The Financial + Environmental Benefit of a Circular Economy w/ Ron Gonen

My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and we are really really excited, more so than normal to bring you this interview because I don't think there's ever been a guest we've had on that aligns so perfectly with how we see the intersection of finance and sustainability. Again, we're just taking it to the next level, I think, and hearing from Ron, He's got so much knowledge about sustainability,

but on the macro level. I know, we talked about a lot on the micro level, So this is such an important conversation and I think there's so much more to be said. We're just scratching the surface, but really excited to kind of venture into this topic for I believe the first time in our over three years of podcastings. So yeah, it's kind of hard. You kind of feel

like you're recycling. That was a pun. The content about finance and sustainability because I feel like there's only so much to say, but Ron Gonan really does take it up a level and bring some fresh perspective and so we're very excited to share this episode. But first our sponsors. This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Unknown Recyclables. Pizza boxes, carpet, batteries. Can you recycle them? No one knows, well, fear not the good people at

the Society of Unknown Recyclables. No pizza boxes, rip up that greasy part and recycle the clean cardboard carpet. You can find a carpet reclamation and facility and drop it off. Batteries some recycling centers actually take them. Check with yours Here at s O you Are or SOUR for short. Our goal is to tell you if that thing can be recycled or not. The Society of Unknown Recyclables literally

just here to tell you to google it. Wall I learned so much, I laughed a little and now I'm close to crying, which tells me that was a good journey. But also, is this a real thing? Or you literally just have to google? Okay, google it. Here's the thing. Some cities are different, like some things you can some things you can change. A real problem that I have, and uh, the solution is google it, Google Google area.

You just gotta google it. So that is an intro, a little warm up to our conversation today with Ron Going. And he's the CEO of Closed Loop Partners, which is the first investment firm dedicated entirely to financing companies that solve linear problems with circular solutions. So you're gonna learn what the circular economy is. You know what the linear economy is, which is the economy we are currently on.

And I know we don't want to get like super like let's study economics, but it is super important to know what economics is. So I just want to read you this a little easy to understand definition. It's from the cusp Um and it says, our desire for stuff is endless. Stuff is not endless. So economics is the study of how we make, distribute, and consume stuff that is in limited supply. So it involves money, but it's

not about money, if that makes sense. It's about the invisible forces that influence how we use the money to buy and sell the stuff. And so while we will hear a lot in this conversation about how to save money. We always want to include that nerve episodes. Some of this it's higher level, and so some of it does involve maybe spending money to save money in the long run, but maybe not even for yourself, maybe just for the future. And yeah, maybe saving money in ways that don't actually

directly benefit you. So it is important to at least have a familiarity with economics and economies how economies work, so that you can better understand your place in the economy. Thank you, so, without further ado, thank you for coming to my ted talk. Here is Ron Gonan. Welcome run to the Frugal Friends podcast. So happy to have you here to be with you today. We couldn't be more enthused about this topic and we know that it's going to be something that our listeners are very excited to

hear about learn more about. I think this conversation is taking us to the next level of understanding and awareness and then actionable steps. So thank you, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us today. Absolutely so, Ron, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? What is the circular economy? What got you interested or even passionate about this way of approaching economics and sustainability. Sure. So today I'm the founder and CEA of Closed Loop Partners.

Closed Loop Partners is a investment firm an innovation center focused on building the circular economy. And what we mean by the circular economy is developing manufacturing systems where you're able to manufacture of the products that we all want without a dependence on natural resource extraction for manufacturing those

products or the disposal and landfill of those products. Those are the two most expensive parts of the economy of manufacturing products, is the extraction natural resource and the disposal and landfill, not the actual manufacturing of the product. And if we can eliminate those two parts of the system natural resource extraction, disposal and landfill, we're going to significantly cut costs and protect our environment. So that's uh what I do today and the area that I'm passionate about.

How did you get involved with this ron? How did you decide this is what I really want to focus in on and even to start Closed Loop Partners or be the CEO of it. I was very fortunate. When I was in high school. My first job was working for one of the screen architects in America, and through his eyes and his experiences, I got to see first what it means to go against the grain, so to speak, because he was really one of the first and blazing

a trail. And I also learned about all of these principles around sustainable design very early on in my life, and it just intuitively seemed to make sense to me, and that really got me started on a career that I've been very fortunate to have focused on sustainable business

practices and maximizing financial returns. This topic excites me so much because when when my eyes are open to it, when I have conversations like this, or I have opportunity to watch shows that are focused on sustainability and you're identifying architectural design and it it does. It bleeds into

an intersect with all aspects of our life. There's such a problem solving component to it and creativity that I don't know if this is common, but I feel it's pretty common amongst humanity that there's something that draws us to that. But we don't necessarily know that this is something that we should be problem solving or utilizing our

creative juices about. And yet I hear so many people complaining about plastic, right if it's the toys that their kids use, or how much plastic is just around their house, and how there's trash everywhere. Okay, well, there's also a component to what can we do about that. This doesn't just have to happen to you. There's something that can be done. And you even talking about, oh, there's there's ways that we can be selling products without extracting natural resources.

I just want to hear so much more. Are there any overarching basics of what you can say regarding how we can go about doing this aiming at a circular economy not extracting so much natural resources. Tell us about the problem solving and the creativity. Sure. The first thing that's really important for people to recognize is that while recycling is absolutely a major benefit for protecting our environment, it's not the only reason why you should be recycling.

The other reason why you should be recycling is it means that your city doesn't have to pay two stick your waste in a hole called a landfill. Unfortunately, the way our sanitation system was designed in the United States post and this was intentional to hide numbers and costs from the general public to the benefit of certain industries. The cost of disposing of waste and landfills. It's buried in our tax bill. It's not priced like other utilities

like water or electricity. It's just a cost that's embedded in our tax bill. And we have no idea how much are we actually spending and who are we paying all of this money too. And so the first thing that's really important for people to understand is that when you recycle, when you reduce, you reduce the amount that your municipality uses your tax dollars for disposing of material in landfill. And that's a really important thing to anchor

everybody on. Yeah, I know you talk in your book about using New York City as an example of the way that they approach waste and the burden that it is on the city, but also surrounding states, like they have to cross Tate lines to take trash to what North Carolina, even as far south as North Carolina. So interestingly, New York City has probably the most robust recycling and

circular economy infrastructure in the United States. So we're the only city in America where the cardboard boxes that recycled in New York City actually get turned back into cardboard boxes in New York City and put back into the system, which is a great example of a way for the city to reduce disposal costs, generate revenue because it gets guaranteed payments for its recycled cardboard, and create a lot

of local jobs. But New York City, even with the best recycling infrastructure in the country, could still do a better job recycling. And the material that doesn't get recycled has to go to landfill, and New York City doesn't have any landfills, and so it ships its ways to landfills in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and South Carolina. And so if you live in those three states, you're effectively the dumping

ground for New York City's garbage. And there's private companies in your state that make a lot of money off of using your land to dispose of New York City's garbage. And oftentimes, if you're stuck on the highway behind a big eighteen wheeler and you think to yourself, well, at least that's American commerce and the American economy and goods being transferred around the country. In many cases, it may just be garbage that's being moved around from one city

to another state to find landfill space. That's insane. We so often everybody forgets about taxes. They think taxes are just something they can't change, they'll always pay, so they never think about, like, how can I effectively lower my tax burden? And this is actually one thing you can tangibly do. Like I know some people complain about like, oh, recycling is expensive for our city, and like nobody talks about how expensive landfills are for the city. Absolutely, and

that's that's intentional. There's a phenomenal marketing campaign that for decades was driven by the extractive industries and the landfill industries to hide the cost of extraction and hide the cost of disposal. And that's eats its way into the press. So I'll oftentimes get calls from the press and they'll say, well, the city just signed a contract to recycle and they're gonna have to pay forty a ton to recycle. What is your answer when people say why shouldn't we recycle?

It costs four dollars a ton? And I say to the reporter, have you looked at how much it would cost to landfill those recyclables? And more often than not, the reporter hasn't looked up that information at all, because they've been pitched on the story by landfill other haters who have invested interests in creating this perception that there's a zero sum game either you pay forty dollars to recycle or do you snap your fingers and it all

just magically disappears. And invariably what happens is I tell the reporter go back and find out what are the landfill disposal fees, and oftentimes come back we go, oh, that's interesting. The landfill disposal fees are fifty five dollars or sixty five dollars or eighty dollars, and say, so, that means that if you don't a forty dollars to recycle and potentially get the revenue share that's in most recycling contracts, which can completely eliminate that that forty dollar

thing create a revenue source. If you don't do that, if you just say, hey, I'm not going to recycle my throwe in the garbage, you will pay that instead sixty seventy or eighty dollar Tipically, Now, what was your question again about is it worth it their recycle? And they're kind of like, yeah, I don't really have much of an article here do I go, um, you have a new article. But it is is the United States spends billions of dollars a year of taxpayer money to

subsidize extractive industry. So if you think about the oil and gas industry, which is where virgin plastic comes from, for decades, they've gotten billions in federal and state tax subsidies. People oftentimes will say to me, well, if we let capitalism work, recycled plastic, if it were less expensive than virgin plastic, everyone would be used. You know, I say, I agree with you. Let's let capitalism work. Let's allow

the free market to see who's cheaper. Unfortunately, if we continue to use federal and state tax dollars to subsidize the oil and gas companies, we're not allowing capitalism to work. We're not allowing the free market to work. We're behind the scenes, unbeknownst to a lot of taxpayers and consumers, subsidizing UH an industry that's actually harmful for our health and environment. And the same thing, we're spending billions of dollars then sending stuff to landfill, and that cost oftentimes

is not transparent to taxpayers. Yeah, so in your book. So there's the circular economy, which is what we want to move closer towards, which is like make use, reuse, remake, recycle, But we're currently on the linear economy, which is take, make use, disposed, pollute. Is there any other ways that the linear economy is costing us that we don't know about? Well, the two clearest ways that the linear economy costs money is you're paying to extract natural resources to manufacture when

you could just be using recycled material. It's much less expensive use recycled material verge. And the other obvious way it's costing us money is the disposing of Protestant landfill. The less obvious ways are all of this extraction of natural resources, it harms our environment and that causes pollution, It causes health issues. The transportation of all of this waste to landfills causes huge amounts of pollution with these trucks rolling around, but it also damages our roads and highways.

These are eighteen wheelers rolling around our highways causing a lot of damage and it's completely unnecessary. So there's some very clear direct cost, and then there's a number of externalities as well that that cost is borne by the average citizen, And the element of what I would call severe unfairness is that if you do a great job recycling, or you do a great job reusing, your tax burden is very love. You're not really sending anything to landfill.

But if your neighbor is somebody that says, I don't care about any of this stuff, I'm lazy, I'm just gonna throw everything in the garbage. The way are just in a structure today is your tax dollars will be partially used to pay for the disposal of their items and landfill, because the way we're structured is everybody just kind of shares in the cost of disposal, and that's completely unfair. Yeah, there's been some I know we're talking a lot about trash, and that's a lot. That's a

lot of what this is about. But I know that there are some cities who will approach it and that you purchase a bag, trash has to go in that bag. So then you're only paying for however many trash bags, which, yeah, that seems a bit more just for I'm going to pay for the amount of waste that I actually use. But I think it seems to me as though when we talk about the linear economy, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about trash and how it's just easy you

you mentioned being yeah, I'm just lazy. It's the easiest route and the way it's set up, that's the path of least resistance, such as buy it, use it once, throw it away. But when we talk about a circular economy, there's a whole lot more involved in that that I think touches on a lot more aspects of our personhood and lifestyles. That is more creative, does engage with more problem solving, and there's a lot more components to explore versus just the trash that happens in a linear economy.

The end of life of the product is the last point in the chain, and what we want to think about from the beginning of the chain is material sign Can we come up with new types of materials that don't involve any extraction? And then can we use product design to design products and solutions that use less material So I'll give you a couple of examples so to stream, I'll use that example first because they're not a portfolio

company of ours, So we can rag on them. No, no, no, I mean, but you want to think that I'm just sort of promoting what are my companies neutral? Neutral? So let's let's take so to Stream as an example. Soda Stream is a great example of innovation and entrepreneurship where a system was developed where if you want great tasting seltzer, you can get great tasting seltzer without all of the packaging. You can just make the seltzer at home with one bottle.

So that's a good example of product design where you're actually providing additional convenience to the customer, you're helping them reduce costs, and you're preserving our natural resources and the environment. So that's a good example of innovative prop design that got to scare. Yeah. I love how you talk about sustainability as being profitable because so often we think of it as you have to sacrifice profitability for sustainability, or you have to spend more in order to be sustainable.

But that is I mean, that myth is getting debunked, that that myth is a hoax that decade was perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry, the landfill industry to make people think that yeah, you can go be sustainable, but it's going to cost us money. Now, behind the scenes, the fossil fuel industry was getting federal and state tax subsidence.

It was a complete hoax, is a complete hoax. It's much less expensive to live us sustainable, less off and actually, if you look back pre and this is one of the things that cover in the book, all of the marketing that we got in the United States was focused on two things, quality over quantity. Quality over quantity, and the recycling of our paper, metal, glass, and plastic as a patriotic duty. Because if you have to abstract natural resources,

you're harming land in the US. But also if you end up being dependent on natural resources from foreign countries, especially if they're not friendly to us, that's not really good for our national defense. And so that's what you saw pre Quality over quantity and recycling as a patriotic post.

There was a concern an effort by some major industries to change that messaging that people saw, and the messaging in the nineteen fifties and sixties changed from it's about quality to your status is directly connected to just how much stuff you have. It doesn't matter if it's like good stuff it's gonna lasting long time. It's just about how much stuff you have. And it went to, hey, don't worry about recycling like you just put it out and it'll all just disappear, and we'll make you think

it it's all free to have to go away. And it's a complete it's a complete hoax that unfortunately a lot of a few industries made a lot of money off the back of taxpayers and consumers. But living a sustainable life, it's much healthier for you and your family, um,

and you're gonna save a lot of money. It is quite striking to see the change that you've pointed out in just seventy years, Like nineteen fifty was not that long ago, and we used to Americans have a reduced reuse, repurpose, be creative with your resources, be good stewards of it.

And and then that switch that has happened. And I think many of us, you know, might claim, oh, I'm not victim to advertising, but really, my goodness, in seventy years the shift that you have described, and how many of us have bought into that and haven't even thought twice about the way that we utilize products. This is

just how it is. We use things once and we throw it away, and even the potential of manufacturers making things intended to break like quality isn't I mean, I hear my grandparents saying they don't make it luck that us and something that you have the stories in your book, Like I was shocked when I was reading some of the intentional stories of early manufacturers, like the light bulb people getting together with their competitors ensuring that everybody creates

light bulbs that will not last past two thousand hours. Then then you got to buy more light bulbs, and knowing that there's still like there's a video camera on a light bulb that's been been shining for what like a hundred years or something, and the light bulb has

outlasted three webcams the people. That's that's absolutely true. And that's an example that I use in a book because I thought that would be an example that everybody could relate to, because everyone has the experience of every year a lightbulb going dead, you gotta changed the light bulb, and so and so forth, and so you read about the reality that the original light bulbs over a hundred years ago, we're capable of maintaining themselves for years. But

the light bulb manufacturers realized, but wish. Second, if we make light bulbs that last for years, that's going to cut into our profits. If we make light bulbs that run out after a certain amount of time, people will have to spend money to buy more. That was an example I used in the book because I thought it was something everybody could relate. Unfortunately, there's dozens of stories like that. A more modern story is, let's look at a lot of the smartphone technology that we have. Smartphones

are amazing. I'm in my forties. When I was a teenager, so just you know, a little over twenty years ago, if somebody tried to describe a smartphone, people were thought you were out of your mind, like you were talking super futuristic type scenarios. So the designers and developers of smartphones, these are incredibly brilliant people. It's hard for me to believe that they're brilliance ends at the ability to develop something that can't always just use the same charger, right,

It's always the charger. It's always the charger. You're just happened with my phone last night? Yeah, it's like you're telling me that this amazing iPhone or sam some phone that you developed. It can take pictures, I can watch movies, I can watch sports on it, I can do email, I can do all of this amazing stuff. But you couldn't figure out how the next version of it uses the same charger as the previous one. That's intentional. That's a revenue generating opportunity to just get you to buy

another charger. That's the kind of stuff that we need to start stripping out of our manufacturing systems and our society because it's pushing costs onto the consumer that shouldn't be there, and it's pushing disposal of products that are completely necessary. Those chargers that don't work anymore on phones have to be thrown out. Those companies aren't taking a responsibility for picking them up and throwing them out on their dime. Their things that you consumer, You sity, you

figure it out, and that's uh, that's not an efficient system. Yeah. Another thing that I've on shocking from the book was the concept of obsolescence by desire. So like that wasn't

like manufacturing goods. That break wasn't good enough for manufacturers, it wasn't fast enough, So then they turned to advertising to make people think they needed new stuff, and that was so much quicker, and I think that's something I mean, that's the main thing that we talked about on this show is to not be like tricked by that, but to read it was crazy. So your your listeners that may have been fans of mad Men, mm hmm, this is actually what the show was about. Right, post World

War Two, this advertising industry grew exponentially. There's always been advertising, but post World War Two, this industry grew exponentially. And the whole focus of that show is how do we hawk this product? How do we spin a story to make the consumer believe that their personal status is directly connected to owning this product. And what you find interesting about mad Men is there's not a lot of satisfaction

in the characters on the show. That the show isn't full of people who go, Wow, I come in at work every day and I get the hot products, whether or not I believe in the product or not. I mean, my focus is really only I got to convince someone else that they absolutely need this product. Wow. I'm just I just feel so personally fulfilled. That's not that's not the story, right, They're all strugg like what am I doing?

But that's effectively would happen in the in the nineties is we started moving our economy towards one of we just need to maintain this massive industry we've built around the World War Two, which was really important industry. It helped us win the war, but it really should have been unwound or focused more on parts of the economy that actually benefit citizens. Unfortunately, it transitioned itself into one of like, make as much stuff as possible and just

hawk the hell out of it. Yeah, like, you just had a really couple tough here do you deserve literally all the stuff? And I think we've brought that mindset for the last seventy years. You're going, you know, life is hard, you deserve stuff. I mean, that's the mindset we live by. And what and what psychologists have shown us is that what makes you happy isn't lots of stuff. What makes you happy is your family and relationships, your your your friendships, and the satisfaction you get out of

what you do for a living. How much you have, it's not core to your happiness. Everybody likes nice things, but the nice part of it is the key, which is what you should be focusing on is As a consumer, I want quality. I something that looks good, it feels good, it lasts long time. When I no longer want it, because I know that it was made well and designed with a certain aesthetic, I'll be able to sell it

to somebody else and recoup some of the value. And if my aesthetic has changed, or I just my lifestyle has changed, I'll go out and get something else that's again designed well, high quality materials, so and so forth. When we talk about consumerism, that's what we should be talking about. Not the route to my happiness is just how much stuff I have, whether or not it was made well or not, and how cheap can I get it? How can I get it? The question like how cheap

can I get it? You also have to think about, like what kind of person do I want to be? Because if you're buying a four dollar T shirt, that means that there's somebody someplace in the world that was paid so little to make that sure that that company could get the cotton, make the shirt transported to the store for you to buy it. That means somebody was paid so little that you were able to get it

for four dos. So you have to just also have to just think about like what kind of person do I want to be and and what kind of system do I want to participate in? And if I saw the making this, like how would I feel about it? And how well am I going to care for something that I only spent four dollars on? When am I going to need another four dollar shirt probably in a month from now? Yeah, exactly right? And then and then it gets it, Then it gets thrown out right and

you got to go to landfill. And you know, we we have a weird sense of patriotism in America where we'll say things like American made. We want manufacturing in the US, but when I go to the store, I want the cheapest thing possible, which obviously means it it's got to get made someplace where there's no lay for lass. So we have this weird sense of patriotism in America where we espouse certain values, but we're not willing to

pay for those values. And and that's a challenge I think as a society we need to overcome and understand, you know, the ramifications of of that and how it's all interconnected. When when you have somebody who can barely survive working in a factory and a developing country making our key shirts. What they're gonna ultimately try to do is they're going to try to get to America uh

and and make a better life for themselves. So if you want to solve the immigration issue in the US, think about who's making your products and how poorly they're being treated, and create a motivation for them to to stay with their in their home and their family where they want to be by giving them a livable weight.

I did. I didn't even think about that, Mike drop Roun. Yeah, okay, So let's talk about some like some actionable tips, like what are um because most waste is created I think it's created at the manufacturing level, if I've heard that right, So, like we're not the manufacturers. We can do what we can, but like, what are the most significant things we can do to promote a circular economy, like whether at home or urging companies to change. It's a great question, and

different people have different interests. So I'm going to give a few things that people can do depending on what their intuests are. So, if you're somebody that's very active politically, great opportunity to go to your local political officials and say how much are we spending on landfills? I want to know what why are my tax dollars being used

to send all this material to landfills? Like, there's lots of examples of cities and communities around the country und the world that robust recycling systems where this material is getting collected and process and sold. So if you're someone who is interested in politics, get engaged around this issue of we should be manufacturing in the United States. We have all of these commodities through the products we have UH, and we don't want to be sending things to landfill anymore.

And the good news is there's a lot of bipartisan initiatives right now focused on building circular economy and recycling search. So that's something you can do if you're interested in in politics. If you just somebody at home wanting to do the right thing by the environment but also save money, make sure you're recycling everything possible, really understand how to recycle. If you've got a local curveside organics program where your city is not collecting your food waste, make sure you're

giving your food waste for composting. So that's that's something you do. Then if you're really interested in product design and products when you're at the supermarket, we're at the store, research the products you're buying and make sure that they're using as much recycled content as pos sable, Understand the materials that are being used, and try to shop responsibly or in a way that aligns with your with your values. Absolutely, yeah, spending in alignment with your values. It does result in

actually spending less, like consuming less. And yeah, that's like the first part. And that's not even to mention investment. Right, You've got closed loop partners where you can even be wealth building in this vein. So that thank you for

bringing that up. So that's the other things. If you're interested in investing, if you over the last decade focused on investing in renewable energy, electric vehicles, recycling systems, you would have made a lot more money than if you would have said, I want to stay in x on mobile, I want us totay in cars companies that aren't going electric,

I want to invest in landfill operate. So if you're an investor, this is definitely where the world is going, and it's going there for a very important reason, which is the more sustainable a company is, the more transparent they tend to do, meaning they're proud to tell you the materials they use, where those materials come from, the labor that they use, how their supply chain operates. They're proud of it. It's something that they have designed with

efficiency in mind. And what do you want as an investor. You want to maximize transparency. You want to mitigate risk, you don't want any surprises. You want as much information as you possibly can get. And that's what they're going to get out of investing in investment firms like Closing Partners that focuses on circular economy and recycling, or other firms that do it, or just do public equities that

are focused in this area. The beautiful thing about what you're saying, too, is that as we move towards this more search ular economy and make both macro and micro level changes, it does save us money again on the macro level and the micro level, which I know we we want to do. We don't want to be spending as much, we want to be saving more, we want to be earning more, we want to be building wealth, and all of this aligns beautifully We're not sacrificing one

thing for the other. To be content with the products that we have, to have quality over quantity, to be concerned about the level of items going to the landfill impacts our taxes. Like I love that every single thing that we've talked about does benefit us on the micro level. Absolutely, you know what else benefits us macro every level. That's right, It's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William.

Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That's bills Bufalo bills, Bill Clinton. This is the Bill of the week ron. Every week we invite one of our listeners or our guests to share with us their bill for the week. So do you have a bill for us today? I do, And I really like this concept that you do because it forces you to really think creatively about how to connect dots. And so my

bill of the week is gonna be Bill Moyers. Bill Moyers used to he's getting up there in age, but Bill Morriors, for most of his career, has produced exceptional documentaries and um, I've always learned a tremendous amount watching Bill Warriors documentaries, and one comes to mind which I would recommend to everybody to listen to, which is the

Power of Myth, which is about Joseph Campbell. And I bring that up because I think studying history is a really important way to understand the system that you're living in today and why it was constructed that way, and to just have greater self awareness. So Bill Moyers would be my Bill of the week. We can't know where we're going if we don't know where we came from. This We've never had this one before, so yeah, I love it like a person. Bill, Um, those are my

Those are my favorite. Yeah, it's interesting that you say that's My husband just this week was saying how he really wanted to watch a documentary but was having a hard time finding one that interested him. And so here we go. I know what we're doing this week, and anything you think by Bill Moyers will be uh an exceptional learning ariands and just help you think about just systems and structures and where we came from and how

we lived today. I really like the Power of of Myth by Joseph Campbell, which was a book that Joseph Campbell wrote, but Bill Moyers did a special series interviewing Joseph Campbell on it. But he's got lots of great documentaries that that he's done on all different topics. So I thought it was a great question for a podcast. I wanted to come up with an answer that hopefully is unique and uh and and full of get unique expense. I know and clearly we like creativity and problem solving,

and you did both today. So if you all who are listening want to submit your bill of the week, you've got something creative. You've solved the problem. You know a guy named Bill. Visit FRU girl Friends podcast dot com slash Bill. Leave us your bill. You know we love to hear it. Yes, So now it's time for the uh. We do a lot of noises and singing and yelling. It gets exciting in the second right, So um,

today we're going to share. This is where we kind of get a little more personal, like what we're doing to promote the circular economy personally. So Ron, as our guest, we would love it for you to go first. You're gonna have the best answer, and our answers are going to are gonna pale in comparison, but we are very excited to hear what you say. First, what I am doing to promote the circular economy is to try to build the most successful investment firm UH focused on backing

the most brilliant entrepreneurs building solutions for the circular economy. Nice, what's like one that you're really excited? I know they're like children and you shouldn't pick a favorite, but like, what are you really excited about right now? What's one of them? Which one is the coolest? Though? For that preface, because yes, fifty portfolio companies and I love them all equally. And um, one that we're very excited about is home bio Gas, which is a company based in Israel that's

developed the first household sized anaerobic digester. Anaerobic digesters convert food waste and biological waste into gas and so. In the United States, a lot of the wastewater treatment facilities have large digesters. These are like fifty million dollar type facilities that turn bio solids into energy. Some municipalities now have anaerobic digesters for food waste. A number of dairy farms have them, but these are big big, multimillion dollar facilities.

No one's ever figured out how to miniaturize the technology down to the household level, and home Biogas has been able to develop a all anaerobic digester that looks like an appliance. You put it into your backyard, you put all of your food waste into it. It It converts it into gas that can pump into your hot water heater or into your stove. So home biogas dot Com check them out. We're super excited about them. Totally disruptive, and back to the earlier point on our conversation, a great

example of how sustainability saves money. You take all of your food waste and rather than sticking it in the garbage where your city is going to use its tax dollars to ship it to a landfill, instead, you take that food waste and you put in your home biogas system, and now you're generating your own gas for cooking or for hot water in which also saves you money. So that's one portfolio company that I'm very excited about. Oh

it's amazing. I love hearing about such cool innovative things that utilize Yeah, you're a waste and then make it productive. It's people are brilliant. It's amazing. Yeah, alright, my turn, chill. Yeah, you know, I am turning my food waste into system. Funny you should say that. No, So it's very very simple.

I think some of the things that I'm doing, but again hailing back to my days of tiny living, it really connected me to my waste, the amount of water that I was using just every I mean, you're very connected to all of your waste in some really gross ways, but in some really challenging ways to when you live tiny. And I think some of those things have carried over. But a little part of me does die when I throw things out. So I have been looking at how

do I stop doing that? One very very small thing that I've realized when I go grocery shopping. So if I can't get to the farmer's market or find a place where I can just like purchase produce, I'm at the grocery store purchasing produce. I've stopped using the plastic bags, like you know, the plastic bags in the produce section where you could just like shove your apples into. I'm like,

I don't. Actually, I'm just gonna get home. I'm going to throw all of this away, So I bring in my own bags and Okay, if I don't want them sitting in the shopping cart, fine, I'll put them into the bag, and then yes, I'm gonna have to wash and want to get home, so they're sitting on the conveyor belt, and who knows what was on the conveyor belt, but it feels a lot better to not come home and just immediately within thirty minutes throw a ton more

plastic into the trash. So that's something tiny And I've been mending my own clothing. I've been buying significantly less clothing, thank you, Tiny Living. And if it's broken, I mend it. So I like my clothes and I want to keep them and amend them. And that's that. I think those

are all excellent examples for your listeners. It's amazing, over the course of the year how many plastic bags we use at the supermarket for our produce, completely unnecessarily, And that just shows you the inefficiency in the system, Like the supermarket is buying all of those bags, and they're passing that cost off to the consumers because they have to cover those costs, and then we as consumers use

those bags. It's completely unnecessary. You can just put it in your shopping cart and put it in your shopping bag and and go home. And then at home, we have all these plastic bags and we literally used for maybe an hour, and then we just stow it in the garbage. So I love that example, thanks Ron. I love the fact that you mend your own clothes. Um, we actually need an industry in the United States where people men closed again, fixed electronics again. And so love

all of those examples. M thank you. Yes, yeah, it's sim it's not needed most of the ways that we approach. And mind you, you are paying for that plastic right like they they offer it like it's free, but like you're paying for it in the pricing of the produce. That's what I mean by all of these hidden costs in the system is you're just grabbing these plastic bags. People don't stop to think for a moment. They're like, oh,

the supermarket, bossy, because I think I want them. But they're gonna have to cover their costs, and so that cost gets passed on. And this is what I mean by like, we gotta break that that system and avoid all these unnecessary costs. Jen what you got for us? So um, I have a few winds lately on the subject of grocery bags. So I do grocery pickup and the like, they just put every individual item in a

plastic bag. It's so useless, but like, so I will there's um the other grocery store near me has like the recycling for those plastic bags, because we can't just throw them in our regular recycling. And so I will hoard these bags and get like a big bushel of them and then take them to the grocery store. And one time I was like taking my carrying my bushel and a lady She's like, thank you so much, um, and I was like, you're welcome, so um, yeah, do

that with my bags. But yeah, so I My most recent win is I try to buy as much clothing as possible secondhand. But jeans have been something I've had a real problem with. But I've devoted myself like to buying new genes, to really like buying quality and buying them secondhand. Um. And so I went to Nordstrom and I tried on all the nice sustainable genes so I

could find my size. Foundas size, went to the saved all my sizes and stuff and save searches on thread up so I can find when the good genes in my size come up. Then it sends me an alert so I can see if I want them or not. But then I also went into our local um it's

like a it's like a local consign. It's like a Plato's closet, but it's local, and found a pair in my size that are not just like good quality, but they're the ones that are like also like, we make our genes sustainably too, So I got sustainable genes that are good quality secondhand, and that feels so good. And so I just felt like a real winner that day. You were You were a real winner that day, Ron says,

you were. Yeah. Story, and it's a great example for your listeners and one that that every everyone listening can can replicate. It's a it's a great story. On the example you gave on the plastic bags. We're running a major initiative at Closing Partners on reinventing the user experience around shopping and what those bags look like. It's called Reinvent the Bag. So if any of your listeners want to Google Reinvent the Bag or go to our website and look for it if they're interested in that area.

That's one thing that's a major focus of ours is how do we reinvent the consumer experience to make sure people can easily get the things that they need but avoid all of those bags. Another thing you can do with those bags is weave them into blankets for the homeless. I mean, you can also just give them like good blankets, but apparently the insulation factor of them are decent. Well that that's That's the thing about plastic is that it's

this bag that was made to use once. But the way plastic is designed is it doesn't really break down. So from the perspective of Baker, it's extremely dangerous from a usability standpoint. Um plastic can be a great product. Literally make it into blankets for homeless and it'll be water proof and and and generate heat. It's important people listening to understand like plastic in and of itself isn't

necessarily bad. Plastic has a lot of major benefits. It's super lightweight, it can be formed into multiple shapes, so there's a lot of benefits of plastic. The key is it can never be virgin plastic because that means that there's a fossil fuel extracted. We should be using material science to develop plastics that can be manufactured in labs, and whatever plastic is out in the market, we have to make sure that we're always always recycling it to make sure that it never ends up in in nature

beautiful on Where can people get more from you? Your book? More knowledge from you? If this is an exciting topic, how do people get at you? There's my book The Waste Free World that people can learn about the history of delinear economy, the circular economy. There's lots of really fun and interesting stories in there. So that's one area

to learn about the circular economy. In other areas, if you go to our website Closed with Partners dot com and you just look at our different portfolio companies with about fifty companies all doing really innovative things in the circular economy, that's also a great way to learn about

innovative solutions and great companies in the circular economy. That's awesome and the book will definitely make you rethink the things that you may have taken for granted and definitely make you double think about the waste that you're producing. I know it did for me, so I highly highly recommend the book. It's great. Thank you, Thank you so much for saying that. And any of your listeners that get the book, I hope they enjoy it and also learn from it. And I love to always hear from

people about what they thought excellent. Thank you so so much, Ron for being with us today for sharing about the circular economy. It's been a blast, all right. Thank you so much, guys, and it's great to be with you today. Who what do you think of that chill? That amazing doesn't feel like the right word, but it's all that comes to mind right now. Again, if you didn't catch my enthusiasm in the interview, I don't know. You might have been sleeping, but I don't know how you could have.

I Again, I think whenever I am on this topic, thinking about it, talking about it, it does give me some motivation and determination to then look at what else can I be doing. There's something about this that it hits a core part of me of Yeah, how do I how do I make the world a better place? How do I make sure that I'm a part of

that equation? How do I just even within my own little ecosystem, make sure that I am doing right by others, by myself, by the products, by that I'm consuming, by the community that I'm surrounded by, so so much good stuff. I think, not just for understanding more of where we've come from, where we're going, and the bigger picture of things, but then I think some really tangible pieces. I really love how Ron broke it down to your different levels

of interest. You're interested in politics, are you interested in design? Are you interested in investing? I think wherever you find yourself or if you're interested in all those things, there's something actionable for you. So I hope that you all listening, we're able to take at least one takeaway from this, And of course, if you've got things to add to this conversation, let us know. We want to hear it. We're hanging out in our Frugal Friends community group on Facebook.

So yeah, really, I think that this isn't a conversation that just ends here. What excites me about this is where we can go from here. Absolutely. Yeah. Ron's book actually got me thinking about the American dream, and like when that term was coined was far before the nineteen fifties. From what I believe. I don't know facts, but from what I believe. So the since the fifties, we have been reshaping what the quote unquote American dream looks like. And so now there are so many people saying the

American dream doesn't work. And that's because it's not the same American dream that people had when the term was coined, Like when like reducing your consumption and repurposing, reusing, when valuing the quality of your items was really important. Was the mainstay of buying things, That was the goal that saved you so much money so that you can afford

other things that build wealth. And and now we have for seventy years, so like our entire lives are in parents entire lives, most of our grandparents, like we have been ingrained with this new quote unquote dream that more stuff is the dream. And it just it's all the stories, some of them are very sinister, and it just like

really got me thinking. And so I have definitely changed my perspective even caring about sustainability, but like diving into this um with the financial aspect, which is something like I'm even more interested in that connection has just really changed up things for me. Sinister, that's a good word to describe it. Yeah, what's being hidden? What's being kept secret and ultimately harming us on again the micro and

macro levels. Yeah. Anyways, thanks for listening everyone. We want to thank you so much for your kind reviews on iTunes and Stitcher, like this one from Acacia p r D says New Obsession happens to be five stars. Hey, guys, you are my who is the obsession? I recently discovered this pod and I have been doing some serious binging. Thank you so much for making an otherwise dry and complex topic so fun and easy to understand. I've also come to love the little quirks, like the fake sponsors

and bill of the week. Keep it up. I'm hugging that. You know. I'm okay being an obsession for somebody. Yes, you are. I've got my own obsessions, and so let's let's keep it circular. You know, I'll be obsessed with something, you be obsessed with us, and we'll just keep the obsession going. Oh my gosh, she'll want to thank you guys. I'm for sharing these episodes on social media, and we really hope you will be sharing this one. This one

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copy of the Frugal Friends workbook. So keep leaving us reviews on iTunes or Stitcher, send us the screenshot to our email Frugal Friends Podcasts at gmail dot com, and still tack us on social just all the ways get at us, spread the message, spread the love, and you are entered for that giveaway. So stay sustainable, don't be trashy, and we'll see you next week. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirian. So it takes my design aesthetic being

hot trash to another level. Well, that's how you're reducing, reusing and recycling is by allowing your aesthetic to be hot trash. Yeah, as I just use hot trash. I am repurposing trash, and I'm in Florida, so it's hot. That's actually my house is hot because our a C unit is so old. It's a joke that carries over from our Frugal Living summit, where Jen described her aesthetic as hot trash no, I think that was an episode,

was it? That was? Our design blends together kind of like dreams blend into my reality, and then you are from deja vu and your life is I think I'm living in the tricks you are. You are taking both the red and blue pills.