact of plastic. Because at the moment plastic is certain for example, life cycle analysis, et cetera, it comes quite well in terms of carbon, it's because you don't account too.
00:13:28
Speaker 4: Much what happens after the plastic is consumed. So we're trying to compare like like we like on that front.
00:13:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so interesting because I think actually in nature, we have all these systems in place that's meant to be regulating our carbon, but we're doing things that are actually reversing some of these feedback looks that we have, and that's highly problematic. So it's interesting just having these solutions that are working with nature rather than against nature in many ways. Shifting slightly, we've actually seen a lot of some regreatory updates, such as the new epackaging and packging waste regulations, and for some larger packaged food companies this could be creating some headwinds for them. What is the opportunities at here for not planned to be able to enable clients to meet these incoming regulations.
00:14:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think this had been really good for us. We have been actually making even a group or a consortion of companies. We call it the natural Polymer group because this regulation as well had been able to define really well what is and what is not a plastic. And there is two criterias. In order not to be a plastic, you need to be a polymer that is aboundant in nature, and you don't need to as the first criteria. A second criteria, you don't need to chemically modify it. Because you can start with something that is for example corn, but then or potato, but then you chemically modify it and you come up with a plastic and then nature don't know how to deal with.
00:14:51
Speaker 4: That chemical modification.
00:14:52
Speaker 3: So that have been really good because in the in the market there is quite a lot of confusion right from consumers and even brands.
00:14:59
Speaker 4: They don't know what.
00:15:00
Speaker 3: Everything has a leaf or everything has a kind of like a symbol of sustainability, but it's really hard to differentiate. And thanks to these regulations, for example, in some markets they started to tax really clear all of the produce that they are considered plastics because under that criteria, and we have been validated, for example by the government in the Netherlands as one of the only materials that is not a plastic. And it had been really good because in some countries, as I mentioned, they start to introduce, for example, modulated fees where they charge you in the same way that they charge you in a supermarket if you want to get a plastic back. So for every item that contains plastic, they can charge you up to thirty cents for example, which is something that is quite significant. So it's a good way to put some headwinds across some of these natural solutions that otherwise it's quite hard to compete against quite a lot of the big lobby and establish kind of like solutions that plastic represents.
00:15:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really interesting to see how this growing regretory, including those modulated fees that are set to come in twenty twenty six to twenty seven, to shift to more environmentally sustainable packaging design where they're using recyclability as the indicator, I believe, and of course the extended use of responsibility for packaging scheme, which is putting fees on plastic packaging I think up to about four hundred and twenty three pounds per ton as of twenty twenty five to twenty six. So this is very material to companies. And I'm curious beyond regulatory push, how much you seeing a pull from consumer demand, because we have seen a growing awareness around the negative impacts of consuming too much plastic exactly.
00:16:41
Speaker 3: I think it's both working together, right, and we have seen some really good examples or Casey studies for example on the reduce of the plastic back in the supermarket. Is a bit of a combination of regulators, consumers, supermarkets working together. And yeah, nowadays if you go to a supermarket, it's really i will say, like reduce much more the consumption of like the plastic bag. What is a bit kind of funny on that example is that like all the shopping is still rubbing plastic. So even if you save the last plastic bag, everything else is. But like the case study is there that like by even if it's put in a small kind of tax or visualization of the problem that there is there like everyone is able to make their actually change that behavior or that that plastic that otherwise is going to be really hard to do anything with it. There is different solutions for the plastic problem. We don't believe that like you're going to solve everything with no cloud or natural materials. The first thing that we need to do is to reduce the amount of packaging.
00:17:41
Speaker 4: So that's the step number one.
00:17:43
Speaker 3: The step nambage is to reduce as much as we can so we know the certain context, like if you are at home or if you are in a restaurant, it's better to use things that you are going to like metal cutlery and plates and glass. That in the society that we live where convenience is one of the items and consumption and they go is a reality if that two things cannot happen. We believe it is where we have to say recycling is another of the solutions that had been there for a while have not been proving too successful. The race of recycling had not been going up, even if it's a solution that we know from decades and nowadays it's less than ten percent of the plastic gets recycle, and when they get recycled, they don't get recycled in the same value products. They get down cycle into things that have less value. And it's one of the things that like the plastic industry or the plastic producers, they always say it's the solution, but it's quite hard to believe because it's always going to require more plastic input into the system. And yeah, certain items, I think it's good to have that end of life and to have that way of circularity, but for other items it's really really hard. Small sashes for sauces or chocolate or flexible films that they have like multiple materials embedded into it and doesn't have too much value and they are dirty. It's almost an utopia to be to recycle those.
00:19:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so interesting actually, just I feel like just the other week I was noticing how quickly I fill up my recycling bin, and it's all obviously food packaging predominantly food packaging ways from the supermarket, and it's true as even if we take away that shopping bag, everything's covered in plastic. And then, of course, as you mentioned, the actual rate of recycling is quite low, and I think someone was telling me recently about the concept of kind of wish cycling, so people putting things in their recyclement that they hope gets recycle, but actually very little of it actually does. And I think you alluded to this earlier. It's not just the environmental impacts of plastic, but there's a lot more kind of awareness around microplastics, chemicals and packaging that can actually be harmful to human health. And we are seeing things like upcoming restrictions on food contact packaging containing pfas, such as the E wide band on the Forever chemical impacting I think from twenty twenty six. And I think it's interesting you were saying that in takeaway foods there's often that layer of plastic. I can know is that most people probably not aware of. I actually was not aware of that layer. How is not a place in aiding clients to meet these regulations as well?
00:20:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's good that you that you mentioned. Yes, for the people who are not aware, the face is this. This is called forever chemicals. So it's really similar to teflon and it's one of the things that accumulates in the environment but as well in our bodies, so it could be quite toxic for us. And some of the consequences of accumulation of these forever chemicals are really unknown because they are relatively recent, but we know have been There's a really good movie called Dark Waters with Marc rouf Falo that I really recommend for everyone to watch.
00:20:39
Speaker 2: This will be my weekend watching.
00:20:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, around this problem of forever chemicals. And it's crazy that it's something that is in our pants but it's in our.
00:20:48
Speaker 4: Foot packaging as well, and the.
00:20:50
Speaker 3: Consequences for health it could be it could be quite quite big. It's interesting as well because we have seen in the last couple of years with a change as well, for example in the US, of political changes regarding how the word sustainability really polarize there. But like the health aspect is something really appealing for both sides. And if you may, microplastics or acrolytes or pfas or for our chemicals is something that everyone aligns that we should be able to control and we should be able to know what it goes into our foods and what goes into our bodies. So I think it's definitely something to look out for us because we use things that they are completely safe even to it not only to be food contact. We do believe that like non toxic and natural materials, natural polymers and maatural pacnion, it should be one of the ways to go. So yeah, definitely align with that part of legislation from regulators and consumers that will help to make a bit safer the way that we consume.
00:21:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's really interesting what you said that around like in the US, where obviously we've had a bit of polorization around the state ability to actually pople can get on board with health impacts microplastics, and I think from a broader consumer perspective, often there's toots that there's more demand from consumers for like sustainable products, which I think there is, but we're kind of self interested and sometimes it's still placing your money where you feel like getting the highest return and actually aligning at with health impacts. People kind of bring it back to themselves rather than maybe think about a broad impact on the environment, so it's usually might shift patterns even further, I think pivoting slightly. I think last year you raised your Series A plus round at twenty three million euros, a doubling of your initial target, and with part of this being used to scale up your operations in the US. And I'm curious, what are the main differences that you're seeing between growing operations in the US and versus growing them in Europe.
00:22:55
Speaker 3: So at the moment, yes, we are mostly person in the UK and bet you and in the US is quite complex, is quite big as well as the price and as we were mentioned before as well, the economic or the political climate is quite different from where we were when we did that fund raising as well. So we are starting to initially to ship some products from the UK and some materials to make the product in the US, And for example, we have the Losles Clippers and NBA Stadium in it using US and a few mir stadiums that they're starting to kind of like get interested with our packaging. So I think that's the stage one. I think Bloomber as well in some of the offices in the US kind of like trial or packaging.
00:23:41
Speaker 2: That's that I'll be testing it on over there next exactly.
00:23:44
Speaker 3: That's one of the first steps to start to create a bit of demand, right, and then we are at the moment in conversations with different type of converters and partners to.
00:23:53
Speaker 4: Start to produce as well the.
00:23:55
Speaker 3: Model that we wanted to do with dog Plug, especially with the food takeaway packaging that doesn't make sense to ship obviously makes sense to produce quite locally. So that's a bit what we are trying to do in Europe. We have managed, we have a few convertors previously locally and in the US. I think it's something that is going to happen over the next couple of months. So it's something quite exciting. And yeah, quite a lot of difference between the US market and the European market in terms of maybe to start with the portions, so as you can imagine, like the size of the boxes in the US are quite different, the type of as well of packaging that they use in the US, it's interesting, but like they use recycling more, which is really good in the sustainability point of view, but in Europe is not allowed to use recycle board for food contact challenges, so it's slightly different all of the legislation and different type of supply chains and how people work. For example, in the US as well, stadiums normally they have censorship deals with packaging companies. So there is even as Stidium what's called Footprint that is one of the companies of packaging, so it's quite powerful. When in the UK we normally try to sell our packing interstitiums to pay them to have.
00:25:07
Speaker 2: Our not the other way.
00:25:09
Speaker 4: Right, business, different ways of working.
00:25:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a different business model, but it's interesting to see the different kind of regional nuances and different pathways to growth. And I feel like it's a very exciting time of growth and just seeing all that I love, like flicking on my news feed and seeing yet a different event. I think I mentioned in the intro the Coldplayer concerts at Wimbledon. Every time I look out for packaging for my strawberries. So it's amazing to see what Kno Player is doing and all the kind of evolution in the products. And perhaps maybe a forward looking question. You have the pledge to replace one billion units of plastic by twenty thirty, What in your view is needed to develop sees packaging at the scale to kind of displace all the semi use plastic in our lives that we probably consume, so we don't even register how much we're consuming it every day.
00:26:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, first we don't have, as I mentioned, the ambition that like see, we can't replace all the plastic applications and we do. What is that plastic is really good in certain as a material. It's really cheap, it's really light, has amazing barrier properties. But the main superpower that it has that is really long lasting is the main weakness as well, especially for those applications where the shelf life of the application is really short, because it's a big mismatch. You are using a skin that is going to last for centuries and a content that is going to last for hours. So it's where we see an opportunity inside of that. We are focusing at the moment mostly on things on the goal or food service, and we believe that we have a room to say on the world of packaging. The scale is one of the main things that like give you as well competitiveness in the surprice and volumes, and it's quite hard to do things in the small numbers. So it's good we're getting We're getting there, especially with the boxes and take away food. For now, as I mentioned, we are now in over fifty stadiums and nine countries and doing things in the millions, which is really good. We hope to keep growing in terms of volumes and that could affect as well, like reducing our prices more and more. So last year as well, we did quite a big price reduction of thirty percent. While everyone was going higher, we were going lower because we had more volumes that could help us to kind of like lower the cost that we in order to gain adoption. We try to pass that wins over our clients. The second thing is in performance, so trying to make being able to do more things with our materials. At the moment, for example, we have the new Holy Grail for us to see if we can make coffee cups.
00:27:42
Speaker 4: We're able to do that, it will be really good, so that's good.
00:27:46
Speaker 3: And the last thing that we are working on is seem to expand on the range of applications that we can kind of like cover. So this last year we launched windows so you could see through our films. We are testing the cutlery mentioned and we have ambisions to start to be able to make more things. So that's quite exciting on that front, because, yeah, sometimes it's even the challenge with these material you can make so many different things to focusing one thing or to know what is the thing that is going to have more impact as next step is one of the things the material as well, as I mentioned, it's not able to do everything that we will love to at the step by a step. Hopefully we can at least start with those applications that there are short term consumption and the natural materia will be a fit.
00:28:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's absolutely amazing, and I think where we're talking about an investor standpoint and financial materiality, if you're able to offer not plug customers a thirty percent discount on the not plus packaging as you begin to scale, while others are experiencing price rises on packaging and faced with regulatory headwinds, it feels like there is a clear choice that they might want to go with as they move forward. And I think it's amazing to hear all the different ways you're evolving the product as well. I would love to have a coffee cup. I feel like coffee cups are my particularly bad habit where I will use single use coffee cups, so it would be fantastic if that was one made out of not plumb materials.
00:29:15
Speaker 3: We are going there, like you said, like thirty percent on what they are paying, just to make sure that we did the reduction of our pricing. That doesn't that we are thirty percent cheaper than plastic. That's really hard. Not too many people know this, but like tariffs at the moment of plastics. We were in Geneva learning about this with the World Trade Organization. But like if you import plastics because they are petrochemicals and normally countries.
00:29:37
Speaker 4: They don't have petroleum, so the taxes.
00:29:38
Speaker 3: Are really low, while if you import natural fibers doesn't need to be seen with but bamboo for example, or other things, normally the taxes and the tariffs are double what you will pay for plastic. Really it's a bit of a nonsense. We're trying to kind of like see how we can change that, but it's not easy. But this is one of the m first advantage of plastics. So one of the ways that we subsidize petro chemicals in this.
00:30:01
Speaker 4: World that we live.
00:30:02
Speaker 2: So we've seen some positive regretory movements, but there's definitely still some hurdles to overcome. By the sounds of things, it has been so fascinating to hear the journey of Knoppler and what you're doing with the company, and just to hear how nature is inspiring design that's solving some of the largest challenges that we're definitely facing around waste and single use plastic, and just amazing to hear how I feel like it's multifaested in the way that's solving this problem by using natural materials through from how it's grown to end of life. So thank you so much for joining us today.
00:30:36
Speaker 4: Thank you, Grace Pleasure.
00:30:38
Speaker 2: You can find more information by going to BI ESG go on the Bloomberg terminal. If you have an ESG quandary or burning questions you'd like to ask bi's expert analysts, send us an email at ESG Currents at bloomberg dot net. Thank you,
