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Speaker 2: All Right, everybody, when we talk about carbon emissions on
Speaker 2: our program and the Patsinet zero, we often talk about
Speaker 2: the carbon emissions associated with power generation, transportation, food production,
Speaker 2: a lot of things. There is, though, a big one
Speaker 2: lurking that doesn't get as much attention, although BusinessWeek has
Speaker 2: been kind of certainly trying to get to it, and
Speaker 2: that is cement production, what goes into building materials and manufacturing.
Speaker 2: Cement is responsible for seven percent of global carbon dioxide emissions,
Speaker 2: more than what comes from all the trucks in the world.
Speaker 2: This according to the International Energy Agency.
Speaker 3: That's an important stat it is. And you're not going
Speaker 3: to believe where I'm going to go right now, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm going to go there. Three time NBA champion Rick
Speaker 3: Fox is trying to do something about this. You know
Speaker 3: him from his time on the Boston Celtics and the Lakers,
Speaker 3: or maybe even as an actor producer. He's got hundreds
Speaker 3: of movie and TV episode credits. But he's also the
Speaker 3: founder and CEO of Partana. It's a company that creates
Speaker 3: an alternative to Portland cement made of recycled ingredients. The
Speaker 3: company says it's quote developed the world's first building material
Speaker 3: that avoids emissions and removes carbon from the atmosphere. Rick
Speaker 3: Fox joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive at Brokers Studio. Wow,
Speaker 3: I mean, okay, we talk about the NBA career, talk
Speaker 3: about your Hollywood career. How do you get to this
Speaker 3: part of your career?
Speaker 4: What's Rick Fox doing in concrete?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Yeah. The short version is a call to service. It
Speaker 4: started as a call to service to my home country
Speaker 4: in the Bahamas, on the heels of Hurricane disaster Durian
Speaker 4: in twenty nineteen. We were displaced. Some thirty thousand people
Speaker 4: were displaced, Homes were destroyed, people were swept out to
Speaker 4: see and outside of donating money from my Bahamas Relief Foundation,
Speaker 4: I decided to get on the ground and start to
Speaker 4: ask the question of how do we build more hurricane
Speaker 4: resilient homes, more sustainable homes to dig ourselves out of
Speaker 4: the eleven billion dollars debt that we were in as
Speaker 4: a country because of the repeated storms. Now, I grew
Speaker 4: up as a kid in the Bahamas, where hurricanes were
Speaker 4: our version of an amusement park at the time in
Speaker 4: the seventies and eighties. Yeah, it wasn't as severe as
Speaker 4: you see today, and those storms are more and more frequent.
Speaker 4: So for me, it was a call to service to
Speaker 4: try and find a solution beyond just donating money, and
Speaker 4: that led me to a search around twenty twenty when
Speaker 4: the world shut down and we can rest asshore Rick
Speaker 4: Fox is not the material science behind the technology here.
Speaker 4: We'll state that up front here. I have a number
Speaker 4: of scientists and partners who have been innovating concrete for decades.
Speaker 4: They're the best in the industry. One of them have
Speaker 4: been cement Man of the Year, others are.
Speaker 3: On the board to day. Hold on, yeah, such a thing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I was not such a congratulations to him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, it's nice to have that. It reminds me
Speaker 4: of my Shack and Kobe days when we have some
Speaker 4: of the best in the business to work with. So
Speaker 4: they've been innovating concrete and over the course of some
Speaker 4: six years of rigorous innovation. They got to this material
Speaker 4: not only catching lightning in a bottle for multitude of
Speaker 4: times in their careers, but in the case of Partana,
Speaker 4: I meant them the point when they were patenting this
Speaker 4: formula and trying to get it from lab into a
Speaker 4: commercial state. And so I formed a company along with
Speaker 4: my founder called Partana Global to bring that out of
Speaker 4: the lab and into the world.
Speaker 2: Rick tell us exactly what they're doing and what makes
Speaker 2: it sustainable and less impactful on the environment.
Speaker 4: Yes. So, the first thing that you may learn about
Speaker 4: cement as a binder in the production of concrete is
Speaker 4: that it takes an immense amount of energy to get
Speaker 4: to a clinker state, which allows you then to produce concrete.
Speaker 4: We are a plug and play solution without the heating
Speaker 4: and the emissions that come with the creation of clinker.
Speaker 4: We have zero Portland cement in our production of concrete.
Speaker 4: We take upscale big industry waste, one product of it
Speaker 4: being from the slag industry to steel manufacturing industry, which
Speaker 4: is slag, and another one being brine, which is a
Speaker 4: desalination industry where those waste materials are pumped into the
Speaker 4: ocean or pumped into landfills. We take them and through our.
Speaker 3: Products can be devastating.
Speaker 4: It can be extremely devastating when if you think about
Speaker 4: cement and its impact on the environment. Heats up our planet,
Speaker 4: then it heats up our oceans and destroys our coral
Speaker 4: It's a repeated cycle of negativity. Right. We get to
Speaker 4: a nature positive concrete by swapping out the bind of
Speaker 4: the Portland cement and replacing it with partana. Those waste materials.
Speaker 4: Through our process and our patented formula get us to
Speaker 4: a interaction with CO two which not only avoids the
Speaker 4: CO two negative emissions when we produce it, but also
Speaker 4: absorbs and remove CO two from the atmosphere carbonation process.
Speaker 3: So don't trees do that?
Speaker 4: Trees do it?
Speaker 3: Actually building it?
Speaker 4: Well, it's it's chemistry, right, So the magic of chemistry
Speaker 4: will generate the process through the interaction and activation of
Speaker 4: the brine in our mix. But but even cement, the
Speaker 4: negativity of cement, it is also absorbing CO two, So
Speaker 4: let's not the problem with us cement is that it
Speaker 4: does so much harm on the front end that it
Speaker 4: can't celebrate the back end.
Speaker 2: In the actual manufacturing em Yes, you.
Speaker 4: Can't celebrate the back end of it. And so in
Speaker 4: the case of our company, we had a two year
Speaker 4: close working relationship with one of the top manufacturers of
Speaker 4: cement products, Top Works out of Germany. They just validated
Speaker 4: us at the World of Concrete in Vegas as the
Speaker 4: only replacement for Portland cement in the concrete industry right
Speaker 4: now today. Now there are a lot of people out
Speaker 4: there reducing Portland cement in the production of concrete, but
Speaker 4: no one can one PC replace it, avoid and remove
Speaker 4: COEO too.
Speaker 3: At the same time, who's back in the company?
Speaker 4: So I'd give a huge gratitude and shout out to
Speaker 4: cherubc Ventures, our angel investors that have been there from
Speaker 4: day one. They've brought a number of their network folks
Speaker 4: along with us, major individuals that have supported us. And
Speaker 4: now as we move towards this year, scaling being the
Speaker 4: next challenge. We're hoping to have the likes of some
Speaker 4: of the biggest movers in the world that can actually
Speaker 4: scale this.
Speaker 3: Uh where are you right now? And it's like how
Speaker 3: much of you is right now?
Speaker 4: We raised thirty million dollars, so we're moving into this
Speaker 4: year now to scale four factories in different regions globally.
Speaker 2: If it's If it's so sounds like win win. Yes,
Speaker 2: it would seem to me that anybody who was in
Speaker 2: the building environment would say, I'm in it. Let us
Speaker 2: help you scale it up. Yes, what's what's the Does
Speaker 2: it cost a lot to do this?
Speaker 4: So prices in terms of manufacturing and capex building a
Speaker 4: facility is something that's not exciting to investors when you're
Speaker 4: when you're burying capitas dollars. But once you establish that,
Speaker 4: then you have the ability to generate return on that
Speaker 4: investment in our factories in the first year. So we
Speaker 4: we turn around rather quickly here.
Speaker 2: So the actual product is competitive with existing building or
Speaker 2: so existing concrete.
Speaker 4: Right, So cementcha is a commodity. Uh And as you
Speaker 4: can imagine different parts of the world on where you
Speaker 4: get your materials from, cement can be priced slightly all
Speaker 4: over the place, right, No different with our formula. The
Speaker 4: exciting part of our business model is we become a
Speaker 4: plug and play. When you go to a factory that
Speaker 4: is producing cement products today to get to concrete products
Speaker 4: finished products, we can swap that in and out in
Speaker 4: a plug in play fashion in less than a week.
Speaker 4: So the excitement level there is no new equipment, no
Speaker 4: new materials. You're really taking out the binder of Portland
Speaker 4: cement and you're adding our binder of partana. So that's
Speaker 4: so when you talk about the cost, cost is relative, right,
Speaker 4: I'll just say this one point I'd like to remind
Speaker 4: people you will pay depending on your problem. That will
Speaker 4: determine what you're willing to pay. Correct And so in
Speaker 4: the case of our products and material we're making affordable
Speaker 4: homes in the Bahamas some thousand homes all the way
Speaker 4: up to luxury based developments. So whether we're making a
Speaker 4: CMU block or a pouring a bridge or a planter,
Speaker 4: or whatever retail product you can make, you're going to
Speaker 4: find a wide range of product and pricing. But for us,
Speaker 4: we hope with scale to bring our products down below
Speaker 4: what cement products cost, which we know we can get to,
Speaker 4: and then on top of that we generate an asset
Speaker 4: class at a bottom line in carbon credits that can
Speaker 4: be used for good and actually can incentivize our partners.
Speaker 2: This is one of those Internet You're going to have
Speaker 2: to come back because we're running out of time and
Speaker 2: we know we want to do more good luck. Let
Speaker 2: us know how things are going. Thank you, Rick Fox,
Speaker 2: of course, we appreciate your time today a partana well.
Speaker 2: From rainwater in the Himalayas to whales off the Pharoh
Speaker 2: Paroll Islands.
Speaker 3: You've got to go there. I know I haven't been there, but.
Speaker 1: I want to go.
Speaker 2: Well, whales off the Pharaoeh Islands to groundwater in Minnesota.
Speaker 5: P FAT.
Speaker 2: So called forever chemicals have been detected in every corner
Speaker 2: of the planet and in the blood of almost every
Speaker 2: human test it. If you've been listening to us over
Speaker 2: the last couple of weeks, you know we are a
Speaker 2: little obsessed with this and trying to get to the
Speaker 2: bottom of it.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 3: It makes sense though, because these so called forever chemicals
Speaker 3: have been linked to an increasingly long list of health problems,
Speaker 3: including obesity, fertility issues, and cancer and carol. There's a
Speaker 3: very high chance that will come into contact with them
Speaker 3: today and they are almost certainly already in our bodies.
Speaker 2: We talk about a lot at home. I'm going to
Speaker 2: say we talked about it over the weekend. We wanted
Speaker 2: to understand a little bit more about them and on
Speaker 2: an industrial level, what's being done. Joining us is Kelly
Speaker 2: Edgren and she is senior director of Sustainability over Ascent. A.
Speaker 2: Set works with manufacturing companies to analyze their global supply
Speaker 2: chains and look for sustainability risks, and she focuses specifically
Speaker 2: on risks from Pithaz. Yeah. She joins us from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Speaker 5: She's on zoom.
Speaker 2: Kelly. Great to have you here with us. You know,
Speaker 2: I was just thinking. I paused for a moment because
Speaker 2: I was just thinking about the conversation we were just having
Speaker 2: with Rick Fox about just looking for ways to do
Speaker 2: things that are sustainable and don't harm the environment, Like
Speaker 2: how could we all get on board and how do
Speaker 2: we unwind ourselves from how much as a society we
Speaker 2: rely on plastics, all different types of plastics for just
Speaker 2: about it. I look around me and I'm surrounded by plastic.
Speaker 2: I look around at home, I'm surrounded by plastic.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's definitely a struggle because, of course, a lot
Speaker 6: of those things make life more convenient, right, and the
Speaker 6: kypos are no different. So I think that's the challenge
Speaker 6: is we have to maybe adjust the way that we're
Speaker 6: living in our expectations for those materials as well, you know,
Speaker 6: before we can really.
Speaker 5: Get them out of our lives.
Speaker 3: What do you mean by adjusting expectations sort of? Is
Speaker 3: that just resigning to the notion that these are in
Speaker 3: our bodies?
Speaker 2: Don't say that?
Speaker 3: What does it mean though?
Speaker 1: Please?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: So I think when I when I say that, think
Speaker 6: of something like a nonstick pan that's coded with teflon
Speaker 6: and that's a.
Speaker 3: Very We got rid of those in our house, right,
Speaker 3: that's great.
Speaker 5: I love that you're all obsessed with PPOs, because so
Speaker 5: am I. Yeah.
Speaker 6: So a lot of people, though, you know, are maybe
Speaker 6: ready to make a shift to cast iron because it's
Speaker 6: a little less convenient and a little more work. And
Speaker 6: I think that's the challenge, and that's the struggle that
Speaker 6: a lot of manufacturers have, is this paradox between customers
Speaker 6: who want them to get rid of pfoss and yet
Speaker 6: those customers maybe are ready to give up the properties.
Speaker 5: That they're used to from PPOs.
Speaker 6: And I think that's the real challenge, right, is changing
Speaker 6: that understanding and expectations among customers as well.
Speaker 2: Should we as consumers expect that it's got to be
Speaker 2: a slow transition just because they're so entrenched in the system,
Speaker 2: And can we really afford to slow down or do
Speaker 2: we need to kind of do something radical and what
Speaker 2: might that be or how can we get there?
Speaker 6: Well, I do think one radical disruption coming from manufacturers
Speaker 6: is three discontinuing the manufacture of pipos And this is
Speaker 6: kind of forcing everybody's hand, right, because if you can't
Speaker 6: get the parts anymore, it doesn't matter if you've designed
Speaker 6: them out or not, you can't make those products. So
Speaker 6: I do think we see some radical forces already affecting
Speaker 6: this change, and we'll have to see if some other
Speaker 6: chemical manufacturers follow Threem's lead and stop making those PFOS
Speaker 6: chemicals altogether. If you can't get the parts, it doesn't matter,
Speaker 6: you know, if you're in the scope of a regulation
Speaker 6: or not.
Speaker 2: Right, they're going to exit all PIFAs manufacturing by the
Speaker 2: end of twenty twenty five. How big is three AM
Speaker 2: compared to some of the other players that are out there.
Speaker 6: If you look at the NGO keem SEC it's a
Speaker 6: Swedish NGO. They've looked at the top twelve p FOS manufacturers.
Speaker 5: In the world, and three M is on that list.
Speaker 6: They're not the largest one, but they have a very
Speaker 6: broad range of PFOS chemicals. Of course, they've been making
Speaker 6: them for getting close to one hundred years. So I
Speaker 6: think it is going to have a significant impact because
Speaker 6: they have a lot of niche chemicals that they're manufacturing
Speaker 6: as well, and again their downstream customers are not going
Speaker 6: to be able to get those parts anymore.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the cats out of the bag. We know that.
Speaker 3: When it comes to PFOS, I always like to ask
Speaker 3: people like you who live in these worlds day in
Speaker 3: and day out, Cali, how you have adjusted your lifestyle
Speaker 3: to live in a world like this. I mean, are
Speaker 3: you doing certain things at home that you think all
Speaker 3: of us should do because you're aware of the presence
Speaker 3: of these chemicals? Apart from getting rid of nonstick, have.
Speaker 2: You banned every plastic container in your home?
Speaker 5: Well, I do have.
Speaker 6: My glass water bottle here that I drink out of. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, I get ask that question actually a lot.
Speaker 6: So of course there's the pants, I've changed my makeup,
Speaker 6: I've changed my dental floss. Definitely trying to avoid plastic
Speaker 6: for a number of reasons, not just pifoss. There's a
Speaker 6: lot of other chemicals in plastic, right, but then there's
Speaker 6: some other things that there's just not alternatives yet. So
Speaker 6: I am waiting for industry to somewhat catch up. I
Speaker 6: no longer spray my you know, winter booths with with pfos.
Speaker 6: So I just where you become aware of it, you know,
Speaker 6: that's a choice that you can make and try to
Speaker 6: find an alternative.
Speaker 2: Well, I wonder if that's the first thing to do
Speaker 2: in terms of labeling, right that if there is something
Speaker 2: on a product. We've done that with what transfats and
Speaker 2: different things, right, We're all very aware things like corn syrup,
Speaker 2: you know, and just there are things that raise the
Speaker 2: awareness that if a consumer starts saying no, that's got
Speaker 2: to impact a company's decisions and their supply chain partners.
Speaker 2: Is that fair or Yeah?
Speaker 5: Absolutely?
Speaker 6: And there's already a few a handful of state laws
Speaker 6: that are migrating towards this, especially for cookware. They're starting
Speaker 6: to require disclosure, you know, in California they have cleaning
Speaker 6: products disclosure rules. Of course, California also has Proposition sixty five,
Speaker 6: which has a few peposts in it, and that has
Speaker 6: to be warned to consumers. So I do think that
Speaker 6: we're going to see more laws coming like that. But
Speaker 6: maybe we can't design it out yet, but we at
Speaker 6: least want to make sure that customers are aware before
Speaker 6: they buy the product what they're going to be exposed to,
Speaker 6: and I think we're going to see some growing state regulations.
Speaker 5: Along that line.
Speaker 3: That much has been written over the past few years,
Speaker 3: indeed even a decade about how companies knew about these chemicals,
Speaker 3: what they did in terms of disposing these chemicals. You
Speaker 3: have an inside view on what these companies are doing.
Speaker 3: CALLI are they doing the right thing right now?
Speaker 6: Well, I don't want to speak to the past, but
Speaker 6: I do think that in the current regulatory framework they
Speaker 6: absolutely are, at least certainly the companies that I engage with.
Speaker 6: I think it's important to point out that there are
Speaker 6: very few PFOS chemicals that have actually had laws written
Speaker 6: against them, and so what's happened in the past is
Speaker 6: the way companies were discharging maybe water from their processes
Speaker 6: that had some PFOSS in it. They weren't doing anything
Speaker 6: that wasn't legal, and so I think the thing to
Speaker 6: note here is that our understanding of the hazards has changed,
Speaker 6: and we are looking backwards. We see things like super
Speaker 6: fun is going to be adding some some PFOS chemicals
Speaker 6: to it.
Speaker 5: So I do think there will be some reckoning coming.
Speaker 6: But it is important to note that most of those
Speaker 6: companies weren't actually, you know, violating any regulations. We just
Speaker 6: are all becoming much more aware now of the hazards
Speaker 6: of pivos. Right.
Speaker 2: The EPA is right, from my understanding, expected to release
Speaker 2: a list of known pifiles that companies must report, and
Speaker 2: so we know this is kind of coming down a
Speaker 2: lot of industrial facilities, military locations, airports, wastewater plants. What's
Speaker 2: the number one reason for anyone who is listening and
Speaker 2: watching right now why we should be really worried if
Speaker 2: we let this continue at the current rate in terms
Speaker 2: of the amount of pifiles that are out there.
Speaker 5: I don't like to cause panic now.
Speaker 2: I just I want to be smart and like because
Speaker 2: you are in this and what people need to know.
Speaker 6: I think, first off, drinking water right is a is
Speaker 6: a large concern, and so a lot of states are
Speaker 6: enacting laws to start remediation of that drinking water. There
Speaker 6: are ways that you can filter pfas out. You know,
Speaker 6: it's expensive, but there are ways to do it. And
Speaker 6: I see a lot of state laws that are really
Speaker 6: focused on drinking water, soil, and air remediation and that's
Speaker 6: certainly going to help. Right, let's get it out of
Speaker 6: the water that we live with every single day. I
Speaker 6: think that you know more awareness of things, even choices
Speaker 6: like I will I don't make microwave popcorn because there's
Speaker 6: pifos in those bags.
Speaker 5: So that education for people, well know.
Speaker 3: That, Hey, ten seconds, where do we look to find
Speaker 3: this information? Ten seconds?
Speaker 6: I think there's a lot of great resources out there.
Speaker 6: I mentioned the NGO ChemSec out of Sweden. They have
Speaker 6: a lot of great information on where key boss can
Speaker 6: be found.
Speaker 5: And that's a great starting point.
Speaker 2: Well, we so appreciate it. Phil smarter already and a
Speaker 2: little freaked out already too, but you shared it in
Speaker 2: a calm way. It's just things we need to know.
Speaker 2: Lit Meditation required right now. Kelly Agrin a senior director
Speaker 2: of sustainability over Assent on Zoom from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.