SEE THE SHOW NOTES AND LISTEN AT: Biomaterials to Move Towards a Circular Bioeconomy with Dr. Michael A. Saltzberg

Katherine Whalen [00:00:01] Hey there, Getting in the Loop listeners. Ever wondered what can be done in your industry to help create a more circular economy? To mark the one year anniversary of the Getting in the Loop Podcast, I've put together a short e-book to help you navigate key circular trends in textiles and apparel, ICT and electronics and packaging. And it includes links to related reports as well as relevant Getting in the Loop podcast episodes. It's yours to receive when you join up to our podcast newsletter at CircularSectors.GettingInTheLoopPodcast.com. So head over to our Web site to get your copy of the Circular Sectors Navigator. That's again, CircularSectors.GettingInTheLoopPodcast.com. 

[00:00:48] Hi, I'm Katie Whalen, and join me each week of I talk with experts around the globe about Circular economy. You'll find out what's being done to make it a reality and if it can really solve the problems it promises. It's time for Getting in the Loop. 

[00:01:02] Welcome back to the Getting in the Loop Podcast. I'm your host, Katie. And today, I'm so excited to share this episode with you. If you've been a longtime listener of the Getting in the Loop Podcast, then you know that we often talk about materials with the focus mainly being more on metals and minerals. These are materials that some people might refer to as part of the technical cycle of a circular economy and a link to some sources about this in the show notes. So you can get up to speed if this is something that you were hearing just for the first time. But next to the technical cycle, there is also a second separate cycle called the bio cycle. This bio cycle is something that we haven't so much previously touched on in the podcast. Before. That is until today. 

[00:01:51] Today, we're diving into the fascinating world of biomaterials and circular design with Dr. Michael Saltzberg. Michael is the global business director for Biomaterials at Dupont, where he leads a portfolio of commercial and emerging businesses which utilize renewable feedstock rather than petroleum or natural gas derivatives to make industrial important chemicals and materials. Through the development of renewable biochemicals and biomaterials, Dr. Saltzberg and his team are solving critical issues for industries as varied as packaging, cosmetics, apparel and carpeting, all facing the challenges of offering high performance choices to their downstream customers while making their supply chains more sustainable. I first met Michael at the Circular economy Symposium at Harvard and immediately asked him to come on the podcast to share his extensive knowledge. And happily, he said yes. So in today's episode, you'll hear how material suppliers like Dupont are contributing to a more circular economy by combining performance and environmentally driven design. Michael explains key concepts related to biomaterials and the bio cycle and shares examples of how biomaterials can be used in practice to extend product life cycles and help close material loops. Let's welcome Michael to the show today. 

[00:03:18] So shall we get started, Michael? 

Michael Saltzberg [00:03:20] Yes, thank you. 

Katherine Whalen [00:03:21] Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm so excited to have you on the Getting in the Loop Podcast. And I'm very excited that we made this happen. Just, welcome to the show, Michael. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:03:31] Well, thank you very much, Katie. It's a pleasure to talk to you. I enjoyed meeting you at the Harvard symposium. 

Katherine Whalen [00:03:35] Yes, likewise. Before we get into the sort of nitty gritty of the show today, could you just tell us where you're calling from? 

Michael Saltzberg [00:03:43] Well, all of us are, because of the Covid19 pandemic, I think we're all working from our homes. And I live outside the city of Philadelphia, in the United States, on the East Coast. 

Katherine Whalen [00:03:54] So you're a fellow East Coaster like me originally from upstate New York. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:04:01] Yeah, very close by. 

Katherine Whalen [00:04:02] Yeah. So let's start off with a bit of a general introduction, if you could just tell the listeners and myself about your background. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:04:11] Sure. So today, I'm very fortunate to lead DuPont's biomaterials business. I come at this from the point of view of being a scientist. So my my training was as a material scientist. And if I go all the way back to when I was a kid, well, 20th, 1969 was my seventh birthday. And it was also the day that man walked on the moon for the first time. And I was absolutely fascinated by all the science behind that. And I was really lucky when I finished my Ph.D. to be able to come to the company Dupont that invented seven of the nine materials that were critical to the space suit that Neil Armstrong used to to walk on the moon. So I've been involved with bringing new materials and new materials technology for my whole career. And I've been I was also always been very interested in the environment, sustainability issues. And so for the last 14 or 15 years, I've been involved leading the biomaterials effort at Dupont, where what we base, what we say biomaterials, what we mean are bringing High-Performance Materials to the market for people to use that are made from plant based resources rather than from fossil based resources like petroleum or natural gas. 

Katherine Whalen [00:05:19] Yeah. Wow, and I think it's so amazing that you've been at Dupont for quite a long time. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:05:25] Yeah, I'm I guess it'll date me. But in February I had my 32nd anniversary at the Dupont company. I came right out of graduate school there and I've been there ever since. 

Katherine Whalen [00:05:35] Wow. Well, it seems like it's a great company to work for. If you have been there for so long. So congratulations. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:05:42] Oh, thank you very much. 

Katherine Whalen [00:05:43] So today we're going to dive into biomaterials and this topic of biomaterials and the circular economy, which I'm really excited about because we have talked a fair amount about materials on the Getting in the Loop Podcast before, but not so much in terms of bio materials and sort of the bio cycle. So I'm really excited for you to bring this perspective to it, to the listeners and just to start to kind of start us off. Could you just explain what bio materials are? 

Michael Saltzberg [00:06:17] Yeah. Again, I mean, it is a little bit confusing, right? Because there are people that talk about bio materials are materials that are used inside the human body for medical purposes. When we talk about bio materials and I think this is becoming the more common usage. What we're talking about are materials that, again, are made from renewable plant based resources rather than from fossil based resources. So people always talk a lot about the impact of fuels and fossil based fuels on the economy. But materials are another very important part of that. Something like 10 percent by volume and 30 percent by revenue. Of all the materials that are made from a barrel of oil are materials rather than fuels and so on. With biomaterials, we're trying to break that fossil cycle and bring High-Performance Materials to market that are more friendly to the environment. And based on renewable resources rather than fossil resources. 

Katherine Whalen [00:07:09] Could you just give us some examples of bio material like other bio material? 

Michael Saltzberg [00:07:14] Sure, yeah. So the one that's the the lead material we have in that we sell at Dupont is a material that it's again, chemical name is propanediol. It's a material that is used to in a number of different applications from cosmetics to polymers. And then Dupont, we make a polymer from that material called Sorona. So the Bio-PDO is actually made from very abundant natural resource cornstarch. So when people grow corn, they take that corn and they use it for lots of different things. And so today corn starch is used primarily for ethanol and for high fructose corn syrup. Both of those applications are sort of declining. And so there's a lot of corn starch that's available in the world. And corn starch is a great raw material for making certain kinds of chemicals. And so that's how we make propane dial. And then we take that propane dial, we mix it with another chemical and we make a polymer called Sorona. 

[00:08:09] That's a beautiful fibrous material that's used in carpets, in textile and apparel and. That's an example. Other people are making biomaterials for for example, for packaging. So one of the most famous is a is a polymer called PLA, poly lactic acid. Dupont doesn't make it, but other companies do. And that's a material that's used to replace fossil based plastics in all kinds of food and beverage and other sorts of packaging. And under the right conditions, that material can be composable, which is one of the reasons why people like it. 

Katherine Whalen [00:08:42] Thanks for clarifying that, because when I think of, like biomaterial, I think of like wood or something that grows from the ground. So it's interesting and super fascinating since I'm very much removed from like the the science of biomaterials to think about that. It is like a technical material. And you can take these with I don't know, the correct word is because I'm not the science guru like you, but you take this bio's sort of material like like cornstarch or things like that, and then actually be able to make new types of materials from that. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:09:19] Yeah, you're right. I mean, we talk about traditional biomaterials and sort of modern biomaterials and traditional biomaterials, like you're talking about cotton wool. People talk about rayon. Rayon is made from wood pulp. There's lots of starches used in all kinds of corn, starches used in all kinds. And other starches are used in many industrial processes for adhesives and other things. So we call those traditional biomaterials. Basically, you just take exactly what nature gives you and you apply it into an industrial application. So the world's been using biomaterials, you know, for many, many years. Linen, milk, paint, many, many examples. The modern biomaterials are where we use the tools of chemistry and biology to make even higher performance materials that can meet people's, you know, today's sort of more demanding performance needs. But starting with the same kind of plant materials. 

Katherine Whalen [00:10:08] Yeah. Thanks for clarifying. So you talked a little bit about the types of biomaterials that you that you worked with at Dupont and maybe I'm you a little bit of a head of myself, because I wanted to just ask you where you see biomaterials fitting into the circular economy in general. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:10:29] Yeah, I think it's you know, it's a great question. What is the impact of biomaterials on the circular economy? And I sort of look at it, there are two major impacts. The first one, which we've already started to discuss, is this idea that it really matters what all the materials that we choose, whether you're a designer of a new product or a new package or you're a consumer, picking what you want to buy on what it's made from is really important. So when you think about the circular economy materials, get into that circle initially and you have to choose what you've made them from. And so traditionally, all the polymers and plastics that are out there are made from fossil based resources. And so they you know, once once they get into the circular economy, you're adding more fossil carbon into the environment and there's global warming implications of doing that. So the first way the biomaterials contribute to the better circular economy is by making the initial choice of where to zero. Where does this material come from? Where's the carbon in that plastic come from? Having it come from a plant based resource where the carbon was sequestered from the atmosphere by a plant is better than pumping that carbon up out of the ground into a barrel of oil or natural gas and making raw material that way. So that's the first question. The other way that bio materials can be useful is that the sort of sort of the end of life. Right. So when you think about it, particularly for single use materials like packaging, there's a lot of concern right now with all the plastic that's in the environment. And so typically, petroleum based plastics are not biodegradable. So once they go out into the environment, they don't disappear. Of course, we want to recycle those things we want. And if we can't recycle them, we want to capture them and dispose of them responsibly. But what happens, as we all know, is sometimes that doesn't happen. And when it does, you know, when a plastic material gets loose in the environment, it doesn't go away. And so one of the ways that biomaterials can help is some biomaterials, not all, but some are more biodegradable. And so they could be acted upon by microbes that exist in the environment and thus they don't cause the same kind of pollution. So those when we talk about biomaterials, those are typically the two major impacts on the circular economy. I'd say honestly, the first one, whatever you make a bio majo, you're absolutely making the right choice about fossil carbon versus plant based carbon. The biodegradability question is much more fraught. There's a lot more positives and negatives there. 

Katherine Whalen [00:12:51] I can definitely imagine for that that that's a I've heard some stories about PLA, for example, which you don't you don't work with, but in certain in certain situations, it's actually not like I'm not probably using wrong terms, but it's not like biodegradable or compostable or things like that. So you have to be careful, from what I understand. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:13:12] You're exactly right. And I think for all of us, it's it's a it's a failure. When I'm one of the material of any sort, plastic or otherwise, just gets out into the environment is not dealt with responsibly. That's a failure. And so the idea is all this will provide some sort of a failsafe. If it gets out, it could be degradable. But as you say, biodegradability depends a lot on what's the environment it's in. Is it in a marine environment? Is it under the ground at a landfill? 

[00:13:38] And so, honestly, our our focus on Dupont has been more to bring High-Performance Materials that can replace a lot of the fossil base materials and make them from plant based carbon did to have a much better impact on global warming. That's been our major focus. We have done some work in the past on trying to do biodegradable materials. The other one we try to do is we try to we have another product where we talk about reduce, reuse, recycle. Right. So reduce is very important. And the amount of material or plastic you have to use, for example, in a package really depends on the performance of that material. So if we can invent new materials that are better performance and you can use a lot less of them and we can reduce how much plastic is required to give the functionality of that package, that's also a big positive. So we really focus on, as I say, the the the choice of where the where the material comes from, plant based. And also can we make it higher performance so you can use a lot less to do the same job. 

Katherine Whalen [00:14:35] Right. Let's dive a little bit into the types of biomaterials that you work with at Dupont, because when we first met at the Circular economy Symposium at Harvard, you were mentioning some different examples. With the materials that you're working with. You've already given us a little bit of insight earlier in this podcast episode about the types of materials that you're working with. But maybe you can expand a little bit on them or share some more information about it. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:15:02] Sure. Thanks, Katie. Yeah, the wood you and I have talked a lot about at Harvard was this area of textiles. And so, you know, our our Sorona polymer is a material that's used both for carpet and textiles. But in the textile market, we can solve a couple of important problems, first of all, against Rona's partially bio based. And so it can replace other materials like spandex, which are fully made from fossil fuels. And the other important thing about textiles is that there's a huge amount of waste every year generated from textiles as they've come to the end of their life. And if you put a material like, for example, spandex into a material-- Let's say you use five percent spandex in a cotton garment like a a pair of jeans. What you've done is you've now rendered that garment not recyclable because the spandex cannot be recycled and it contaminates the recycling stream. Rose, if you use Sorona fibrin against the Monat can provide that same stretch functionality that you get with spandex. But instead of using a material that's that's fossil based and not recyclable, you can now use a Sorona product, which is both plant know, partially plant based and also can be recycled together with peaty and plastic that's very commonly used in water or carbonate soft drink bottles. So you can solve two problems, two environmental problems by going to a higher performance solution. And by the way, you get this great performance benefit because the Serranos stretch fabrics don't lose their stretch over time. Over time, spandex will, like a rubber band, lose it stretch, whereas Sorona won't do that. So consumers both get a better, longer lasting fabrics. They can use it longer. Don't throw it out as early. Which is great. You know, reduce the amount of clothes they have to buy. And they also cancel those other two environmental problems. 

Katherine Whalen [00:16:47] Yeah, I remember that. We had a long discussion about about that and the benefits that this has over, you know, just normal, normal spandex for not only like the end of life, but also for the for the use phase. So I think that's like. Embedding, too, secular strategies right there for, you know, thinking about the design and how you can extend product lifetimes, but also how you can help to recover materials at end of life. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:17:15] Yeah, I mean, I think we feel as a material supplier, we're well back in the value chain. But what we try to do is provide new solutions that help consumers make better choices. Right. So I think if everybody was buying, you know, stretch jeans and they stage stretcher and sort of or more new looking longer, they keep them longer and then they'd buy less and there'd be less waste. 

[00:17:35] And so by going all the way back in the chain to where we are and providing better materials, that's what we're hoping to do. We're not the people that make the clothing. We're not the people that make the carpets. But as a material supplier, well, where we can contribute is by giving better design alternatives for the people designing those products so that consumers can make better choices. 

Katherine Whalen [00:17:56] So you  mentioned that this is used in clothing and apparel and also in carpets, I believe. Are there other examples that you can share or other types of materials with their end uses that people might be interested in or surprised about? 

Michael Saltzberg [00:18:14] Yes, I think one of the most fun ones that happened this past year was and this is, again, for Sorona. And I'll give you an example, it's not Sorona. For Sorona, we partnered with Stella McCartney, who's, of course, a very famous designer in the U.K. to replace fur with a faux fur that's absolutely gorgeous, soft, beautiful, but it's made from Sorona. And so, again, instead of using an animal based product, you're using a bio based material that doesn't doesn't harm any animals. Stella McCartney is very committed to that. And so very high fashion, very soft and beautiful, but great. A great substitution there of a new material. It provides the same performance or better performance with a better environmental impact. The other material that we're working on that's very close to commercialization is I think everybody's very well aware of the issue with P.E.T. bottles, polyester bottles that are used for water and carbonated soft drinks around the world. And if you've ever noticed water bottles that are that are very, very thin in these situations, very small amount of plastic is used. Whereas with carbonated soft drink bottles. The bottles are much thicker. And the reason for that is if they don't make the bottles thicker and use that much plastic, the bubbles will go out of the soda into the shelf. Life is reduced. Nobody wants that because that's a huge waste if you have to throw a product out. The environmental impact of wasting food is humongous in the world. So what we would love to be able to do is improve the shelf life of these carbonated beverages, whether it's sparkling water or soda, by using a lot less plastic. And so what Dupont has done is develop a material called PEF. It can be blended together at small levels with P.E.T.. And in doing so, it improves the performance of Petey's so that you can reduce greatly maybe 20 to 25 percent the amount of P.E.T. you need to use in a bottle to get the same of. So this is an example of the reduce benefit that we can offer from a biomaterial. 

Katherine Whalen [00:20:12] Wow. So I'm going into this calling. I knew we were gonna be talking about like materials and design, but I didn't really think about just so how how much, you know, what you're saying is related to design and really thinking about, like, the entire materials specifications, but not also in materials specifications, but the entire product usage and the product specification. I find that so fascinating because it's a very crucial part to creating a more circular economy. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:20:42] Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think the secret to getting better is working together better. Right. So in the past, you sort of had this linear chain where your materials suppliers sat back and sold to some converters, sold to somebody else who eventually sold to a brand. And what we're finding now is that the brands that even the retailers are very interested in sustainability and what everybody's recognizes, we all have to work together. Right. So the solution, sometimes it'll be a material solution. Sometimes it'll be a design solution. Sometimes it'll be a municipality collecting garbage in a different way. All those things have to work together. And so that's what we find in our business, is we're very much working not only with our direct customers, who maybe you're taking our polymer and spending into a fiber, let's say. But we're working with their customers and their customers and even with the brands. So we have lots of great partnerships. I mentioned Stella McCartney, but there's lots of other great partnerships we have with those kind of companies. And that's what really this is what that's what it's gonna take to really make an impact. Is everybody working together? 

Katherine Whalen [00:21:42] Can you go a little bit of insight into how these partnerships work? Do you find that you're approaching these companies or are they coming to you? I imagine it's probably a little bit of both, but--. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:21:55] Yeah, it is. So, you know, for years we've we were the ones that were sort of, you know, shouting in the wilderness. And honestly, we've been at this a long time. So Sorona was launched in 2006 and there was always a few brands that were interested in sustainability. But it was not, frankly, was because consumers weren't interested. So brands were interested and retailers weren't interested that long ago. And that's when I started with this business. But what we see today is that everybody has recognized that we've got to do a better job with walking softer on the earth and also, frankly, from a money perspective. Brands and retailers know they must offer more sustainable alternatives for consumers. And so we continue to approach brands and we continue to you know, we have salespeople that that's their job is to talk not to our direct customers, but to the Nike's and and, you know, Antos and Stella McCartney's in the world. But also they're now looking for us and proactively searching out those kind of solutions. So if Europe, a product designer at a at a textile brand or a carpet company, you're proactively looking for sustainable solution. So it's going both ways, which is really fun to watch. And I think in the last two to three years, I've seen a huge acceleration in the demand and acceptance of more sustainable solutions, even if they cost a little bit more. And that's been a big breakthrough, because anytime you bring in a new material, you don't have the same economies of scale that these old petro based materials do. And so one of the barriers for us used to be people would say, I'll buy your stuff, but only if it costs exactly the same. And what we see now is because consumers are willing to pay a little bit more for sustainability. So are our customers. 

Katherine Whalen [00:23:29] I find it really, really fascinating about the different applications that you can use bio materials for. But I'm also coming from a design background, and that was an industrial designer and did my master's in industrial design engineering. And I know sometimes from a materials specification perspective, there are reasons why you choose to go for a different type of material. And so maybe there is a situation where a material might not be as preferable. I'm just curious if you have some thoughts on on on that. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:24:01] Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, that's why we always emphasize performance first, right? Because if we went out to the world and said, hey, this is more sustainable, it's not going to perform as well, like your clothes aren't going to be as soft and it stretches are going to be as good. But you should totally buy it because it's sustainable. That's not going to work. That's been our experience. And so we have to provide materials that this is challenging. It's very hard to do. The turns that provide a really excellent performance and sustainability. It can't be a choice. It has to be both. And frankly, there's also situations where just saying something is a biomaterial doesn't mean it's better for the environment. You've got to really carefully look at things like we do a very careful lifecycle analysis on every material we make to make sure that we're much better, not five percent better, 10 percent better, but significantly better than whatever we're trying to replace, because otherwise, why are you doing it? So, you know, there's just saying something made from a plant based resource. There are processes that could make something from plants, but the lifecycle would not be nearly as good as the material that's replacing. You've got to really watch out for that. So we're very conscientious. We're very databased. We share all that data with everybody in the value chain. We do what we call refereed lifecycle analysis. They go out to academic experts that make sure that our analysis is correct. And I think that's a very important aspect. 

Katherine Whalen [00:25:19] Yeah, so performance comes first. And you work hard to achieve, you know, performance as well as and quality and and also being able to use the biomaterials for it for that end so that it's not a not a trade off between that between the two of them. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:25:37] That's exactly right. And, you know, with performance, people are used to understanding how to measure it with sustainability. The community is still getting, as I would say, aligned on what are the right metrics and what are the right ways to to measure sustainability. And so we're very much in tune with that. We work very closely with a variety of different organizations from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Sustainable Brands Coalition. We're very much engaged with that to make sure that all of us are speaking the same language when we talk about sustainability. But as you say, russets always performance first and sustainability right behind it. 

Katherine Whalen [00:26:10] Yeah. And as you've proven, it can go hand in hand. Yeah. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:26:14] It can be done. 

Katherine Whalen [00:26:16] Yeah. So looking a little bit of a head. I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on comparing, you know, biomaterials to renewable materials and what you expect this demand to look like, you know, that the material demand. What do you expect that to look like in the coming years? Although I know now probably things with Corona are a little bit. Everything is uncertain. And then we're all this has nothing to do with biomaterials or circular economy just in general. But what what what what does the future kind of look like for for biomaterials at your organization? 

Michael Saltzberg [00:26:56] Well, I think, you know, we're all as you said right now, the economy is all over. The world is in a crisis situation. But we'll get through this and we'll get back to us. A strong economy. I really believe that what we're seeing right now is the demand for High-Performance by materials greatly exceeds the supply. Right. So it's on us as materials, the materials industry to continue to innovate, continue to bring new materials out. A great example is just something as simple as recycled P.E.T.. Many, many brands from textile brands to shoe brands, lots of different people have all come out and said, we would love to make all of our polyester products from from what they call Arpit recycled. But the demand is the supply just really isn't there right now. So I think we've shifted from maybe the last five years, say, five years ago, the problem was there wasn't enough demand for biomaterials. Now, what I think the issue going forward is going to be is making sure we have cost effective supply of materials that meet these performance characteristics. If we can do that, this industry will grow very, very fast. 

Katherine Whalen [00:28:02] Yet you bring up a very interesting point about the demand, and I also find this in the work that I've been doing, not even related to it, to biomaterials or materials in general, but like I was looking at electronics and repair of electronics and the companies say we can do it. We just don't have the the the supply of used ICT and the uncertainty regarding the supply. So how do you base a business case around the uncertainty of your core material or product? It's very difficult. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:28:36] Yeah, it's really is a challenge. A lot of times people will focus solely on, for example, the exciting, sexy new materials technology. But a lot of times that's exactly what you're talking about, development of the supply chain, things as grubby as you know how to. How is this stuff shipped and how is it collected in these kind of things? Those can make or break the implementation of a new innovative material or new innovative solution. So I think that's been something that has been a big realization, the industry over the last few years. And people are working on it. And there's a role for governments to play there. There's a role for individual companies to play. There's also a role for consumers. 

Katherine Whalen [00:29:11] So we could be here all day. But I'm conscious that you have a, you know, a business to run and lots of things to do to achieve. And it's just the start of start of your day when we're calling right now. And it sort of the end of of my day. But before we go, I wanted to ask you the question that I ask all guests that come on the Getting in the Loop Podcast, which is about the In the Loop game that I created, which is a game where you are product, product producing company and you travel around the board to collect the materials to make your product. And so you could be producing an electric car or you could be producing some photovoltaic cells. So basically solar panels and there's different events that happen in the game that require you to kind of rethink your strategy and to maybe persuade you to take a little bit more circular action. And these events can be helpful so they can help you achieve your goal or they can actually be a bit more challenging and they can kind of hinder you from achieving your your goal in the game. So I always ask the guests if they could create an event for the In the loop game. What would you focus your event on? 

Michael Saltzberg [00:30:27] Okay. It's a lot of fun question. I did take a look at the game. It's a fascinating idea and great way to have especially, I think students get more familiar with the concepts of the circular economy. The one that jumps right out at me and again, this is coming from the perspective of somebody who's, you know, whose business tries to bend manufacturers and sells biomaterials would be a carbon tax. And so one of the big issues we have in biomaterials is that we compete with people who pump fossil carpet out of the ground and that's their raw material. And so all they have to pay for is the ability to go get that fossil carbon. And of all the impacts that they have on the world in terms of our carbon dioxide levels of the atmosphere, etc, all those things they don't record. They don't have to recognize those costs. Some people call this the tragedy of the commons. And so I really think a big for your game on the bio maternal side of things if let's say globally or least regionally, let's say, you know, in all of the EU, if it became that there those costs were recognized, that the people that are selling petro based materials had to account for the costs that they cause in the environment so that their materials were a bit more expensive. That would absolutely drive substantially faster acceleration in the use of biomaterials. So if I had a car, I could put it to your game. That's the one I would put. It would be a substantial and far reaching carbon tax or a carbon credit, depending how you looked at it. That would recognize the true cost and benefits of petrol based materials versus bio based materials. 

Katherine Whalen [00:32:08] I like it. Yeah. Thinking about kind of linking back to what you said as well about Circular economy metrics and trying to figure out the the true benefits of having more sustainable and secular materials. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:32:24] Absolutely. 

Katherine Whalen [00:32:24] Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Michael. It has been such a pleasure to talk with you today. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:32:30] Katie, it's been my pleasure. Like you said, I think we could talk about this for hours. It's been a really engaging conversation, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and hopefully to your listeners about bio materials. 

Katherine Whalen [00:32:41] Yeah. So I'm gonna link to your website and some of the information related to what we discussed today. But before we go, if you could just say where listeners can go to learn more about you and the topics that we discussed. I would really appreciate that. 

Michael Saltzberg [00:32:57] Sure. So we're on all kinds of social media platforms, Dupont Biomaterials. So you can find us there and we'll provide, our marketing team or provide you with some direct links to particular stories that might be of interest. And it'll be great if you can include it and people can learn more. 

Katherine Whalen [00:33:15] Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. For show notes and links, go to our website at GettingInTheLoopPodcast.com, and while you're there, subscribe to our mailing list to have new episodes delivered to your inbox every Monday. See you next week.