The Curious Capitalist – Professor Greg Sotzing (3BC and PcTRx)

Welcome to the latest installment of The Curious Capitalist, brought to you by the Board of Conscious Capitalism in Connecticut. The Curious Capitalist is a series of podcasts where we take the opportunity to not only speak to board members from the conscious capitalism, Connecticut. But also to business owners, startups, and entrepreneurs.

The Curious Capitalist is available on all of the world’s biggest podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Spotify. Never miss an episode again and subscribe today wherever you get your podcast from. On this episode of The Curious Capitalist, I’m speaking with Dr.

Greg Soze. Greg is the co-founder of P C T R X – platform cannabinoid active ingredients and products company. He is also the chief scientific officer of three bc. A Connecticut based cannabinoid company. Now three BC is a leader and innovator in solvent free conversion technology, which provide manufacturers with hemp-derived solvent free cannabinoids in the form of tinctures, capsules, e-liquid edibles, and much more.

Along with C E O, Brian Thompson and Chief Operating Officer Jazz Deep Singh, Greg has a passion for improving people’s well. And they are dedicated in cannabis exploration and development. You can find out more on their website, three as in t h r e e-bc.com. That’s three bc.com, T H R E e-bc.com. Now though, let’s speak to Greg about his work and his.

Now I’m excited to dive into this. Wanna dive into the science, I guess, behind it, and the struggle of Connecticut hemp farmers who are feeling somewhat left out at the moment of the state’s cannabis plans of the future. Greg, welcome to the Curious Capitalist. Thank you, . Welcome to the show. So come on then.

Tell me a little bit about, I know your career, obviously you are a chemistry professor, but what inspired you, I guess, to get involved in the

industry? Inside the cannabinoid industry, uh, pretty much had to do with the farm bill. Also, back in the past I had polymerized, a carotenoid called Astatin in the attempts to try to make a non phenolic antioxidant polymer.

So I saw my opportunity with C B D as being a chance to take and revive this type of chemistry. You know, once the farm bill then legalized federally, Wowsers.

Now listen, we are gonna have to speak solely in the English language on this podcast, Greg. Remember, big brain, little brain . So tell me a little bit about hemp growing in Connecticut.

You know, what’s the landscape here at the moment? And indeed,

nationally. Well, I, I always hear things about how the industry’s always taking hits and going down as opposed to how things are, you know, burgeoning and flowing. What we do at three BC is we take A C, B, D and we do solventless conversions of the CBD B over to trace cannabinoids like cannabinol.

So again, when I deal with the hemp, farmers will take their biomass and they’ll go off to like an extraction facility, and at that point they’ll take an isolate on such as cannabidiol, C B D.

Gotcha. Okay, so let’s do a very brief terminology and uses 1 0 1 for the less informed amongst us. So we’ve got.

Which I guess is the plant that you grow and you can make rope from and all those good things. You’ve got C, B, D, which obviously I give to my dog on 4th of July. I’ve got the cream to rub on my back. And then you’ve got cannabis, which obviously back in the day was far more fun than it was now. So talk to me about the three different elements and give me a bit of a 1 0 1, I guess from a chemistry per.

I’ll give you a perspective from, uh, someone I ran into sometime back at a conference. His name’s Jaime Bra Villa and he used, uh, cannabinoid oils both from, you know, cannabis type oils, extracts, used those to treat his wife Nicole, and she treated her for her stage four metastatic breast cancer. And she had tumors all through her body and he watched, and she watched over a period of five months, all those tumors.

D. So that right there will tell you the impact as well as C B D being an f d A approved drug under the name Epidiolex, uh, to take and prevent the seizures of these children that can have 30 or 40 seizures a day, two epileptic conditions that’s being treated. And I believe it’s something like 80,000 children, uh, that are being treated with the epi epidiolex, uh, to prevent these seizures.

So it’s keeping them. Wow. So this has a huge impact on me, especially when you’re hitting things like cancer. You’re hitting, saving children’s lives, children taking this on a regular day-to-day basis. Mm-hmm. . So again, what we need though is we need a way by which to take and have controlled and extended delivery of these types of compounds.

And we need these compounds to get safely or to be made safely. So again, the nutraceutical, if you wanna call it that the nutra or food ingredient market needs to have some standards within the market. For what they sell to people like us. You know? And then there needs to be the high standards as usual with pharmaceuticals and getting those out to a, to someone that needs the medications.

We can’t slip on the, uh, the rigor of how we make these cannabinoids or how they’re isolated and put inside things like gummies. I mean, this is very important that we look at what’s inside, everything inside these gummies before people start consuming 2, 3, 4 gummies. A. You know, that’s a lot of gummies over a period of someone’s life if they wanna take and sort of like institute that inside their practice.

For sure. Is that really sort of what the crux of what inspired you with

the business? Yeah. I went towards, when I saw people using solvents for making these ingredients or food ingredients, tray cannabinoids, things from C B, D, I went towards a solventless procedures. Mm-hmm. . So not using solvents. The idea is that you can make these same cannabinoids by not using solvents in the reactions or in the workup procedures, and you don’t wanna have solvents inside your food or solvents inside of vapes or anything else.

I mean, no, solvents are very toxic, even at very, very low concentrations. They’re, they’re toxic, especially if it’s every day. Consuming these types of solvent toxins. Absolutely.

The buildup would be huge. You know, I’ve always thought, and it sounds a bit childlike, but go with me on this, Greg. I’ve always thought that like a majority of the diseases and illnesses that we get that aren’t contributed by man, There’s probably a solution already on Earth, and that’s kind of the vibe I get whenever I read or listen to anything about C B D and the cannabis industry.

It’s like, it’s like the magic bullet if you like to cure. And there are so many examples like the one you just described, you know, of course it’s not gonna do it for everybody. Otherwise, you know, we wouldn’t have such a huge problem with counselors. There are people who have medical conditions who are greatly aided by this industry, and absolutely you’re gonna want the finest quality pharmaceutical grade, solvent free example of that

food for thought there.

Yeah. Adding to your, uh, comment there with cancers, I mean, there are a lot of people getting tumors. Mm-hmm. A lot of people getting cancers, different types of cancers. And now we see. We’re consuming one credit card worth of plastic every year. Everybody . Wow. Wow. One credit card worth a year is going into your body and your blood.

They’re finding this microplastic inside a breast milk. Yeah. Which means that maybe the infants are drinking the, uh, the plastic as well. So you wonder how people are getting so many things of. Hmm. You look at additives inside of foods, and I never understood why food industry uses benzoate salts that could turn into benzoic acid, that could have small levels of decarboxylation to form benzene, I mean to replace things like sodium chloride.

You know, something that’s in a normal salt, but you know, these type things very conscious of, and I think in the cannabinoid space, I know that these things, these cannabinoids have tremendous benefits. I mean, if you wanna say nature has provided these mm-hmm. , or if you’re a creationist, that there is a creator and that these were created for us, these natural medication.

That we don’t need medications from petroleum oil, that we could actually find these things in plants. Yeah. You know that we could use them, but also that we could use these things as plastics, what we find in plants. So we made a polymer out of C B, D, so we make a polymer outta CBD B and a dipp acid. A dipp acid is from beets.

Right. A CBD B is from the hemp plant. Yeah, of course. Now these plastics are thermoplastics. You can make and you can mold, melt, mold, all these types of things you do with normal plastics. They have a higher price. . So why do they have a higher price? Well, they have a higher price because hemp is not being grown prominently throughout the country.

Yes. If, if hemp was grown like corn, well then these polymers I make that are naturally biodegradable would have prices in the same ballpark as what you’d have for like polylactic acid, which is a polymer that’s derived from corn that’s compostable. You know, with, with our polymers, they’re not just compostable, they’re made of c b.

Which is a known anti-inflammatory. Yeah. And a polymer is an antioxidant, non phenolic, which means that this polymer can take and protect things from oxidative stress. You see that the thing we have, that’s the biggest thing in life that we try to oppose, is oxidative stress inside of our bodies and outside of our bodies.

It’s the oxygen in the atmosphere combined with the heat and the. You know, this leads to degradation of these common plastics, commodity plastics that we see today. It makes them more brittle. It makes them break apart into smaller pieces. Yeah. You know, and then if you look inside the body, we have things like reactive oxygen species, which are also radicals.

But again, my claim is that if we’re gonna make polymers and and go after things in the future, we need to go after things are made from natural feed. And they need to be things that people can just take and easily, let’s say, return to the earth. Mm-hmm. not where you need some complicated procedure as to how you’d compost it and how it’s different from food being composted.

Yeah. You know, so again, natural biodegradability is where you could take a polymer in some sort of plastic and just throw it in dirt. It could be basic dirt like lime, and that sort of polymer would just take and disintegrate, metabolize inside the earth just as if it was a hemp. Or a bee plant.

How long would it take for that type of polymer, say packaging to fully compost, if you like, back into the earth.

There’s no composting. You don’t need composting for this, uh, this polymer. So literally I could, would take just to dissolve into the earth if, if it’s a certain baity and you could take and control the time it takes for this thing to just naturally biodegrade based upon the s. The chemical structure of how we modify it.

So what we need to think about is we need to think about things that would take and exist within our lifetime and then just disappear. So

is it solely money? The reason we are not doing this already, because I’m sat here feeling a little bit stupid, if I’m really honest. I’m like, hang on a minute, I’m talking to this man who is fully grasped and taken on board the medical benefits of this natural plant.

You can also make packaging for dead. That is not gonna pollute our planet. Is it solely down to money? Yeah. A lot of, so for thought there, sadly,

people care about, they find someone successful if they make money. Mm-hmm. They look at the size of their house and they go, that guy is successful, or that lady’s successful.

That’s what they do. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Truth. Yeah. The heroes that people choose are not the heroes. I don’t, I don’t wanna go to a fan’s only type webpage and. Paying someone a prescription to watch them clip their fingernails. You know that, that I do not, I don’t find that to be something substantial. . Oh, Greg, you are funny.

It’s

so true. I’m gonna, I won’t be looking you up on TikTok or Instagram today.

No, you will not gonna have thing,

Greg. Joking aside, how do we change the world? You know, the technology is there, nature is provided, and the technology is there for us to be a much cleaner race. What do we do? You know, whether it be locally here in Kinetica or globally?

What do we need to make people listen and to make this happen? How do we get into a solution?

Well, first people need to speak out and say, this is an important area that needs to be. You know, uh, that’s one aspect and I see that the presidential administration has made it a, an important thing. I saw that recently in one of the Biden announcements.

Mm-hmm. , you know, it doesn’t show my political position, but it’s a, this is the right step. We have to do it no matter who you are on this earth. So I think that if people are not gonna be conscious of the whatev, was it 800 million tons of this plastic? 800 million tons? I mean, it’s ridiculous. Maybe I got the number wrong, but it’s a lot of plastic and, and every time I get an Amazon order in, I feel really bad just tearing that plastic apart and all these things, and just realizing only a very small percentage of this stuff gets recycled.

Yeah. You know? And where does the rest of it go? Well, it’s floating out there in our ocean. You know, you take a trip to Hawaii, look down from your airplane, and you ain’t gonna see a nice big ocean. You’re gonna see a big island of plastic. Just floating there. I also

also believe we ship quite a lot of it overseas so that we don’t have to deal with that problem, which is, is quite seamless.

Everything gets shipped. I mean, you ship it from here to there, you got business to business shipping. Yeah. Right. And all those things, those packages get opened. Things may just get tossed. Right. And it gets repackaged and reshifted, you know, you got the whole vertical that’s doing this type stuff. It’s not just at the end customer.

It’s the whole.

Yeah, it’s a big overhaul. We certainly need, and you’re right, you know, we are starting to hear rumblings from Washington that this does matter, you know, and obviously at the moment there’s COP 27, I believe on at the moment in Sharmel shaking, you know, and just maybe these decision makers who we elect, which they’ve often forget, that we elect can actually put some action in, get into the solution, stop contemplating the navel.

Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox. Bra . I’m growling a

little bit, Greg. We all have it inside of us to be greedy. It’s very easy to be greedy. That’s an easy thing. But what’s hard to be is to be the other way, is to be generous. You

know, that’s, it’s not even generosity though, is it? You know, when I think about the tenants of conscious capitalism, of course we wanna be doing good.

You know, we wanna be doing the right thing. And but

to all people. To all people, yeah. I don’t care. Good, bad, ugly, whatever. It doesn’t matter. It’s, it’s doing good to all people because you have this consciousness that, I have this vision of the world too. Like other people can have visions. My vision of the world is where we’re using all of our plastics for the most part.

I’ll say 99%. There may be reasons to use other plastics, but certainly one time use plastics. Those things should just disappear and disappear safely. Yeah,

absolutely. How do we make that happen? How do we make it happen? That’s the thing that keeps me awake is that we have the technology, you know, you know, hearing about, you know, the hemp.

Packaging that literally we could make some high level decisions today. Oh yeah. And start to make a difference. Yep. I wanna see hemp is beautiful. Of hemp and, and beats, like you were saying about the polymer being made from beats.

You know? Yeah. Hemp is a beautiful, uh, plant. The plant, like I’d said in the thing there, it’s, it’s weed.

These things can be controlled. Their growth, you can actually take and increase the amount of cannabinoids inside the hemp plant through appropriate lighting and whatnot. So getting into programs here with Jerry Berkowitz, who, uh, works with hemp on campus, beginner’s ways he can enrich those, those chemicals that are being used for drugs, uh, we can make better biomaterials.

And for anyone that works out, you know, lactic acid is an inflammatory, not an antiinflammatory. Yep. So it still releases and it’s good that it still releases. But polylactic acid, we’ve done comparative studies. A PLA is not an antioxidant. You know, our polymer is an antioxidant. So if, if you want something to go inside your body and sort of take and let’s say, protect things that you’re trying to deliver, yep.

It’s great that the polymer now can take and do chemistries with these reactive oxygens or even reactive nitrogen species to preserve, let’s say that drug or preserve that enzyme or whatever it happens to be that you’re deliver. This is my perspective in terms of things that would go inside the body now.

Yeah. A lot of people don’t know that cosmetics, if you look at things like cosmetics, and maybe I’m just old in my times, but, or paints, take your paints on the wall. The, the paints. These could be made of like polymer particles, right, that are sheared onto a surface. So all those paints are polymers. And then the question would be is, well, we talked about lead in the paint many years ago.

The question is now how do we generate a paint that can take and really protect things, but the same token, not be at all bad for the environment. But again, you can get into all kinds of topics like this as you get into naturally biodegradable and antioxidant types of polymers. We should be shooting for the sky.

Absolutely. There is absolutely no ceiling. The Curious Capitalist Podcast on behalf of the Conscious Capitalism Connecticut chapter is created and produced by Red Rock Branding. If you are enjoying this episode, please subscribe to and share this podcast today. But that kind of leads me on to like the article that first sort of caught our interest at Conscious Capitalism was an article that ran in the CT post about the hemp farmers, specifically in Connecticut.

Why is there being this massive drop in hemp farmers? Was it solely because of the, the hemp price crash as they call it? Or is it being, you know, replicated over the country? Why are we not encouraging more people to grow, I guess is the question?

Well, I think the, when you take like hemp, so the farmer who grows the hemp is on that part of the vertical where it starts.

So the farmer needs to find a customer to send the hemp. So what will happen is they’ll send the hemp out and maybe the hemp will get ground up. Maybe it’s just the flower, maybe it’s the other portions of the hemp. But they need to have that other person on the vertical, right. That they sell to. Mm-hmm.

Now, some people, the hemp farmers, they may have a full vertical. They may go from the farming all the way up to a final product that sells. But for your common type of, you know, your hemp farmer, my, my grandfather was a farmer in Pennsylvania. And you know, again, you go with crops that you know, you’re, you’re trying to survive.

That’s your career. He did truck driving when he wasn’t able to take and grow crops. What I’m just saying is that for someone like that, they have to have a customer they take and provide to someone they sell to. And I don’t know if the structure is there for those hemp farmers that they can find those customers.

And again, the customer they have too, they may have be. Moral standing themselves in how they do their business. Mm-hmm. in terms of what they wanna get into. So maybe some won’t wanna go into the food ingredient market at all. And maybe they’re only doing the hemp, let’s say for fiber paper, things like this.

Yeah. But again, I mean, it’s their responsibility, don’t get me wrong. But we also have to have responsibility as the state to help guide those hemp fi farmers, help them find customers, especially, especially if things like state laws are preventing things like moving hemp or whatever it happens to be, biomass across state lines.

I don’t know what all the laws are now because those laws constantly change and someone like a farmer is not gonna have or may not have, you know, a lawyer full-time to tell them how the law is changing from one year to the next. Yeah. These are just some of the points I bring up or things that need to No, they valid address from infrastructure.

No, and, and absolutely there’re things that I probably haven’t thought of. You know, I think the regulation, but the demand,

I’ve got two lawyers right now that, just two lawyers that always advise me with things, the company lawyers. Right. And yeah. You know, I don’t know if every farmer can take and afford a, can afford certain types of lawyers or not.

No. But also if there was the demand, like you said, it’s a supply and demand situation. If there were more enlightened people who were looking for products that were derived from him, You know, I’m sure that those legal issues would disappear very quickly. Let’s have it right. You know, I’m

sure that there ability, we’re still, there’s a reason why a big pharma has not yet moved in full-time with this.

That’s the question that should be really be asked if there is such potential in this. With big pharma and GW Pharmaceuticals sold for a few billion to a jazz pharma for this Epidiolex and also their sativa. So there is stuff happening in big. But we don’t see much of that right now inside the United States.

So the question is, you know, is there something happening behind the scenes? I don’t know, ,

is there something happening behind the scenes in the pharmaceutical industry of the United States of America?

Could you guess? Insert your own answer, could you ?

I will get irritated. So let’s move on, . So what does the future of the industry look like?

And I want you to do it with your, I guess, your scientific head knowing what is the possibilities that we’ve touched on. But more so also as, I guess, you know, as a business. What does the future of this industry look like? I mean, we know where we’d like it to be. What’s the realistic

endgame realistically, is that you could be shipping out drugs that would take and do tumor reductions out to people and not have them come in for as much chemotherapy is what they’re having.

Oh man, that’s one reality. Another reality is that you could take and replace all one time used plastics with plastics that would be derived from. So again, that’s a huge one as well. If you take things like a 3D printing biomaterials and so on, I mean, get into things like, could be stents, could be catheters, right?

Organs. Yep. Go down an entire list. These are the things that hemp has to offer that that, again, through these structures that we’ve just published, that these poly cannabinoids, that they could be used as drugs, pro-drugs, biomaterials, and it could be used to replace things like one time used plastics as well as high performance materials.

And this is something we’re doing right now.

Wow. I mean, the sky really is the

limit. The structures of cannabinoids are just, uh, incredible cuz they. All kinds of structural variations. You’ve got the cannabinoids and you’ve got the terpenes in there as well. Yeah. And remember the plant? The plant has those terpenes for good reason.

Well, all those reasons survive out there in nature. You know, it has lots of insects coming in. It’s got insects that wants to come in, ones that doesn’t wanna have come in, and it’s gotta have its own protect. Nature to itself. But the question too is can you harness that from the plant as well when you take and make these synthetic materials from the plant?

Right. Those things can be harnessed. I believe so. I think there’s a huge, I mean, I think the hemp plays a huge role in the future of this planet. I believe it plays a larger role than.

That is huge. I wanna say to any business owner out there, anybody who works in manufacturing or any type of business, if this hasn’t lit a fire under your backside, then nothing ever will

It just won’t. Your soul is dead , it just is. One of the other key tenets, if you like, within Conscious Capitalism is about how we choose to run business. And, and how we treat our people and how we lead our people. Talk to me about the teams at both of the respective businesses that you’re involved with.

Tell me about your teams.

I’ve got the, I think the most loving team around people I’ve met along the way. You know, some have been around for some time and then just falling off. It can be a very frustrating adventure being a conscious entrepreneur because there’s a lot of people that just don’t. They just wanna make the money.

But, you know, getting into this, we do preclinical work as well, so making sure that all of our product is tested with at least animals to see if there’s any toxicity mm-hmm. before they actually go out and get used. Uh, this is not normal practice, but Brian Thompson at uh, three BC as well as, uh, someone who’d come on, uh, jazz deep, uh, sin hot that he came on, as well as Chief Operating Officer.

Yes. You know, again, we stick to our principles of solventless synthesis for what we. Out of our company. And again, the idea is that if you never use solvent, there will never be solvent in your product. And we don’t have to use these toxic solvents that are being used across the planet. These, you know, again, these things from oil derived sources.

We can just do this without those things and don’t have to throw the things out or incinerate ’em when we. Yeah, when it comes to PC T R X, my president here at Yukon, the new president here, Redin Merick, she introduced me to Kinetica Innovations, which is the venture arm of the state. And I gave a presentation and one of the people there in the call was Constantine, Dr.

And Nakira Andis also has a very large heart, very much towards, you know, he’s running the Clean Tech Fund through Connecticut. So again, someone who has, again, this level of consciousness, not. Let’s make money, but let’s do things for good, you know, good purpose, good reason. And he’s done that with a company that he’s been working with, both 6K Incorporated and also Buyer Rez.

But me and Constantine of team together bring safety to the cannabinoid market. What most people do not know, and this is a very serious matter, is that c b D cannabidiol can be converted to th. The, the component gets people really high. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It can be done with only heat. There is no chemicals that are required.

There is no mass added to C B D or mass lost. C B D has the exact same number of atoms, same type of atoms as what th h c has all it requires. And what we found in a recent publication that’s just been accepted and will be showing is that CBD B, with only heat turns into thc, which will pose a significant.

Health risk to the public. That’s what I say, and I say this because any teenager that would wanna take and go to C B D, just put it in right side their oven at home and put it at, you know, 375 or three 50 or whatever the oven goes up to and cooks it up for half an hour, they’re gonna get thc. And I, I should let you know that I did all this, all this work under the, you know, again, permissions of the Deep Drug Enforcement Agency.

They’ve come through and, uh, approved my lab for Schedule one use and looking at these poly cannabinoids. But our poly cannabinoids, the great thing that they do is they preserve the C B D. Pete will not convert the CBD in those polymers over to thc. It’s not gonna happen. What? In fact, you have to heat ’em up so high that they’ll start to combu.

And when I say combust, I mean generate CO2 and H two O, but our poly CBDs, again, are a tamper-proof version of C B D that would allow for a controlled and extended release of the C B D such that we can boost bioavailability. That’s what Constantine and I are getting into, because one of the side effects of CBD to these children, if you [email protected], is that they’ll take the CBD inside oil and a side effect will be as they get diarrhea.

I believe that’s one in four children will get the side effect of diarrhea. And even though it saves their lives, again, anyone who’s had diarrhea, you can appreciate that a child having this possibly every day could be dangerous and embarrassing as well as many other things. So, mm-hmm. . So again, these things like microdosing, if you wanna call it that, this would be a way by which to take a microdose cbd, b, d, and to do it safely.

But again, CBD on a shelf, on a shelf, in a grocery store or whatever. That C B D, if it only requires heat to convert, you know, all we’re talking about is it could be a matter of time. It could be a vehicle that was delivering that C B D to a store that happened to sit a little bit too long inside of the hot sun.

Right? And next thing you know, you’ve got people calling up poison centers. I don’t know, but I’m just saying it’s something that needs to be looked

at. , you’ve got me thinking now, so I’ve got quite a few.

Um, that’s, that’s what we need to do. We all need to thank everybody.

Yeah. I’ve got quite a few c b d items in our house right now.

In fact, the dog put it in your oven and Yeah,

I was just thinking, dog, you’re open at 3 50, 3 50 Fahrenheit. Put it in your oven for half hour, and you tell me if you feel any need differently after using that product.

I don’t have a level one d e a clearance. Greg, I’ll get in big trouble. .

No, I, I dunno if you’ll, because you know, it’s kind of hard to say that, you know, Hey look, heat got to it.

And they’ll be like, what? Yeah, heat. Well, heat from where, you know, earth,

they wouldn’t believe me. They think it wild, but I get arrested for

being well, well then call me up. I’ll, I’ll be your witness. I’ll be on the witness thing and they’ll say, Hey look, I got a paper that shows only heat turns C b D into thc.

She didn’t mean to. It’s a deal. It’s a

deal. Weather. This is important.

Well, this is important for people who have, who have commercial drivers’ licenses. Absolutely. This is important. The people who are law

enforce this. The forklift truck drivers. Yeah. I mean, this is a huge implication.

And yours, I’m making that right now.

I’ll make that right now here on your program, I’ll say that CBD with heat will turn into T H C and that could pose a significant health risk to the. And that’s something we have to be thinking about. And that’s what my company is thinking about with P C T R X. That’s getting C B D to people safely.

Yeah. In a tamperproof platform,

you got a big job on your hands. We all have No, I’ll take that back. We all have. We all have very big,

we all do. When enough people die, maybe we’ll let, we’ll start looking at it and say, okay, this is an issue, Greg.

Do it beforehand. Not unless there’s a dollar bill in there.

Don’t be ridiculous. I know people dying is not a good enough reason anymore. Now, before I start sprouting off and saying things that will probably get our podcast kicked off of Apple and Google, you’ve lit a fire under my backside. I’ve got to be honest, and I hope you guys as the listen. I’ve also got that same passion and enthusiasm and like we have no plan B, was it Planet B?

They like to say we’ve got a real opportunity, but we do need to stop worshiping the dollar bill and actually put our money where our mouths are. And um, being crack addicts,

I’m referring to oil. Absolutely crack addicts. We’re also crack addicts, crack addicts and crack addict. Frack

addicts without even knowing some people, without even knowing, you know,

nj, it’s not, I think about this now every day.

Every, like I say, everything I do, it’s almost, you know, the only way I can really save face to myself is trying to work towards this goal here. And hopefully it will happen because every time I unwrap my, uh, like I got a little donut right here. Yeah. Unwrap this. This goes out to all the schools, by the way.

And I know that this plastic wrap will not be recycled. It’ll probably be incinerated or just buried. Yep.

Absolutely.

And how many billion people on Earth are eating rappers like that every day? Do you know

something? I do, Greg, and I’ve done it since I was a little kid and my geography teacher was very inspiring to me about the environment and it taught me that the world was a lot bigger than me and it was, I had opportunities in this big wide world.

I didn’t have to stay in the small town where I was born. I could go and explore the world. She also taught me that my. in the world. I had a responsibility and we used to do this thing and my whole class did it where when we were offered a plastic bag, carry a plastic bag in the uk, I would always say, no, thank you.

I’m saving the world, and here I am many decades on. Now, I’d like to say I’m getting on a bit now. I still do it in shop, so I go into a store, I may get myself a, a drink or something to eat. Would you like a bag? In fact, no. Mostly in America. I get given a bag without request, but if they ask me, do you want a bag?

I say, no, thank you. I’m saving the world. And just about half a dozen times, the person behind me said, I like that. I’m gonna say that. That’s my contribution in that small little way is that ripple effect, that if you stop for a second at a till, at a cashier counter and say, I don’t need a bag, because you know what, if I can carry these goods to your cashier, register to pay, then I’m pretty sure I can walk my backside out to my car and put ’em in the car and plastic bags when they brought in the charge.

I was delighted, but I’d be more happy. Did away with them and Well,

now, now the real question is plastic bag is what you talking about only within the one percentile? Or are you talking about something within the 20 percentile? I bet you what you’re talking about is within the one percentile. Mm-hmm. , if you take and you look about, like I say with these, I mean it’s, uh, single use plastic bottle water bottle bottles.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, you can say that plastic bag probably only weighs, maybe, I mean how much it’s like light is. Yep. Right. But then you take something like, could be a bottle. Mm-hmm. could be a, the, all the packaging they put inside of a box to protect stuff from banging around. Yep. Right. You take those things and now add up that mass.

Wow. And that’s, and some of these things float. Some of these things don’t float. Some of these things are more hazard than others, but, but again, these things were all breaking down. They’re all floating out there in our oceans. They’re all inside of our soil. You know, the question is, is will we ever escape this?

We need to do microplastic cleanup. Yes, we gotta need to clean up and we have to have a replacement right away, because every day that goes by, or every year, that 800 million tons of plastic is being produced and not recycled. That’s more of a cleanup that we have. And you are

eating a credit card’s worth of plastic.

That’s what I’ve read.

And used cardboard. I was like, look at that. How hard was that, mate? Really? Was that difficult? How many years has it taken you to realize that you didn’t really need to do that? You didn’t need to, eh,

but caution too that just because it’s natural doesn’t mean you still have to research with the re natural things if you make enough of it.

You still have to research if that’s toxic or not to that local environment. So I’m saying is that we have to continue on this pathway. Hmm. You know, solving the problems we have to aim higher in terms of how we see our future and going towards that and not living in the present. You know, what we’re doing right now in the present.

It’s not good. Or even the packages where you, I did this morning, I had a package, I couldn’t open it. And what do you do with the package that you can’t open? You try to force it open and then if you can’t force it open, you find a pair of scissors and you cut it open and now you’ve got all this little PR plastic scrap still just to hanging around.

Yeah. I’ve already pre aged it. I’ve already done the work, some of the work already. That nature, you know, when it breaks it down or OX daily stresses it out. I’ve already started the process. Just tearing this thing all, just trying to get my thing out. So those type things really upset me is when they’re, they’re just melt molded around your product and you can’t get it out.

Yep. It’s good for security. It’s good that no one will take and steal it. That’s in a larger type thing, but it’s hard as hell when it comes to. , you know, again, trying to remove the stuff or you know, like I said, pre aging it to become microplastic. Yep. .

I don’t know if, uh, this podcast, this certainly hasn’t made me happy.

It certainly put fire back in my belly and reminded me of all the things that really matter, Greg, and I really appreciate you for, for coming on and being a, a part of the podcast. And I really hope that there are lots of irritated virgin on angry listeners out. Who are in positions of authority who can actually start to push

that aiming behind.

I’ll go on your team. I’m right behind them. Uh, if they wanna lead the charge, I’m right behind them. I, I’ll, I’ll lead a charge, but I like where I am right now with my own wealth, you know, I’m happy. Yeah. But I, I’m just saying, I, I’d be happy to take and be part of it. And I love being part of this program.

I really support your

mission. It’s amazing. If people wanna get in touch with you, Greg, how should they do? So if they’ve listened to this, they feel inspired, like, I need to speak to that. Up in Connecticut University. He’s a normal guy going on . No, sorry, Greg, I’m not buying that first. I’m a normal guy. . .

I was in all the remedial classes in school, so don’t, don’t play me up,

Oh,

okay. Prof. How, how can people get in touch with you if they wanna continue this great

fight? They can contact me by my Yukon email address, you know, for like just general inquiries. Mm-hmm. , so it’s G dot satz. At yukon.edu. Fabulous. I’ll also include that in the show notes. There’s two way with SAD sings.

You can remember it. S O T Z I was told means drunkard in German. And then the other way is it also rhymes with snot sling.

Goodness. This is what students, this is what you learn from students when you’re a professor. So I got snot sl, I got sock stink. I mean, there’s all kinds of things from my last name that you couldn’t imagine.

thought zing does it for me. That’s good enough. All right. I will also include your contact details in the show notes, which you’ll be able to look up and get in touch cuz I am sure that you may get a few emails and also I believe you’re on LinkedIn as well.

So we’ll try and push some people your. Let’s clean up the Earth Truck

him. Let’s clean it up and let’s, let’s, let’s clean up the earth. .

Let’s make a difference. Let’s make a difference. We here for a long time. Let’s make our own difference. , buddy, you’re amazing. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for your time being a part of the Curious Capitalist.

I really appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode of The Curious Capitalist. If you would like to find out more about Conscious Capitalism or if you would like to join the local chapter, visit the website, Connecticut dot conscious capitalism.org. The Curious Capitalist is available on all podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Spotify.

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