MBA’s ‘Garbage Man’ speaks to CNN

MBA on c n n

MBA’s founder, Dr Mike Biddle, also known as the ‘Garbage Man’, spoke to CNN in August about his lifelong quest to transform plastic waste into high quality raw materials. The CNN interview with Mike aired in August 2014 in the ‘Make, Create, Innovate’ section of the channel’s business programme, which seeks to highlight pioneering companies making a real difference to the world.

Speaking to presenter Nick Glass, Mike shared his journey from leaving his job at Dow Chemical to beginning a 22-year quest to separate plastic polymers. He showed Glass around MBA’s Worksop plant, explaining that the plant now works 24 hours a day using 30 different processes to process 75 tonnes of waste daily.

“Society today is recycling less than 10% of the world’s plastics, most of which are in complex mixtures of waste and hard to separate,” Mike told Glass. “We decided to try and find a way to solve that problem. Now, we sell to Fortune 100 companies in the electronics, appliances, automobile and home furnishing industries.”

Mike explained that in the circular economy, turning post-consumers plastics into raw materials for new products was an important part of conserving energy and natural resources and preventing waste. He also expressed his sense of fulfilment in helping to make this possible.

“When I see a product on a shelf that’s made with our recycled plastics, knowing that we made it happen is a very rewarding feeling,” he concludes.

The four-minute interview can be viewed on the CNN website here.