Refillable Future: Ending Single‑Use Bottles - Manuela Zoninsein
About Manuela Zoninsein
Manuela Zoninsein began her career as a journalist in China in 2007. She witnessed a shift from reusable to single-use water bottles in a country with more than a billion people. The Brazilian-American who was born in Brazil and continues to return to the beaches of Rio de Janeiro along with her work experiences and academic studies at the MIT-Sloan Executive MBA program led her to found Kadeya, a company with a mission to replace the single-use plastic bottle problem. She’s developed an innovative vending machine system that will be an important factor in addressing the plastic pollution crisis.
Building Sustainable Systems to Reduce Plastic Waste and Emissions
Manuela has vivid memories of the beaches of Rio de Janeiro and the Brazilian-American return annually for a visit. Her love for the ocean and her experience as a journalist in China watching the country shift to single-use plastic motivated her to see a solution to the growing plastic pollution crisis. Her MBA studies at MIT helped her see that logistics was one factor that she could solve with a beverage system. Her company Kadeya is responsible for designing and building a vending machine, capable of sanitizing, refilling and dispensing beverage containers. She discusses the innovative sustainable system, be an important factor in addressing the plastic pollution crisis and reducing carbon dioxide by 500 million tons annually. Manuela also offers advise on how to go about tackling a problem that is personally important..
-
00:00:01 Pamela Ferris-Olson Today on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist series on Wo(men) Mind the Water dot com, I am speaking with Manuela Zoninsein. The Brazilian-American began her career as a journalist in China in 2007. There, in a country with more than a billion people, she witnessed a shift from reusable to single-use water bottles. Her awareness of the global crisis around water, her experience and academic studies at the MIT-Sloan Executive MBA program, inspired Manuela to develop a company focused on creating a sustainable hydration system.
00:00:28 The Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater dot com engages artists in conversation about their work and explores their connection with the ocean. Through their stories, Wo(men) Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and her creatures.
00:01:01 Pamela Ferris-Olson I am speaking with Manuela Zoninsein, a Brazilian-American who has vivid memories of the beaches of Rio de Janeiro and an active mind designing and building a 21st century vending machine, capable of sanitizing, refilling and dispensing beverage containers. Her company Kadeya is on a mission to replace the single-use plastic bottle problem, with an innovative sustainable system, that will be an important factor in addressing the plastic pollution crisis and reducing carbon dioxide.
00:01:36 Welcome Manuela. I am most interested to hear about Brazil’s coast and learn about your journey from journalist to sustainable water advocate and entrepreneur. I don’t know how many of my listeners are aware of the kind of work that goes into launching a business, particularly one designed to be a significant contributor in the work to curb plastic pollution.
Let’s begin by having you tell us a little about Brazil. Please describe the beaches that keep you coming back regularly.
00:02:09 Manuela Zoninsein Hi, Pam. Hi, everybody. It's a great pleasure to be here.
Thanks for having me. So I am dialed in today from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil which is where I was born. We are in Rio proper across from Ipanema Beach, which is one of the more famous beaches in the world. And if you've never had the chance to come down to Rio and specifically to Ipanema, I can't recommend it enough. Everything you've heard is true and better.
00:02:44 The beach that has really kept me coming back has a more immediate personal significance to me. That's beach is called Itacoatiara, which I think is the most beautiful beach in the world that I've ever seen. It’s across the Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro.
00:03:06 Pamela Ferris-Olson Let me ask you. You like to walk on the beaches there and you collect trash. What sort of changes have you noticed over the years in the amount or type of trash that you find during your walks?
00:03:18 Manuela Zoninsein So when I was a kid and we would go to the beaches in Brazil and around Rio, it ends up being a family affair. It's like your public living room. Everybody goes when the day is hot on the weekend. You set up shop. You stay there for the day. And I remember we used to bring food. That was a common thing. You kind of bring a picnic and you'd set up for the day and then at the end you'd pack up and go home.
00:03:46 And as you all are probably aware and familiar, the omnipresence of single use packaging and the conveniences that those products afford us have led to people not bringing reusable containers that they carry to the beach or a picnic and for their hydration. Instead people come empty handed and buy products at the beach. And that is an amazing part of a lot of the beaches throughout Brazil, I'll say really quickly, Brazil's national policy does not allow privatization of beaches. So you can access every single beach in Brazil, unlike in the United States. There's a whole secondary economy on the beaches and you have beach vendors who specialize in different products that are very popular and localized. So now you go to the beach and you bring cash to buy, you know, your grilled cheese. Guys walk around with little grills that they grill the cheese live there for you. They coat them with different seasonings or with honey or different cookies or crackers and biscuits.
00:05:02 Manuela Zoninsein One of the famous ones called Globo. So while there's this great secondary economy that provides additional cash for, you know, the lower echelons of the economic rungs here, the flip side of it is that there is just a lot more trash people leave behind. Depending on what area of the country and what city you're in, there's different levels of awareness. I've been surprised on this visit back to Rio, we come every year, that there's garbage bins now that are split into organics and recyclables. So I’m starting to see a little bit of a conversation around that. Carnival just started and there's the big Sambadrome, which is like the huge parade center for all the carnival competitions. You'll see the samba schools parading down. Now they're trying to have reusable cups. So you see increments of sustainability conversation increasing but for the most part, you know, people come to the beach and it's both their living room, their public living room, but also their public garbage.
00:06:21 Yeah, I've been shocked at how much garbage there is and everybody is aware of it. I remember when I started walking on the beach in Itacoatiara and collecting garbage. You know, there were teenagers who saw me do it and they were like “Oh, it's cool that you're collecting [Manuela uses a Brazilian word for trash]. So people understand that there's a problem. But I'm not seeing a scaled approach to how to solve that problem.
00:06:45 Pamela Ferris-Olson What made you decide to tackle the issue of plastic pollution? To be sure, it is an enormous challenge. Plastic debris makes up 80% of all marine debris.
00:06:56 Manuela Zoninsein Part of it was I had the opportunity to live in China between 2007 and 2015. As you mentioned, I had a previous life as a climate correspondent when I started out in Beijing reporting for Newsweek and a construction publication called The Engineering News Record. One of the great takeaways of my time in China is I got the chance to see what happens when 1.5 billion people do anything. You get to see in fast forward the benefits and the shortcomings of any policy or any economic decision. And I saw in front of my eyes what happened at scale with plastic waste. So I really came back to the US with that in my mind. And then the other key takeaways, two of them really quickly. I saw society and culture change from reuse to single use. There's no reason why behavior change can't also go in the other direction, right? It shows you the malleability of culture and behavior change and so I thought, “Well, what would it take to go in the other direction?”
00:08:07 Manuela Zoninsein And then the third take away is that the US created this problem We have to be the ones to create the solution. I spent a year back in Brazil on another startup and then in 2016 relocated full time to the US and said, “I'm going to figure this out.”
00:08:28 Pamela Ferris-Olson So was the idea to start your company, one that dispenses reusable beverage containers, a product of your MBA studies, or did you pursue the MBA so you could develop the idea for Kadeya into a marketable concept?
00:08:46 Manuela Zoninsein Great question. So in 2016, when I moved back to the US, I joined a software tech company headquartered out in Silicon Valley. I was in their New York office. I was doing nothing related to sustainability for my day job. And the reason I was willing to do that is because they are and were one of the best companies in the world to this day for figuring out how you present the right data to the right non-technical individual to make a great decision. In their case it was in the business context. I felt that learning how to present the data that matters to individuals at a moment where they're making decisions was critical to winning this journey against climate change. On the side, I started the Sustainability Club and as a club we decided the problem we wanted to solve, that we felt was within our reach, was to help the company transition away from single use beverage consumption. Like a lot of well-funded tech companies of the time, we had a very well stocked kitchen and every floor had packaged goods that you could go and grab for free at any time.
00:10:04 Manuela Zoninsein And I would sit in the kitchen doing work on my laptop and watch people go to the fridges, even though we had refill stations of all types. We had unlimited kombucha on tap and cold brew coffee on tap. We had the basics in place for a reusable system. The glass was ready to go that you could grab out of the kitchen and refill. But people were not using them, they were going to the fridge, opening the fridge door and grabbing a bottle of whatever. We wanted to figure out why and to try to change that behavior. What we ultimately did is we designed a reusable water bottle program for the company. Over three years we defrayed single use by about 30%. And so I took that insight with me to Business School.
00:10:48 Pamela Ferris-Olson Whether you're trying to convince an investor or somebody who's giving grants, I imagine you can't do it just on an idea on a piece of paper. You have to have a working model or prototype. So where does somebody get the money to build the prototype?
00:11:05 Manuela Zoninsein So you do have to network your way to meet wealthy individuals who have themselves had already had some sort of financial exit and who are aligned with your idea. So anyone out there who has an idea get started building that network because it takes time and it also really does pay off. I'm now connecting with people who I met four years ago. I kept them in mind and I tracked them and I kept in touch and now they are going to potentially be able to invest in Kadeya. I was very focused on proving out the potential of my idea without building the full technology.
00:11:51 Pamela Ferris-Olson OK, so I'm really interested about this machine. It sells containers, which is not a new idea. But it also accepts back the used containers and then the machine cleans and refills them. Doesn't that mean that you have to have a really large machine to do all those functions?
00:12:12 Manuela Zoninsein Yeah, you've got most of that right. So our machine is a bit wider than like a double door fridge that you would have at home. You go up to that machine and we have a touch screen that lets you pick out what beverages you want. We don't only serve water now. We also have carbonated products and flavored products. We can do cold brew coffee and iced tea. You pick your beverage. Then a stainless steel bottle with our custom design and has been pre washed sanitized and inspected drops down. And then it gets filled, kind of like a soda fountain. And then we cap it and you grab your bottle. The idea there is we are emulating the experience of a vending machine or that fridge at your workplace that you open the door and reach in and grab it. In about ten seconds you can have a packaged beverage that you grab and enjoy that beverage. When you're done, you can return that bottle to any station in the network. The analogy here is bike sharing for bottles. You're just borrowing the bottle, so you're not buying the bottle. You're buying the product, you're buying your coke, you're buying your Gatorade to enjoy, and then return that bottle.
Over here what is my right shoulder [Manuela points to an image of the Kadeya machine]. And then the bottle gets inspected to make sure there isn't any major debris like cigarette butts, bubble gum, plastic wrappers, chicken bones, in which case we would reject the bottle. Assuming the bottle is generally free of debris, we accept the bottle and then it goes through a rigorous wash and sanitize procedure and then a dry process. Finally a final inspection where we can identify a blonde hair, a hairline fracture, a chip on the lip or dent on the side. If there are any problems with the sanitized bottle, we will reject it. Internally we have a little reject bin. Otherwise that bottle goes into a little storage facility or box that is humidity and temperature controlled and awaiting the next consumer to come in and order their beverage.
00:14:21 Pamela Ferris-Olson This is all in one machine?
00:14:24 Speaker 3 Manuela Zoninsein All in one machine.
00:14:26 Pamela Ferris-Olson Amazing. So you said you have an Air Force contract. Why was the Air Force or what were they trying to do? What problem did they want to address that they wanted a Kadeya machine?
00:14:39 Manuela Zoninsein It turns out the problem today is solving, if we think back to what I was saying about, you know, as environmentalists, digging into why single use works today. The problem we end up solving as compared to single use is a logistics problem. With single use in these environments, the employer is currently providing pallets and pallets and pallets of bottled water. These are bought wholesale at your Costco, Walmart and then somebody is loading those pallets on the back of a truck. Somebody is driving that truck. Somebody's unloading those pallets off into some sort of local storage on-site facility and then someone is fork lifting those pallets to where the workers are, and then someone is cutting open those pallets of, you know, the plastic wrap and then handing out bottles or restocking coolers in hot months. That is a huge logistical lift to make sure that an individual has a container in his or her hand full of good quality water that they can then tip back and drink. In today's case, by connecting to the existing water line, we're providing that bottled beverage where the worker is without any of those logistics that I just described you.
00:16:14 Pamela Ferris-Olson You’ve really made it clear. There's so many questions that I can ask you but we don't have enough time for that. So I'm going to ask you, given your experience with Kadeya, I wonder how you would advise listeners to tackle a problem that is important to them. Where should someone start?
00:16:33 Manuela Zoninsein You have to be utterly obsessed with solving the problem, because every day you are going to face barriers. Every day people are going to say ‘No.’ I get more noes. I get nine noes for every yes. Because I so believe in what I am is doing and so believe that the problem needs to be solved. I believe that I'm the right person to do it and the time is now. So that's the first thing. Be obsessed. Get to know everything and everyone in that space, and then start to develop an understanding of where others are not doing it well in your opinion. Develop that opinion. Develop that hypothesis and then continually improve that.
00:17:22 Manuela Zoninsein The next point is and this is, I think, scary, especially for women because a lot of us have been raised to be perfectionists and to open our mouths with an idea only once we feel that we've improved the idea and tested it. You got to throw that away.
I like to say don't be a perfectionist, don't get good at being perfect, get good at being good enough. And what that entails is talking about your idea before you know enough to have the right comments. People will criticize you. Be okay with that and accept it and enjoy it because those early criticisms that early feedback is going to lead to such rapid iterations of your idea. That's what I was doing at MIT. I was saying, “I think I want to build city bike for bottles.”
I hadn't baked out that idea and people said, “Well, that's crazy. How you gonna get the bottles back?” I said, “That's a good point.” And then I sat down for a month and worked on that.
00:18:28 Pamela Ferris-Olson I feel your passion. I feel hope that maybe this plastic bottle situation has an advocate like you that we will make a big bite in it. So thank you for your passion and for you being willing to step up and try and make a difference.
I'd like to remind listeners that I have been speaking with Manuela Zoninsein, founder and CEO of Kadeya, a company focused on reducing plastic consumption and thus making the beverage industry more sustainable. Manuela Zoninsein is the latest guest on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. The series can be viewed on Wo(men) Mind the Water.com, Museum on Main Street, and YouTube. An audio-only version of this podcast is available on Wo(men) Mind the Water dot com, on iTunes, and Spotify. Wo(men) Mind the Water is grateful to Jaine Rice for the use of her song Women of Water. All rights for the Wo(men) Mind the Water name and logo belong to Pam Ferris-Olson. This is Pam Ferris-Olson.
