Troy Swope On Environmentally Friendly And Innovative Plastic Manufacturing

Footprint Co-founder and CEO Troy Swope leads world-class engineers, scientists, environmentalists and designers on a mission to create a healthier planet, with step one to provide sustainable alternatives to single-use plastics.

Troy’s work as a self-titled ‘accidental environmentalist’ has already led to invention and production of plant-based fibre solutions designed to be sustainable, biodegradable and compostable and are being implemented by its customers in nearly every U.S. grocery store – with performance and price comparable with plastic. Troy’s expertise spans over 20 years, first as an award-winning engineer at Intel where he introduced new materials science methodologies that resulted in a $350 million-dollar manufacturing cost savings, and later as the founder of Unisource Global Solutions, which disrupted the EPS and EPE foam packaging industry by creating sustainable molded pulp packaging alternatives for consumer electronics companies such as Dell Computers.

Founded in 2014, Footprint has grown to over 2,500 employees with offices in the US, Europe and Asia. In the past two years at Footprint, Troy has been named by Newsweek as one of 50 luminaries on their inaugural America’s 2021 Greatest Disruptors list, a Business Intelligence Group Sustainability Hero of the Year and Mountain Desert Finalist for E&Y’s 2020 Entrepreneur of the Year.

Troy discusses How for-profit organisations can design highly sustainable products to reduce negative environmental impacts and Where enterprises can implement technological solutions.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in sustainable business?

[Troy Swope] - I started working for Intel at a very young age with semiconductors in Research and Development. I was in technology development at Intel, and then ultimately ended up leading a materials group responsible for just about everything that moved Intel's products worldwide from fabrication to assembly tests and raw materials. Actually, a lot of single use plastics, probably the most expensive single use plastics in the world were really our focus in development. But ultimately what led me to becoming an accidental environmentalist is we had a project where Intel's products were getting contaminated in shipping. When we were investigating the contamination, we identified that plastic outgassing (the new car smell when you open up a new car) is actually on a lot of levels not good for you at all. As we were investigating, we discovered in 24 hours Intel's products can get contaminated in these plastic containers. So, what if food sits there for weeks, months and even years at times? We started bringing food into Intel's facilities in Santa Clara, and with everything in the supermarket curious engineers explored what's in food and were alarmed with the data. This is the early two thousand, and we were just shocked at how much plastic was in our food. We just said, "all right, we have to develop something that's better than this,” and back in those days it was obvious plastic pollution was going to be a problem. But for us, the opportunity we felt was it was going to be a bigger issue once everybody understood that they're eating plastic.

As a co-founder and CEO of Footprint now, can you tell us more about the organisation and its core social objective?

From a cultural perspective we're innovation based. There's a core group of us that came from Intel, and Intel in the nineties were developing and doubling processor capabilities, which was probably the most technically advanced product on the planet at the time. It probably still is today. It's the backbone of everything. We had this great engineering and problem solving methodology we were taught at Intel, which is just the absolute most amazing place to be in the nineties. That core group leads with the culture of believing we can innovate anything.

You're going to fail, but you just need to know how to learn from failure. Our number one objective is to get plastic out of food and eliminate those human health impacts.

After that, we want to get plastic out of feminine hygiene products, motor oil bottles and shampoo bottles. Then we innovate everything; we innovate process technologies, material science and manufacturing methodologies. We believe it's critical to do that at a hundred percent net zero emissions, net zero water, and with one hundred percent renewable energy. We already have a significant CO2 emission reduction target and impact by replacing plastic. We believe in doing that in advanced manufacturing technologies and capabilities that will provide an even greater climate change impact. We've been recognised during a few CNBC Newsweek’s and some others like Fast Company. But we believe in the next couple of years Footprint will be recognised as one of, if not the most environmentally impactful company on the planet.

Can you explain how the packaging industry and single use plastics have impacted the environment on a global scale?

Other than poisoning people and its impacts on the oceans, it does a great job of protecting food for a very long period of time. It's cheap, flexible, a great oil barrier, water barrier and moisture barrier. Other than poisoning you, it does a great job of what it's intended to do, and it's got 50 years or 60 years of development, so it's cheap. Those things are difficult to contend or compete with.

The real opportunity exists because plastic is a disaster from a climate change and CO2 emissions perspectives. When you start thinking about harvesting oil and natural gas, it is hard from a lifecycle analysis to justify its production with whales washing up on shore.

In human health impacts, it's hard to measure those as well, but even with very measurable criterion like CO2 emissions and its influence on climate change, there are abundant opportunities to do good. You're going to see a huge amount of innovation around developing technologies and processes to clean up and eliminate plastic. It creates tons of opportunities to do good for the planet and our shareholders. One of the new models (and the model for the future of business) is pro-planet for-profit. You need profit to fuel future innovation. As we demonstrate, Footprint's going to be recognised for being really good at being pro-planet pro-profit. The more money we make, the more opportunities we have to continue innovating on how we use energy, reduce waste, clean up plastics and convert hydrogen and carbon that's locked up in plastics into useful materials. There's so much opportunity in packaging today around innovation process technologies and material science. When you complete innovation, the impacts on the planet are huge and measurable. It's unbelievably rewarding.

What role does innovation and technology play in helping businesses and enterprises create products that are valuable, but are also balanced with negative outcomes?

I'm going to be unbelievably biased and have a very unique view because, I grew up at Intel, which in the nineties was the centre of the internet and the new digital universe.

Innovation is everything, and continued innovation is everything. What we need now though is to make sure consumers and investors are investing in business that is pro-planet for-profit.

We are going to take some risks, but making sure capital is available for entrepreneurs to go out and take a shot is crucial. The future of the investment world (and John Doerr says this in his book Speed and Scale) is pro-planet for-profit. But innovation is going to be the core of everything; it's the core of Footprint. We're going to need it, because the planet needs it, and human health needs it. It's going to be critical for our future. The big question is do we know how to innovate, and that's where Footprint really differentiates itself. You need to know how to design, experiment, come up with a hypothesis, design an experiment, understand when you're confounding data. Then, you must understand what you're going to learn from this experiment, execute that experiment, learn and progress. Not everybody knows how to do that, but Footprint does it exceptionally well.

What's holding entrepreneurs back from prioritising sustainability when designing or implementing their own business models or ideas?

I'm not for sure anybody's holding them back, I think the big obstacle is capital. My fear is Footprint's lucky we've received our funding in our funding strategy to go and execute our vision. But there needs to be capital, and the current markets are going to slow down.

Some of that innovation around recycling, EV batteries and new technologies will similarly slow down, and there's a new field of material science which is going to need capital.

Some of the other things that hurt is just the word ESG, and there's a great article in The Wall Street Journal about how the term is convoluted. There's too much of G, and G should be a standard. Everybody should be expected to have governance. Exxon being rated higher than Tesla using this scale is a bit of a joke. This may limit people from jumping into the E (Environmental) space. But the reality is consumers are not hung up on politics. We know that pollution is pollution if it's carbon or plastic. We need to stop and come up with innovative solutions. The reality is those innovative ways are going to create a tremendous amount of wealth for shareholders, entrepreneurs and the teams that are working on it. That is the future; we need more voices like Paul Hawken and John Doerr. John Doerr especially, because he is in a position where he is investing in those businesses. We need to focus on supporting entrepreneurs that are pro-planet, for-profit.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently that are creating a positive social change?

There's a ton of great examples of Unilever doing environmentally friendly business in the book Net Positive by Andrew Winston. There are a lot of other good examples for businesses to follow. The reality is Unilever has pushed a lot of companies into doing good socially. Footprint has a unique technology, and one thing I'm very optimistic about in the future is every business leader we talk to in these major CPG or retail spaces want to do the right thing. The reality is their supply base hasn't always given them the technology best for the planet. That creates a tremendous amount of opportunity for Footprint and others to give them the technologies that help them go market, look at what they’re doing for the planet, and they procure materials. What gives me optimism, or what I'm excited about is that these businesses are actively looking for change.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

I'm a fanatic reader. I tell my children all the time that the world's secrets are in a book, I just don't know which ones so read them all! I really like Marc Benioff's book Trailblazer. If you're an entrepreneur thinking about building a business for good, there's a lot of real good things to take regarding how you can structure the business and support your local community. I mentioned John Doerr; he's got a great book if you want to just understand what's going on relative to pollution. If you don't want to use the word climate change because it's political, just talk about how carbon is a polluter. There's some good data in there. Paul Hawken's book Drawdown is a really good illustration of what's going on, and you can look at where innovations are and where we need innovation to help heal the planet. Then there are just fun books; I really enjoyed Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow. I'm obsessed with what I don't know, and I'm certainly in the space of healing the planet. Again, John Doerr's book is really good, so is Net Positive by Andrew Winston.