My World Too

- [Narrator] Throughout the country, people are planting seeds of innovation, harvesting a bounty of ideas to help care for the only home we have, planet Earth.

The core of sustainability is meeting the needs of today's society without compromising the world for future generations.

Billions of people on earth, and climate change a reality, it's more important than ever to open our eyes and minds to alternative ideas, both new and old, about food production, renewable energy, the circular economy and more.

This series explores eco-friendly ideas and lifestyles that help make our world a little bit better.

Welcome to "My World Too," short stories of sustainable living and earthly innovations.

(soft music) - Plastics are tremendously valuable.

They've brought a lot of good to humankind.

Safety, efficiency, economy, so it's not a surprise that they grew like crazy.

But the downside is that we began to see climate change and began to measure greenhouse gas emissions and carbon emissions and so forth.

And then, on the other end, we began to see what happens when all of this plastic ends up in the environment.

Maintaining the functionality, maintaining all the good properties that we get from plastics, but doing it with less impact on both the front end and the end of life.

And so that's been our focus since we started this company.

(soft music) - [Narrator] With over 300 million tons of plastic produced every year, disposal of these plastics is becoming an ever increasing problem.

One company in the heart of the country is working to solve that problem with biodegradable and compostable plastics.

Nick Schmitz visits Green Dot Bioplastics.

(soft music) - Tell me a little bit about Green Dot Bioplastics.

When was it started?

What is sort of your mission?

- Well, the company has, like many startup companies, gone through several phases.

We started out originally as purely an R&D company.

We were trying to develop and commercialize some technology to make what would be the world's first biodegradable rubber.

The second phase of the company, we became a true manufacturing company along with R&D, and we had commercial products and began to sell them into the marketplace.

And then the third phase of the company started in 2019 when we incorporated and began to pursue plastics for packaging.

Packaging, single use, disposable applications, all the kinds of things that you think of when you tear a wrapper open or open a box and immediately throw away the package.

So that's the phase that the company is in now.

We are launching those products.

They're certified as biodegradable by international testing labs.

We have patented the technology.

And so really after many years of working in that direction, this is sort of our coming out party.

We're now doing all the things that we set out to do years ago when we founded the company.

- [Nick] Can you just sort of walk me through the difference between what we would think of as a traditional plastic, a petroleum-based plastic, and the sort of plastics you're developing here at Green Dot?

- At the highest level, quite simply, bioplastics means that we're making a plastic, which is a polymer, and we're making it out of plant-based renewable sustainable resources instead of out of fossil carbon.

So we're all aware of the issues with fossil fuels, the same issues remain when we make fossil chemicals and turn those into plastics.

(soft music) - What are some of the key differences between the bioplastics that you are producing here at Green Dot and what we would think of as more traditional plastics?

Say, a plastic bag that I'd get at the grocery store.

- I mean, that's a great question.

That's what our whole business and company and this whole bioplastics industry is about.

So let's take the bag at the store, the shopping bag or whatever.

It's made from a plastic called polyethylene that is turned into a film, and then formed into a bag and printed with the grocery store logo.

And you get your groceries and you take it home, and instantly that bag is trash, right?

They say the average use of a shopping bag is 12 minutes, I think, something like that.

So that polyethylene bag comes from fossil carbon.

Through the refinery, it gets turned into ethylene or naphtha or something, and then converted into polyethylene.

So it's quite carbon rich, if you will.

A lot of fossil carbon is put into the atmosphere through extracting the oil, the refining process, turning it into polyethylene, making it into a film.

We have released tons and tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

On the other end, after we're done with that bag in 12 minutes and we throw it away, it will sit in a landfill for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years.

If it doesn't make it to the landfill and it ends up on the beach or in a river or something like that, it can begin to mechanically degrade.

And that's where microplastics a lot of them come from.

So, now let's contrast that with a bag made from a bioplastic.

We have a plastic that is partially or fully derived from a plant-based raw material.

So therefore, we haven't put a bunch of carbon into the atmosphere.

In fact, many bioplastics are carbon neutral, meaning that the plant absorbed as much carbon growing the plant is what was used to make the plastic.

On the other end of the use, when we're done with that plastic bag, we can compost it and turn it back into organic material for the soil.

And today, there are any number of bioplastic that, especially the ones that we concentrate on here at Green Dot, that are also home compostable.

So they're certified as being compostable in your own backyard or garden composting pile.

They don't have to be collected and sent to an industrial composting site.

(soft music) - Mike, thank you so much for having us here.

Tell me a little bit about this space.

What goes on here?

- So this is our product development lab.

And in this space, what we do is we create new bioplastic formulations for various applications.

And we're also able to do some testing on those materials to see how they compare to more traditional plastics.

We create materials for things like packaging and injection moldable items like cutlery and things like that.

- [Nick] Okay, so a lot of the like single use items.

And what's the process?

- For our materials, we start by doing what we call compounding, where we're blending and creating alloys of different materials so that they have the right physical properties for whatever the application is.

Those materials come out in the form of pellets.

Those pellets are then taken by our customers, and it can be then remelted and processed into things like sheet or film or cutlery or things like that.

- So Mike, what are we looking at here?

- So what we're doing right now is a small scale version of a process called blown film.

And the material you're seeing run here is actually one of our biodegradable materials.

So blown film is a process that's used to make plastic films, bags, things like that.

And what's essentially happening here is our plastic is being melted and pushed through a dye where the plastic comes out as a ring.

The ring points up, and air is injected into the middle of that ring so that the plastic is actually blown into a bubble.

That's why we call it blown film.

The material is then allowed to cool.

And it is flattened into a sheet, which is actually a double layer sheet, and then can be collected on a roll.

And that roll of material could be used again for bags.

It could be used for mulch films or anything like that.

- Okay.

And so you're doing this on a small scale to sort of test your formulas to make sure that the end product will behave the way you envision it?

- Yeah, that's correct.

We also do this process to test how the material behaves during processing.

So what are the proper temperatures, what are the proper speeds and things like that so that when we send the material to a real manufacturer, they'll have an idea of how to set their machine up to have the best chance of success.

(soft music) - So, Mike, how do these plastics, the bioplastics you're developing here, stack up against more traditional petroleum-based plastics?

- For the applications that we're targeting, these materials behave very similarly to the traditionally used materials.

In their strength, their flexibility, they stack up quite well.

- So I see we've got some cutlery here.

So is this spoon made out of the bioplastics that we're talking about?

- Yes, it is.

- I mean, I'm holding it, it feels like plastic spoon.

It doesn't feel any different.

But you're saying that once I'm done with this, I throw this in my compost bin with my food scraps, and over time, it breaks down?

- Absolutely.

- Wow, that's pretty remarkable.

Versus if this were a petroleum based spoon, how long would this sit in a landfill before it broke down?

- Thousands of years.

- Thousands of years.

So you're talking a couple of months versus thousands of years?

- [Mike] Absolutely.

- Wow, that's pretty remarkable.

(soft music) - Traditional plastics are still growing two or three times GDP.

So we are still making, using, disposing of tremendous amount of traditional plastics.

But bioplastics are growing about 10 times GDP.

So a lot of the world gets it.

A lot of the world understand that we can't keep doing the same thing we're doing.

But what's happened recently that's driving it even faster is trying to do a much better job on the end of life story.

And so about half of the trash that goes to a landfill is organic waste.

Food waste, yard waste, something that will break down if it's in the right environment, which a landfill is not really the right environment, but a composting facility is.

But it's really hard to get that to the composting facility, or even your backyard composting, if everything goes into a traditional plastic bag.

Or fast food restaurant can collect the food scraps, but if they use plastic straws, traditional plastic, and they use traditional plastic cutlery and the cup and the lid and all that goes together, then you've just got a mess.

It's not really compostable and it's not recyclable because you've just made a mess, and so it ends up going to the landfill.

But that's a case where bioplastics can enable all of this other organic waste to make it to the composting facility.

Picture going into your favorite fast food restaurant, you drop your trash in the canister there, and the lids, the cups, the straws, the utensils, all of those things are compostable.

The bag that holds it all is compostable.

And inside is all of this food scraps, the drink that the kids knocked over on the french fries and you know, the bits of ketchup and whatnot on the paper liner.

All of that can go together and go straight to the composting facility.

And quite literally, we can take out half of all of the stuff that goes to a landfill today.

As we speak, each day, more and more people are starting to figure this out.

And let's face it, when you're standing in the grocery store aisle, and you know, Junior's tugging on your shirt sleeves and you gotta get home, you're probably not standing there thinking about all of these choices and options.

So the goal of the industry is to eventually make this so that you don't have to think about it.

You know, let us do the heavy lifting and let us put products on the shelf that can satisfy all these demands.

And that's a lot.

I mean, but that is what we think about every day here at this company.

- I, for one, am grateful that you are thinking about it, and thank you so much for inviting us in and letting us take a look around, and keep up the good work.

(soft music) - [Narrator] On Vine Street in the urban core of Kansas City, Missouri, there is a man growing fresh herbs and vegetables, and teaching his neighbors about where their food comes from.

Whitney Manney joins Mike Roland in his greenhouse to find out more about Ophelia's Blue Vine Farm.

- Come on in.

Welcome, Whitney, to Ophelia Blue Vine Farm.

- Wow!

Mike, thank you so much for having me.

I would have never known that this place was right here in the heart of the city, in Kansas City off of Vine.

This is amazing.

- [Mike] Well, thank you.

I wanted to do something really cool for the neighborhood.

- [Whitney] Yeah.

- [Mike] And our focus is culinary herbs.

So things that you cook with, you wanna make your food taste better.

- It smells so good in here to me.

I am ready to dig in.

Mike, give me a little rundown about Ophelia's.

Like what made you say, this is my life's purpose?

- Well.

my grandmother's name was Ophelia, and I spent every summer with her in Illinois.

She was a seamstress by trade, but she grew up on a family farm that we still have.

It's over a hundred years old.

- Wow.

- And so, every summer, I used to tend to her garden.

And she taught me a lot of life lessons, you know?

And she taught me how to farm on a small scale, and I wanted that connection, when I got married and had kids, I wanted them to know what real food tastes like, what real tomatoes taste like, the smell of a English rose.

And so when we moved to Kansas City and I got married, I started to dabble in urban farming, you know?

We just started growing on different lots, and we ended up selling at the Ivanhoe Farmer's Market.

So we did that for seven years.

And it was a great experience to give back in the community.

It was a great experience for me to bond with my children and to meet a whole bunch of different people to grow in a whole bunch of different types of soil.

When the pandemic hit, the market had closed up, and we didn't have an avenue to sell any of our produce.

We did what we could.

We put in a walkup window in here.

We got a pellet stove, my first pellet stove.

I said, wow, if I could heat the greenhouse through the first year, I bet I can keep those plants alive.

- So let me ask you this, because bringing up heat, we are in Missouri, you know?

The weather is volatile at any time of the year.

Did you kind of think that through when you were in the planning process?

Was that a part of your business plan?

Were you thinking like, I need to be able to be sustainable all four seasons?

- Originally I wasn't, you know?

But as I saw where the economy was going, as I saw where climate, the climate change that was going, I understood the fact of, well, I wanna be in charge of my own destiny, you know?

So up here, we have, these are electric heaters and those are backup.

If something were to happen with our other heaters that are off the grid, those would kick on.

Those are very expensive.

Those are like a hundred dollars a night to run, you know what I'm saying?

- [Whitney] Woo, okay.

- They gonna keep stuff in here alive.

- Okay.

- So that's a backup.

Right?

- Right.

- So I didn't wanna be caught up in rolling blackouts and the power company's gonna cut your stuff off to save the grid regardless of if you pay your bill or not.

- 'Right, 'cause if they see that you're using a whole bunch of power, they're gonna be like, hold up.

(laughs) - Exactly.

So this one runs off wood pellets, which was perfect.

But we got a grant through Casey gift, and it allowed us to buy this furnace right over here we call Big Bertha.

- [Whitney] Okay.

(laughs) - [Mike] And that burns corn.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- So, corn.

Where you getting this corn?

- And other types of biofuel.

So in the past, we've bought the corn, now we're hooking up with Vine Street, the brewery down the street.

- [Whitney] Okay, cool.

- So we're gonna get their spent grain.

And so that's just a way that we can be more sustainable.

So that product doesn't have to go out, trucked out to a landfill somewhere.

- Right.

- We could take it here, we could drive, we can pelletize it, we can burn it, and we're gonna turn that into energy.

- So it's like you have the community connections on top of sustainability, you're reducing, reusing, which is amazing.

Okay, so let's backtrack just a little bit.

I know the significance and the history of it.

I'm a KC born and raised.

We are in Vine District near 18th and Vine, Vine Street.

Talk to me a little bit about the significance of Vine, like the historical significance and how that plays into Ophelia's.

- Yeah, the historical significance of this area is huge.

I mean, 18th and Vine where bebop was born.

I mean, we're on 24th and street right down there.

18th and Street, Michael Jackson.

When they're talking about going back to Kansas City, it's right down there!

- [Whitney] They're talking about down there.

- That's where we're at, you know?

And musically, we have that.

We have the Negro Leagues Museum.

Traditionally, this street was black excellence, you know?

And although you don't see it here, across the street, there was a taxi stand, there was movie theaters, and so I wanted to be a part of that, you know?

Going to the Blue Room and saying, oh man, this has such worth, such excellence attached to it, and I wanted to do something really cool for the neighborhood, really cool to the area.

And so I got the idea to bring Ophelia's down here to have a greenhouse in the city in a place that no one would expect it.

- It's all about plugging in and actively being a part of the community.

I mean, you know, growing up here, it's been through so many phases, the Vine District, and it's cool to see like, you know, new business owners, up and comers really plugging in and doing our best to revitalize and bring pride back down here, which I think is amazing.

(soft music) Talk to me a little bit about working with the houseless community.

Like, how important is that?

Because it feels like a definite like beneficial relationship for both parties.

Was that something that you came into this space knowing you wanted to do or were you just observant and said, you know what?

What else can I do to help?

- I started this all by myself, you know?

And as I would be working, people would stop and, "Hey, you need some help?"

And for a long time, I was like, "No, I don't need any help."

But then after a while, there's certain people that you can trust to do certain tasks.

And over the years, you build up a relationship, you know?

And I really wanna see these people win.

Because they have stories or people's mothers and daughters.

- They somebody.

- And children and stuff like that.

And a lot of 'em have system abuse problems.

And they're in a system, I understand that system.

They're in a system where they just can't get the support they need.

They can't get the ID, which leads to the job.

They can't get the house and stuff.

So we just do what we can.

And we've had several success stories that people have come down here, and they've come back and visit us, and they've said I've got that job or I finally got into housing, you know?

But that's rare, you know?

But we do what we can because my grandmother, Miss Ophelia, she was Jehovah Witness, and she got all her hours in in January, you know?

And so she used to knock on people's door, you know?

And say, "I bring good news."

And they would scare her off, but her spiritual message, I wanted to do some of that as well.

- So what I'm hearing is Ophelia's is more than just a transactional business.

This is bigger than commerce.

This is truly purpose driven.

You're honoring your grandmamma, you're plugged into the community, you're a part of revitalization, but you're also giving back and you're able to create this just symbiotic relationship with the community.

- What we wanna do is we want to educate and we want to amaze.

- Yeah.

We wanna give the people, the kids in the area, primarily, the experience to see how stuff grows.

We wanna brighten people's day as they walk by, you know?

So in the country, this is nothing, but being in this particular space, that makes it so important.

That's what he wanted to do.

So many kids growing up, they don't even have this experience because of how cities are developed.

They don't have backyards.

They don't really, some of 'em don't even have porches if they live in these high rises buildings.

A lot of the things we plan on the outside is for the children from the heirloom, raspberries and blackberries.

We've got the beehives, we've got the flow hives that give them opportunity to put a little cup in there and turn the spigot and get it right from the hive.

So we want to educate and we want to amaze and show people that it can be done.

- This is very cool 'cause in all my years of living, I've never seen grapevines, honestly.

- [Mike] Everything in here is serving more than one purpose.

So this is gonna provide an all-natural shade, okay?

- [Whitney] Yeah.

I can tell, yeah.

- So, yeah.

So we have four on this side and we have four on that side.

And it'll take a, these are three years old.

But eventually, it's gonna provide us fruit, it's gonna provide us shade, it's gonna drop in the fall, you know?

So we can let more light in.

But sustainability really was the key.

- Would you consider education a part of Ophelia's?

'Cause it kind of sounds like you've been working with the houseless community or volunteers, do you feel like you are in a way teaching people about urban farming?

Like you're spreading the message basically?

- Yeah, I do.

The feeling that you can get when you grow your own food, when you're sustainable like that, you know?

And it could be something from dill or something micro greens or whatever, but it's just an incredible feeling, you know?

And when I tell people we're out here, we're printing our own money, you know?

We're growing stuff, we're letting it go to seed.

This is going to seed right now, right?

So we take that and we save that seed, we never have to buy dill seed again.

- Right.

- Ever.

- You know?

- That's true.

- And so we can sell the plant, we can grow the plant, we can use it, and you can do that with almost everything.

We do a lot of cloning here as well with all of our mints.

That's why we have brand consistency.

Every ounce of mint that we sell, that we package and we sell tastes the same.

Why does it do that?

Because it's a cutting.

We take that, we put that in a cloner, which is basically a container with a oxygen bubbler in it and leave it for two weeks, it gross roots.

It's genetically identical.

And so the taste is the same, the taste is not different.

(soft music) - So I noticed that you have two greenhouses here on Vine Street.

What's the future of Ophelia's?

I know your grandmamma is proud.

I can only imagine that you have an immense amount of pride just honoring her name and her legacy, but what's next for Ophelia's?

- I'm taking over a 30 acre farm in Kansas, which has a lot of history behind it.

And so, we're growing other stuff like orange and yellow flesh watermelon.

- Oh my goodness.

- We're growing the cantaloupes, we're growing the tomatoes and things like that.

And that just allows us to diversify a little bit more, you know?

And so, we wanna pivot the motto a little bit.

We're still gonna do the herbs, you know?

But we're going to branch out into more recession proof crops.

And so since we have the land and it has a lot of history behind it, you know, it was farmed by the potato king, you know?

- Okay.

- And so, the future is just gonna be super bright with what we wanna do as far as agriculture.

- Are you applying some of those same principles that you have here on Vine Street as far as outreach and education there?

- Absolutely, you know?

And it's a great opportunity for us for training as well.

So we have volunteers to come out and help and learn how to grow some stuff and plant some stuff, and we just wanna grow more produce for more people, you know, and do something really cool for the community as far as education's concerned.

(soft music) - Mike, thank you so much for having me in this amazing space on today.

I know that your grandmamma would be so proud.

- Thank you for coming out today, and I'm sure she would.

You know, this is all inspired by Miss Ophelia and her community service, her wanting to give back to her community, wanting to make a difference in the community.

And so, she was a very strong woman.

Two of her of her kids played in the NFL, you know?

So I had to step my game up.

And so, this is my gift to the world, you know?

- Amazing.

What a great legacy.

- Well, thank you.

Yeah, she was a great woman.

She always had work for you to do, which is what I teach my boys.

So we wake up every morning and we do some work.

(soft music) (uplifting music) - [Narrator] Share your sustainability story or learn more about sustainability and earth-friendly innovations at myworldtoo.com.

- What green efforts are you all putting into this campus just to make everything happen?

- What do we do?

Let me see, how much time do we have?

Because it is expansive.

- So we work with them to see, what does your overall land look like?

How can we improve things not only for the landowner and their overall operation, but also for the environment, and specifically water quality, what we work on.

(uplifting music) (transitional music)