CONVO 02: Tristan Lecomte
On pioneering plastic 'offsetting' by connecting the dots from luxury C-suites to grassroots recycling fishermen
IN CONVERSATION WITH SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR TRISTAN LECOMTE, FOUNDER PUR PROJET & SECOND LIFE
Trillions of tonnes of plastic exist in our oceans. 8 million tonnes of plastic leak into the ocean every year flowing from 10 major rivers. As seen in Issue #01, our global plastic problem is a systemic, human crisis that disproportionately impacts disadvantaged communities.
What can consumer brands do to be part of the solution and not the pollution?
If anyone understands how to approach this as a business objective, it’s French social entrepreneur Tristan Lecomte. Connecting the dots from global luxury brand C-suites down to farmers and fishermen, his life’s work is in engaging commercial companies to invest in regenerative projects that drive both social and environmental impact.
Spending the first decade of his career leading the Fair Trade movement for the French market, Tristan’s affinity to agricultural projects around the world introduced him to the benefits of agroforestry. In 2008, he founded Pur Projet as a way to help companies evaluate, reduce and ‘offset’ their carbon footprint. Pur Projet has since planted 10 million trees in 155 plantation sites across 40 countries. They work with the likes of Nestle, Ben & Jerrys, Unilever, Chanel and Clarins to balance their economic development through regenerating the ecosystems, improving livelihoods and strengthening supply chains.
Today, Tristan is once again shifting gears towards new terrain: ocean-bound plastic. Second Life, his one-year-old startup, is focused on supporting the collection and recycling of plastic waste in remote coastal and island communities across Thailand and building circular solutions.
The notion of “plastic offsetting” has been deemed complex territory to standardize, but this is changing. This month, Second Life became the first-ever project to be recognized by Verra for its Plastic Waste Standard, making them pioneers in the plastic credit game. In other words, they’re building new pathways for companies to balance their plastic pollutant behavior – while at the same time building systems that financially incentivize people in vulnerable communities to collect plastic and help protect vulnerable ecosystems.
I recently joined Tristan and the Second Life team on a field trip across several of the islands on the border of Thailand and Myanmar to learn about their work here. In between interviews with local island recyclers and beach clean-ups (and some sunset surfing sessions on Koh Phayam), I sat down with Tristan for a tête-à-tête.
Lisa: Hey, Tristan. It’s been such an eye-opening trip so far. Can you tell me in a nutshell how Second Life is working with brands to help tackle the global plastic crisis?
Tristan: With Second Life, our tool is the Plastic Credit. We receive funds from companies who want to take responsibility for their plastic footprint and put this towards developing circular ocean plastics supply chains.
For example, we’re working with French skincare and cosmetics brand Caudalie. They’ve figured out that their products produce up to 600 tonnes of plastic a year and would like to take responsibility for that.
Caudalie gives us money that goes toward our plastic waste reduction program, helping to recover and recycle ocean-bound plastic waste. In exchange, they’re able to claim plastic credits, similar to carbon offset credits, at the hand of an entirely new verification standard called Verra.
This month, Second Life became the very first Plastic Reduction Project to be listed for Verra’s Plastic Waste Reduction Standard. What does this mean?
This Plastic Standard just came out in January 2020. One year into launching Second Life, we’ve been working towards getting our methodology listed as we roll our pilot projects out across coastal and island regions in Thailand.
This doesn’t mean we’re the first to do this kind of work. NGOs and different players have been collecting plastic for years. But at the hand of the Verra Plastic Standard, it’s the first time that plastic stewardship can verifiably be utilized as a tool for helping businesses to manage and reduce their plastic waste footprint at a company level.
To get technical, this standard defines Plastic Credits to be issued based on how much plastic is collected and recycled above a baseline rate – so what would have happened in the absence of the project activity.
Similarly to calculating your carbon footprint, any consumer brand can evaluate and calculate the amount of plastic waste they’re generating through their business. So what should they do with this information?
The first step is always to reduce. All the companies we work with are already on that journey. They’re taking steps to reduce costs, avoid and reduce packaging, reduce unnecessary transport... There are many ways to optimize this. It’s always a game of cost.
By working with Second Life, brands can help to cover their plastic footprint by recollecting plastic that has already leaked into the marine environment.
These companies understand that sustainability and circular economy are the future. By taking the step to ‘offset’ their plastic footprint, they’re taking financial responsibility over what they cannot omit through recycling within their own supply chains. Plus, they are helping disadvantaged communities who are most affected by the plastic plague and not equipped to deal with it – and who are mostly not responsible for it.
It’s a way for companies to balance their plastic footprint with nature.
The notion of balance is interesting. Like with carbon offsetting, plastic credits shouldn’t be seen as a catch-all solution or excuse to pollute. How can companies make sure they’re keeping that balance in check?
The first step is always to evaluate what’s happening within their own operations and supply chain. If a brand is able to reduce as much as they can at the production level, while at the same time taking responsibility for plastic that’s already been dumped into the ocean, it’s complementary.
Let’s take Caudalie, for example. They’re known for being a brand that makes ‘green and rational’ cosmetics, meaning they use 95% minimum of natural origin ingredients in their products. On top of this, they have a strong ecological commitment. Since 2012, Caudalie has given 1% of its turnover to environmental associations for reforestation.
Pur Projet has been working with Caudalie to develop agroforestry and forestry plantation projects in partnership with small-scale farmers communities, that supports soil regeneration, biodiversity and carbon sequestration.
Now, as a next step, Caudalie wants to address their plastic waste. They’ve already made efforts to go more green in their packaging by using recycled materials, but their goal is to become net-zero waste. So this is where the Plastic Credit comes in.
Your life’s work involves being in the field. Having the chance to observe you on this 4-day island field trip, it’s clear that you thrive from this kind of work. How does fieldwork feed into what Second Life is doing?
Being in the field gives us the opportunity to have human conversations, build relationships and come up with the right solutions at the local level.
With Second Life, we’re working towards serving different island and coastal communities who are heavily affected by the plague of ocean plastics, but mostly not responsible for it. These islands don’t have waste systems in place either, so there are real problems to solve.
We work directly with formal and informal recyclers and waste collectors in these communities. Often these are fishermen who also collect. In some cases, this can be life-changing for local recyclers.
Take Khun Palinyia on Koh Sinhai, for example, who’s proudly built a viable recycling business and has been able to buy a new boat from his earnings and our partnership.
Khun Palinyia so kindly inviting us all into his home for lunch and a question/answer session. It's inspiring to see how he’s built this small, grassroots recycling business from scratch, despite the difficulties of engaging locals in his cause.
On every island we’ve been to, I’ve been struck by your team’s work to speak with these local recyclers to learn about their unique situation and find tailored solutions.
It’s interesting to see how every island community is different and faces its own unique challenges.
Typically, when we arrive in a community, we start with socialisation. We hold a public appraisal meeting to better understand the situation, what the problems are and if we can help find a solution. We invite the community to engage in a beach clean up together and we buy the waste, to show that it’s a resource. From there, we think about how to innovate and design solutions that could work for that specific community.
Only a fraction of the waste you collect is recyclable PET plastic. What happens with the rest?
It’s our goal to create a circular system of solutions for every type of waste collected in these island communities.
Incentivizing people to gather plastic recyclable waste, bring this to the mainland and sell it at a competitive price is one part of it. At least half of the waste collected in these island communities is non-recyclable, so we do our best to find solutions for this also.
That could mean sending it to an industrial recycler to dispose of properly, for example.
We are also working with innovators like Professor Pow, a Professor in Engineering at Chiang Mai Rajabhat University who has developed machines to design new upcycling solutions.
Last year, we financed one of his machines that produce pavement blocks from non-recyclable plastics and glass waste. This year, we helped him install a new machine with a bigger capacity to create a “green cement” based on recycled plastics. We also connected him with the plastic recyclers and collectors in the South in Krabi to send them more of his machines.
Today, we have about 30 tonnes of flip-flops that we don’t yet have a solution for. We’d like to produce new flip-flops from this waste, but we need to first make sure we’re doing it in a way where it doesn’t create microplastic waste and add to the problem. We’re working on developing this on a product design level and making connections with brands to make it happen.
The objective is to recycle 100% of what we collect. If it’s really not able to get a second life, then our last resort is to do RDF, ‘Refuse Derived Fuel’, sending it to be burned in an industrial burner for energy recovery. This is a more energy-efficient way of getting rid of the waste and better for the environment than getting burned on the islands.
A year into the project, how’s it going? What challenges do you foresee ahead?
With Pur Projet, we’re usually building projects with the goal to sequester carbon across 40 years. With Second Life, we’re committing to reaching our goals in just 7 years.
Within seven years, we’re committing to helping island communities across Thailand go from no waste system to solving their plastic issue through circular supply chains that are financially self-sufficient.
For now, it’s working well in terms of environmental and social impact. We’re working to get more volume of plastic from the smaller recyclers on the islands to improve the quality and additionality of the plastic we collect. We’ll have to continue improving how we work with these local communities to incentivize and innovate for solutions.
Ok, let’s zoom out for a second. When it comes to the global plastic crisis, what do you think are the main blockers in creating impact at scale?
The biggest problem is that petrol is too cheap, making recycled plastic comparatively expensive. It costs more to recycle it then to make virgin plastic. If this weren’t the case, then recycling would be very profitable and we wouldn’t have to do this work to get brands to incentivise the cost.
Also, awareness. To avoid using plastic as much as we can, to eliminate the use of single-use plastics or to use it only for high-value tasks. It’s all about the 6 Rs.
Plastic as packaging is a great invention. But it has to be circular, otherwise it’s a poison.
Featured:
Keep reading:
A Sea of Plastics Claims and Credits: Steering Stakeholders Towards Impact (Report, The Circulate Initiative)
First project begins registration process with Verra’s Plastic Program (Verra)
Plastic piles up in Thailand as pandemic efforts sideline pollution fight (Reuters)
Plastic Waste Makers Index: Revealing the source of the single-use plastics crisis (Report, Minderoo)