Impact at scale caught up with Barak Ekshtein the Founder of TONTOTON. TOTOTON is a plastic credit solution for non-recycled plastic. Choosing to focus on the hard-to-recycle plastic that typically gets left behind in the current recycling system. So far they have collected and treated more than 2,513 tons of orphan plastic and are growing every day.

Barak was inspired to start this business when he noticed the growing amount of plastic that we could not recycle and wanted to do something about it—developing an economy around cleaning up orphan plastic and creating jobs for those that collect this plastic.

Some of the topics that Barak discussed:

  • The $10 billion recycled plastic market
  • Recyclable vs non-recyclable
  • The problem with orphan plastic
  • Taxing the producers of plastic
  • Plastic credit system
  • Transparency in the recycling system

Other titles we considered for this episode:

  1. It is a problem that keeps growing and growing
  2. It's everyone's fault, so there is no one to blame
  3. Move from selective collection to inclusive collection
  4. It is a mix of business opportunity and strong impact
  5. Impact businesses must be profitable

Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):