Hannah Wallace

7 Green Tech Startups With the Innovations—and the Funding—to Help Save the Planet

From growing kelp forests to making packaging out of mushrooms, these companies are reducing greenhouse gas emissions from every angle. 

I wrote this round-up for Inc.'s Carbon Neutral package, in the May/June 2022 issue. 

Entrepreneurs coast to coast are coming up with innovative technologies showing not only that we can live without carbon-based energy, but also that we can thrive without it. From a Maine startup that's growing kelp forests (which can sequester gigatons of CO2 for centuries) to an electric vehicle company in Eugene, Oregon, that's making affordable electric cars with flair, these green tech startups show that our carbon-free future actually looks pretty cool. Wave energy? Batteries to store renewable energy that are more environmentally friendly than lithium? Biodegradable mushroom-based packaging? These aren't merely futuristic notions. They're happening now, and they've got the funding to prove it.

 

A Running Tide kelp microforest.

 

 Courtesy of Running Tide

 

 

 

An Acrimoto FUV.Courtesy of Acrimoto

Arcimoto

Tech: Builds right-size EVs for less than $20,000
Founder: Mark Frohnmayer
Home base: Eugene, Oregon

Not everyone needs--or wants--a Tesla. Arcimoto is on a mission to democratize electric vehicles. The startup, founded in 2007, makes a series of right-size EVs that are ideal for urban eco-drivers. The Fun Utility Vehicle (FUV), for example, is an open-air (yet covered) car with three wheels. Doors optional. It's ultra efficient and--unlike so many EVs--actually affordable. The company is growing, having just moved into a new 250,000-square-foot plant, a fivefold increase over its former digs. Next off the line will be a series of specialty vehicles, including the Rapid Responder, outfitted with sirens and lights for emergency services, and the Cameo, designed to create a smooth camera vehicle for the film and influencer industries.

Running Tide

Tech: Grows kelp to capture carbon
Founder: Marty Odlin
Home base: Portland, Maine

Like trees, kelp naturally fixes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere--only kelp does it exponentially faster than land-rooted trees and plants. So founder Marty Odlin decided to build a business selling carbon credits around this fact. Running Tide scientists amplify the process by growing the seaweed on wood buoys layered with ground-up seashells that sit on the ocean surface, allowing the plants to capture carbon via photosynthesis. The buoys themselves are made of carbon-rich wood, and when they get waterlogged over the course of several months they sink to the bottom of the ocean--carbon, kelp, and all--where they will sit for centuries. The potential is enormous: Some suggest kelp farms like these, if scaled in our oceans, could collectively sequester over 270 gigatons of carbon. Shopify, Stripe, which just launched a new $925 million carbon removal initiative, and Frontier (along with Alphabet, Meta, and McKinsey) were early purchasers of Running Tide's carbon credits. Chris Sacca's Lowercase Capital is also an investor. The first deployment of algae is happening in late summer 2022, off the coast of Iceland.

Rye Development's Swan Lake Energy Storage Project

Tech: Uses hydropower to store renewable energy
CEO: Paul Jacob
Home base: Boston

Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are critical to our carbon-free future, but since it's not always windy and/or sunny, they require storage mechanisms to green the grid. When it opens in 2026, the Swan Lake energy storage project, based in Klamath County, Oregon, will be the first pumped storage hydropower project built in the U.S. in 30 years. The system uses excess renewable electricity from the grid to pump water to an elevated reservoir, where it sits as stored energy until it's needed. During peak demand, the water is released, spinning turbines that generate electricity. Swan Lake, which is being built by Boston-based Rye Development, will generate 400 megawatts of clean electricity, vastly increasing the storage capacity for the grid's wind and solar electricity.

ESS Energy Warehouse battery system.Courtesy of ESS

Energy Storage Systems

Tech: Builds a better battery
Founders: Julia Song and Craig Evans
Home base: Wilsonville, Oregon

 

These husband-and-wife founders started in their garage in 2011, cooking up so-called "flow" batteries, which store more energy and cost less per kilowatt-hour than lithium-ion cells. That's because they're made of environmentally benign materials: iron, salt, and water. A bonus: Iron batteries have a longer lifespan than lithium batteries--they can operate for 25 years or more with daily use versus lithium ion's 8 to 10 years. This kind of long-duration battery storage, which has been installed at San Diego Gas & Electric and other locations, will be crucial to reliably power a grid that relies on intermittent renewable resources like wind and solar.

 

AquaHarmonics

Tech: Tunes buoys to the waves to generate power
Founders: Alex Hagmuller and Max Ginsburg
Home base: West Linn, Oregon

Solar and wind energy will be essential for a carbon-neutral future, but the amount of time they produce energy is low. Solar produces energy just 25 percent of the time and wind produces energy 35 percent of the time. Wave energy, by contrast, has the potential to produce energy 60 percent of the time, and AquaHarmonics' founders believe they can increase that capacity to at least 80 percent. They will do this by using many smaller devices rather than a single large device as most other wave energy startups have done. Not only are small devices cheaper and easier to deploy, they can also generate more consistent power because they move out of phase with one another. For a variety of reasons, they can also survive storm conditions better than most bigger devices can, and continue to generate similar amounts of power. AquaHarmonics is designing cylindrical buoys with a mooring line that reels in and out with the waves. Depending on where they're deployed, the average capacity is 300 to 600 kilowatts, about the same as a big wind turbine. In 2017, the startup won the $1.5 million Wave Energy Prize and has since received $4.4 million in grants from the Department of Energy. It will soon deploy a device in Hawaii at a Navy Wave energy test site to demonstrate that the technology works. Grid-connected testing should follow in 2023.

 

Harvested air mycelium (left) and a faux leather jacket made from mycelium.Courtesy of Ecovative

Ecovative

Tech: Makes biodegradable packaging from mushrooms
Founders: Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre
Home base: Green Island, New York

Polystyrene foam, otherwise known as Styrofoam, is made from petroleum. But what if you could use a plant-based version that you could also break up into bits and throw in your garden, knowing it would become soil in a matter of months? That's the solution pioneered by Ecovative, with its 100 percent natural and biodegradable packaging material made from mushroom mycelium, the root structure of fungi. The company uses a patented growth chamber to guide mycelium into enormous sheets, and then forms it into everything from wine shippers to packaging for beauty brands like Ulta Beauty Retailing. Next up? Projects for the fashion industry including shoe insoles and mycelium leathers. The company, which has licensees in many countries, is ramping up production, with plans to open a 20,000-square-foot facility on the East Coast in August 2022.

Products made with Perfect Day animal-free milk protein.Courtesy of Perfect Day

Perfect Day

Tech: Makes faux milk that's nearly identical to the stuff from cows
Founders: Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi
Home base: Berkeley, California

Methane is 28 times more potent at trapping heat than CO2, and a single dairy cow generates about 220 pounds of the greenhouse gas per year. The founders of Perfect Day engineered a way around the climate-warming impacts of the 10 million-cow strong dairy industry in the lab. By introducing the genetic code for whey protein into a fungus, Trichoderma reesei, they get a whey protein that is molecularly identical to the whey protein in cow's milk. As such, it mimics the creamy mouthfeel of dairy, making it a viable substitute. The protein is already used in a handful of popular ice-cream brands including Midwest ice cream manufacturer Graeter's and the Keto-friendly line Nick's. The company also partners with General Mills on a cream cheese and Betterland and Starbucks on an alt milk that the coffee giant is still trying to name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Spectacular Comeback of the American Farmers Market

Once ubiquitous, farmers markets nearly vanished in the mid 20th century — until an array of forces converged to bring about their modern-day renaissance.

Fennel, beets, and parsley, at the PSU Farmers' Market; Brussels sprouts on the vine 

Visit the main Portland Farmers Market on any given Saturday morning and you’ll see tables spilling over with rainbow chard, beets, leeks and all kinds of lettuce. You’ll see vendors selling homemade salsa and tortilla chips, and cheesemakers plying their brie. It’s a scene that’s become part of America’s urban fabric. Today, there are over 8,140 farmers markets around the country.

But it wasn’t always this way.

 America’s interest in fresh, local food was well underway by the time Michael Pollan’s influential The Omnivore’s Dilemma became a bestseller in 2006 and Michelle Obama started a kitchen garden at the White House. But just a few decades prior, the beloved farmers’ market was all but extinct in the US. Its near death — and spectacular comeback — shows how social movements, economic shifts and government policy can converge to resurrect a food system that’s healthier for people, the planet and cities themselves.

To continue reading, go to Reasons to be Cheerful. 

 

How to Be a Responsible Cannabis-Consuming Traveler

I wrote this for Conde Nast Traveler back in April. 

This is part of a collection of stories on the intersection of weed and travel, from Women Who Travel. Read the full guide—with practical tips, travel experiences to check out, and more—right here.

Cannabis tourism is on the rise. Nearly 20 percent of all adult Americans qualify as cannabis-motivated travelers, according to research done in 2020 by MMGY Travel Intelligence in partnership with Enlightn Strategies, an advisor in the cannabis space. Today, 18 states and the District of Columbia, Guam, and Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands have all legalized weed for adult recreational use. (A dozen more have passed medical marijuana laws only.) But each state has slightly different rules and regulations, which can be tricky to navigate. 

 

Here are some tips to keep in mind for consuming responsibly in states where cannabis is legal.

Do your homework

Before setting off on a cannabis-themed adventure, research your destination. A great resource is the weed legalization map at Leafly, the go-to resource for all things cannabis. “They have a great overview of state-by-state laws,” says Jamie Evans, founder of the Herb Somm and author of Cannabis Drinks: Secrets to Crafting CBD and THC Beverages at Home. They also list nearby legal dispensaries. “They are the all-in-one resource of what’s legal.” You could also google: "cannabis consumption in X state” to get the local government’s up-to-date rules and FAQs.

It’s also worth noting that while you can barely walk down the street in Oakland, California, or Portland, Oregon, without seeing people vaping or smoking joints, even in states that have legalized weed, it’s technically illegal to smoke on the street everywhere except New York City and in other outdoor public spaces. Bottom line, it’s better to err on the side of caution and stick to private backyards or cannabis-friendly spaces like designated lounges or cafes. When considering where to stay, homeshare platform Bud & Breakfast is like an Airbnb for the cannatourist, listing cannabis-friendly accommodations worldwide. Some properties even include fresh buds and smoking paraphernalia.

Read the fine print

In some states, the total amount of allowable THC per single scored piece of chocolate (or caramel, or gummy) is five mg. In others it’s 10 mg. Get out your glasses and read the fine print. Dosing is very individual. “Some people are like rhinos—you can give them 50 mg and they’re like, ‘I’m sort of high,’” says Katie Stem, the founder and owner of Oregon’s Peak Extracts. (For context, 50 mg is considered a very high dose for most consumers.) Stem, who herself is sensitive to THC, advises always starting “low and slow.” When she started making brownies, she didn’t know until she tried a few that “10 milligrams of THC makes me feel like I’m melting off the stool.” For her, dividing a five mg gummy in half and then taking a bit off of that is the perfect amount. “Start with one to two mg of THC and wait an hour. That’s the Maureen Dowd tip—don’t redose until you wait two to three hours.” (Columnist Maureen Dowd famously ate too much of an edible and ended up comatose in her hotel room, later writing about it for the New York Times.)

Don’t drive stoned 

People are busted every day for driving while stoned, even though the testing methods are widely contested. (In some states, like Washington, the legal limit is five nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood, which can easily still be present in your bloodstream 48 hours after using.) Best bet: If you’re intoxicated, call a Lyft. 

Seek out lounges 

Some states and/or cities allow cannabis consumption in designated lounges, restaurants, or bars. MoeGreens in San Francisco has the feel of a speakeasy; you can purchase your products at the dispensary and then consume them in the chic Mid-century modern-inspired lounge. In New York City, Café Cannal is a women-owned cannabis-friendly cafe and lounge that serves CBD-infused beverages and pastries, and allows patrons to consume their own cannabis on site. And at the Artist Tree Studio Cannabis Lounge, which just opened in West Hollywood, there’s a smoking area and table-side services of edibles and joints. 

Ask a budtender 

Think of your budtender—that's the person working at the dispensary—as the concierge of your cannabis experience. They can give you the low-down on the best organically-grown weed, direct you to a local cannabis lounge, and, most importantly, help you find the right experience for your needs. Whether you’re looking for something to help you sleep or you want something to make you feel creative and energized, the budtender will be able to steer you to the best strain and method of delivery.

Herbacée, a new cannabis-infused rosé from Northern California

 Chris Greenwell

The mother-and-daughter team behind Make & Mary

 Natalie Gildersleeve

Women-owned cannabis companies

As the U.S. cannabis space grows, women are helping shape it, running everything from cannabis tourism agencies to premiere edible companies. Here are a few of the brands we're watching right now.

Front Row Travels 

Baltimore-based travel agent Ayanna Lawson keeps her finger on the pulse regarding cannabis laws, women-owned businesses, and more. She can plan your next cannabis-themed trip, whether it’s to Las Vegas or Jamaica.

 

Tokeativity

Tokeativity is a global cannabis community that hosts digital and IRL events and tours for women. Founders Samantha Montanaro and Lisa Snyder will be leading an East Coast Tokeativi-Tour, with visits to New York City, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, as well as a west coast jaunt from Oregon to California.

Empower BodyCare

Over a decade ago, Trista Okel made her mom a THCA-infused topical oil to reduce the arthritis-related pain she was suffering. Today, Okel’s Topical Relief Oil, which has a 1:1 ratio of THCA to CBD, has a cult following. You can order her CBD-only lotions, soaking salts, and topical oils online from any state, but the combination products you can currently only buy in Oregon dispensaries.

Greater Goods

The chocolates, gummies, and other artisanal CBD-infused confections that Carrie Solomon and her partner Jody Ake make are made from fair trade, organic ingredients. If you’re in Portland, Oregon try their THC-infused line, Leif Goods, which contains full-spectrum cannabis oils from respected local growers.

Green Muse

This Black-owned hip-hop-themed dispensary sells records as well as weed. The dispensary is based in Northeast Portland, and runs a workforce development academy to help primarily Black youth (aged 21 to 24) break into the legal cannabis industry.

Herbacée

You can find Jamie Evans’ new cannabis-infused wine in Northern California for now, but it’ll be available statewide next month. There is no alcohol in this rosé blend of Grenache, Mourvèdre, and Cinsault, just five mg each of THC and CBD to create a pleasant buzz.

Laurie + MaryJane

Laurie Wolf, called the Martha Stewart of marijuana, and her daughter-in-law Mary, make award-winning brownies, infused nuts, and cheese crisp crackers, sold at all the best Oregon dispensaries.

Make & Mary

Most of the items that Yvonne Perez Emerson sells at her expertly curated Portland wellness boutique are made by BIPOC folks. In addition to selling her own line of herbal products—from an exfoliating face mask to a lymphatic drainage CBD tincture—she sells self-help books, silk kimonos, and hand-dyed socks. She also holds workshops and events.

My Bud Vase

Marketing strategist and entrepreneur Doreen Sullivan finds vintage flower vases and turns them into artful bongs. You can buy them on her website or in dispensaries and wellness shops around the country from Chicago to Las Vegas, where the company is now based.

Peak Extracts

From THC-infused chocolate bars and tinctures to “Rescue Rub” (for sore muscles and joints), Peak makes potent plant medicine. Owner Katie Stem began using cannabis for her own medical reasons and still makes some of the best strain-specific chocolate bars in Oregon. 

Simply Pure

This Denver-based dispensary is owned by Wanda James and her husband, Scott Durrah, who together became the first Black couple in the U.S. to own a legally-licensed dispensary, cultivation facility, and edibles company. James, a former Navy Lieutenant, is also an outspoken champion for cannabis reform and racial justice in the industry.

Shop MaryJae

Though weed is still not legal in Texas, this Austin-based shop, which is LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and woman-owned, sells CBD-infused edibles, hemp flower, and cannabis accessories.

Yew Yew 

Founded by New York-based Jenny Wichman in 2017, Yew Yew aims to break the stigma around cannabis through its chic, minimalist smoking accessories that could easily be mistaken as a piece of stylish home decor. 

How San Francisco Cracked the Urban Composting Code

California’s environmental achievements are something to behold. The state ranks first in the U.S. for growth in solar power generation and battery storage. It’s the national leader in cumulative electric vehicle sales and public EV charging stations. And it’s one of a growing number of states that aim to run entirely on carbon-free energy in the coming decades – a goal it briefly met, for about 15 minutes, on April 30.

Now, California is once again setting the pace on a critically important (if somewhat less glamorous) climate imperative: urban composting.

On January 1, a law went into effect making it mandatory for every city and county in California to provide residents a means to separate and recycle their organic waste. The impacts could be enormous – according to climate experts, composting is one of the simplest low-tech measures humans can take to reverse climate change. Allowing food waste to decompose in landfills creates methane, a greenhouse gas dozens of times more potent than carbon dioxide. And landfills are the third-largest source of methane in the U.S. Composting has other benefits as well, from sequestering carbon and helping farmers create drought-resistant crops to creating long-term revenue streams for city governments.  

Yet few big American cities have successful city-wide composting programs, particularly on the East Coast. How does a city fully integrate composting into its sanitation stream? Perhaps nowhere offers as clear a path forward as San Francisco, the first big U.S. city to offer composting to all of its residents. Twenty-six years later, its system remains the gold standard.

Building a system scrap by scrap

In 1990, when curbside recycling was still new to many communities, San Francisco was already recycling over 25 percent of its trash. Nevertheless, the city’s Department of the Environment was concerned about all the garbage still being sent to faraway landfills, so it authorized a “waste characterization” study in 1996 in which engineers looked at exactly what was being sent to the dump. What they found was shocking: 33 percent of it was organic material that could have been composted.

“It was a combination of food scraps, sticks and leaves,” says Robert Reed, public relations manager at Recology, a resource recovery company that partners with the city. “We have 5,000 restaurants here, so we’re generating a lot of food scraps.”

All those scraps add up to a heap of emissions, plus the associated costs of disposal. “When you put materials in a landfill, you eventually fill that landfill and you have to build another landfill. And now you have to ship to greater distances,” says Reed.

So, at the city’s request, Recology, which has collected San Francisco’s refuse since 1921, launched a compost pilot program. It started at the San Francisco Wholesale Produce Market and on residential routes in the Richmond District. Soon after, it expanded to include some large convention hotels. By 2000, it had gone citywide. 

Nine years later, when cities like Seattle were just beginning their voluntary residential composting programs, San Francisco made composting and recycling mandatory for all residents and businesses. 

Mandatory participation scaled things up dramatically. Recology began offering free composting pails, bin labels, signs, multilingual trainings and toolkits for commercial buildings. It also meant occasional fines from the city for non-compliance. All of it was part of the city’s ambitious plan to be “Zero Waste” by 2020.

Today, San Francisco’s pioneering program is world renowned. Over 135 countries have sent delegations to study the city’s compost and recycling systems first hand. The city collects more than 500 tons of compostable materials from its ubiquitous green bins every day, according to Reed, helping to divert some 80 percent of the city’s waste from landfills. All these organic scraps are turned into high-quality compost in just 60 days at a Blossom Valley Organics facility east of the city, and then sold to local farms, vineyards and orchards.

The curbside composting and recycling bins used in San Francisco. Credit: Recology

The revenue from these sales helps offset the cost of the program. “If something goes into the landfill, there’s no sale!” laughs Reed. The system also creates jobs. According to a study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, composting sustains four times the number of jobs as landfill or incineration disposal operations. In Maryland, a 2013 study found that composting operations provided more total jobs than the state’s three trash incinerators combined. 

And of course, all that compost enriches the region’s soil with nutrients, minerals and microbes, helping farmers grow healthy crops with fewer commercial fertilizers. Compost also acts as a natural sponge – Pennsylvania’s Rodale Institute found that farms can grow up to 40 percent more food in times of drought when they use compost and follow other organic practices. In the West, where drought is common, this is a boon to both commercial farmers and backyard gardeners. Compost can even mitigate the threat of wildfire by retaining moisture from rain and irrigation. 

All of which begs the question: With the many obvious benefits and few apparent downsides, why, 26 years after San Francisco started composting, haven’t other major cities like New York, Boston, or Chicago followed suit?

New York’s composting conundrum

Not long ago, New York City briefly had its own in-home composting program. In 2015, then New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio introduced a Zero Waste initiative similar to San Francisco’s. Composting was its cornerstone. Pandemic-related budget cuts forced the city to suspend the service in May 2020. But even before that, the program was anemic, only diverting 43,000 tons of food scraps in 2017 – just five percent of the city’s total food waste. 

A New York City curbside composting bin in 2017 before the program was discontinued. Credit: Wikipedia

Theories abound as to what went wrong. One big one has to do with a lack of public outreach. Even the chairman of the city council’s sanitation committee admitted that no one in his own building knew how the system worked. “In my building, we received the brown bins, and some fliers,” he told the New York Times. “I guarantee I’m the only person in my building who knows how to use them.” 

Simply convincing residents to change their long-standing garbage habits was another hurdle. Former NYC Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia told the Times, “The biggest challenge is asking New Yorkers to do something different.” She related a story about how, when the department was handing out brown bins one man didn’t want one. “But we were handing out compost at the same time, and he definitely wanted the compost. We said, ‘We really need your banana peels in order to make this in the future.’” The man took one of the bins, illustrating the importance of education and outreach.

New York re-launched its composting program in August 2021 in neighborhoods where interest was most concentrated, according to Vincent Gragnani, press secretary at the city’s Department of Sanitation. Soon, there will be 100 bins at schools across the city that can be accessed with a smartphone app or a key card. “Within the next two years, every public school in the city will be separating their organic waste for collection,” Gragnani told RTBC. New Sanitation Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch is in the process of reviewing what has and has not worked with the city’s program in the past, but is not ready to share this publicly.

Can California strike ‘black gold’?

Now, inspired by San Francisco’s trailblazing composting success, California is set to enact statewide composting for all. (Only a small handful of states mandate statewide composting). The goal of the law is to reduce the landfilling of compostable materials by 75 percent by 2025, thereby reducing methane emissions on a massive scale. CalRecycle, the department that oversees the state’s recycling and waste reduction programs, estimates about half of the state’s communities had food and yard waste collection programs at the start of 2022.

“We all have the same goal: to send as little as possible to the landfill,” says Reed. Credit: Sacramento State

There are several things the remaining cities and counties around California can do to emulate San Francisco’s success. One is to stay on message. In 2000, when Recology made green bins available to every resident in San Francisco, the response was mixed. “Some people said, ‘Come and take it back.’ Other people embraced it right away,” recalls Reed. “We were doing a lot of outreach and education in promoting the program and why we think it’s important for people to participate.” 

For instance, San Franciscans speak over 100 different languages, so Recology opted to put photographs on the green bins (in addition to a few words in English, Spanish, and Chinese), showing what can and can’t be composted. The company also produces a customer newsletter that comes with its bills, filled with articles about the benefits of composting and recycling. In addition, Reed, a former reporter, worked closely with journalists to get stories published early on about restaurants embracing composting and vineyards relying on compost from the city. 

But according to Reed, the key to composting success is getting kids on board. “The best way to get adults to compost is to get composting programs running in schools,” he says. Recology donates compost to school gardens, which makes a big impression on children. “Those kids go home and say, ‘Why don’t we compost at home?’ The very next day the dad has a pail on the kitchen counter, and they’re rolling.” 

Prior to the pandemic, classrooms would visit the Recology Environmental Learning Center and even take tours of the composting and recycling plants. During Covid, Recology’s programming for students has shifted online. The company leads virtual field trips via Zoom and has produced educational videos and games about composting and recycling for kids from pre-K to high school. There’s even a “Better at the Bin” coloring book.

Finally, Reed says regular and frequent communication with the city is key to the composting program’s success. Every week, Recology staff members meet with a team from the Department of the Environment. “We all have the same goal: to send as little as possible to the landfill,” Reed says. At these meetings, they compare the tonnage that the city is sending to compost versus sending to the landfill, brainstorm ways of getting more residents to compost, and discuss messaging. 

One conundrum recently tackled in these meetings was how to encourage more participation in apartment buildings, which have lower rates of composting and recycling, and where 65 percent of San Franciscans live. Their solution: recruit volunteers at these buildings to distribute Recology’s monthly newsletter, as well as encourage composting in neighborly ways, like with composting contests or quizzes. “These are very creative people!” says Reed. “They keep composting part of the conversation.” There are now advocates in 100 buildings around the city.  

One of these is Madeleine Trembley, who lives at the Gateway Complex in the city’s Financial District. A year ago, Trembley, who refers to compost reverently as black gold, started a newsletter for her 1,255-unit building called Trash Talk. “The newsletter immediately got a lot of peoples’ attention,” Trembley says. “It was educational, practical. We give tips that people can implement easily, understand easily.” As a result of her newsletter and the topics it covered, more young residents have gotten involved in the Board — and one of them is even making video tutorials about composting to share with residents. “It just makes no sense to create more methane gas to stow it away in the landfill. And I think a lot of people realize that.” 

 

Household Recycling Made Easier — For a Price

I wrote about Ridwell, the Seattle startup that's building a business around collecting all the old batteries, clamshell containers and lightbulbs that most recycling programs leave behind, for Bloomberg Businessweek.   

 

Jill Fransen considers herself a serious recycler, the kind of person who knows the difference between various plastics, takes care to sort them, and drives five miles from her home in Portland, Oregon’s, North Tabor neighborhood to drop off refuse at a recycling center.

Over nearly a dozen years, Fransen’s routine was pretty well established. Then in late 2020, she heard about Ridwell, a subscription-based recycling service that had just been introduced in Portland. For about $12 per month, Ridwell would pick up items — stuff that many recycling programs won’t accept, like certain plastics and spent lightbulbs — right from one’s front porch, and take everything to its local plant to sort and redistribute for recycling or re-use.

“I was skeptical at first because of the monthly charge,” says Fransen. But seeing Styrofoam and #1 PET plastics — for polyethylene terephthalate, most known as the plastic used to make clamshell and other food containers — on Ridwell’s collection list persuaded Fransen to give it a try. “You have no idea how much #1 PET plastic you use,” she says. (According to the Michigan-based consulting firm Resource Recycling Systems, just 9% of the 1.5 billion pounds of PET-made items circulating in the U.S. are recycled.) “And driving out to East Portland got to be a pain in the neck.”

Taylor Loewen, general manager of Ridwell’s Portland operations, sits atop plastic bales at the warehouse.

Photographer: Moriah Ratner/Bloomberg

Fransen is among the nearly 300 early adopters of the service in Portland, where operations started in November 2020. Since then, the number of subscribers there has grown to 22,400. Ridwell launched and established itself first in Seattle before expanding to Portland, Bellingham, Washington, Denver, Minneapolis and Austin. The total subscribers collectively is about 60,000. The company is among a small group of environmental startups that are working to eliminate plastic packaging and create compostable plastics from mycelium, a mushroom root.

Ridwell’s growth has coincided with Americans’ redirecting much of their anxiety and restlessness over the pandemic into online shopping. That in turn has generated huge amounts of garbage. “So many people were getting stuff delivered from Amazon, Instacart, and takeout,” says Taylor Loewen, Ridwell’s Portland general manager. “People were stuck at home realizing: ‘There’s just so much packaging in my house!’”

The effort started well before the Covid pandemic. Generally, consumers don’t have many easy options for properly disposing of things like plastic film, batteries, lightbulbs, and clamshell containers. In January 2018, China banned the import of most plastic recyclables, leaving many U.S. cities without a place to send what they’d collected. Before then, processors in China had handled about half of the world’s recyclable waste. Greenpeace has estimated that more than 90% of the plastic ever produced has not been recycled. 

Ridwell founder and CEO Ryan Metzger at the company’s Seattle warehouse.

Photographer: Chona Kasinger/Bloomberg

Those types of items had accumulated in Ridwell founder Ryan Metzger’s basement in his Seattle home. One weekend in the fall of 2017, he and his then 6-year-old son Owen started to clear the house of the refuse. “Every weekend, Owen and I would pick a category — Styrofoam, batteries, lightbulbs — and we would find a local partner,” he explained — someplace willing to take the haul. Before long, Metzger, then a marketing consultant for startups, was also hauling neighbors’ expired batteries and lightbulbs to various drop-off centers and recycling facilities around Seattle, along with his own trash. He’d post messages to the  neighborhood message board Buy Nothing, sharing tips about how to get rid of stuff — “I found a place that takes Styrofoam!”

The project, initially dubbed “Owen’s List,” caught on quickly. By October 2018, with 99 customers, it was officially named Ridwell. Within a year, the subscriber list had grown to 2,400 in the greater Seattle area.

For a monthly fee of $12 to $16, depending on the length of commitment, a square white Ridwell box is collected every two weeks. The box comes with reusable cloth bags, one for each item category — batteries, lightbulbs, threads, plastic, and a rotating “featured category” which ranges from old printer cartridges to holiday lights. Metzger estimates that, as of February, over 4.6 million pounds of waste from just Seattle, Portland, and Denver have been diverted from landfills.

Finding local partners, a key piece in the project from the beginning, has helped the expansion. Metzger worked to connect with businesses and other organizations that might re-use or recycle some of the collected items. Today, Loewen, the Portland general manager, and other employees with similar roles in Ridwell’s various locations spend a good chunk of time connecting with nonprofits and organizations like Free Geek, a Portland area technology nonprofit that facilitates the reuse of small electronics. The partners and categories vary from city to city.

Ridwell offers Portlanders a way to recycle plastic film, batteries, lightbulbs, and plastic clamshell containers.

Photographer: Moriah Ratner/Bloomberg

Four years in, the venture also has become a fuller recycling business in its own right. At Ridwell’s 10,000 square foot warehouse in northeast Portland, employees sort plastic bags and blue Amazon wrappers (recyclable) from manila padded envelopes (not recyclable). A baler is used to compress plastic film into compact bundles. Industrial-sized bins spill over with second-hand clothes which ultimately will be donated to the city’s Pioneer Wiping Cloth, one of several organizations Ridwell works with.

Ridwell’s work has drawn investor interest. Metzger says the company has received three rounds of funding, though he won’t disclose the amounts. The business, he adds, is largely customer-supported.

Dylan de Thomas is vice president for external affairs at The Recycling Partnership, a national nonprofit dedicated to improving recycling systems across the country. De Thomas, who is based in Portland, is a fan of Ridwell — with one caveat. “I think it’s a neat concept. For all the materials — minus one — it’s a convenience service,” he says, referring to PET thermoforms, which are not only not accepted by the city’s recycling program but aren’t taken by any of the free recycling centers in town, either.

An unanticipated development has been a clash with Portland trash haulers, particularly in Clackamas and Washington counties. There, the sanitation workers have protested that Ridwell is stepping on their toes, even though those municipalities don’t currently accept the items that Ridwell collects. (Portland doesn’t have a municipal sanitation department, so private companies are contracted to collect garbage.) Another big challenge has been logistics. “It’s a logistics business that is growing quickly,” Metzger says.

Employees collect and sort items from Ridwell members at the Ridwell warehouse in Portland, Oregon

Photographer: Moriah Ratner/Bloomberg

The Recycling Partnership’s de Thomas says ideally, what Ridwell collects and helps to redistribute or recycle should be part of any municipal service. “I prefer recycling programs that serve all of the residents equally and equitably,” he says.

Metzger is working to address the imbalance, he says, and is aware that the service Ridwell offers is not something everybody can afford. To that end, the company launched a pilot project over the December holiday season: for every gift card sold, Ridwell contributed $10 towards a six-month community-supported membership, of which there are now 100. “We hope to make it a more regular and larger part of Ridwell,” Metzger says.

Education also is part of Metzger’s game plan. The company sends out regular emails explaining what items are and are not included in each category. For example, a link might take you to the Clamshells page , which specifies that #1 PET plastic includes everything from plastic egg cartons and deli containers to plastic cookie trays. Not included in the category? Plastic bottles, blister packaging for batteries or electronics and colored plastics. Photos on each page make it easy to determine what is and isn’t included.

Last October, Metzger launched a transparency page. The company already had been sharing the names of their local partners, but on the transparency page, they also post each category’s contamination rates (how much collected material can’t be recycled or reused because it’s too dirty). On the website, you’ll learn that plastic film is the company’s most popular category in all six cities and goes to Trex in Nevada, where it’s transformed into composite decking.  Also that batteries, which go to EcoLights, have the highest recycling rate: 100%. 

“Transparency is something that consumers are very interested in,” Metzger says.  “It reinforces the behavior they’re making and shows the impact that we can all have by recycling and reusing properly.”