The Plastic Bank: Making plastic waste a currency to alleviate extreme poverty and ocean plastic
Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.
Impact: What is the impact of the work to date? Also describe the projected future impact for the coming years.
Spread Strategies: Moving forward, what are the main strategies for scaling impact?
Financial Sustainability Plan: What is this solution’s plan to ensure financial sustainability?
Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?
Founding Story
Team
Ashoka contacted me directly.
Co-Founder
No Poverty, Gender Equality, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate Action.
at 21 a near death car accident revealed my calling as a strategy guy. I started creating companies with the sole purpose to get paid in experience.
At 23 I was one of the 150 students accepted into the Royal Roads University BCOM in entrepreneurial management program. In addition to completing the 2 year degree program (that is condensed into an accelerated 11 months), I recruited over 60 students to join me in a not-for profit consulting and business start up organization designed to get everyone paid in the unique relevant experience each student required. I was nominated for student leader of the year and received the Eric C. Douglass scholarship for showing the spirit of entrepreneurship with a philanthropic nature.
After graduating I partnered with my sister to create a nutritional consulting company. Simultaneously I was operating my own marketing services company with a focus on helping charities and other organizations create video driven websites. I also launched my own online TV series and website called Cool in Vancouver.
At 25 I leveraged my experience to become an intrepreneur and become VP of Marketing for a multimillion dollar company called Nero Global Tracking. By 26 I was the Vice President of that company and automated it to the point that the CEO, David Katz, no longer needed to show up to the office. Along with David, I co-founded The Core Values Institute to perform both personal and corporate core values training and consulting for entrepreneurs. This was in addition to our GPS Tracking company.
By 29 I intentionally automated myself out of Nero Global Tracking and, with David Katz, co-founded The Plastic Bank, a triple bottom line social enterprise that makes plastic waste a currency in developing countries to help reduce global poverty. I coined the term Social Plastic® and created the brand strategies to launch a Social Plastic® movement that gained over one million supporters and well over 250 media features before expanding globally. By 31 I signed onto my first equity stake Board of Advisors position with HeroX, an official spin off of the XPRIZE. Within months of joining HeroX we created a million person Problem Solvers movement in which every day people can solve game changing challenges.
I am currently writing a book, speaking and performing work shops on business strategy. In December 2015 (2 weeks after this application deadline) I will be performing a custom workshop on gamification for Unilever's Innovation Team in London England.
In Haiti we are partnered with Executives Without Borders (EWB) and Ecole Supérieure d'Infotronique d'Haïti, (ESIH).
EWB is a charity that entered Haiti after the earthquake to start a plastics for cash program. In 2014 EWB reach out to TPB requesting a partnership to help transition the program into a self-sustaining model that could withstand falling oil prices. We have since taken over the operations of the program in Haiti to revive, sustain and improve it. In addition to our own locations we are successfully transforming EWB's Ramase Lajan centers into Social Plastic Recycling Markets.
ESIH is a technology school we have partnered with to connect local Haitian students with our technology related social impact. We partnered with the University of British Columbia to create and open source a new technology to turn plastic waste into 3D printing filament. They will be running our technology in Haiti to allow our collectors to exchange plastic waste for 3D printed items. We are working with ESIH to build a platform to source the needs of our disadvantaged collectors and allow the world to provide 3D printable solutions through a collaborative crowd sourced platform.
We currently have a partnership with USAID and are currently finalizing a partnership with Word Vision. Details will be released once we have permission to do so.
We have had over 400 partnership requests the represent over 75 different countries. We are in the process of creating a franchise process to exponentially speed up our rate of expansion.