Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Hello and welcome to the Mulch Matters podcast where we will explore the intriguing world of mulch and its impact on agriculture and the environment, as well as update you on the latest research about soil- biodegradable mulch and recycling options for plastic mulch. I am your host, Dr. Nataliya Shcherbatyuk, and I am a communications specialist for the project, “Improving end-of-life management of plastic mulch in strawberry system”. In each episode, we’ll dive into the latest research, trends, news, and insights on why mulch matters and how we can improve plastic mulch end-of-life options. We’ll also branch out and discuss other plastics as well as talk to researchers, experts, and practitioners in the field who will share their insights and experiences on how to use mulch effectively in different settings.
[00:01:03] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: We have a special guest with us today, Michael Vincent. Michael is the CEO and President of OPT USA (Ocean Plastic Technologies). Michael will talk to us about groundbreaking approaches to plastic recycling in the agricultural sector. He brings a wealth of experience from ocean plastic prevention and on-site recycling innovations that convert agricultural waste into valuable resources right at the source. Tune in as we discuss the impact of these technologies on local communities and the environment and explore how such initiatives are spreading globally to transform waste management practices. Hello-hello Michael, and it’s so nice to see you here. It is more like to hear you with us today: I can see you but nobody else can. 😊
[00:02:02] Michael Vincent: Oh really? We’re not doing a video as well.
[00:02:05] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: That is correct.
[00:02:08] Michael Vincent: I showered and dressed up for you guys. You need to tell me these days before. 😊
[00:02:10] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: I put the makeup on as well. Ah, yeah, we might improve that more into the next serious. Yes, maybe when we get our YouTube channel you know. Yeah well, let’s go ahead and start I’m sure it’s going to be a very interesting conversation and I’d would like to start just with you providing an overview about what Ocean Plastic Technology is, what’s the mission and what do you do in relationship of plastic and agricultural industries.
[00:02:47] Michael Vincent: Yeah, sure, absolutely. So, I am CEO and President of OPT USA. The USA Entity of Ocean Plastic Technologies. Ocean Plastic Technologies Incorporated is the parent company that is actually based in Durban, South Africa. And it’s been around for about 9 years now or so, somewhere around there, and it was born out of a mission-based type of effort to help communities in rural South Africa that don’t have access to even electricity, let alone plumbing, waste recycling, and that type of stuff. These communities that are along these rivers and so on, that actually the river is their waste management, and to help them clean up their environment, but also uplift that community and creating jobs, and wealth through condensing the value chain of recycled plastics down to the collector. You have these tin collectors and stuff like that, and can collectors that go take that and get it recycled, they get money for it, right? But plastic wasn’t the same way, so we developed a micro-recycling plant that can fit in a twenty-foot ocean container, right? I mean the footprint of the smaller ones are less than five feet by fifteen feet by about six foot high and they completely recycle process waste plastics, right? So, they grind, wash, they shred, dry and then granulate and/or pelletize into a final product that can go right into manufacturing, so from source of waste plastic direct to a product that’s densified into pellets, or flake directly into manufacturing and this has created hundreds of jobs and wealth across these communities in South Africa, and so we’re bringing that technology across the world. We’re moving into other areas and moving into other industries because what we found is taking the recycling to the source and avoiding the mingling of those plastics into the single stream, you know, large murfs etc. The infrastructure that we have today is much more effective like I said it shrinks the value change, so there’s that motivation to actually collect and/or sort or clean those plastics at source and it lowers the cost of those plastics, so it’s more readily usable economically in the manufacturing more plastics or getting it to some other form of you know, enhanced chemical recycling, or pyrolysis, or whatever it happens to be that you’re doing specific to agriculture. What we found is that not only are machines that handle rigids, you know, your containers for fertilizer, your 45-gallon plastic drums for fertilizer and/or feed or pesticides whatever through our hot wash process, those can be, but also films and flexibles, so your silage and your hay bale covers, and your hoop-house films, and your poly-mulches can be run through these machines at the field, right? You don’t have to pick it up, I mean a very remote location, some of these places obviously very rural and so you don’t have to bale these things and ship, you know. Half the stuff at best probably more is dirt and biomass, right? So, the transportation plus to take it to get it recycled is terrible. We do it right there, so, you avoid all that. So, now you have pellets of film, ag film cleaned, ready for manufacturing coming right off the farm. That’s the idea.
[00:06:48] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Okay, and how many facilities do you have? You mentioned it’s created hundreds of jobs, but is it like a large facility focused on one spot or it all over?
[00:06:58] Michael Vincent: No, no, there’s, you know, so they’re small, they’re just 20-foot ocean containers, some of them are 40-foot ocean containers because they work inside of the containers. Well, so there’s room for, I mean, they’re fully kited, right? They’re powered, there’s electricity inside them, they’re running, you know, wi-fi and running cellular service, computers etc., like that, because we’re tracking all the data and everything from there, so they’re sophisticated, but there’s double digits. There’s over 10 running in South Africa, there’s about 20 on order, and there’s more and more going at a time in that instance there, you know, it’ll create, you know, five-six direct jobs, but all the ancillary jobs there are huge. You have these people that are coming in: they bring their plastics and then they get digital wealth that they can then go buy food, water etc. with from the local supermarkets and markets in that town. So that’s how there’s hundreds of jobs. Now, when you bring it into a more affluent, you know, society like in the United States or even some of the cities like in South Africa, like Johannesburg or whatever happens to be that impact of direct jobs, is lower, right, because the value isn’t, you know, you have to have a much higher income, you know, per job there, right. You’re not going to make 100 jobs out of 1 in the United States, but it’ll certainly support 4 or 5 people running that machine with a really nice salary if you’re running through that, because our machines will run, the ag machine, that we’re currently the new film machine that we’re currently testing right now is somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 kg/hr, so close to a ton.
[00:08:55] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Yeah, that’s a lot. Yeah, wow. Well, it’s doing cleaning so that’s really good. I wonder if you’re going to expand even more towards Europe let’s say, and maybe to Asian countries?
[00:09:07] Michael Vincent: Yeah, Europe will come. Yeah, so, Europe will come. There’s no doubt about it. There’re talks to go into Europe, and spreading across Africa is happening right, with some major companies we are about to expand into the Caribbean where we’re in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and we’re expanding across the United States and into Canada to do boat plastic there as well. So, these films that you can do Ag with you do boat plastic. We’re going into the Caribbean into the US VI here in the next month or two, we’ll start kicking off our projects there, but we’re also negotiating and looking at Southeast Asia, we’re going to Cambodia, Indonesia, even in talks with some people in the Papua New Guinea in the Philippines as well. So yeah.
[00:09:59] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Now, my question might sound silly, but I think I’m still going to ask you. I know it’s ocean, it’s like ocean focused, but you also focused on agriculture. So, let’s say if there are plastic mulches off agriculture, can they also be brought up to basically those containers or how that’s, or that doesn’t make sense what I’m asking at all?
[00:10:23] Michael Vincent: Well, what you’re asking is if ocean plastics can be brought into the containers as well as that. No and so here’s where that comes from let me explain, where that comes from. So, the ocean plastics flow to prevent the plastics from getting into the ocean in the first place, right. That’s where it is and then from there it really has expanded into all these other areas where this technology can be used so it was the main focus was to get it along these communities in these lesser developed areas like some areas in Southeast Asia and in Africa, you know, throughout KwaZulu-Natal and some other areas where like I said the rivers are really their waste system in many of these places and it goes right into the ocean. Once it gets into the ocean, the economics of recovering it are difficult as we see, I mean we have some people that are having success. Also, plastic that comes out of the ocean can be degraded. It’s really, you know, no pun intended it’s garbage, you know, could be so degraded. So, if you can catch it before it gets into the ocean, now you’re preventing all that extra energy and effort to regather it all those negative impacts and you’re getting a much higher quality reprocess plastics to then feedback into manufacturing. So, we look at it this way, if you’re running into your bathroom, right, like right now we’re recording you go oh my gosh, there’s water in my feet, I left the bathtub running, you don’t run and grab a bucket and a mop and start cleaning up the water until you turn the valve off right.
[00:12:05] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Exactly, yeah, you need to prevent the cause of course.
[00:12:09] Michael Vincent: Exactly, so, and that’s where it is and that’s why you know the United States arm is OPT and not the full out ocean plastic technologies is because we aren’t out there pulling plastics out of the ocean. Although we can and do process it. But our focus is keeping it from getting into the waterways in the ocean at the beginning and let those people, God bless them, that are out there collecting out of the oceans do their work and make that happen together. We can clean up the oceans and prevent them from getting back in there, right, because they’re not pulling guarantee you as hard as they’re working, they’re not keeping up with a full truckload of plastics entering the ocean every minute they’re not, you know, and that’s what’s happening.
[00:12:55] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Yeah, exactly, well and let’s be honest, it’s always better to prevent than clean after the fact, it’s just the way it is, and yeah, definitely.
[00:13:03] Michael Vincent: Amen, agree, hundred percent, hundred percent.
[00:13:07] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: So, what inspired you? What was your motivation to actually pursue to get connected with this career of plastic and agriculture.
[00:13:16] Michael Vincent: Yeah, okay, well you know once you get your videos going that people will be able to see, I’ve got like my Vox amplifier behind me, and I’ve got my Telecaster here I’ve got my Martin Acoustic I got my bass guitars, and Strata Casts etc. So, I’m a musician I guess you could call it, I played in a few bands and stuff like that. But what I was doing was looking for somebody to create an idea to start making guitar accessories, picks, and capos, and stands, and pick guards, and all this kind of stuff out of recycled plastics and I thought let’s do ocean plastics. I love the ocean and it’s an issue, and we need to do this. So, I started researching. This is a number of years back and the only people who really talked to me were ocean plastic technologies and the more I got to understand what they were doing and the impacts that could be made and how they were advancing, I decided to forget making the stuff, let’s expand what they’re doing and let me help other people who are already making plastic things. Switch over to recycled plastics and my 35 years in logistics I felt was really a benefit and something I could bring some knowledge, I could bring to this technology in this effort because I believe that logistics is really the answer to getting this recycling done as you guys well know, I mean your studies in trying to work with agricultural films and how do you recycle them and do you use biomass, it’s logistics I mean it’s pure costs of supply chain of moving those and getting them recycled that’s there so that was my motivation and now I’m just full hundred percent in.
[00:15:07] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: But you are still playing the guitar, right?
[00:15:07] Michael Vincent: Well, yeah. Absolutely.
[00:15:15] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Ah, that’s great. That’s great now that you know you’re talking about guitar and musician, I remember wow you know I’m musician too, I’m playing piano, and here you go I’m in agriculture.
[00:15:26] Michael Vincent: I love it, well, you know what, we’ll have to collaborate sometime. Yeah, I have a friend who’s also in logistics and we take suggestions from people in the logistics arena, and we parody songs right, well, he’ll take it, he’ll rewrite all the lyrics and then I’ll do all the music and we’ll do a parody song of yeah now it’s fun.
[00:15:46] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Why not? Well let me ask you this: are there any innovations or anything, I don’t know, new creations that you are excited about and we’re talking about plastic and agriculture, but something interesting coming up that you’re really excited about?
[00:16:05] Michael Vincent: I mean yeah, you know, I really and there are and I can’t point to any single one but I can point to the efforts that you guys are doing, and yesterday I spoke to two more organizations that are really focused on the agricultural plastics, and then you know the people in Cambodia center that are reaching out to us to help them with those their agricultural plastics. I think I wouldn’t point towards a single type of technology, but the overall effort and awareness that is coming to light and is gaining momentum is what excites me the technologies are there to do it. It’s figuring out the logistics of how to do it in these remote places with these, you know, limited supply here of plastic, limited there, limited there, when you put it at a murf, and you’ve just got all these plastic hundreds and maybe thousands of tons a day coming into it. You’ve got feedstock, but when you have to drive 300 miles to a, you know, 20000 acre farm and then recycle all the plastics that spread over the entire farm, this is a little bit more difficult, but it can be done, and what people don’t understand is just how much plastics are coming out of those fields and it is just amazing in what has gone up, but the efforts I think is really it and the, you know, it’s also the efforts and the interest and the backing from the manufacturers of those plastics that is that is really important. There’s a lot of other industries that I deal with in with reprocessing plastics, then the Ag, then just the Ag and what you find in the more industrial applications is that there’s a lot that are interested but they’re just not doing it because they don’t have to, because of the cost they cannot justify the extra cost, but you know, when it’s consumer facing, you can because people care and they’ll buy certain things because they are recycled and that’s awesome. But when you get into industrial applications you don’t see that as much and Agriculture is kind of that same way, except that the people involved with agriculture care about the environment because they’re in agriculture. So, that’s, you know, that’s really encouraging, and I wish everybody looked at their industry that way because when you think about it, we’re all involved with the environment anyway. So, but, you know, whether you’re raising cattle, or making iPhones, or whatever it is, you’re still involved with and interacting with the environment, so that desire to make it happen needs to be there. But that’s what’s exciting really about the Ag. Agricultural space and recycling is that there’s so much opportunity there and there’s so much effort going on, it’s collaborative and here’s the thing about what we’re trying to do is of talking to different people not speaking to somebody yesterday who’s got a fairly decent operation nationwide recycling plastics already, but the technology that we bring enhances that because they’re still moving plastics fairly long distances that are not very densified and then they’re processing when they could be processed on site and then moved through their network saving a whole bunch of carbon footprint a lot of energy spent and improving that cycle and regionalizing it so that it benefits the, you know, the local or regional more concentrated I guess if you will a reduced or shrunken value chain. So, those are kind of the things, those are I guess those are the things that really excite me the most about, you know, there’s so many, from pyrolysis to mechanical recycling etc. It’s all there, it is going to take a bit of time though because there’s a lot of people who have tried it and failed and so when you talk about hey I’m going to start recycling poly-mulch and this is what we can do and all that kind of stuff like, yeah, we tried that before it’s too dirty, it can’t be done, forget about it.
[00:20:20] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: And well, try more, fail better. You know that’s how something better is going to be created. So, yeah.
[00:20:25] Michael Vincent: Amen exactly, yeah, no I don’t know “It is just a challenge to me”.
[00:20:32] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Yeah, and you know, you said something quite for me what I think is important is technology and awareness, and I think this is what you do really well on social media, for example, and YouTube, where you bring this information, you bring people to you, you show the videos of what’s really going on. For me personally I had no idea that the truck full of garbage, plastic and bunch of different things can be just unloaded into the river. I’ve never, I had no idea until I saw the video, I was like, what is going on. I have never seen it in my life. It was an eye opener to me. It was an extremely uncomfortable scene, you know, to witness and I think that a lot of people are actually not aware of what’s going on if you don’t provide them with that information. So, awareness and spread of this information is extremely important too and nowadays with the technology that we have, we cannot not share that we have to show what really is going on. That’s why when you said to prevent oceans to get, you know, messed up with plastic, it’s more than just to clean the oceans already which are full of plastic.
[00:21:46] Michael Vincent: Yeah, you got to turn off the valve, you got, we gotta try and do something different and you know the thing is that it’s education, it’s awareness but it’s also the actions that are really needed right, Doug Woodring he is the founder and CEO of Ocean Recovery Alliance, he’s based out of Hong Kong and he taught me, you know, he was introduced as an activist and he said “… no, no, no, no,no, I’m not an activist, I’m an actionist.” And there’s a big difference, right? And I evangelize it through YouTube, in my podcast etc. and that type of stuff, but when I’m not doing that, I’m actually recycling plastics and solving logistics to get it done so action with those words is what’s required just, you know, chain yourself to a truck to prevent it from dumping plastics isn’t going to get it done. We have to work together and find solutions because a lot of it is just out of necessity right, I mean what else are they going to do with it and some until we figure out how to help and make it better.
[00:22:55] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Yeah, I agree and totally agree with that yeah. Okay, let’s talk a little bit about the future. So, thinking about the future of plastic recycling, how do you see it and I mean by what do you see in how OPT will be a part of it, like what role it’ll be playing, how do you envision that?
[00:23:21] Michael Vincent: Well, yeah, so, our goal, and what I hope, and what I think, and what, you know, what is happening are all in congruence which is nice and encouraging is not you talk about disruption etc. and it’s become a cliché, but it’s not disrupting in a negative way. It’s and we call ourselves an enabler and helping to move forward and so there’s got to be, there are, all these nascent technologies that are coming out and they’re exciting. Whether like we talked about enhanced chemical recycling or what you know pure cycles doing down in Florida, which isn’t really chemical recycling, but they’re stripping it down to the base polymers of PP of Polypropylene is pyrolysis that takes it down to the poly oils or actually turns into fuel. There’re all these different things that are going on, but they all require plastics to be collected, sorted, and processed and the current system we have doesn’t cut the mustard. It doesn’t work it. We know it doesn’t. We can talk about it all day long. We’ve been talking about it all day long for years. We still only recycle about 6% of our plastics in the United States and that’s with like 30% of the bottles being recycled which is like the most common plastic. That’s how bad we are at everything else and the education with people is you know you can’t recycle this; you can’t recycle that. Yes, you can recycle all plastics, all plastics are recyclable, period. The end. There is no other argument against. You can’t argue with me about it because you’re wrong. It’s only because we don’t recycle them that you, the consumer, or the industry can’t recycle them. That’s all not because they’re not recyclable, they are and so figuring out those ways to recycle is what needs to be done and the current single stream doesn’t work, so we’re helping to go to those sources. Take recycling to the source and recycle there in smaller batches process it so that it then can come into major locations to then be distributed in final processing. So, a hub and spoke type of network if you will and going and finding those before they get commingled with all these other plastics and become, you know, economically unviable, you just can’t go into a murf and start separating all these things. There are all kinds of technologies, visual etc., that are starting to you know, separate these things, and make them happen. But until that happens, we’ve got to look for other solutions and get them separated and you know the closer you can get that done the more economically viable it is. You shrink and that value chain and you’re better. So, that’s where OPT goes is helping to drive that technology forward and taking our recycling now that’s in your mass, you know, United States.The other part is taking recycling to those locations where it seemingly would never be economically viable to do it where those volumes just aren’t high enough for waste management to go to places where they just don’t have recycling. The US Virgin Islands have no plastic recycling. Okay, they have some organizations like Island Green living do a phenomenal job collecting and baling and shipping plastic bottles out of there but, there is no state structure their waste management does not have recycling, so our technology going down there to create recycling process for that country and in conjunction with them to create recycling, that’s where we’re going taking it to Cambodia taking it to these smaller islands in Indonesia that are beautiful, that people go visit, but then the trash stays there and then it can’t do anything with it because it’s not economical for anybody to go there and do anything. Well, these small plants that fit in a 20-foot ocean container and completely recycle plastics, now you’ve got densified clean plastic that’s got value that can enter the mainstream of recycling and be used and that’s where the Ag came into place because the farms are kind of like those countries, right. They’re out in the middle of nowhere and getting that plastic out is logistically terrible. So, if we can get in there and do that with these machines now, we’ve got something happening.
[00:28:14] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Yeah, I’m just thinking about the, you know, places where recycling is not an option because it is just not there and you mentioned bottling, how they pick up and recycle, starts with recycled bottles and then bottles it just a tiny-tiny fraction of the plastic, if you think about it. It’s yeah, everything is plastic now.
[00:28:36] Michael Vincent: It almost seems that way. Well, you know, if we keep going forward everything will be plastic, I mean, you know, our bodies are ingesting plastic all day long. It is crazy, right?
[00:28:49] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Well, exactly, yeah, it’s another hot topic, I would say, now is how much plastics are actually we can, you know, afford in our body as well because plastic is just it’s ridiculous. You know, it was a phrase that hit me when I heard the first time that for plastic there is no away, like there is not such a thing, you know, I just could throw it away, but it doesn’t exist. There is no away like it is somewhere exactly. It’s ending up somewhere, so it’s.
[00:28:49] Michael Vincent: No, there is no away. Yeah, that is true. There is no away, it’s coming back to you. They found ocean plastics or where they found microplastics in Ocean spray, they found in the mist at the top of Mount Fuji and Kilimanjaro, they found plastics microplastics in every form of protein that we eat. It’s already there you can’t, I don’t care, go get yourself organic free-range chicken. It’s got microplastics in it. All have microplastics that they’re everywhere. The bottle has, some a bottle a liter of ah bottled water has something like 240,000 micro particles of plastics in, it just your average liter of bottled water. So even say well, I’ll drink bottled water, it’s clean.
[00:30:07] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: And which is very you know it’s crazy because for health purposes we promote “drink your water, eat your protein”. That’s like plus, and plastic.
[00:30:19] Michael Vincent: Um, yeah, exactly, and plastic.
[00:30:22] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: It’s scary crazy. But I really hope that it’s going to be, you know, on the long shot, in the long term, that we will find the solution how to improve this, you know, leaking sink, the way I like to say it
[00:30:36] Michael Vincent: Listen, it is so exciting, there are so many things there and here’s the thing is people look at sustainability and recycling, I think and especially business leaders I’m speaking to is. Think it’s this huge cost thing. It’s a huge blue ocean of opportunity. It’s an amazing opportunity for business and for capitalism and for new businesses and marketing your own products and redesigning your own products. It’s a huge opportunity if you’re not looking at it that way, you’re seriously looking at it the wrong way, because it really is, there are so many great things that are happening right now. I’m just about to start reading an article about, they are coding microrobots. That they’re release in water that they can that they can manage in a micro, I mean super tiny coated with a film of a metallic film a magnetic film on this algae these tiny piece of that they’re using in rivers and they can move them around very strategically with magnets and clean all the microplastics out of the water.
[00:31:51] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: That’s exciting. That’s definitely exciting. Yeah.
[00:31:54] Michael Vincent: I mean, there’s so many different things that are happening right now to make this happen and so many new industries and business opportunities. I don’t see how we fail, I’m very optimistic about it.
[00:32:07] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Yes, me too, especially when you’re focused on the you know, not what we can get today but more like on the longer terms in the positive future I think yes, we are going in that direction and it just going to take some time and.
[00:32:21] Michael Vincent: Yeah, yeah. But as long as reasonably navigate the waters of those who want to tear down anything that’s not perfect, right. Not everything that’s not perfect is green washing, not everything that’s not perfect needs to be sued, I mean, you know, we have to make steps there if we wait till we’re perfect. It’s going to be too late.
[00:32:40] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: And it’s never goanna happen anyway, perfection is what actually kills the motivation and success because it’s never going to be perfect and even if I think it’s perfect you’re gonna come and check it, for you it’s not going to be perfect. So, it’s just how it is, yeah.
[00:32:55] Michael Vincent: Exactly, now It’s not gonna be perfect. That’s how it is. You’re right, exactly right. I agree.
[00:32:59] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Any current interesting or particular or you know something you excited about in the mean of collaborations or partnerships that you are working on now?
[00:33:10] Michael Vincent: Well, one of them is with you guys, just the fact that we’re talking and evangelizing this stuff is exciting and I hope we continue to do that, really, I mean that is really important as far as our collaborations. It’s really the potential that we have and I think we will do it the one in Cambodia is really exciting, our move into the Caribbean and the US VI is really exciting and then really the conversations that we’re having with a couple of different organizations about helping to improve the processing of agricultural plastics in within the United States is really exciting because you know you always hear about all these efforts around the world and you know, there’s a lot of them around the world that are there out of the necessity. They got nothing else that they can do with those plastics and here we have kind of out of sight, out of mind and we have almost what it seems like still limitless places to go make another landfill and farmers burning. Plastics in the middle of Iowa doesn’t get seen by anybody sitting in San Francisco or LA, or anything like that would be horrified by it but it happens, it’s happening right this second, they’re burning plastic right now. and the focus on getting that, making that happen is really exciting to me.
[00:34:42] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Yeah, me too, I am really looking forward to see how we’re going to have that changed and improve you know I’m relatively new to all this plastic and mulch projects but I think it hit my heart right the day I started and it’s I didn’t know a lot of stuff and I’m in agriculture I’ve been in agriculture since back to university, back in Ukraine, where I did my bachelor and masters and I didn’t know a lot of things until I really started digging into it. So yeah, it’s interesting. It’s fascinating and the future with optimism into improvement is I think it’s big.
[00:35:26] Michael Vincent: Yeah, no, I agree 100%, as long as there’s people like you out there that have you know that find that passion and move forward with it, we’re gonna be just fine and there’s more and more people every day that are getting into it. It’s important that we evangelize, it’s important that we’re transparent and it’s important that we educate people very clearly about what’s going on because things can be twisted easily, and the majority of people read new information from the angle of proving what they already believe I think right. So, changing their mind is very difficult to do, so you need to be very transparent and very clear in how we promote what we’re trying to do and what others are trying to do.
[00:36:15] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Yeah, definitely. Is there anything else you’d like to share with our listeners about OPT?
[00:36:15] Michael Vincent: Um, hey go to optusa.earth, go there right now and check out what we’re doing and tell people.
[00:36:34] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: Um, yep, that was my that was my next thing to say yeah.
[00:36:37] Michael Vincent: Research everybody else who’s out there trying to make things happen and at least learn about it and discuss it if you are not there to help then that does help right? Or get involved, I mean, make something happen, call somebody and say hey do you know that these guys are doing this stuff who knows who’s going to pick it up and make it explode but what it’s going to inspire you to do.
[00:37:02] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: That is so true and WOW. Thank you so much, Michael, for being with us today.
[00:37:09] Nataliya Shcherbatyuk: That’s it for today and until the next episode. You can find more information by following us on Instagram and LinkedIn by @mulch_matters and going to our website (www.smallfruits.wsu.edu) and choose ‘Mulch Technologies’. This work is supported by the Specialty Crops Research Initiative Award 2022-51181-38325 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed on this podcast are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Intro and outro music credit to Zakhar Valaha from Pixabay