Worms Turning Plastic Into Fertilizer (Wriggle Brew) CEO Sam Baker

https://www.wrigglebrew.com/?srsltid=AfmBOopVAmmjtWDI7xsblPJdkW1vkwd6PfuE-1igD5rnuD0b3IVnLuMZ

How can worms turn plastic into a less expensive fertilizer? 

Sam is the CEO of Wriggle Brew and this episode has some really interesting insights! 

Sam@wrigglebrew.com 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/

I'm here to help you make your packaging more sustainable! Reach out today and I'll get back to you asap.

This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is Sam Baker, the CEO of Wriggle Brew. How are you, Sam? I'm well, happy to be on the show. Really exciting to have you on. we're talking about worms today and, things related to worms, which I think is really interesting. I was very excited when I heard about you and your company, but before we start with that part of it, let's talk about you and how you got into this location and business. Sure. So. I'm 24 years old. I am the CEO of a sustainable organic fertilizer company, and I got into it in an odd way. It was a startup that we launched out of UCF, the University of Central Florida, me and a couple of my friends, and our aim at the time was to create a fertilizer that was a lot more sustainable to produce. Along the way, we ended up learning all about earthworms and microorganisms, and my co-founder and I, his background was biochemistry. My background was chemistry. Ended up pivoting part of the business into digesting plastic waste using microorganisms found in worms. Amazing. And, I think this is really innovative. It's very exciting potential here to, possibly figure out another way to handle some of our plastic waste. not all of it can get recycled. Not all of it can get reused. So to, to have it turned into something productive is incredibly valuable. you're based in Florida. Tell us a little bit about your facility there and what you do. So certainly we are inside of a 30,000 square foot brick warehouse. It's originally from the 1950s. We occupy only a small portion of it, about 2000 square feet actually. and we've turned it into a lab where we're both working on producing. Fertilizer, which this business was started to make from earthworm manure. From earthworm poop. But we were also studying using worms to digest and destroy plastic material. We're actually producing earthworm castings, worm manure from plastics. We've got a fume hood and, a few other pieces of equipment, which are all being used right now to further that research and those production aims. And it's been a wild ride. We've been running since 2022, funded entirely by bootstrapping, by sales, and by a handful of research grants that we've won. An incredible idea to use, or utilize, I should say, animals to, create sustainable materials and things that can be actually used to grow, food and, for new healthy topsoil, which I know is an issue nationally and internationally, but you said you recently shipped out 5,000 gallons or pounds of material. Tell us about that. 5,000 gallons. Yeah, so, so we recently shipped out 5,000 gallons to Missouri. So a lot of our fertilizer that we're making with earthworm manure. Which, by the way, the fertilizer is called Wriggle Brew, hence the name of the business that is being shipped to soy farms and to corn farms, and to a lot of row crop agriculture. They're using it as a mainstay ingredient, so it's actually replacing a lot of the synthetic fertilizers they're using, and for a couple reasons, but one of the big ones being that worm castings are relatively affordable. We are able to make this cheaper than a lot of synthetic fertilizers. So it's not only an organic alternative. It actually saves a lot of farmers money and it produces really good regenerative ag conditions in their soil. So we talk about resources and nutrients being cycled and being more available, and that's really big because people wanna be sustainable. They want to purchase sustainable products, but they want to do it in a way that does not break the bank. And so the key thing here is I think we found a way to do it affordably so that it does not cost the farmer to be more sustainable. That's exciting. And it, and you're exactly right, we're past the point of where people are willing to pay more sometimes, to be more sustainable. They need to be competitive. And it sounds like you've offered a more sustainable solution that is even more competitive financially. So it's a win-win for the planet and for the bottom line. Precisely. And that's where I think a lot of sustainability work needs to go. Because it's, like you said, it's very difficult to convince people to switch to something sustainable over the long run. in the short term, the novelty of it or the ecological interest can win out, but in the long run, it has to be something that is gonna make life easier for the people using it. That's excellent. what kind of, packaging do you use to ship your products? So right now we ship the soil and paper bags. Unfortunately, the plastic BA bottles are still the mainstay for us shipping the liquid. However, we're working to solve that as soon as we can. There's a lot of options that are fortunately available right now. in fact, a lot of bottling is now going towards things like PLA, but also things like, sugarcane based plastics, which are really exciting. And of course, we're also working on plastic digestion here. So we're trying to work with some local, landfills and things like that to start processing their plastic. So any plastic we put out into the world, we wanna be able to one, for one digest and destroy, an equivalent or greater quantity on our end. Right now we've destroyed about 400 pounds of plastic using our method, and that's really at the desktop scale. Once we get some greater funding, we'll be able to actually scale that to begin processing industrial quantities. That's amazing. And I'd like to talk a little bit about the process, and how you can scale it. Where do the worms come from? do you have large vats of dirt that, that you're using? What, how does it all work? So, I can't tell you everything, but I'll tell you what we can. So. Worms themselves, earthworms specifically do not really eat plastic, so they will occasionally be able to eat bits of things like polystyrene, softer plastics. Especially things like larva, which actually have mandibles, can eat polystyrene relatively quickly. But in, in all of these cases, these animals are really able to eat and digest plastic because they have microorganisms in their gut that are really well suited to breaking these compounds apart. So styrene the compound, which makes up polystyrene plastic, it's very closely related to toluene. Toluene, is something which certain microbes have adapted enzymes to digest and break down. Those same enzymes actually function to break down styrene. And similarly, there are enzymes for breaking things like benzoic acid, which is a byproduct of high density polyethylene down, and same thing with PET. So these plastics, if they are heat treated the right way, can become other aromatic compounds like benzoic acid, like toluene. And since those compounds are digestible by these enzymes. If you grow enough of these microbes, you can use them to actually digest these plastic byproducts. And that's what we do. We actually have some fermenters, basically big bioreactors full of these microbes chewing through this plastic material. And about five days of bioreactor, that's maybe five liters in size, can eat about 450 grams of plastic resin materials. And that's really huge because that's about a pound of plastic in a five liter bioreactor. So you can imagine scaled up to maybe a 500 liter bioreactor. if the scaling continues, then you're looking at maybe 500 pounds of plastic in five days. And that's a considerable quantity. So it's imminently scalable. And what comes out of the bioreactor is a bunch of biodegradable material, which is actually what we feed to the earthworms. So we do still have earthworms involved. They're not eating the plastic directly, they're eating the offtake of the microbes digesting the plastic resin. And the reason we do that is because it's a heck of a lot easier for them to eat those secondary metabolites than it is for them to eat the plastic upfront. So it takes them about two weeks to eat those secondary metabolites. But what you get at the end of that process is earthworm castings. It's actual fertilizer material or fertilizer precursor. So the whole process is maybe five to six weeks. Plastic comes in soil and fertilizer comes out. No loss, no waste. Materials produced very clean, and I think very scalable. And, I'm envisioning, and I know you can't tell us all the details secrets, and we wouldn't ask you to do that. I'm envisioning, I've gotten to tour, beer brew houses in my career. I'm envisioning huge vats like that, stainless steel vats. Is that kind of, your long-term vision to have a huge facility like that? you're right on the money. That's exactly right. And it's, in fact, it's really the same kind of equipment, which is part of why we call ourselves wriggle brew. So we brew our both our plastic digestion and our actual worm tea product, like a beer. But instead of hops, we work with worm castings. And instead of yeast, we work with a series of earthworm microbes. I'd love to see you take over an old brew house, facility. I know there's a, the, there's been quite a bit of, downsizing in some of the brewery industry, so maybe there's a, that's ripe for the picking. You could, turn a, turn an old facility into a riggle brew house. That'd be great. I hope so. That would be really fun. Yeah, that's neat. Might be able to keep some of the big sign out front if it has brew on it. Just, that's perfect. So, you're looking for farmers, people in that industry to, to purchase this material. how, what's your strategy? How do you work, how do you reach out to the farming community with this new product? Well, a lot of it is actually gorilla marketing, so stuff like this, making appearances on podcasts and YouTube and Instagram. But a lot of it all is also working with distributors because farmers, a lot of them get their goods from distributors who they know. And we're very fortunate. We work with a big distributor out of Missouri called Concept Agritech. They make a blend from our fertilizer called Fermi Boost, and they sell that to a lot of farmers. In fact, they were at a trade show recently. They sold out of it completely. We had to send them a whole bunch up, really fast. And, it's been That's great. Yeah. My, my in-laws are farmers here in Oregon, and so I'll be sure to pass along the word about your products. That's wonderful. Thank you. in the packaging industry we have something called EPR, extended Producer Responsibility. I'm sure you've heard of that. Yeah. do you think that there are environmental incentives for farmers, any kind of, financial incentive for them to use more sustainable products? There aren't enough. I really think there ought to be more. So there are some certification accreditation. Boards and bodies that exist out there that do provide some incentives. And there are some organic certifiers that require certain organic actions to be taken or to sell your good with a certain labeling. But really there's not enough incentive right now. And the cost to the American people and to the future of this country is the destruction of our soil. A lot of farms, most farms are not being run regeneratively and the consequences, the soil that they have on the farm is getting worse in quality. So we like to talk to the farmers about how this can improve their soil quality, because many farms are family businesses, so these are resources that are going to be, passed down through the generations, which is something farmers do care about in value. But it, but again, it has to be something that has a dollar value for them because they run it such thin margins. They are so pressed by so many different financial concerns. Right now we have a lot of subsidies in the United States for different kinds of farms for growing dairy product, for growing corn, for many different crops because we view them as strategic, strategic assets. it's a strategic priority for the United States for us to fund certain kinds of agriculture, but we don't have that for certain kinds of agricultural practices, and we really ought to, I think. Exactly well said. they need to encourage this, environmentally friendly methods of, farming and more sustainable agriculture is really needed, for the future. Like you said, the top soil is struggling right now. It's degenerating very fast and we've even seen the return of dust storms in many parts of the United States. that's unprecedented. We haven't had that in decades. The last time around we had dust storms. We had a president, FDR who very famously said, A nation that destroys soil destroys itself. When you deplete the topsoil, you prevent the formation of the compounds necessary to actually make food. You remove calories from the system and without. Agriculture without food. We don't eat. And I dunno know about you, but I like to eat. Yeah. Well, and a lot of these fertilizers are affecting animals like bees. And, I think I just read an article that was very scary about, how many bees have died this year. it's, It's really an impact that we don't wanna see for the future. and I think a lot of these fertilizer chemicals are the culprit. But that's my assumption. Yeah. Well, it's true. It is. So. A lot of it is bees. So here in Florida, for example, most of our native bees are ground bees. they do not form hives up in trees. They live in the ground. They live in soil and burrows, so, oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, it's actually most North American bees, I believe are burrow bees. I would've to be double checked on that, but I believe they're burrow kind bees. And so they're very affected by how we treat the soil and how we develop land, how we use land, what kinds of compounds we use. but not just the bees. Earthworms too. Without earthworms, you don't have the cycle of decomposition of detri or digestion that moves leaves back into humus. So on a field where you have cows eating grass, the way the caloric math works out, you need an equivalent biomass of earthworms below the ground. As you have biomass of cows above the ground, eating the grass for that, for the caloric, exchanged even out. So what that means is a farmer really has two herds. He has a herd of cows as much as he has a herd of earthworms, but he doesn't see that second herd. He doesn't know their health, he doesn't know how they're doing, and because of that, when that resource is destroyed, when that herd is devastated or eliminated, the farmer is bereft of one of his most important tools and doesn't even really know it. Worms aren't cute like bees. It's hard. To push the marketing angle to be like, Hey, we should care about the fact that we've got earthworms that are endangered now, but it's very difficult. That's a really interesting point. Yeah. Bees are cute and they're at attract, they're fun to see and, we all know about 'em other than the occasional bees. Yeah. Honey is a very attractive product and very delicious. Yeah. Worms don't really produce something that we see, but it's affecting us daily and we don't even know about it. Yeah, and it's, there's a massive, I think, ecological tragedy unfolding there. We don't even know all the species of worms that exist. There are 4,000 that we know of, and there are likely many more with many special abilities. Some of them are good at sequestering heavy metals. Some are good at digesting plastics. Some may have the key to other benefits to humanity. We have not even anticipated. Incredible thought and I've often thought of landfills, teaming up with somebody like you and your team to, to have a facility there where they could divert some of the landfill in incoming product, if you will, into something that gets reused. Absolutely, and I think it, it's something we're gonna be doing very soon. We've actually. Had a bit of a relationship with our county, and they're prepared to send us some plastic, but I think this could also apply to food waste as well, because food waste can be fed to earthworms and into, we've actually been working with a company who's using bio digesters to rapidly convert food waste into compost. And compost is very edible to earthworms. So if you can take. Food from a landfill, and rather than have it rot and turn into methane, have it go through this biodigester and then turn into castings, then it can turn into calories, which can turn into plant matter, which can absorb carbon, right? And the same applies to plastic. even though plastic doesn't turn into methane itself, when you pile it up on top of food waste, it prevents the flow of oxygen, which creates anaerobic digestion, which creates methane, right? and has no value to us unless it's harvested for fuel, which is, happening more often. But I like your idea better. I'd like to see, I'd like to see that material, used again. And, I think both are part of the solution.'cause some plastics, like PVC, there's chlorine in it that's just not usable, as a food source, But the more carbon rich plastics, those can be. I had, BPI. they do bio biodegradation and they talk about biodegradable products. And, they said that every, us person creates one pound of food waste every day. And so you think about that potential, product for you that could be huge. Could be. and I also think this could be a huge product for other countries as well. in the US we generate a lot of food waste, but even in countries where they don't generate a lot of waste, for example, in Africa, they don't have any domestic fertilizer production. They do at least have manure. They do at least have effluent matter. Those things can be transformed into much better agricultural inputs by the action of earthworms. Very exciting. I'm, looking forward to what you will accomplish with your, teammates here. how do people get in touch with you if they wanna purchase some of this? Well, I'm glad you asked. It's pretty easy. You can go to our website, riggle brew.com, so W-R-I-G-G-L-E, riggle brew.com. You can also find us on Amazon. We are on Instagram or on Facebook, and if you'd like to talk to me and ask me any questions or are interested in using it for a farm, please reach out to me at Sam sam@wrigglebrew.com. There's also a contact email on the website. And feel free to, to shoot me an email or gimme a call. I love talking about the worms if it doesn't come across. Thanks, Sam. Really appreciate what you're doing. Keep it up. Thank you, Cory. it's been a pleasure.