Episode 54: Overcoming the Plastics Crisis Takes Bold Action (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Liz Bothwell: Hi everyone, welcome to Waste360's NothingWasted! Podcast. On every episode, we invite the most interesting people in waste recycling and organics to sit down with us and chat candidly about their thoughts, their work, this unique industry and so much more. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode.

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[00:00:26] Liz: Hi, everyone, this is Liz Bothwell from Waste360 with Dave Ford, founder of SoulBuffalo and co-founder of The Oceans Plastic Leadership Network. Welcome, Dave, thanks for being on the show today.

[00:00:38] Dave Ford: Hey Liz, how are you? Thanks for having me.

[00:00:40] Liz: Thank you, we're so glad to have you here. We've been wanting to talk to you for a while. Would love for you to give a little background on yourself and introduce you to our listeners. What fuels your passion for the work you're doing?

[00:00:52] Dave: SoulBuffalo started as an expedition company, we have been taking senior leadership on environmental expeditions around the world for years now. Done a lot of work in the Arctic and the Antarctic on climate change expeditions, done a lot of work in Africa and in India, wildlife conservation. Four years ago, really as the plastic issue really came into the sight eye in a really big way, we truly knew that there was an opportunity to experience this issue, tangibly, because it's such a tangible issue.

We chartered a ship and, essentially, ran the first-ever ocean plastics expedition, invited top leaders across the plastic value chain, most of the top NGO dedicated to the plastic waste issue out into the middle of the Atlantic Gyre. We did the Ocean Plastic Leadership Summit last May, which really proved to be the foundational platform for everything we're doing now with our Ocean Plastic Leadership Network.

[00:01:58] Liz: That's great. Was your goal for this to reach some Paris Accord for plastics? What were you thinking, Dave?

[00:02:05] Dave: A lot of good math out there is saying that we have 10 years to solve this, and there's just a tremendous amount of energy and organizations out there that are dedicated to this. We feel if there's anything standing in the way, it's just feed and timing. Especially with everything that's just happened with the coronavirus, it's really important that we keep the momentum going so that we can figure this out within the next 10 years.

We built a platform, specifically, to address those challenges. I think there's a lot of different pot ways that this could all come together, a Paris Accord for plastic is, certainly, one way to do it, but what we're really working to do is synergize and help goose and enable all these amazing organizations that we work with really across the spectrum.

We have Greenpeace and Dow Chemical on our advisory board, and I think that's the first time that's ever happened. We really feel it's really important to include all parties, all solution sets, whether or not they're in direct contrast with each other. We really believe productive tension is the way to get things moving in a much more rapid way than they currently are.

[00:03:24] Liz: I love that, the productive tension and then doing it in such a concrete way. I know you brought together some unlikely friends during your excursion last year. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that went?

[00:03:37] Dave: Yes, sure. We had 160 passengers with us in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean [inaudible 00:03:42]. The reason that the Atlantic Gyre -for those of you who [inaudible 00:03:47] the gyres are five major slow-moving currents that capture a lot of the plastic. The Atlantic Gyre is an interesting one because you can get out in the middle of the open ocean and experience the plastic issue, because there's these giant seaweed patches, Sargassum seaweed. The plastic actually gets caught in the seaweed patches.

Now, the Pacific Gyre gets all the press because it's so much bigger and it stretches like a huge swath of the Northern Pacific, but the Atlantic Gyre is actually an easier place to really tangible feel the issue. That's why we pick the Atlantic Gyre.

Again, we had 160 participants with us, expand in the spectrum, we had Greenpeace and Nestlé Waters actually shared a room on this vessel. It wasn't our idea, but it came to be, it was in the middle of a Greenpeace action against Nestlé Waters. That was a really powerful experience for the two leaders that were in a very small room on the ship, that they were able to forge relationships. It's been helpful and understand more about the complexity of both sides of the issue and each other's perspectives.

I think the most important thing was, really, twofold. First of all, we hit the mother lode of plastic, we hit a ton of plastic, we were pulling a handful of plastic out of these seaweed patches. There's a myth that there's these giant trash islands out there. That does happen from time to time when you're in a storm, watch out for a hurricane or in certain places in Southeast Asia where these issues are really really bad, but for the most part, it's actually much scarier, t's more like a plastic smog, it’s tiny fragments of microplastics or bigger pieces that are eaten by fish.

There's certainly a lot of big durable goods out there, as well. We were pulling lobster traps that had come down to Bermuda from Maine, and octopus pots that have floated over from Morocco, they had these little plastic octopus pots. We hit a ton of stuff, we had a big consumer package of a good company that makes a lot of toothbrushes, caught two of their toothbrushes out of the Gyre when we were there. We definitely had a really emotional experience for a lot of folks that were there, that we hit- Well, there's no guarantee that you're going to hit anything, but we hit a lot.

I think that was, of course, really important on the experiential and expedition side of the thing. More importantly, we had really brilliant leaders, we had six CEOs, we had a lot of CSOs, senior R&D Leads, brand leaders, we took all these brilliant minds, we put them together in groups and four initiatives were born on the ship. Two which are funded, two which are not funded but have a lot of traction, so eight months later, I really proved the model that when you take these brilliant leaders and put them together in unique ways, that magic can happen.

We're really excited about that and working to duplicate that into some degree online, like, "How can we put the right leaders together online to help solve everybody's problems, collectively?" Because there's certainly a lot of complex issues around this specific subject, this is not an easy world crisis to tackle.

[00:07:20] Liz: No, not at all. It's great that you brought so many brilliant minds together and that it was so action-oriented. You said you walked away with four main tenets, can you talk about those a little bit?

[00:07:32] Dave: I'd say the first one. This is a funded initiative. We brought five of the top waste picker cooperatives in the world. Now, for people in the audience who don't know about the waste pickers, there's projected 15 million informal economy waste pickers that are pulling plastic and other materials, but largely plastic, out of landfills, from beaches, out of the environment, they're really the unsung heroes of the circular economy.

A lot of these people are living below the poverty line, whatever they're picking every day it's how they're feeding their families at night. There's a lot of really great organizations that are dedicated to helping these people, both public and private sectors, we have both represented. We had five organizations that were with us on the ship. These five organizations are Mr. Green Africa, which is based in Nairobi. Chintan, which is in India. We Go, which is based in Brazil, but like a global network in itself. Plastic for Change, in India, and First Mile, which is in Haiti.

Largely, these organizations are in the global South, the developing world. There is just a tremendous amount of waste that’s ended up in the environment, and these people are getting it out. The goal of this specific program is certainly to empower these people with living wage training, with access to healthcare, access to microfinance loans, but more importantly, we're working to help them get global access. The brands that can buy their materials and stabilize their markets.

One of the organizations, for example, just a few weeks ago reached out because, out of nowhere, the pricing just cut in half. What they were getting routinely over a long period of time, all of a sudden, cut in half, and they didn't really have any good explanation for why. There's so much demand from the big CPGs, the Consumer Packaged Goods, want this recycled material.

Now, definitely can get it tricky with food-grade or different specs that need to happen, there's a tremendous amount of initiatives like the Coke's, the Pepsi's or Nestlé's in the world are putting their stake in the ground saying they want more recycled material in their packaging. There's a lot of supply out there, so we're working really hard to help these organizations align directly with the big brands to help stabilize their markets.

The second initiative is being housed by PYXERA Global, which is one of our partners and one of our advisory board members. This is totally born on the ship, it's called The Zero Plastic Waste Communities, it's all about bringing a zero plastic waste footprint to individual village archetypes in the developing world. Think about a coastal African city like Takoradi, Ghana, which is one of our first targets. There's lots of small coastal villages all over the world, so the idea is to get this coastal village to a zero plastic waste footprint, and then roll out the blueprint and the learnings to help other similar archetypal cities.

We have pilots that we're working on in Rajasthan, which is the mouth of the Ganges, landlocked, totally different. Anna Warren is there, we're working with island communities, specifically in conversations with Sitka, Alaska, which is Native American communities, totally different ball of wax when you're talking about island communities. Now they're working with their waste and how the plastic wastes, specifically. The idea is just been build these models so they can scale across different similar communities.

We have an alternative material, IP factor that we're working on with John Warner, who is the father of Green Chemistry, he's one of the most renowned chemists in the world, he won the Perkin Medal, he is just a brilliant, amazing guy. The right guy to build the next round alternative materials that are marine biodegradable that, basically, can break down in the environment in a non-toxic way.

This is a bigger picture, we're really heavily rolled up with this one right now. There's IP, shared IP across multiple partners. There's lawyers involved when you get with IP, but this is one of the ships. The idea is just to work with John and with a slew of major brand partners to build materials that don't exist right now that could help solve this issue.

Lastly, we have a program called Zero Hero, that is a massive idea at scale as well. It's all about getting retailers to work together. We have some incredible brand partners that are already aligned with us on this, but get retailers to work together to make it so the average Joe or the average Jane, when they're shopping in a grocery or big-box environment, to understand what they're buying is best in class packaging.

Identifying the criteria of what that means, some of that is going to be a percentage of recycled content in the material, some is packaging reduction, reuse and refill models. How can we get it so that a large percentage of the populace just think about the type of packaging that they're buying when they're in a retail experience? This is global in scale, we're talking to some European retailers and Australian retailers, additionally, to all the big guys here in the US. Consumer consciousness doesn't get more important with respect to this issue, they're getting consumers just to understand and care about what they're buying. Those are the four, we're super excited. I just had such amazing people aligned with each of them.

[00:13:36] Liz: I love that. You have a lot that you're working on, right now. A lot aspirational that can really come to fruition, we applaud you for that. I know, Ellen from HP was on the ship. She was on our show recently, she just really seems to be walking the walk, for sure. It sounds like she's not only helping with the waste pickers lives in Haiti, but actually finding new markets and new uses for plastic. Are you finding this same type of concrete effort happening with a lot of your members?

[00:14:07] Dave: I would say, that's the most rewarding part of doing this, is that you have people like Ellen Jackowski, who’s the global head of Sustainability at HP and her archetype, there's people in every company that just their life mission absolutely revolves around solving this issue. Ellen and HP are doing some incredible work, but I'd say all of our partners have similar initiatives, maybe focus on different things, but we're just working with top leaders inside of these really big organizations and NGOs, for sure, that just wake up every day and know that they can make a difference.

As a part of the network right now, we have PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, P&G, Hasbro, Dow, HP, Waste Management, Nestlé Waters, Clorox, Carnival, The American Chemistry Council as a partner, we have MacArthur Foundation. On the NGO side we have Greenpeace, as I mentioned, National Geographic, Recycling Partnership, I think Keefe introduced us, if I remember correctly. We have Circulate Capital, Closed Loop Partners, The World Economic Forum, GPAP is a part of what we're doing, Conservation International, World Wildlife Fund, is on and on, it's really been incredible.

We have 65 organizations in the world, and I would say we have 90% on the NGO side of organizations that are just eating, sleeping and breathing this every day. We're surrounded by brilliant people, Sustainable Packaging Coalition, SAP is a great partner, we have ASU, NYU and Stanford representing in the Advisory Board. Systemic, I could keep going on and on. It's really humbling in a lot of ways to be surrounded by such incredible organizations on all sides.

[00:16:05] Liz: I like that. If you get that many brains thinking about this issue, you're certainly going to come up with solutions. I love your idea of speed, that it matters and getting it done within the 10-year time frame, that's awesome.

[00:16:19] Dave: Yes. I think what we really tried to do is just invite all the major players to the party, we're not looking at this competitively. We're a membership organization and we invited all the other membership organizations to be a part of this because we need to synergize, there's definitely a lot of duplication that's happening out of there, there's a lot of confusion, I think, on the brand side of like, "All right, should I invest with this NGO or that NGO?" [unintelligible 00:16:48] what they're doing is similar, so we can help facilitate this energy and speed through what we're doing, just help people connect deeper and faster than we're doing our job.

That's what we've been able to do and that's how we've been able to build the trust to convene around this issue in this type of way. I think what our strength has been is that, for years, we've been taking C-suite executives to Antarctica and Greenland, it's been experiential and nature. But more importantly than the experiential piece, it's been about the connection and how deep you can take the relationships when you're in these types of settings. We've been experimenting online and finding a lot of ways that we can do similar things, creatively and uniquely, online as well.

That’s been a big part of what we've been building out, as the coronavirus crisis has hit. We're really viewing this entire world challenge as just a huge opportunity. Our motto is, "The obstacle is the way", we really can already feel us getting stronger through this.

[00:18:01] Liz: That's amazing. I love that outlook. It sounds like you are pivoting because of the coronavirus. Can you talk a little bit about what that virtual experience could look like for your network?

[00:18:13] Dave: Well, I wouldn't call it a pivot, I would just call it a recalibration. We are, absolutely, always going to be going out in the world, immersing leaders, that's central to what we're doing. A big piece of what we have, we have an online network, an online community, we're really looking at collaboration rooms. We have a lot of relationships with CSOs, really senior leaders in R&D and with competitors.

What we've been working to build out is the ability to get these people in smaller groups together online. We, certainly, are working on a lot of bigger initiatives as well, we can do town halls and Ask Me Anything, we have great partners that have incredible content. There's a lot of organizations that are doing that, it's important to educate as a part of this, but we're really low numbers, which sleep on the working group side of things.

It's like, "How can you take the top five CSOs from the top five EPGs", really in the last few months, most of my conversations has been just check-ins around, "How are you doing? How are you personally, professionally? Would you need help? What's keeping you up at night and how can we, through the network, help?" We find a lot of similar issues with big companies, specifically, at the CSO level, and again, at the R&D level, it's like, "Well, how can we help put together working groups in really smart ways? Move the needle to help competitors at times solve problems? How can we put the NGO groups together to help them synergize and work smarter?"

That's really where I feel what we're doing it's really an extension of what we are already and it's really about just putting people together that are going to add value to each other, they're going to add value to each other's organizations who are going to be stronger by knowing each other, and knowing each other in a deeper way. That's where we're recalibrating, but again, it's the same ESOS, that what we've always done, it's just giving us an opportunity to dive a little deeper and faster on the online side of things.

We had an incredible second Ocean Plastic Leadership Summit was planned, we were going to sail from the Azores to the UK, we had heads of global supply chain on board from some of the biggest companies in the world. The coronavirus hit and it was a very easy decision to cancel, we canceled pretty early on. Until the corporate travel bans are lifted, we're in a completely new world. I think the positive side of that is that everybody has a lot more time these days. Not everybody, I have a three-year-old and a lot of people are working at home with the kids, but nobody is on the road right now, there's an opportunity to deep dive, there's an openness to explore new avenues, new ways to connect and new ways to drive progress.

I feel we're just really well-positioned to help. A lot of folks that are dedicated to this issue though that we don't lose ground, there's a lot of good things that are happening out there. It might not be moving fast enough, but when something like this happens, a pretty major global speed bump, but we got to keep moving. Again, a major global crisis, like ocean plastic, we can't let another major global crisis slow down as timelines don't change.

[00:22:08] Liz: Absolutely. To your point in support your mission anyway, it keeps these groups engaged and connected throughout the year, even if you were able to go on your next trip, it's a great way for people to connect all year long. I love that. Dave, do you think people will come out of this pandemic ready for real change where our planet is concerned?

[00:22:32] Dave: I'm an absolute optimist that this is going to be- Obviously, this is a stranger time as any of us alive can remember, it's been a really good run since World War Two. But yes, I think the opportunities are for us, to come out of it stronger for the environment, to did focus on the environment to even catapults further into this collective workstream from the industry point of view. Is being an incredible wake-up call across the board.

Yes, I do think we going to be able to come out of this stronger. I think it's also, when you look it on a different topic, when you look at just the air pollution, the lack of air pollution through this time has really been interesting. You read in reports about views in the world, blue skies in China, and views to the Himalaya from India, just people that live in these places haven't seen for years. I think the same across the board, there's a huge opportunity and we're just watching the world mobilize right now.

We're watching bending initiatives in the US, for example, that are unimaginable coming together to help get the economy back on. It's possible for us to solve these issues, there's no doubt about that, we're really are hoping that this- I really feel positive that this is going to be a wake-up call, and for the environment, it's going to be a really good thing at the end of the day.

[00:24:12] Liz: Definitely. What have you learned about leading during these wild times? I know this is, like you said, unlike anything we've experienced before.

[00:24:20] Dave: On a personal note, I lived two hours north in New York City in the Catskills, down a dirt road. I lived in New York for 10 years, my wife and I had a baby, we moved up into the country, had a lot of friends here, but my sister-in-law and my brother-in-law are New York City doctors. They have three kids, and two of their kids, since this happened, my brother-in-law is a thoracic surgeon and my sister-in-law is a pulmonologist, they're in the thick of it down there, so we've taken in my 14-year-old nephew and my 9-year-old niece.

On a personal note, that's been incredible. Our family, I feel like it's got much stronger and focusing on the home front, has been really powerful because I've been running a hundred miles an hour for a really long time, and having to just take a deep breath and just feel the energy of what's happening and adapt to it, has been a really powerful learning experience.

I think professionally too, initially running a hundred miles an hour to run this second Ocean Plastic Leadership Summit in Europe, and then having it canceled in a very short amount of time. I think there was an internal pressure just to keep moving fast, but it's also just not possible right now, in the same way. Just being patient and just realizing this is the time for our members- I really feel the conversations I've had with our membership has just been incredible, but just reaching out and saying "How are you? How are you doing? Where can we help during this time?"

We've been able to help connect some of the plastic industry with some of our manufacturers that have shifted to make face masks, we've been able to connect just supply on that front, just being connective tissue to help get some emergency face masks, face shields built through just outreaching really quickly to some of the CEOs we know. Yes, It's been, I think, for us, just really powerful, really formative, and personally, just realizing that's okay to be patient. Right now, at this point in time in the middle of April, at the height of this pandemic, it's more about just making sure everybody's good to go and just figuring out where we can help. There's going to be a lot that we're going to launch in the coming months, but it doesn't have to happen overnight.

[00:26:54] Liz: Absolutely. Please thank your sister-in-law and brother-in-law for all that they're doing, they are the real heroes right now.

[00:27:03] Dave: It's beyond comprehension what's happening down in New York City. We're really grateful, I'm just super grateful to help and, again, it's been such a win-win, such a powerful experience to be able to do this and be able to hold space for our family. Thank you, I appreciate that.

[00:27:23] Liz: Always. Dave, you do know a lot of our listeners are on the waste and recycling side of things, and a lot of what you're working on is upstream as well. What do you think the waste and recycling role is in all of this, the plastics crisis?

[00:27:40] Dave: Well, I can tell you that the conversations that I've had with many of the CSOs around this issue, when I asked them what's keeping them up at night, it's lack of access to recycled materials at scale. That it's pretty uniform, it's like, "How can we get the scale we need at the prices that we can execute it and make it viable to get as much recycled feedstock into our products?"

It's interesting, certainly, we have a waste picker portion of that side of the equation, I'm working with the developing economies, we have a lot of MRFs, a lot of recycling companies that are supplying a lot of materials, ocean-bound and otherwise. I think that the role of the recycling community is we seem to figure out how to get these brands what they need at scale, so they can start using more of it because they really want to. Start attacking the roadblocks that are preventing that, there are a lot of them.

I think that one of the opportunities that we feel that we can help facilitate is just more of an open dialog from a lot of the big companies that need the supply, and there's just so many different organizations that can provide these materials.

[00:29:04] Liz: Absolutely. What advice would you have, Dave, for people who want to do their part to overcome this plastics crisis?

[00:29:10] Dave: I think it all comes to connection, collaboration, and understanding. What else? What's happening out there? And how your specific niche in this industry helps. I think that's what we hope to do as well, is just to help educate better. There are so many initiatives out there that are dedicated to this issue at large, so how can we make it really easy for everyone to understand how they fit in and how they can help?

For Waste Management, who's a partner of ours, it's going to be a completely different set of criteria than individual MRFs or any of the other companies around the value chain. But I think it all starts with awareness of what's out there and where the solution sets in moving and how we can just empower the sector as a whole to work smarter together. I think it's all about together, competitors working together, that, I think, in a nutshell, it's how can get--? Which is tricky in this model that we operate under as a world, like, "How can we get competitors to work together?", that's where this becomes a movement and not just a hodgepodge.

Companies that are working all over the map, it's how do we make it consistent, move it together and move all the organizations together in the same direction.

[00:30:45] Liz: Definitely, for the greater good. Dave, SoulBuffalo set out to help people experience the world, right? Now you're really helping to change it. Are you feeling your vision is becoming a reality?

[00:30:57] Dave: I feel that we built an incredible network on ocean plastics, I feel we're just getting started. We have 65 organizations to date, 22 of the biggest companies better that are in the value chain, but we're absolutely just getting started. I would say we're on our way, I would say talk to me in 10 years and see how we're doing against this issue.

Again, we just want to help boost all these other efforts that are out there, all the new NGO partners, all the brands. Help facilitate this productive tension between some of the activist groups and the industry groups, just realizing it's okay that they don't see eye-to-eye all times. I'm couldn't be more excited about where we are, but we got a long way to go and we're just really excited to continue to roll up the sleeves.

We're a nimble organization, we're able to experiment, but I think the strength of what we have going on is just really powerful leaders at the heart of our membership. The more powerful leaders that we can bring into the mix, just get everybody to know each other deeper and better as we continue to build this, it's just going to get stronger and stronger as a snowball.

[00:32:18] Liz: Definitely. I saw that you posted that the ship you used during the excursions just sunk a Venezuelan battleship. Can you please tell us that story?

[00:32:27] Dave: Yes, that was pretty wild hard to believe story. The ship that we chartered to go out in the Atlantic for the Ocean Plastic Leadership Summit last May was largely used in Antarctica and the Arctic, wildlife photography boat, it's a 118 passenger. Nice boat, but not over-the-top luxury by any means, but it's mostly taking 75-year-old retired couples to Antarctica to take pictures of wildlife.

We got it as it was transiting back and forth from Antarctica to the Arctic when we went and did this expedition in the Atlantic off Bermuda. It was a really perfect boat, just across the board very quaint, very nice. Recently, like a week ago, it was repositioning from Buenos Aires, where it was docked to Guadalupe in the Caribbean. For some reason they had to stop, there were no tourists on board, it was just the crew, they had to stop and some routine maintenance, but it was off the coast of Venezuela.

The Venezuelan Navy attacked the Resolute, which was supposed that we were on. Fired shots at it, I don't know if they thought it was a spy boat, the reports coming out of the news, it was in CNN, PBC, you name it. We were reading that this was a story is because the Venezuelan Navy rammed the Resolute, but it was an icebreaker. It has this really tough interior to deal with the Arctic and Antarctic ice, and the Resolute sunk this Venezuelan Navy patrol ship.

It just adds to the legend, on the lore of the Resolute, it's just completely ridiculous. Nobody died, which makes it hilarious. The boat did sink, but there weren't any casualties on the Venezuelan Navy side. Just a random, refreshing on coronavirus.

[00:34:24] Liz: Exactly. To your point, it adds to the lore, that's amazing [laughs]. Now you'll have a lot to live up to, Dave, for the next one. The pressure is on.

[00:34:34] Dave: We're ready for it. Totally ready. We're ready to do a lot of stuff in the meantime. I think we're really well-positioned to just continue to connect these brilliant leaders across the board so we are able to back out there in the world.

[00:34:51] Liz: That's awesome, that's amazing. Dave, can you tell our listeners how they can follow along with all of the good work that you're doing? Whether it's your URL or Twitter handle, whatever you think will help them follow your amazing work.

[00:35:04] Dave: Totally. My personal Twitter handle is @DaveFord88. Dave Ford like the car, but no relation to any other famous Fords. Our website is oceanplasticsleadershipnetwork.com or you can go to SoulBuffalo.com, follow either on LinkedIn as well. I want to say really quick, I listen to your Baltimore's Mr. Trash Wheel podcast and I'm from Baltimore, so that was amazing. I've seen those things in action, it was so great to deep dive on the great work that I knew in my hometown.

[00:35:43] Liz: That's great, I didn't realize you were from Baltimore. Those guys were so fun to talk to and so humble, I just love the work that they're doing, and how they made that simple design turn into really a hauler on water that's making and doing some great things. Thank you.

[00:36:00] Dave: I definitely encourage any of your listeners that didn't listen to the Mr. Trash Wheel episode to get on that, those guys are amazing. That Harbor was so trashed before they put these things in and it's just amazing to see what happens with a little innovation.

[00:36:18] Liz: Well Dave, thank you so much for being on the show today and really bigger picture for bringing together all of these brilliant leaders and remarkable groups to really change the trajectory of the plastics crisis. I know you're going to really do some great things in the next 10 years, and we're going to watch. Thank you for all that you're doing.

[00:36:38] Dave: Thank you so much, Liz, we're so grateful for our partnership with Waste360, just really grateful to know you. Thanks for having us on, and we're excited to report back once we have the next phase.

[00:36:54] Liz: That sounds great. Stay well and, again, please thank your sister-in-law and brother-in-law, enjoy having your niece and nephew there, I'm sure your three-year-old is loving it.

[00:37:04] Dave: She is, she's got a lot of attention, so it's amazing.

[00:37:08] Liz: [laughs] That's awesome. Stay well and we'll stay connected.

[00:37:13] Dave: All right, thanks, Liz.

[00:37:14] Liz: Okay. Thanks, Dave, talk to you soon.  

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