Joe Tegerdine - How Reencle Unlocked 24-Hour Composting

[00:00:10] Adam: Hello and welcome to Green Champions.

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

[00:00:17] Adam: 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 Adam.

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

[00:00:26] Adam: Today we are joined by the Joe Tegerdine. Joe is a huge champion composting and soil health, and he's been all over the world. He's worked in technology with an academic background in law and policy. If you missed it, last time we talked about Joe's kind of career transition from consumer electronics, how he got connected with this company called Reencle and got into soil composting. And some of the really neat stories about that where our conversations are going with younger generations, in terms of creating bigger change.

So today, Joe is the general manager of the North America Group for Reencle. And what is Reencle? Joe will tell us a lot more about that shortly. So today we're gonna dive into Reencle and the composting solution and the impact this is having on the value of food all around the world.

Joe, welcome back.

[00:01:10] Joe: Thank you. Good to be back glad to be able to talk about this.

[00:01:12] Adam: Yeah. Let's dive right into Reencle. Can you explain what Reencle is and how it works to make food based compostable, actionable or sustainable?

[00:01:20] Joe: So

 Reencle is a consumer products manufacturer, and our primary product is a home composter. And so what we do is we have a unit that emulates what we call hot composting, so we use microbes, which is the secret sauce, is an essential part of proper decomposition and composting. So we use microbes, heat, oxygen, and moisture, those four essential parts and create this ideal environment for those heat loving bacteria to accelerate and metabolize at their optimal level. So they'll reproduce and metabolize and eat up the food like as fast as possible when they're at that ideal temperature.

And that's what enable us to decompose 90% food waste within 24 hours. And those are the units we make. We make two different sizes for the home and then we make big ones for commercial use. And it's a pretty amazing technology. One of the things that I always note is that we don't create finished compost. It's what we would consider an unfinished compost or a moderately unstable compost. So it's similar to an outdoor backyard tumbler. Once you complete that tumbling process, then you take that material out and then you would cure it with soil or use it as a mulch to let it cure as a mulch. And so that's similar with ours is after it's had its time in the unit, once it reaches its max line, you just empty that little excess out, you cure it, and then you can use it for planting and growing.

[00:02:43] Dominique: Can you help explain some of those words for us of I know you just talked through how that shows up and what you do with it, but what does it mean that it's unfinished and what happens in curing?

[00:02:52] Joe: Yeah. And I'll explain this in layman's terms 'cause I'm layman, right? 

[00:02:55] Dominique: Good. That's perfect.

[00:02:56] Joe: Yeah, I was on a call yesterday with one of our researchers at Michigan State, Dr. Ramani Narayan, who's a renowned scientist and actually developed the polymer for compostable plastics. And so, brilliant. And when I look at his presentations and sit there, I feel like I'm sitting at the foot of a guru. He was teaching me chemistry and biology, all these amazing things I had no interest in when I was can't say that. In high school I wanted to like do micro or ocean biology and train dolphins. But, 

[00:03:28] Dominique: Oh, interesting.

[00:03:29] Joe: Yeah, that was, it was a, it was like a joke, but it was like where my heart was, I think. I was like, I'd love to do that.

[00:03:34] Dominique: You're like, if no one laughs, I'll do it.

[00:03:36] Joe: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Yeah, marine biologist and train dolphins. Yeah, so basically, so what we're talking the whole process both biological and chemical that's going on 'cause you have living organisms and then you have these chemical processes that are going on.

I've learned this from, meeting with people like Dr. Narayan and also, there's a great, social influencer on Instagram. She calls herself the compost coach, and she's from Australia, and she had this great book that I bought that's like a very simple instructions on all sorts of composting. It was really cool. So basically, thermophilic bacteria that operate their best at, somewhere between 140, 150 degrees fahrenheit, like into that range. I think even maybe it's 140-170, so it's in that range. And that's where they will metabolize and digest the food. Break it down is like at their optimal level, these thermophilic bacteria, they also, they eat all organic material. So whether it's paper, fiber-based or food, proteins, carbohydrates, normal, like outdoor composting, you generally would never put protein in it or carbohydrates or sugars and things 'cause it attracts pests where our unit can eat those and the microbes really like 'em.

I've tested stuff and we had bunch of leftover candy canes after Christmas or whatever, and I just been wrapped 'em and threw 'em all in there and it ate 'em all up. And I've put fish guts, all sorts of different stuff and spoiled milk things. So loves it. And so then at that temperature, they need water, just like any living thing. These microbes don't have water, they will hibernate and won't be able to do their job. And then they need the oxygen. It has to be oxygen rich 'cause the oxygen fuels the fire, so to say. So if they don't have oxygen, they'll become anaerobic. It's this composting process and an aerobic composting environment. So if they become anaerobic, it's similar to what would happen in a landfill and they're, oxygen deficient. And then they'll start to release methane in that decomposition process.

And then like finished and unfinished. So basically when you have a compost that is being processed in a tumbler in your backyard, right? Or even in our unit, the decomposition process has to complete. So that means like the acidity level balances out your respiration, and that's part of the microbes, the cells, the respiration cease, like everything they've done is basically completed and totally breaking down that material into its, basic chemical elements. So then it can be absorbed plants and used within the soil, right? So if you have something like, if you just throw a piece of bread into a planter, your roots do not absorb bread. You have to break that down to carbohydrates and all the basic carbons different chemicals so then it can extract those through its roots. And that's basically what the thermophilic bacteria are doing. They're making happen.

 And so helpful and I appreciate you digging into some of the layers there 'cause sometimes like I think it's really helpful to hear someone explain it and talk through it. But I also like that you mentioned the protein thing because I know I run into those questions a lot when I'm talking to clients and doing a lot of like the onboarding about composting in general and there's a lot of conceptions around, oh, but I can't put meat and bones in here. I can't put dairy. The thing I wanna make sure listeners hear about is like these kind of commercial grade solutions similar to when you get your compost collected and managed by a commercial, local organization that can service your area.

You can be able to include those bones, dairy, eggs, all those good things that maybe in your backyard you're not able to have a resource for. I'm glad you mentioned that aspect as well.Part of the issue too, like within the industry, especially in the consumer electronic side and less on the commercial side, commercial has very well-defined definitions of compost and what you can call compost. And part of that is because they're selling this to the public. And so there has to be very well-defined definitions of this is what it is. It's more challenging on the consumer side, backyard composting, right? To tell somebody, oh, you're using a tumbler that's not compost yet or You can't call it compost. Or like within our industry in electric compost in the home, there's confusion because a lot of the dehydrated companies will claim to compost and they don't, right? So it's caused confusion. And what they need to tell people is that, Hey, we dry and ground it and then you need to take this and you need to now compost it. That's the appropriate way.

[00:07:52] Dominique: We're almost missing words that we haven't had the need to build yet, or we do, but don't mutually agree on as much.

[00:07:59] Joe: Yep. It's true and it's difficult because from a marketing communication standpoint, if I tell people, oh, you have a soil amendment. What does that mean? Or this is fertilizer. 

[00:08:11] Dominique: Sounds hard, sounds complicated.

[00:08:13] Joe: Yeah, like or if I say fertilizer, they associate that with a chemical solution. Oh, you're, I'm gonna, adding some chemical, whatever. Like I think about my grandparents when they composted and it was just anything that was gonna be composted. And I have chefs, like customers that do this. If it's going into the compost, they call it compost. So if they're collecting raw food in the kitchen, they're like, oh yeah, that's the compost. It needs to go to the Reencle. And so there is this very broad use of it, but we're talking and trying to communicate to our customers, we're trying to explain to them like we're talking about compost and the process of composting. And so the material inside the unit, we could call it a byproduct, we call it these things, but it will become compost if you follow these steps. And so it's just like in a tumbler, right? It's compost and then you cure it and it's finished compost. 

[00:08:59] Dominique: It feels almost like you're trying to coach someone through a recipe, 

[00:09:03] Joe: Yes. 

[00:09:03] Dominique: But you can only say the word food and 

[00:09:07] Joe: because they won't understand it otherwise. And so that's the, and even Penn State Lab, there's a soil testing lab there that we'll send samples to, and they have a schedule that says 0 to 1 is finished stable compost, and then 2.1 or 2 to 3 is a moderately unstable and then unstable. And the only thing that they don't call compost is basically raw food that hasn't started the composting process. But all of their definitions to that is either a unstable compost, moderately unstable compost, and then finished compost. There's four or five things where they describe it in that way.

And so when we take ours out, it's defined as a moderately unstable compost. But I'm not going to, you it's like marketing. "Hey, have this make you a moderately unstable," it's. So we try to tell 'em, "Hey, what comes out of there, it's not quite finished. You need to cure it and then you'll have something you can use."

[00:10:04] Adam: Got it. It sounds like you put a lot of care into that messaging and so that people understand, hey, this is exactly what I need to do to get that end

[00:10:11] Joe: Yeah. We try to be accurate 'cause otherwise, we don't wanna be seen and definitely don't want our customers to believe like we're greenwashing or this is a green grift or something like that. Like we wanna legitimately be like, okay, this is what you're getting and this is what you're using.

[00:10:27] Dominique: I appreciate the intro to Reencle and what you're doing and how it works. What's the impact so far? Like how can we think about where Reencle has already been adopted? what are the environmental impacts so far, maybe health outcomes or even like community engagement? You mentioned last time there's like an online community of users that get to share their feelings, but what else have you seen impact wise?

[00:10:50] Joe: Yeah, so this is a really great question. I was actually, this morning, I met with one of our marketing folks and have tasked them with getting like the average data, we know how much food waste is generally created in a home. There's averages the EPA puts out. And we know worldwide, we have somewhere about 300,000 customers that have bought composters. So we're not measuring data in the homes or anything like that. And so based on those averages, I was like, I wanna know, based on those averages about how much food waste we've composted have turned into compost. And the great thing about our product versus other solutions that because we're creating compost, we know that we've removed the methane risk from that material. So even if it still ends up in landfill, we can reliably say we have had this impact on removing methane from landfill. And that's something that our competitors can't do. Our competitors that don't actually compost, can't say that 'cause they, if theirs ends up in landfill, it will turn anaerobic and create methane. So that's one of the big impacts. So I'm actually, I don't have the number yet, but we've been in the market since 2019. We're the biggest selling brand Korea, where we started. And then we're selling, I think into 17 countries now, close to 20,000 customers in the US.

So then we have our commercial units where we've been deploying for about a year and a half now is where we got started. And they're doing much larger volumes. So we have that impact. And the great thing about both of these also is that we know we're impacting the downstream impact of transportation.

So this material is then sent to an organic like a pickup for composting, we know that we've reduced the transportation cost. If they're using it on site, like some of our customers, our commercial customers use it on site, then we know we're completely eliminating any transportation costs. So the carbon impact of transportation, that downstream effect is huge.

[00:12:41] Dominique: There's so many impacts. You mentioned last time there's, or maybe even episode as well, but you mentioned there's two sizes for the home. What are the two volumes?

[00:12:50] Joe: So we have one that handles about 2.2 pounds a day. And then the other one is a little bigger, handles 3.3 pounds a day. So those are sizes. And there's some other little features with them, there's a digital scale on the larger unit and then we'll be launching one with wifi, so you can monitor it with an app sometime in the fall. So there's that. And then our commercial ones we handle from 66 pounds per day, up to 220 pounds per day, depending on which size fits the organization. And a lot of our corporate customers, it's cool, they're doing hybrid programs where they're putting the residential units in break rooms and like small cafes and then putting the larger units near production kitchens and catering places. So using a hybrid model.

[00:13:35] Dominique: I was gonna add that you have about two pounds in one machine, and I think the average food waste per person per day is about one pound in America. So thinking about the impact possibly if they're using that for a household of four, you get a sense of just the impact scale you've had at each home.

[00:13:54] Joe: Oh yeah, definitely. So that's part of the, I told our marketing folks that I was like, get that number. Go do the math. Ask, ask ChatGPT, whatever. Get that number 'cause we have made like a real impact in that regard. The other great thing that I'm seeing from community in dealing with our customer service and our social networks we're communicating with people is people buy the unit and some of the people that don't even garden or grow anything, they just want the unit so they can compost to handle their food waste responsibly.

They'll start posing questions, Hey, if I wanted to grow something, what do I do? And so our gardeners jump in start with herbs, start with something simple, get a little planter, put a little in, and they get instruct 'em. And so I'm really finding this really cool thing where we're actually helping encourage growing and people growing flowers and their own food and vegetables, which, I'm a huge advocate of regional food systems and people producing their own food as much as possible. Which we're seeing other great things with schools we're, helping support with some of our refurbished units that we've donated to is that these programs for food security and helping people learn how to grow so that they can have healthy food, when they're limited financially being able to buy healthy food at the grocery store, but being able to grow some of their own food. So some of these schools that are doing some really cool programs and we're gonna launch a really great program with the people's co-op in Detroit. They're gonna use one of our commercial units to process their food waste, and then it will go to their urban farms that are producing food for the co-op. Some really cool stuff that's happening within different parts of the country with, utilizing reconnecting people to this idea that, hey, we don't have to rely on the grocery store for our food, like we actually can produce. I look at our little gardens in the back, we have three above the ground planters. We've produced so much zucchini this year. I think if we, my wife's been shredding it, so we've been freezing it bags, but we have enough zucchini that we'll be able to cook for the entire year, I think. There's so much, if I showed you how many bags of zucchini we have, and we have not a lot of planters, so it's amazing the yields you can get from a backyard garden with healthy soil. 

[00:16:00] Adam: What challenges have you faced in scaling Reencle's mission and kinda communicating its benefits?

[00:16:06] Joe: So part of the challenge that I think when I first came on is that we were trying to communicate what it does, but there had been a lot of confusion in the industry just because I would just say irresponsible or maybe poor marketing from companies that were selling other like dehydrated products and stuff that we're calling themselves kitchen composters. And so it's created with the US Composting Council written a few different articles. Coming down really hard on these solutions, that it's not compost, they're lying. And we've been associated that with that because of that.

And so that's been a real challenge in trying to reeducate people the technology and to differentiate ourselves from those products. And also, and it's probably part of what we're doing with our commitment to research and development. We have ongoing research going on at Michigan State University, ongoing research at Brigham Young University, Dong-A University at South Korea. 

So we have universities like that are doing things to help structure our best practices so that we can communicate to that customers. So we can give them instructions more about, what you're putting into your unit, some of the things that you may not be putting in that you should, to give yourself a richer compost. How to use the compost, how to cure it. So there's best practices that they're helping us develop beyond what we already do to really hone in the science behind what we're doing. And that's gonna be a big differentiator and help us overcome some of these early challenges of communicating the science behind what we do and why we're different and what I think is just a much better solution for people were complete, right? Don't require like some other, you're not shipping it somewhere to get it handled. You're not sending it somewhere to become chicken feed. You're not sending it, to commercial compost to be compost. If it's onsite, 100% circular is our goal, is to help people have a circular economy within their home.

[00:17:56] Adam: And it sounds like you're doing a lot of research in order to take that innovation forward, which is really exciting. You mentioned, you have some new features coming up with this kind of wifi enabled version, but where do you see Reencle heading next? What are the upcoming innovations and partnerships and expansions? 

[00:18:12] Joe: One of the things that we get asked a lot, especially from our commercial customers is what compostable products can we put in the units? Like they want to be able to outfit their cafes with single use compostable. So we're doing research with a company right now on compostable plastics to find a plastic that will break down in our unit fast enough.

So that's something that we're working hard towards, but then we can, anything that's fiber-based breaks down within a few hours. Like our microbes love the fiber-based material, so most compostables can. So that's one thing we're developing is our own. We'll have our own single use compostable branded Reencle so people know if it says Reencle, it can go on a Reencle unit.

That's one of the things we're doing. We're also offering more gardening tools around gardening, since we have people that are asking about gardening. So we're gonna launch, it's a Korean, it's like a plow with a blade on it that they call a homi. We're gonna start offering our own. We've talked about doing our own outdoor tumbler because we feel like they're products that compliment each other, right? Some people, if they have the wherewithal and they can do it and wanna do tumbling, then we wanna encourage that, right? It's still utilizing food waste the right way and making it into compost for soil.

So we're working on a number of products. We're also improved, we've got a new, it'll probably come out next year. So it's a smaller version, handles a little bit less volume, but it's gonna be perfect for an apartment setting so it'll be a little smaller. And it has some neat features that I think will, it'll help accelerate decomposition process.

[00:19:37] Dominique: A lot.

[00:19:39] Joe: Lot of really great stuff.

[00:19:40] Dominique: Yeah, that, that's a lot. And that's really awesome. And I appreciate how much you've shared with us about the difference between a dehydrator machine and what Reencle is doing. And I know that we ultimately found you as a guest through your work with Reencle and through like happy customers who have Reencle that were actually excited about wanting to hear more about the product and like people behind it.

But I personally came to it being like, huh. Is this a dehydrator though? So I was really grateful when I got to see through my research of how it actually works and I'm grateful for you sharing that with us. I know you mentioned a lot last time, a little bit about the value of food and that being a hurdle in the journey of talking about food scraps, food waste, compost. But is there one big misconception? It might be that or something else about sustainability that you run into the most in your work?

[00:20:30] Joe: Yeah, I think one of the like a huge miss for the industry and for people that are into sustainability in general, people who care about climate change, people that are thinking about the environment, like literally, I've talked to a lot of scientists and different people that agree with this is that food waste sustainability is literally the low hanging fruit of sustainability. If we can take care of our food, it has a massive impact on all the downstream effects, right, from soil health, nutrition in our food, healthy microbiome and microorganisms in soil, all the fungi nematodes and worms, everything like the basis of human health is in the soil. That's where it starts.

And if people, and it's the simplest thing to do, right? If you take your food waste instead of putting into garbage and you compost it, you're having this massive impact, right? Far greater than putting solar on your home, far greater than an electric car. All the different things that we can do, probably the most impactful and literally the simplest is just keeping our food out of the landfill, like getting it back into the soil and not just give it a landfill. That's the methane part, which is important, but literally compost it, get into the soil, and there's so many simple ways of doing it, right?

You can use a Reencle and you can do it. Best case, use a Reencle or use a tumbler, use a backyard composting and compost it, right? Or take that material, compost it, if you're not gonna use it, share with a friend. And if you can't share with a friend, send it to the organic, hauler, if you have a chance, you've reduced the volume, you reduced the carbon impact of it going to a commercial place.

Worst, idea is to still send it to a landfill, but at least it's been composted and you don't have the methane impact, right? So doing something is better than nothing, and it literally has a huge impact. I was at a summit, I need to find the source to this, and I've gotta find the name, but she gave a presentation where she said, if we just improve 40% of inhabitable land, we'd lower global temperatures by a full degree. So when you think about that impact, and we're talking just 40% of our inhabitable land, not a 100%, just 40%, and that inhabitable land is a very small amount of land compared to what's all around the world. We just proved that much, we'd have that big of an impact on global temperature. So with all the other stuff that we can do from an expense standpoint and somebody who's dirt poor to uber wealthy, everybody can take care of food waste, it's within our ability to do 

[00:22:53] Dominique: that's an amazing message to leave us with. So thank you so much for that. Thank you for teaching us about the journey of compost and also managing to, I mean, you told us all about Reencle and the amazing ways that it's breaking down material in 24 hours, which is crazy. But also you helped us find small ways to get started and to see how this is an everyday thing we can all take part in. And I know Adam and I appreciate that because our listeners are always looking for ways to really take action with what they hear from different champions in their field. So thank you. And how can listeners support you and connect with Reencle?

[00:23:27] Joe: Yeah, just we've got our website, just reencle.co. And then you can find us on our social channels under Reencle, Reencle Global. Whether wherever you go, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. But yeah, and you can connect with me, Joe Tegerdine, my name, pretty unique name. Pretty easy to find me on LinkedIn Facebook or whatever. So love to connect.

[00:23:48] Adam: Fantastic. Thanks so much for joining us today.

[00:23:50] Joe: Thank you.

[00:23:51] Dominique: As always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We're 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.

[00:24:02] Adam: You can find our episodes or reach us at thegreenchampions.com. If you wanna stay in the loop, give us a review and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. If you wanna support the podcast, you can donate on our website as well. The music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions, and we'll dig into another sustainability success story in our next episode.