Walter Griggs With Bambhu Innovation

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. And now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Walter Griggs with Bambhu Innovation. Welcome.

Walter Griggs: Ali. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here and share the work that we’re doing with Bamboo Innovations, where we like to focus on something. What I call is the perfect convergence between purpose and profit. Our mission is to create materials that help businesses achieve their sustainability goals while driving real, measurable impact. And I’m so thankful that I that you give me the opportunity to share our message. Thank you for that.

Lee Kantor: And can you share a little bit about your backstory? How did this innovation come about?

Walter Griggs: Very good question. So thank you for that. So I’ve been in the material handling space for the last 15 years where I would go into warehouses, our company Square Pack services, we would go into warehouses and figure find ways for them to be more efficient, whether it was through the racking, through the, um, through the containers they were using. So I’ll give you an example of when a car is made, a vehicle, an automobile, when it’s manufactured, it’s manufactured over a thousand different pieces. And if each one of those pieces required a box, it would take up so many boxes and our landfills would be full of so many, so much more cardboard. So in industries like that, they they use what’s called returnable and reusable packaging. So that’s what I was doing. I was figuring out ways to reduce the amount of items going to the landfill. So this was basically, um, kind of a natural progression. But something kind of amazing happened. You kind of you remember the pandemic? I know everyone remembers that. But something different happened for me during the pandemic. We made a shift, you know, where we were providing PPE items to our clients like the Southern Company, Marta, you know, different large organizations, but also to the general public.

Walter Griggs: And we felt good about that work because those were really hard to come by items. And what happened for me during that in the process of donating. Giving. Someone gave me a really genuine thank you and receiving that thank you was really life changing because you know, we all do business to make money and blah blah blah. But when you’re doing something, when when people are thankful or appreciative for what you’re doing, it made me kind of want to get into that business, if that makes any sense. So just kind of I ran into, uh, but, uh, our CEO, Mr. Amara Lama, um, he reached out to me a few years ago, um, and we started discussing bamboo and its roles and how it’s a super plant. Um, and we came up with some great technology that we’re excited to share with this country and the world. Um, our bamboo eco polymer and our bamboo eco pole. And both of these are designed to keep items from going to the landfill. So I’m just trying to stay true to what I’ve been doing for the last decade and a half, and just trying to be as helpful as I can to the community and the planet, my friend.

Lee Kantor: Now, can you explain to the listener what makes bamboo so special in this regard?

Walter Griggs: Very good question. So bamboo by itself. So we can start with the growing of the bamboo. All right. So bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants. Um, it grows to full maturity in 5 to 7 years. Um, bamboo has the same tensile strength as steel, so it’s very, very strong. So, um, what we’re doing with this is we’re attempting to combat deforestation and some other things. So when bamboo grows, um, it actually cleans the soil. So if the soil was contaminated with urine or certain metals or toxins, the growing of the bamboo can actually clean cleanse the soil. So as we take this very strong bamboo plant that sequesters carbon and we turn it into a polymer or a composite, um, the base material because of the bamboo is so super strong. Um, it has a lot of very positive properties, my friend. So the bamboo is just a super plant that can do so many things, and it has so many different applications in the construction and just so many different spaces. There’s really no limit to what we can do. Anything we can do with wood, steel or concrete, we can basically do with bamboo.

Lee Kantor: Is it easy to grow or does it only grow in certain environments?

Walter Griggs: Oh, very good question. Very good question. Um, bamboo is one of the easiest things to grow. Um, there’s over 1600 different species of Bamboo, but there are several different types. So when you think of bamboo, people are going to say, oh, it’s so invasive. Oh my God, you can’t control it. That’s that’s the running bamboo that it basically just grows and tries to interconnect with every other piece of bamboo that’s on the planet. So that grows. But there’s also there’s also a different species, what’s called clumping bamboo. So it doesn’t grow so erratically. It stays compacted in its own general, um, in its own general space. So bamboo is one of those things. Um, so if you compare it to a, a tree, an oak tree, an oak tree is going to take anywhere from 30 to 50 years for this tree to grow, where we can do anything with it. Bamboo is going to grow to maturity in 5 to 7 years. And the processes that we do with the bamboo, we can use the cellulose because it has the maximum amount of cellulose when it’s about 24 months old. So there’s not a long life cycle. Um, it’s very regenerative. Um, it’s immune to a lot of bugs and plants. So, I mean, as our technology grows, um. It’s cool. It’s a good opportunity for farming and different things because, um, it’s a really good plant for for our community and our planet.

Lee Kantor: So where are you at in the life cycle of your business? Are you actually, um, producing some of the packaging that you’re talking about, or are you at the stage where you’re getting investors and you’re growing bamboo? Like, where are you at?

Walter Griggs: Very good question. Very good question. So right now we’re at the stage where we have two initial products that we’re leading with. Um, the first product is the eco polymer. Um, it’s a next generation biodegradable alternative to traditional plastics. Um, some of the key features is it’s made of 70% renewable bio material. Um, it’s biodegradable, nontoxic. It leaves no microplastics whatsoever. Um, we have several different types of this resin. So we’re looking to replace HDPE, ldpe polypropylene polystyrene and ABS. So there’s really, you know no limit to the industries because if you’re using plastic then we can replace that plastic in most cases with a biodegradable solution. Um there’s no retooling required. It works with the existing production equipment. Um, and imagine a material that works on existing machines and requires no change of infrastructure and eliminates microplastics. That’s what bamboo eco polymer is. So that’s our first product. Do you have any questions about that one?

Lee Kantor: Well, um, so who is the ideal, um, purchaser of that product?

Walter Griggs: Very, very good. Very good question. So, um, a lot of companies have sustainability goals where they’re trying to lower their carbon footprint. Um, there’s even something called, uh, the EPR, which is the extended producer Responsibility act, and the Extended Producer Responsibility Act shifts responsibility for waste management, waste management from the government to the producers, and requires them to manage their products at the end of life impact. So what that means is a lot of companies that are putting packaging into the world, plastic packaging, are being deemed for that packaging not being some form of recycled, recyclable, biodegradable, um, so they’re actually being deemed on negative impacts to the environment. So when you say who is the, um, intended client, it’s anyone who’s using Plastic made out of an oil based resin. Um, this this resin that we have, this bamboo, um, biopolymer. It can be blow molded, extruded. It can be thermoformed. Anything that you can do with a PCL or PCR or anything like that, we can do the exact same thing with this polymer. Hence the difference is at the end of life. Um, this the finished product will not sit in the landfill and take 5600 years in order to degrade, which is going to in turn, um, provide microplastics and nanoplastics our product is going to buy, excuse me, it’s going to biodegrade within two years, leaving nothing, nothing negative. Um, we’ve done testing on the soil for the soil degradation, the plant degradation, what it does to, uh, animals and earthworms. So it leaves nothing negative to the environment. So, um, with minimum changes, we can really change the way everyone does business. Who does? Who deals with plastics?

Lee Kantor: Now, are you looking to, um, kind of handle the entire supply chain of this in terms of a growing your own bamboo, or is this something that you’re looking to purchase bamboo and then bring it in into the community here?

Walter Griggs: Um, very good question. Um, we’re going to start with a hybrid model. Um, because we are importing some of this technology from across the pond. But as we do, as we start to commercialize and localize our manufacturing efforts, we would like to work with the local farmers and develop a network, because there is a, um, there’s a whole network of farmers that’s growing bamboo presently. Um, and really have no outlet for it. So we could we could definitely easily start, um, start a farming association here and push forward.

Lee Kantor: So do you have any advice for maybe those organizations out there that really are would like to be more sustainable. And they really haven’t tapped into the benefits of bamboo just yet. Like, what is some, um, easy way to ease into this?

Walter Griggs: Mm. Well, a very good way to ease into it. So it’s several ways to ease into it. Um, from a business appeal. Um, take a look at the. So whatever product you’re making. Okay. You need to take a look at the end of life. If you’ve done any type of LCA life cycle assessment to understand at the end of life what happens to your project. What happens to your product? So let’s kind of interject this for a minute. So there’s a lot of focus on recycling. And recycling is a beautiful thing. I mean at my home we separate the garbage and recycle. I mean, we take the time to do that. Um, but my research, um, leads me, um, to understand that out of the totality of what’s collected, less than 10% of those items, um, that are collected are actually recycled. So everything’s pretty much still ending up in the landfill. All right. So and if we don’t do anything different, um, we’re going to keep getting what we’re what we’re getting. And this is why this is so important. Okay. We we spoke about microplastics, but if you Google microplastics or nanoplastics, you will see that more and more Americans are having are finding microplastics in their bloodstreams, in their food and the air we breathe.

Walter Griggs: I mean, this is a serious, serious problem. And if we don’t do anything about it. Yeah, I mean, we’re in our 30s or. No or older. But honestly, if we don’t do anything about it, our grand great grandkids and great great grandkids are really going to have an issue because the concentration of this stuff is only going to increase if we don’t figure out a way to change the problem. And a lot of times, you know, when you want to make a change, you have to think about how it’s going to affect everyone involved. And the beauty about, um, the eco polymer is we can start at the manufacturer level, change the substrate, and there’s no effect to the end user. Our our polymers can be recycled, but when they’re done at the end of life, you put it in an anaerobic condition. The enzymes from the soil start to activate. And it’s, and it’s, uh, it actually disintegrates within two years. So only thing I’m saying to you is if we do nothing. The problem is it may not affect us, but it will affect someone in our family down the road.

Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Walter Griggs: Let me see. What do we need more of? Well, we really need to find. So I want everyone, if they don’t mind, to kind of take a look around for the next few days and ask yourself anything that you see that’s plastic. When you’re in, when you’re in your kitchen, when you’re in your wherever you ask yourself, does it break down? Um, is this going to cause microplastics? What? What? And then you start to tailor what you’re buying based on how it’s packaged. I mean, what’s the end of life? And be proactive about that. And from a business standpoint, if you’re producing some kind of plastic whatever, whatever industry And you have an issue where it’s going at the end of life. Then we can help you with that. We would like to have a conversation with you. Um, we’re working with one of the largest, um, community in the communication space right now. Um, there’s a lot of, um, not a lot, but there is some noise in the, um, biodegradable single use items. As far as the knives, the forks, the spoons, different things like that. Um, we’re in more of, like, the industrial space. It’s not very noisy there. We want to understand how to help, you know, the UPS, the Fedex create, um, biodegradable stretch wrap, stretch film or pallet wrap that can go outdoors. That’s not going to disintegrate. Easy. Think about all the packaging supplies that are, um, Are ending up in the landfill, and that’s where we’re going to start. Um, so any of those companies that that are in the warehouse business that has a tremendous amount of packaging supplies, who have sustainability goals that they’re trying to meet. We would love to partner with them and see what and see what we can do to take them to the next level.

Lee Kantor: Well, if there’s somebody who wants to learn more and have more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, is there a website or a way to connect?

Walter Griggs: Oh, without a doubt. Um, it’s ww ww w Bamboo Innovations. That’s b h, you know, I’m sorry. That’s b a m b h u I n n o v a t I o n.com. Please reach out to us on the contact on the Contact Us page. Let us know what we can do. Um, you know what? What’s really beautiful about what we’re doing. Like I said earlier, um, we believe that this is something that will make a big difference down the road. You know, if we can get a decent amount of manufacturers to switch from these oil based fuels, these fossil fuel based resins, and switch to something more environmentally friendly. You know, our grandkids are really going to thank us for that. So that’s the mission that we’re on right now. And just thank you so much for letting me spread our mission.

Lee Kantor: Well, Walter, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Walter Griggs: Well, God bless you and your team. And thank you so much for sharing. And. All right.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor for Atlanta Business Radio. We will see you all next time.