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Welcome to Future Sharks William Amos! It’s great to have you here to share you story! Now tell us a little about yourself
I am a 4th year Environmental Engineering student at UC Irvine. I am an Environmentalist and Engineer. Designing our sustainable future requires the integration of new technology, policy, and activism. To achieve this goal we have to foster a spirit of cooperation and innovation, and I will do just that in any team I am a part of. I am also an eagle scout and a recipient of the national Brower Youth Award for Environmental Activism.
City where youāre from:
Marin County, California
Hobbies:
backpacking, hiking, surfing, meditation
Favorite quote:
āIn every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeksā
-John Muir
Background
Why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?
I didnāt intend to be an entrepreneur. I just knew that I wanted to be apart of saving this planet from the many issues that it faces. As an environmental engineering student I had hoped my studies would lead me into a career that was focused on such a goal, however, I soon learned after my first year that if I were to stay the course with this field I would never do more than treat wastewater. Not to say this isnāt an important or noble task, it was just not something I was interested in as it was a largely solved problem. I wanted to help with the unsolved problems. During my 3rd and 4th years at UC Irvine I began to realize that more and more if I wanted to solve the problems I saw myself solving I would need to forge my own path. This is not to say I want to, nor think I can, solve all of the worldās environmental problems myself. I just mean to say that the if I wanted to tackle things head on I would need to do it outside of the conventional channels.
Who were your biggest influences?Ā Was there a defining moment in your life?
I didnāt think this plastic recycling project would go beyond my college career. I was fairly certain I would get a job after this was all over working as an industrial designer or as a sustainability coordinator. However in October of 2016 my goals were drastically changed. I received the Brower Youth Award for Environmental Activism. Upon receiving the award I spent a week back home in the Bay Area with 5 of the other winners from different walks of life, but all striving towards the same goal of helping achieve a healthy planet. Not only was I inspired by these other college students and the amazing work they did, but I was given a new sense of purpose. I knew I had to take this farther, to see if we could make the world more environmentally sustainable through disruptive products and innovative engineering.
Now
What are you working on? How did you come up with this idea?
Our project began two years ago as a part of the international Solar Decathlon competition. This competition tasks university teams with building houses entirely powered by solar power and bringing disruptive innovation to every corner of them. I lead the team that created the workshop of the future in this house. Within the workshop we displayed the fast growing technology of 3D printing. Aldrin and I being environmental engineers also explored the ways we can make this emerging technology better for the planet. We researched and found that there were some interesting pieces of equipment out there to grind down plastic waste and make that into material for 3D printing.
While during the Solar Decathlon we only presented one of the pieces of recycling equipment, after the competition was over we got to work. We began our extensive design, prototyping, and academic research work in what is now known as the Speculative Prototyping Lab in UCIās School of the Arts. The location is no accident,our lab director and faculty mentor is an arts professor. Our team is multidisciplinary Ā and represents many different disciplines within engineering and the arts. This pairing of arts and engineering has increased our ability to develop ideas that are outside of convention and thus truly disruptive.
In March of 2017, after almost 1.5 years of research, we successfully completed a partially automated working prototype system. The system has generated multiple spools of printable plastic from different kinds of waste, including used drink cups and failed 3D prints.
How is your product/service different and unique? Whatās the vision?
While others have created the equipment necessary to make 3D printable material from waste plastic it has not been successfully implemented on a scale that has measurable impact on the environmental issue posed by plastic waste. Rather than simply give people the tools to make their own material from recycled plastic, Closed Loop Plastics aims to collect, process, and generate the material at a scale that will hopefully drastically change the way we think about plastic waste. We arenāt stopping at the concept, the goal is to put this into wide scale action.
Who are your customers? How do you find them?
Our customers are anyone with a 3D printer. We are currently working on partnering with the forty agencies in Orange County, CA, who offer prototyping services using printers that require large quantities of this spooled plastic. We are working on creating an infrastructure to collect the waste they generate, process that, and then sell it back to them at a discounted cost from what they would normally pay for the material if it were brand new. Weāve found out customers largely through networking with maker-spaces and the maker culture in general. We also attend many events pertaining to 3D printing, sustainable technology, as well as general entrepreneurship events.
Did you experience failure along the way? What did you learn from it?
If someone doesnāt experience failure theyāre lying or ignorant. Our group overcame so many obstacles. The main failure was that the equipment we bought to recycled waste into 3D printable material didnāt work as it was supposed to. Essentially we spent 1.5 years pioneering technology to solve the problems that the equipment posed. What I learned most of all was that this industry is so new no one really has solved all the problems, even if they state that they have. This isn’t meant to be a critique, but it does point to an overall issue which is that many feel it necessary to find out something first. It isnāt all that important who gets there first, just that we as a world culture get there. Our team isnāt the first to think of taking plastic waste and making it into 3D printing filament. However, we donāt need to be, we just want to make it work on a scale that has impact.
Value-add questions
Give the readers the best entrepreneurship advice you have.
Passion over planning. Disruptive thinking doesnāt come from being the most business savvy person in the world, it comes from being driving by a feeling so deep in your bones you could never shake free of it. Bring the passion, and the planning will come. When something is wanted enough the right plan will come into view, not miraculously, but through the thousands of hours you put into that idea, that passion.
Teach us something about {internet marketing, social media ads, fundraising, sales funnels or another topic} Can you recommend any favorite websites to learn that topic?
Grants. Get grants. Small ones, big ones, tall ones, thin ones. So much of what we do has a community of people behind it that want to back our work. The applications can sometimes be arduous but once a narrative is created then itās simply adapting that to the topic at hand. Our team successfully garnered over $25,000 in grants to create our first working prototype. For any grants look into your university’s resources. Many of the grants that we won were less than $3,000 but we applied to as many as we could and garnered the resources we needed to achieve our primary goal.
What should an entrepreneur focus on?
I would first focus on creating a good product. Many of the other ventures Aldrin and I have looked at seem to have wanted to focus on market research first and then work on developing the product. I would first pour your soul into developing something you can be proud of. Once you do that then the market will become clear.
What are some of your favorite books?
Favorite books: David Brower: The Making of the Environmental Movement by Tom Turner
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way we Make Things by William McDonough &Ā Michael Braungart
Where do you see yourself and your product in a couple years?
In two years Closed Loop Plastics will hopefully have completed our pilot program to make all of UC Irvineās campus sustainably printing with our recycled plastic filament. After that first year we will move onto expanding to include all of Orange County and then expand the plastic processing to other campuses so as to disperse filament production and expand CLPās product reach.
Here is an interview we did with William’s partner Aldrin Ryan Lupisan about Closed Loop Plastics.
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