Episode 5 Transcript: Colleges Try to Clean the Pool

MOLLY WOOD:
Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast that dives deep into the climate crisis, and comes up with solutions. I'm your host, Molly Wood.

Aww … it’s college graduation season! So heartwarming … great job, everybody … you did it … you’re headed off into the world to make it a better place … a new crop of fresh-faced ambassadors of the future will be headed off in the fall …

To follow in your footsteps … of being climate-crimey-crimebags of unbelievable waste and trash creation.

I’m sorry. I know you’re just kids but my god. Everything you eat is takeout. Your furniture is totally temporary and you get rid of everything at the end of … practically every year. There are parties and events and I mean the red plastic solo cup isn’t just for beer … it’s for beer PONG. You’re the worst!

One study … by an outfit called Dump and Run Inc … suggests that an average college student produces about 640 pounds of solid waste per year … including 500 disposable cups … yeah … and 320 pounds of paper. Crimebags.

All right … all right … don’t take it so personally. College campuses are a hotbed of waste but on the plus side … colleges are aware of the problem … and many schools and even entire university systems have been dealing with it for many years now.

The California State University system started phasing out single-use plastics back in 2019 … the National Wildlife Federation holds an annual contest to see which campuses can reduce the most waste … previous winners include Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, Dallas College in Texas … and Xavier University in Louisiana.

Now … aside from all the beer pong cups and the trash at the end of the year … here’s where one of the biggest sources of waste and trash comes from … on a college campus.

TAKE SOT:
We've got a lot of great places to eat at Ohio State. You've got your dining plan and soon you'll be hungry. First, you should know that we have three traditions, locations that are all you care to eat with lots of options. There are sit down restaurants, fast casual, and cafes. There are even food trucks no matter where you are on campus.

There are plastic forks … single-use containers … coffee sleeves … plastic lids … GALORE …

But actually … not at The Ohio State University. That school … is partnered with the company co-founded by my guest today … to make reusable food containers … a standard part … of the educational experience.

PAIGE SCHULT:
I am Paige Schult I am one of the co-founders and CEO of topanga.io we are a technology company that enables businesses and consumers to eliminate single use packaging at scale.

Who we work with today is we work with a lot of universities and higher ed campuses. Um, so if you can imagine, the rising generation of consumers cares a lot about sustainability and the environmental issues that surround us on a day-to-day basis. They are increasingly looking to their campuses and their universities to set high commitments for sustainability. 

A lot of these come down to dining on campus because that's where waste is so tangible—both food waste as well as single use packaging waste. It's really the single-use packaging waste element that we work with today. Um, so a lot of schools traditionally have bought single-use compostable containers. You get to-go at your cafeteria or your Starbucks on campus. You grab a single-use container and you use it once, then throw it away.

MOLLY WOOD:
Mm-hmm.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Two issues with this. One is from a business perspective, packaging is really expensive. If you're giving it out to students to be thrown away, you're basically sending a sunk cost out your door. The second problem is packaging has a big environmental footprint both upstream in terms of its manufacturing as well as downstream in terms of where does it end up—in the landfill, in recycling, in the waterways. 

So we really help all these universities switch to reusable packaging that truly stays in circulation and we back that up by our technology products. Um, so our products at their core, they really help track and trace reusable packaging and ensure that a student who's given reusable packaging knows when and where to return it and knows what their impact has been by participating, and also ensures that operators and program managers know exactly how much packaging they have in circulation, what their kind of ROI from a cost and environmental standpoint has been to date, um, and all of that good stuff.

MOLLY WOOD:
Okay, so let me walk through it. So I am on campus. I'm gonna cast my mind back to the good old days of campus, and I go to the food court. You are not making the packaging?

PAIGE SCHULT:
Correct. We are purely the software, so we can work with any type of packaging a school might want to use.

MOLLY WOOD:
Okay. The school has decided that they're gonna get this really cool recycled plastic, totally reusable packaging. And through Topanga, you what? It's QR codes on the packaging, right?

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yep. So on the packaging, we'll place QR codes and/or RFID chips.

MOLLY WOOD:
Mm-hmm.

PAIGE SCHULT:
These are like stickers on packaging that identify that as package number 123. Think of it a lot like checking out a library book.

MOLLY WOOD:
Okay. So the student takes the package because they got like a to-go meal that day, take it back to the dorm. They have an app? Do they have the Topanga app?

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah. So every time that a student is placing an order to-go in a reusable container, that container will be checked out to them by a member of the dining team. The dining team will use our scan app, the Topanga scan app, scan the QR code on the container, scan the student's QR code that they have saved to their Apple wallet or Android wallet, and that kind of initiates that checkout process. 

Um, then the student, the first time they've joined our program, they'll get a welcome text saying, "Hey, thanks for joining Reuse Pass. Here's how to access your account. Here's what to expect." Um, and then, yeah, from there on out, each time you get a container you'll be able to see when and where to return it and what your impact has been through that same app.

MOLLY WOOD:
And is the idea that they bring it back as soon as they're done with it, or that they keep it in the dorm and use it a few times and then maybe bring it back, or both?

PAIGE SCHULT:
It could be both. So very much at its core, it's a borrow and return model.

MOLLY WOOD:
Mm-hmm.

PAIGE SCHULT:
I loan something out to you, you temporarily have it, and then you drop it off when you no longer need it. Most of our organizations that we work with set up a return window, rental period. Um, so because we're uniquely checking this container out to you as a unique participant, we can really track and understand exactly if it has or has not been returned by a specific date. 

So say we want it back in three days, Molly, you haven't dropped it off in three days, you'll get another text from us saying, "Hey, please return this as soon as you can. Click here to view return locations."

MOLLY WOOD:
Got it. And then how many vendors are there out there making the actual packaging? Is that hard to find? Like, do you present this to the university as pardon my pun …

PAIGE SCHULT:
Mm-hmm.

MOLLY WOOD:
… where it's like already you and the container makers, and you go, "Let's do this."

PAIGE SCHULT:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's a great question. And it's interesting too because the landscape has accelerated so much from kind of every angle in the, you know, better part of the three years we've been working in this space. 

Um, but there's kind of two types of universities: ones who have tried reuse programs in the past so they've already procured packaging. Um, and they've tried to loan it out to students. They see that students don't return it, that they can't get any data, so they're really—they know what they're looking for and what they're looking for is us.

PAIGE SCHULT:
We can come in, they already have packaging figured out, and we really just help them launch and scale the technology piece. There are schools on the other side of the spectrum who, again, students want this from them but they have yet to test the waters. In those scenarios, we have about three packaging manufacturers that we work with, and we'll bring them into partnerships as makes sense dependent on the dishwasher and the type of packaging needed and all of that. 

So there's actually a whole range of packaging manufacturers in the space but there's three or four that we work with really closely.

MOLLY WOOD:
Got it. And then how many schools are we talking, like how many are interested in this movement? Is this mostly student-driven?

PAIGE SCHULT:
Like

PAIGE SCHULT:
Do you find that it really is happening because students were like, "Why'd you give me this cup?"

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah. You monster. Um, it's really, it's kind of from the bottoms up and from the top down. So very much student-driven in terms of being vocal about it. "Hey, we want sustainability. We want to go to a school that offers this." Student governments are increasingly kind of putting this as a doctrine in the school's operating procedures, which is awesome to see. 

It's also very much top-down from the sense of, one, endowment and the chancellors know that sustainability—whether or not that's a good thing—is important for their organization. And then also, two, operators recognize the cost savings. They, again, packaging has gotten so expensive. I mean, we're talking 55 cents for a compostable container for a $3 meal. So if they can switch that into something that's truly saving them money by staying in circulation, then that's a huge driver. So say students is the sustainability piece and operators is more the economic piece.

MOLLY WOOD:
What, um, what brought you into this? You were doing startups in the sustainability space before, right?

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah. So career's been a complete zigzag, um, always connected by kind of this desire to better understand what makes people tick, what drives people to behave in certain ways. Um, I had been working actually at a compostables tableware company, um, that was really challenging kind of and solo and China and kind of these big plastics name with a better-than alternative. 

Um, while I was working there I got really curious about what the definition of sustainability is, what makes something sustainable. Uh, we can market it and we can sell it to sustainable but have we done the work to look at that kind of upstream and downstream full systems approach of, if we look at this product throughout its life cycle, um, are we still gonna say it's sustainable? 

I started taking some graduate courses at UCLA to better dive into that data piece and that system's thinking piece and walked away from that with a foundation of Topanga which is reasonable packaging can be economically and environmentally better than single use in a lot of applications.

MOLLY WOOD:
Did you find though that you did not want to make packaging like what—which is a very understandable choice to make especially a venture-funded landscape—

PAIGE SCHULT:
Um

MOLLY WOOD:
but I wonder how you decided on that technology layer and why that might be missing for packaging makers.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah, absolutely. So that kind of goes back to the early stories of Topanga when we were Topanga Supply. Um, me and my two co-founders, one of my co-founders, um, is he's our CTO today but he's an engineer and a data architect and just kind of a tinker, tinker with all things technology and systems. 

He'd prior to joining Topanga been working at Sweet Green building out all of their tools to help their kind of inventory management in their kitchens run effectively.

PAIGE SCHULT:
When I kind of came to him with what I'd been tinkering on for reusable packaging, he saw right away that, "Hey look, if we're gonna make this work there's gotta be, um, a bigger system technology component to help this scale and help there truly be data coming from this system to manage it. Not just I'm giving something out to you and I hope I get it back." 

So we really started kind of with this understanding that there's a physical component and a digital component to reusable packaging. We were a vertically integrated milk man style market for our first eight months in existence.

PAIGE SCHULT:
With local farmers products in bulk reusable packaging, taking it to our kitchen and redistributing it and consumer-facing reusable packaging, and then delivering it to your doorstep and picking up the empties.

MOLLY WOOD:
Yep.

PAIGE SCHULT:
That's when we started building out the technology to kind of test it ourselves, understand how it works, what it needed to have, what it didn't need, um, and ultimately walked away from that proving out some of our core hypotheses and realizing, "Hey look, if our goal is to make as big of an impact as possible on the global scale at challenging single-use waste, we can do so much more effectively by leaning into what we're good at, which is building technology, um, and letting other people handle the physical operations that they know and they know well."

MOLLY WOOD:
Ok … we’re going to take a quick break … when we come back … more details on the *data … that can be gathered … through a program like this … how to get college kids to actually return reusable packaging … and get your notebook … because we’ll talk about some of the schools that are mandating reusable food containers on campus.

BREAK …

TAKE SOT from Ohio State dining vid:

There is also traditions to go. You get your to-go container from the cashier at a traditions location, then fill your to-go box with your food from any station and off you go and you get dining dollars to use at any student life dining location.

They are included in every dining plan to give you additional flexibility to eat what and where you want it. … [fade down music]

MOLLY WOOD:
Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool … and your freshman orientation … it’s a vibe. Here’s part two of my conversation with Paige Schult … co-founder and CEO of Topanga.

MOLLY WOOD:
How big a deal is the data that you're collecting? I mean, I would imagine that the reason that, for example, a university would do it under endowment pressure is to be able to do some reporting around it.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah, it's huge. Um, and I think it's huge for a range of reasons. I think, one, there's so much honor system that goes in today into reusable packaging where either a consumer is saying they returned it or people are counting what went out and what went in very manually into their reusable system.

PAIGE SCHULT:
There's no true traceability to understand exactly how many times on average your containers have been reused.

MOLLY WOOD:
Right.

PAIGE SCHULT:
And return rate is one big piece of the pie. If we can't get consumers to return these containers, then they're never gonna be reused. But the second and equally if not more important piece is the reuse rate. 

How are we measuring that these things are actually being used enough times to break even and outperform their counterparts from a single-use environmental and cost perspective? So that's really what makes the data so magical. Um, but yes, ultimately it's coming down to data accuracy and, and do I have the measurement to back up the sustainable work that I did?

MOLLY WOOD:
And then on the consumer side, in this case the student, what is their incentive?

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah. So incentive kind of ranges across our programs. Um, some of our programs are mandatory. So if you're getting to-go, you get it in a single-use or in a reusable container and that's just the way it works. Others are opt-in. 

Um, some schools have taken an interesting approach where you can either choose a reusable for free to access, or you can choose a single-use container and pay an extra $2. So they're kind of presenting consumers this choice.

PAIGE SCHULT:
The incentive to return on our end, depending on the school, sometimes we'll charge a late fee. So if your container hasn't been returned in three to five days, then you're subject to $3 late fee.

Um, one of the big things that we're excited about right now that we're really building out throughout the summer is our incentives and rewards and how do we more clearly showcase to end users, to the students, the impact that we're making and make it more engaging at a community level so we're not just kind of building this muscle memory while you're on campus but we're also kind of instilling this understanding of the system and of the benefits so that when you leave campus you continue to seek out this type of consumption.

MOLLY WOOD:
How do you, how do you quantify that? How are you, you know, are, is it, uh, pounds of trash avoided? Is it in emissions terms? Like what's the language for quantification?

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah. So right now the life cycle assessment data that we're, we're able to use is looking at kind of different impact categories. One is waste diverted, um, one is greenhouse gas emissions avoided, and the third is water saved. Um, those all are looking at kind of single-use versus reuse on a full kind of cradle to grave.

MOLLY WOOD:
How many times does a container have to be reused before it's like basically a break-even or net economically?

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah. So for most of the containers on our platform, it's once we get to that fourth or fifth reuse, then you've broken even. Um, and then everything above that is just bonus. So what's exciting about all of our programs is they hit that break-even point.

MOLLY WOOD:
Wait, I'm gonna stop you there cause there's like a loud truck by you. We'll just wait till it scoots by. Oh wait, don't mute. I need to know when it's gone.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Is that, is that better?

MOLLY WOOD:
Yeah, now you're good. You're good. Sorry. So maybe start with the four or five times.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah. So, um, most containers based off of the materials that are being used on our platform need to be used four to five times to hit that break-even point from both a cost and an environmental perspective. Um, all of our schools today have hit that break-even point in terms of number of uses, which is amazing, and a lot are really starting to kind of continually improve and improve that. 

So one of our schools with the highest return rates is the Ohio State University. They have a 99% return rate, um, and they're on track for each of their containers in circulation to be used 75 times throughout the course of a school year which—

MOLLY WOOD:
Wow.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Um, really, that's when you're saving money and that's when you're truly making a dent in the impact.

MOLLY WOOD:
What are some of the schools where it's mandatory? I need to like make a subtab in my kids' college spreadsheet.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah.

MOLLY WOOD:
Prioritize.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah.

MOLLY WOOD:
Yeah.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Ohio State is one of them.

MOLLY WOOD:
That's so cool. Like I would never have guessed that. That's awesome.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah, it's really interesting. Um, University of South Carolina, Colorado State University is moving there as well. Um, so it's really kind of a full gamut that we're working with that have chosen to lean into this.

MOLLY WOOD:
I love this, um, idea of that being a beachhead based on consumer demand, right? The rising consumer. Um, and I wonder like, how are you thinking about that? I know you're really into behavior change. I read an interview where you said that you like to people watch at the airport, and I was like, I love Paige. It's my—

PAIGE SCHULT:
Guilty pleasure.

MOLLY WOOD:
But, you know, and, and Amia where I'm a venture partner, which is an investor in Topanga, we should full disclosure here, that's the thesis.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Mm-hmm.

MOLLY WOOD:
Behavior change.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Mm-hmm.

MOLLY WOOD:
Like you said this great thing about how if they get used to this modality—

PAIGE SCHULT:
Mm-hmm.

MOLLY WOOD:
—that then people will go out in the world and hopefully be horrified when they see single use. Talk to me about how you see this market in particular as like a beachhead for consumer change.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think so much of the pushback from consumers broadly in the mass market world is that reuse is difficult and it's not convenient.

PAIGE SCHULT:
That's the issues that we largely see. And so I think by being able to kind of prove this muscle memory by getting a lot of the data from users firsthand how this works when it works best really gives us the opportunity to challenge that convenience pushback head-on and start to see, "Okay great, we proved that this can work in the Panda Express or in the Starbucks that's at a university." 

Well, now we can go out and prove that the same, by the same logic, same tools, same operations this can work in an open environment as well. Like, you know, the coffee shop down your street that also has another location down the other street. So I think really kind of today what we see as the opportunity is proving this out in high frequency and high volume food and beverage environments, continuing to see that through to the open world of the mass market consumer like you and I. 

Um, there's a lot of B2B opportunities as well where our technology can perform really well. I think a lot of brands are starting to realize that so much of their waste, both again from a cost perspective as well as a true kind of waste to landfill perspective, is things like cardboard boxes that are moving from point A to point B and the truck's going back to point A. So all the infrastructure is there to make it reusable. They just need to have this layer of data in place to help them manage that.

MOLLY WOOD:
Right.

MOLLY WOOD:
What stage are you at now? Like, what's your kind of growth trajectory?

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah.

MOLLY WOOD:
Where are you?

PAIGE SCHULT:
We are, we are early, um, but it's been a really exciting time. Um, we started focusing on this higher ed space the start of last school year, and now thinking school years again, which is August 2022, and really proved out a lot of success points there. 

So kind of for the next 12 months, um, our focus is to continue to own this campus space to really prove out that we're the market leader and, and get loud about why data is so important in making reuse successful at scale.Um, and that's really it. We're at eight schools today. We expect to triple that by the end of the calendar year, um, and then just continue to grow from there.

MOLLY WOOD:
Um, and what is your business model? Who pays you? Is it the school or the vendor or both?

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah, great question. Um, so it's typically the dining operations budget at the school—

MOLLY WOOD:
Mm-hmm.

PAIGE SCHULT:
—where our kind of paycheck is coming from. It's interesting though, even though these schools are our clients, they're customers, they're paying us, we really see them more as partners because their sole focus is making their students happy and making sure their students enjoy dining on campus which is truthfully a huge part of campus life. 

Um, so we're able to work with them more as partners than from a sales perspective, which is awesome, just building relationships.

MOLLY WOOD:
And if there was one thing that you could see that would be like a giant tailwind for your business, obviously it would be some sort of mandate, I would imagine, right?

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah.

MOLLY WOOD:
What would you, if you could wave your magic wand and it was mandatory as Ohio—

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah, I mean legislation is a huge piece. I think one thing that's really fascinating that, um, you know, we've spoken with a couple states kind of recycling centers. A lot of the recycling centers at states have the infrastructure in place for reusables 'cause they're washing and sanitizing plastics. 

And so there's these huge kind of washing facilities that could start to work with reuse at scale and kind of create this more full-circle system on the municipal level. Um, so I would love to kind of continue to see that thinking evolve.

MOLLY WOOD:
Wait, that's happening?

PAIGE SCHULT:
It's being piloted in some municipalities around the country, which would just be a huge unlock.

PAIGE SCHULT:
The infrastructure's built, we just need to know how to tap into it.

MOLLY WOOD:
That is remarkable and has just spawned a, a whole series of, uh, stories of additional stories. Paige Schult, co-founder and CEO of Topanga, which you can find@topanga.io or hopefully at your school. Paige, thanks so much. I appreciate it. Thanks for being in the pool.

PAIGE SCHULT:
Yeah. Thank you, Molly. Thanks for having me.

MOLLY WOOD:
If anybody out there has some insights into these recycling centers that are just waiting to be turned into re-use facilities … email me! in … at everybody in the pool dot com.

And before we go … I want to make it really crystal clear why waste … and food waste … are a climate issue. Because I know … a lot of things can get wrapped up in this conversation … it’s not *all carbon emissions and global warming.

When it comes to waste … *especially plastic waste … first of all there’s the thing I mentioned in another episode recently … which is that plastic … is made from petroleum products and even natural gas … so there’s a huge fossil fuel component in fresh plastic.

And something like 40 percent of single-use plastic demand … is for food containers. That’s everything from takeout to the one-time-use tomato clamshell thing that you *hopefully recycle … but most people don’t. Almost 100 percent of those containers … are what’s called virgin plastic … straight from the fossil fuels.

So the plastic *itself … is creating greenhouse gas emissions … that are warming the planet … leading to more severe storms … droughts … floods … killer heat waves … sea level rise … and increasingly unpredictable bad things that are happening … a lot more often.

And on top of that … there are a lot of *other chemicals … in all of this packaging … that are terrible for our bodies … and our environment … it’s just pollution … which is killing animals … and choking oceans … plastic is 85 percent of ocean pollution.

And this is a pretty NEW problem … the U-N estimates that just in the early 2000s … we generated more plastic waste in a 10-year period … than in the entire 40 years before that.

This is solvable … and like I said … world leaders are negotiating for a binding global treaty … people are awake to the problem and actually yes … you fresh-faced rising freshman and graduating seniors … you actually *are … making a difference … and you can … at whatever school you decide to go to … so keep it up.

That’s it for today … Thanks for listening to Everybody in the Pool.

Please like, subscribe, and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts if that's what you're using. Email your thoughts and ideas to IN at everybody in the pool dot com. And for an even deeper dive, sign up for my newsletter at mollywood dot co. Together, we can get this done. 

See you next week.