Joe Tegerdine – From Legal Briefs to Leafy Greens

[00:00:09] Dominique: Hello and welcome to Green Champions.

[00:00:12] Adam: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people, sharing sustainability success stories.

[00:00:16] Dominique: From entrepreneurs to artists, scientists to activists, this podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Dominique.

[00:00:25] Adam: And I'm Adam.

[00:00:26] Dominique: Today, we are so excited to be joined by Joe Tegerdine. He's a huge champion of composting and soil health. He's been all over the world, has worked in technology, has an academic background in law and policy. Today, Joe is the general manager of the North America Group for Reencle. And we're gonna dive more into Reencle in our next episode.

If you're curious, it's a true kitchen to garden composting solution that turns food scraps into garden fuel. What does that even mean?

Well, it breaks down 90% of food waste in less than 24 hours. And join us next week to hear more about Reencle and how they're doing that. But today we're talking about Joe's journey in becoming a passionate advocate for sustainability and consumer electronics. So thanks for joining us today, Joe. We excited to get started.

[00:01:13] Joe: Thank Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm very happy to be here.

[00:01:16] Dominique: Well, start by telling us a bit about, you grew up in Seattle and you've shared a little bit with me about how that environment shaped your views on nature, health and sustainability. Can you share a bit of that?

[00:01:28] Joe: Yeah, so I grew up in the Northwest, so born in Portland, lived there till about 12, and then head up Seattle. I lived between where the Willamette and Clackamas Rivers met. And so as a kid, not a lot of supervision. So I lived in the rivers and lived outside in the ponds and different stuff.

I learned how to catch bullfrogs with my hands. We'd go catch crawdads and I learned how to cook 'em and dip 'em in butter, that kind of thing. And collecting owl pellets in the forest and then dissecting those and trying to reconstruct the skeletons of the rodents and stuff that the owls would eat.

So, from a young age, just developed a love for being outside and just being in nature. 

 It was fascinating growing up, especially in northwest. You hear about Greenpeace and the Rainbow Warrior and the whales and the spotted owl and, just different things happening within environment and conservation and animals and different things.

And I was in a situation where I knew people that were really extreme that we would probably classify as like eco terrorists, right? And so I became more, I wanna say more moderate in my views.

I fully believe in conservation and wanting to be live sustainable and protect our environment, right? It was very important to me butI'm not comfortable with trying to force people to accept a worldview. And I just thought a lot of just the inherent anger and confrontation in it just didn't make a lot of sense to me. 

if we try to take people who have no experience with the outdoors or experience with just the beauty of it all and try to force them into caring, it doesn't work very well. I avoided calling myself an environmentalist or even a conservationist because it, to me that was an extreme position. 

Now you didn't start with sustainability, right? You started with consumer electronics? 

Yeah, I graduated law school and I spent about maybe six weeks in a boutique law firm in Destin, Florida doing real estate development. And I was bored out of my mind and through a connection, I speak Mandarin Chinese, so locally, there was a manufacturer rep that lived there in North Florida and somebody made an introduction. We went out for lunch and he was like, "Oh, you speak Chinese. You have this other sales background and stuff that you've done, throughout your college careers and stuff, and you'd be a perfect fit for our team."

And so, I took the job and started working for a manufacturer in Taiwan, and we built product for DirecTV, Sirius Satellite Radio at the time of Sirius, then became SiriusXM and then, gosh, we were building antennas for Apple and then just expanded there. That company I was, is one of the top five largest manufacturers in the world, but that's where my career took me after law school was into the consumer electronics space.

[00:04:02] Dominique: It's so interesting that you have been very passionate about the environment and you seem to be comfortable in the position of being an advocate for the environment and somebody who enjoys being outside.

But it sounds like you don't identify as strongly with being like an activist in any way. And I can relate to that feeling of I don't personally wanna be in the position of convincing anybody of anything, but I'm happy to be in the ecosystem and be a resource in the places that you fit.

So it's just cool that you found your path in that way and you've truly been over all over the place, which is really awesome.

[00:04:35] Joe: Yeah, it's been interesting because I think when I was younger, and especially in the early days of my career, the environment and the experience I had, because I shied away from it, I also felt like it was such this big thing and there were so many issues, right?

From what we're producing, what we're using. I'd, I'd read articles about, okay, electric cars. Okay, this is gonna help solve the problem of Petroleum and oil based vehicles and stuff. And as I started looking into it, then you start to research, "Oh, what's happening with precious metals and then precious metal mining and rare earth materials."

And then what that means in the manufacturing process and then looking at how do you recycle that and the toxins that are created from that.

So I started reading these and I found that unless you really dove into a topic and studied it yourself to pull out like the facts, right, from all the noise, it was really hard to know, what is the best solution, right?And so, I just felt " Man, it's not my expertise and so I don't have enough knowledge and so I just have to try to make good decisions in my own life and live that way."

And then you're limited by infrastructure, right? Depending on where you live, like the place we lived in North Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Utah, a lot of 'em don't have good recycling services. And so you're kind of like, "Okay, well how am I gonna recycle", and so there's nowhere to pick it up. So you're just throwing stuff away to go to landfill. Early on, I just didn't, I didn't think I could really make a difference or I just had to think about it personally and manage my life personally, which some areas we've done really well, in other ways, we've we're just as awful as everybody else.

[00:06:10] Dominique: You're human. 

[00:06:11] Joe: Yeah, exactly. It's the human experience.

[00:06:13] Adam: So how did you first get into composting? Where did that start?

[00:06:16] Joe: We

 started planting and trying some things, and I'd buy some compost from a nursery garden, mix it with soil and get in the soil. And then go a few years, we tried doing our own composting in Mississippi and it didn't work, so we're like, ah, we'll just keep buying compost, we made some messy, smelly, mess. And then you'd have pests, right? You were limited with what you could put in compost, no proteins, no carbs, that kind of thing.

And then Texas, we tried composting again and we lived on a little ranch and had cattle and goats and chickens. And after the skunk sprayed our dog a couple times from getting in the compost we're just like, forget the compost, we're feeding everything to the animals. 

Which is funny because our pasture was full of like pumpkins and random gourds and things that were growing out there that they had eaten and evacuated and then there it grows.

But that was when we first got started and just realized we didn't wanna take the time necessary to do like the traditional composting is what we, where we ended up. So the animals were great.

But then moved back to Utah in a suburb, all of a sudden there's no animals. And we started thinking like, "Okay, what are we gonna do with our food waste?" 

[00:07:21] Adam: I'm curious, how did that lead to Reencle? You read Reencle in Hong Kong. How did that come about and like how did that start to make a connection?

[00:07:29] Joe: I wound down some business and I headed to Hong Kong to meet with some clients and then just to see what was going on in the consumer electronic space and see if there was, a new product or something they could work on. So I would go to these shows and I like to walk the whole floor 'cause there's a lot of the same stuff, if you've ever been to these shows. 

I mean, you walk by, it's like earbuds, earbuds, earbuds, speakers, earbud speakers. And then you'll see something that's " Oh wait, what's that? That's a little unique. Let me, lemme try, try it out."

[00:07:55] Dominique: Yeah, you saw a mechanical garbage can and you were like, what's this?

[00:07:59] Joe: Exactly. 

 I saw our Reencle prime. I see this unit and it's got stuff in it. And I see, decomposed food, 90% in 24 hours, and I'm all, that is just not possible. No way. I've tried composting this. No way. So I got talking to them it was a great conversation and then I left. I remember calling my wife at the hotel. I was like, "I found this amazing product. Like I just can't even believe, like if it works, this would be really, really cool, especially with where we're at, where we don't wanna have to compost and then the winters in Utah, all this stuff."

So I started thinking about it. I got on their website, did a bunch of research from my hotel room, What's behind this? Who are the competitors? Trying to get an understanding of that industry 'cause I'd never been exposed to it, like never saw anything about it. So I started looking at it and I started seeing okay, there's these dehydrator products. At the time, I didn't know, it was like all composters. They all represented themselves as kitchen composters. And so I started researching it and reading some reviews from people that look like credible backyard gardeners and master garden stuff. There's a distinction here. There's a dehydrator that just basically chops up mulches and dries out the food waste and it just becomes a grounds or powder. It's a technology that's been around forever, right? It's just dry and grind.

[00:09:07] Dominique: And I can share that as a sustainability consultant, those products serve a purpose and do something that you could argue like suits people's needs, but it's not really solving our problem by just removing the water.

[00:09:20] Joe: I think the best thing they do is they remove the volume so it can lower transportation costs, but you still have, if it goes to landfill, you still have the methane issues. You still have to compost it if it's gonna be usable as a soil amendment. So it's almost like an interim step, but in some situations I can see it, it making sense.

So I started this research and then Reencle kept talking about their microbes and thermophilic bacteria and creating this environment that emulates like a hot composting environment. So I started studying hot composting, and then I went back the next day to have more conversation. And then I also told 'em as a marketing advertisingexpert I audited their website and social media, and I was just like, "Okay, you guys need to do this, this, this, try this, try this," and that's how I always gained my clients is I never talked about retainers and payment upfront. It was always provide value, and if they found value in it, it worked for them, 9 times out of 10, they came back to me and said, "Hey, can you help us more?" And so, the CEO was there and he is "Well, why don't you come up and see our factory in Korea and we'll send a sample home to you?" And I said, "Okay, I'll, I'll come up on way home." So I went up to Korea, very nice, professional manufacturing, high quality processes in place. So I was like impressed there, went home, sat for a few weeks as I was trying to getting settled in and doing stuff, I'm like, okay, I gotta finally try this. And then I started trying it and it was freaking amazing.

[00:10:39] Dominique: What was that like? Like, did you you unbox it, you start putting it in your kitchen. Like how big is it? Tell us all that. 

[00:10:45] Joe: I unboxed it and put it on the kitchen counter. And my family, wife, are all a little skeptical "What are you doing with this thing?" And I was like, "I just wanna try it and see if it works." Anyway, put the microbes in, added the water, did all I followed the guide.

And I would ask, I'd send messages to our CO Gene of, "Hey Gene, what are my restrictions? What I can, can't, whatever." And I kind of took an aggressive approach 'cause I was like, all right, I'm gonna see, I'm gonna put it through its paces 'cause if it's gonna work, it's gotta work. And I wanna see if I can break it. 

[00:11:13] Dominique: And your vantage point you're on the marketing advertising end so you're like, I wanna know how to story tell about this item.

[00:11:21] Joe: Exactly, exactly. Like I wanna be able to say exactly what it does. I wanna differentiate and I wanna know who to reach out to for, because they weren't doing any influencer marking at the time. I'm like, we need to find some good, reputable voices in the sustainability food space, especially in health and wellbeing. 'Cause of my background, I thought, I don't wanna polarize. Let's get away from the climate change messages and talk about health and wellness because that's gonna transcend, political borders, right? So I started using it and I was just shocked and I still, my family still makes fun of me 'cause I'll still check it every morning. But seeing you throw a loaf of bread in and then it's gone in two hours and you're reaching in there and you're feeling it and you're like, it's literally gone now. The chemical process isn't finished, but visibly there's nothing left of it. And so I put fish carcasses in, like the whole thing, all the fish guts and everything. I wanted to see if it would smell, what would happen, 'cause fish is, fish is fish. And within a few hours I'd open it, maybe a little bit of remnant and some I let like literally let it get rancid. So I'd open up the Tupperware it'd be like, well, half throwing up as I'm putting it in there.

[00:12:24] Dominique: This is great for our listeners. They love this. 

[00:12:26] Joe: But we're dry heaving as we're putting it. And my wife's recording me. She's "Oh my gosh," and within a few hours there's like this remnant odor, but still, pretty much gone. And then the next day I'm literally shoveling through there and I can't find any of the fish parts, like it was gone.

And so, anyway, got talking with the CO and they said, "Well, we don't want you just to be a, like a rep for us. We really would like you to run North America. based on your experience with some of the regulatory stuff that you've done, you've worked with governments who've worked in the private industry, done a lot of different stuff, and we could use somebody with that expertise in a lot of different spaces to help us grow." And so, I was like, "Yeah, that would be awesome."

[00:13:05] Adam: How did your background in consumer electronics prepare you for this role?

[00:13:09] Joe: So

 I passed the bar in I took it in July. I found out I passed in September, and that was oh five. And then literally I start working for that company in October. And I'm actually helping the boss. So this was like, it's startupy, right? So I'm doing whatever they need me to do, whether it's helping them on personal real estate contracts to helping draft, like license agreements for technology and different stuff. 

Anyway, we have this order shutting down all of our manufacturing until we can prove that we're not violating this part regulation for our radios. And so I got thrust into this whole regulatory side of the consumer electronics business and had to spend almost every week in the summer in Washington, DC, I'd fly back to Taiwan. My engineers would educate me on the technology, how the PCB boards laid out the attenuation that happens with every, I mean, it was crazy, FM modulation. I became an expert. And I'm literally going to FCC labs that were testing at different contracted labs and testing in the vehicles to show that we weren't violating. And then the whole political side of it, which was crazy because this was right as Howard Stern went to Sirius.

And then I got to see how the underbelly of Washington worked, right? so I became, I don't know, I'm a little jaded, maybe a little cynical when it comes to government.

[00:14:22] Dominique: I think that happens when you get exposed to how things work, I feel like.

[00:14:26] Joe: Yeah. And it was very eye-opening. it was a huge learning experience. 

Because Reencle transcends because it's a sustainability product, there is a certain amount of regulatory things going on, right?

With laws about food waste diversion, and there's aggressive goals by the EPA and others and both, and local state governments and cities and stuff to help manage food waste. And they've set some aggressive goals to make that happen.So there's that regulatory element side of it.

Then there's the consumer electronic side, like building a good quality product. And for us it's like, "Okay, our DNA is sustainability soil health." Well, we also have to make sure that our processes in manufacturing are sustainable as possible, and so that adds a whole nother element of a company that really Reencle itself probably hadn't thought much about that process. They were so focused on the end product. So now it's going back and saying, "Okay, if we wanna become a B Corp, what do we gotta do?"

And so it's like looking all these processes and finding the right places to source parts to our own processes, to the right types of packaging. We use styrofoam for a long time. We're finally getting away with that on one of our units. 

So there's that part of it, and then it's building a product that can last for a long time. We have great customers that are very much 'do it yourself' type people. Like I've never seen this in consumer electronics before, where literally we'll be like, "I don't wanna return it or see it in landfill. What do I have to do to fix it?" And they're built pretty modularly. And so we can send a video and send apart and they literally will take 'em apart and fix 'em themselves.

[00:15:53] Adam: That's cool.

[00:15:53] Dominique: That's such a cool unique factor of the space that you're in is like your customer type is fitting into this unique persona where they're really valuing longevity, quality, your long-term relationship with them. That must be an interesting thing to think about from a marketing point of view and advertising and the way you are trying to convince someone this is a product for them for a long time.

[00:16:16] Joe: Oh yeah. Well, and it's reaching those people is interesting. They'll send video and you're like, this is like some little old lady in the middle of Rhode Island who's never worked on anything in her life and she's got her screwdrivers out and 

[00:16:29] Dominique: She's let's go. I'm fixing this thing. 

[00:16:32] Joe: And I'm, I'm shocked. 'Cause, being in the like connected car space and consumer electronics in that regard aftermarket, if somebody has a problem, it just gets dumped off at Best Buy. They just return it, get their money back, return it, and you have millions of returns of all these things, and you start to test 'em and troubleshoot 'em. But people are just tossing the stuff if it doesn't work for them. So being in this where people like wanna fix it and can fix it is pretty, pretty remarkable.

[00:16:57] Dominique: Yeah, it's cool to hear your perception of the culture around this product when you have so much familiarity with the world of consumer electronics. Your perception of how unique this population is is extra special because you've seen so many other, maybe more like typical electronics markets.

So a lot of our listeners sometimes come from the vantage point of just curiosity of wow, how is this interesting person doing this interesting work? And I think in particular, your background in electronics technology, marketing and law is just

[00:17:30] Adam: and regulations.

[00:17:31] Dominique: Yeah, you, you are such an interesting like soup of things, but you bring all of those fully with intention to the work that you do. And I was just curious, if somebody's listening and is wow. I also have many interests and a variety of skills, and I love the way that Joe has leveraged all of his special skills to work on a passion area. What advice do you have on the way that you've been able to show up in all those ways and bring all of your skills to the table?

[00:17:58] Joe: I would say number one, be willing to explore, right? Don't stick yourself in one thing. Do as much as you can to explore it first. And I know there's some limitations like that. With my personal situation growing up, single mom, five kids, put myself through college, law school, that kind of thing. I didn't have the luxury of doing unpaid internships or things like that. I had to make money. For instance, outta law school, I was offered a presidential management fellowship and it's pretty prestigious award that you get to work for an agency for a couple years. Well, the problem is I'm married. I've got two kids, a third on the way. I can't go to DC for $38,000 a year, even though my wife's a nurse and makes good salaries on RN. So there are limitations with our decisions, but even in that, I think two of the things is always provide value. Don't doubt yourself. Everybody has value that they can bring to an organization situation. Figure out what your value prop is. Provide value to an organization and people will pay for that value. Companies will pay for that.

So provide value is number one. Number two is network. Talk to people and don't be afraid to talk to people. Look for mentors, talk to people. I realized I got older how important it is because sometimes people look at networking as, "Oh, I'm just using these people for my betterment, whatever." And it's not real networking. Real networking is taking a genuine interest in what people are doing and then realizing that at some point you can provide value for them and they'll be able to provide value for you. So like on my LinkedIn,as long as it's not a scammer, I generally, if somebody reached out to want to connect, I almost a hundred percent accept it.

Because I've built relationships with people that maybe 10, 15 years ago I didn't need what they were selling. But then all of a sudden they've evolved in a position. Now they're in a role that might, there might be some synergy there, reach out to 'em. So I think it's about being genuine about your value and being genuine with people and then exploring those different things.

There's a lot of ways that you can find your niche and I think people do it all the time. But I look at my career and everything, it's crazy 'cause I never thought, if you would've asked me in my twenties what would I be doing today? I would've no idea. 

So I wasn't exposed to a lot of things, like people laugh now 'cause my youngest son, I took him to the ReFED summit. He's 17. He works in our warehouse, does refurbs and stuff. And he's "Dad, I wanna do more sales. I wanna talk to people. I don't like just working on units all time." I said, "Okay, I need help at this, come talk." And he, so at 17 he's sitting at this event and talking to people, generating some leads, getting contact information, whatever and had a great time.

And I thought about it. I was like, "Holy smokes, man. If I would've been 17 with that kind of exposure" ' cause he gets to talk to so many cool people and so many interesting people that it really expanded like his worldview and like possibilities and things he likes. And so I think young people should do that too.

I've run into some young folks at big consumer electronic conferences like CES, I've run into some young folks at Circularity, some of these trade shows. They always have deals for students. you can volunteer. That is a great way to go and just get exposure to a lot of different people and a lot of different industries and that's something I really encourage.

[00:21:08] Adam: Speaking about young people, what gives you hope about the future of soil health and food waste?

[00:21:13] Joe: So there's two things happening. I think, number one, we have a consumption addiction that lays at the root of all of our problems. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about oil and gas, fossil fuels. If we're talking about even the challenges with electric energy, shopping, all the fashion industry, food waste, it's consumption at the core. I think younger people are starting to see that the consumption economy is detrimental to our future. I think they're starting to realize like we need to go back to these old ways of thinking about when I buy a refrigerator, it needs to last 30 years. And the technology's there, right? Being in manufacturing, I'd hear from people all the time, " Oh yeah, all that cheap crap made in China." And I'd laugh and I'd say, " do you know it's US companies that define the spec?", That they build the product too. So if you want automotive quality and a part that will last for 10, 15, 20 years, they can build that. It's just gonna cost more money.

So I think younger people, for whatever reason, what I've noticed with some of the younger people with my own kids is they're paying more attention to what's causing some of the problems within our communities and within the environment as a whole. and I think they're getting away from our generations that's got stuck in this dichotomy of right and left. And they're just saying, "Wait a minute. We all should care about taking care of the earth. And what does that mean and how are we gonna do it." 

[00:22:36] Dominique: Yeah, thinking more long term, big picture like y'all don't think there's gonna be an impact from the stuff that we're doing right now.

[00:22:43] Joe: Well, and I think a lot of them too, they're hitting at a young age. It's hit my family. Chronic illness, and all the chronic illness with the explosion in diabetes, the explosions in cancers in young people, like all this stuff. It's forcing people to look in the mirror and ask the hard questions. And I think young people have to look at it and say, wait a minute, "why do we have this obesity epidemic? Why do we have this chronic illness epidemic? I saw some statistic that healthcare wasn't even the major economy or industry within states in the early nineties, and now more than I think 37 states, healthcare is the number one driver of their economies. Like what happened in the last 30 years? And so I think a lot of young people have to start asking those questions and going, "Wait a minute, we're getting cancers. Is it because we have massive amounts of microplastics causing plaque in our brains and our testicles, right?" I do think we're reaching this point where it's like we can't avoid it anymore. Young people can't avoid it.

They're very health and vitality requires them to say, "Wait a minute." And the high stress, like the mental illness, that's going crazy. And it's I, I spent the weekend on a horse, right? You can't, just like when you're on a horse enjoying the outdoors and you're under these big skies and the connection with the animal, you feel connected to the earth. And it's such a wonderful way to recharge, refresh. And I do think people are starting to realize that get outside, walk barefoot, right?

[00:24:04] Adam: I think that's a kind of a great way to bring this back full circle 'cause you, you started talking about how you were on the farm trying to compost. But then weaving this whole narrative together of your experience with consumer electronics, which is very consumption based to now what you're doing with Reencle, which is changing the dialogue around that.

But being able to develop technology that's actually taking that in a new direction. 

[00:24:25] Joe: There's a lot of stuff we throw away that it still is edible. But I think people become more conservation minded. My kids even said it when they're not at home. "Dad, I had to throw away food. do I put it in a baggy and bring it home ?" Like they've gotten used to that habit and start going, wow, this is worth something. This, I hate calling it food waste. I wish we had a better word, like food gold or platinum or something 'cause we wouldn't throw it away. We wouldn't treat it that way. We treat it different.

[00:24:48] Dominique: Yeah. And I think that whole paradigm shift around the value of that food is a big thing I know I've heard you talk about, but also I think is a big part of what Reencle doing is changing this mindset.

So for next time, I'm very excited to dive into that and to really talk more about that product as a whole and the impact you've seen so far. But thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. What is one way for listeners to support you and the work that you're doing? 

[00:25:14] Joe: I use my name Joe Tegerdine, whether it's you want to connect on LinkedIn or I have a Facebook. anything I do is Reencle related 'cause I think if I wasn't doing Reencle, I would turn off all social media. 

[00:25:25] Adam: How do people find Reencle?

[00:25:27] Joe: So Reencle is just reencle.co. is our website. And then you can find Reencle global on Instagram, Facebook. We have a great Facebook community. We call 'em our Reenclers. It's.

[00:25:40] Dominique: I love that.

[00:25:41] Joe: Oh, it's awesome. It's like master gardeners to newbies, new owners. It's a great group if you really wanna see if any of your listeners wanna see like what people are talking about with our product and their gardening and different stuff, it's pretty cool.

[00:25:54] Dominique: And kudos to your team for having a space where you're probably getting constant feedback on what things need to be coming out next.

[00:26:01] Joe: Our competitors are there. We leave it completely open. 

[00:26:05] Dominique: Thank you so much, Joe, for chatting with us and sharing your story and your wisdom. It is really appreciated.

[00:26:11] Joe: Thank you. It's been good to be here.

[00:26:13] Adam: As always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We are here to put real names and stories behind the idea that no matter your background, career or interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate change.

[00:26:24] Dominique: You can find our episodes or reach us at thegreenchampions.com. If you wanna stay in the loop, give us a review and a follow on your favorite podcast platform. If you wanna support the podcast, you can donate on our website as well. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions. We'll dig into the second half of Joe's success story in our next episode.