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EL032 – Tired Tires and the Circular Economy: How Wastefront is Saving the World One Tire at a Time

Circular Economy - Tire Recycling
Circular Economy - Tire Recycling

Host - Pat Sweet: This is the engineering and leadership podcast with pat sweet episode 32.

Host - Pat Sweet: Welcome to the engineering and leadership

Host - Pat Sweet: Podcast. The show dedicated to helping engineers thrive today. I speak with Henrik Selstam CTO of waste front about his company and their mission to address one of the world's most pressing environmental challenges dealing with end of life tires.

Host - Pat Sweet: Hey everyone.

Host - Pat Sweet: Welcome to the show. I of course, am pat sweet and I'm super, super happy to have you here today and happy father's day. I realize it will be after father's day, by the time you hear this, but I'm recording on father's day. So to all the dads out there have a lovely day, lovely week, little bit of housekeeping here, just a few things I wanted to mention right off the top. I wanted to mention a book called seed, which is written by Matthew G Dick. It's a, it's a a hard science fiction, novel, really, really good stuff. I interviewed Matthew back in episode 14. And you could, you could check that out at engineeringandleadership.com slash episode 14, to listen into that. Anyway, Matthew reached out to let me know that there's a new audio book version of his book seed which had been out for, for some time.

Host - Pat Sweet: So anyway, I just wanted to give a plug for that, do check that out. Matthew hired a professional voice actor and, and really went the whole nine yards, right? So I really do want to promote him and his work. And the other thing I wanted to mention is that I'm planning on launching a monthly webinar in the next couple of months, and it would be great to hear from you about the kinds of topics that you'd be interested in related to productivity, leadership, management, systems engineering, you name it. I definitely want to to hear from you to make sure that whatever it is I'm putting on is actually of interest to you and actually helping you deal with issues and, and covering topics that you're interested in. So do drop me a line. All right, let's get to the main content for today.

Host - Pat Sweet: By some estimates, over 1.5 billion tires are discarded each year. They're notoriously difficult to recycle and many end up in landfills where they leach toxins into the soil and water by almost any measure. This is a huge problem and growing that's why waste front a startup based in Norway has been working to develop methods of recycling old tires to create products that could be used in new tire production, mechanical rubber goods, or as a filler for plastics. Today, I speak with waste fronts, CTO, Hendrick Selstam about his and their mission to address one of the world's most pressing environmental challenges. Henrik Selstam is an engineering physicist and has more than 25 years of experience as either a founder, CEO or managing director of numerous companies in it real estate and waste. Henrik holds a master's degree in engineering physics from Chalmers university of technology in Gothenberg, Sweden. Here's my conversation with Henrik. Mr. Hendrick Selstam, thank you so much for joining me here on the engineering and leadership podcast.

Guest - Henrik Selstam: Pleased to be here. Thank you.

Host - Pat Sweet: I'm very, very, very excited about that. Because I think your, your company waste front does, is doing some really interesting work. So some really important work. Could you maybe set the scene a little bit and briefly explain what your company does?

Guest - Henrik Selstam: Yeah. We started out with the concept of saying that's we have a lot of lack of cars and saving the environment if it, if it does actually, but the wheels on our cars are still old used cars, you know wheels from from a traditional way of doing it. And they ended up in the landfills and I've been looking at landfills all over the world. I know the reason, and I know the purpose and we have a mission that people want to use them as a resource to create new tires or, or maybe fuel or something that you can use in the economy. So we started out saying that that's do something with the tires and let's do it like the industry does, but better. And that's our concept.

Host - Pat Sweet: So that's really interesting. And I think probably something that a lot of people overlook is even, even when the world moves to electric cars. I think it's safe to say that that's a win as opposed to an F tires are still a significant wear item that, that, that will not be eliminated. So, so where did, where did this inspiration come from in the first place? So how, how did, how did anyone come up with this idea?

Guest - Henrik Selstam: Well, it goes way back actually, because I've been very interested in, in and out of waste recycling and waste treatment and what we can do with waste. This is a resource in the wrong place, aquatic to a Chinese program. I think it's very, well-defined, it's a resource and why not use it. And I've been looking at landfills in, in all the continents or the, all of the world haven't been in Antarctica, but it looks the same everywhere. And all these tires are just piling up. And if, if someone set them on fire, you cannot put it out. It's, you know, it's, it's a, it's a huge problem. And I happen to set the tire on fire when I was like six years old, something like that. I couldn't put it out. And it was very smoky and very stupid. And it's sort of burning my mind that we got to do something about this because they burn tires everywhere. And we have to do something useful with this resource. So, so

Host - Pat Sweet: On waste fronts website one of the things that that is, is really explained to detail is that the unsustainable handling of end of life tires is an under reported, but major cause of pollution

Speaker 5: To have you

Host - Pat Sweet: Explain this, it, it, it, it's almost, it almost goes without saying, of course, of course these tires have to go somewhere. And of course in many parts of the world, they end up in landfills, but, but why is it, why is it that this is under-reported why, why doesn't this get people's attention? Because I think we're talking about a, an enormous waste stream here. What, why isn't that? Why doesn't this capture people's attention?

Guest - Henrik Selstam: That's a good question. I think it's a combination of a politics and economy. If we don't have a solution for something, or we think we don't have a solution, it's easier to let the politicians decide what to do with the tires they should be collected. But what happens after that? No one knows. So it's not in my backyard sort of thinking. And they have come up with some ideas, stop using it for football fields or landscaping land, you know, landscaping. It's not a good way of doing it because you have you have chemicals and minerals in those crumps that will sip sip into the water. And you had a problem. So it's, they're trying to hide behind the problem and not finding a solution. There are also always solutions and you should always ask their engineers and technicians. What kind of solution would you prefer for this kind of thing? And we are talking about sort of economies now, nowadays, and there are ways to do that, but not many people know that.

Host - Pat Sweet: So this is something I want to get into is this idea of circular economies. And I think aside from what waste front is doing with tires, just the idea that it participates in a circular economy, economies is super fascinating to me, but before we get to that, I wanted to talk a little bit more about you and your role with waste front. You're the CTO of this company. What, what does a day in the life of a CTO at waste front look like?

Guest - Henrik Selstam: Not one day, it's not the other one. Like, I mean, it's, it's always in a different things and it's everything from deep diving into a science report, reports and articles into going to the storage and then pick up a sample from there, carbon black that we have produced to send it for an analysis. So it's a combination of all sorts of things. And we have, as, you know, these meetings on teams or zoom or whatever goes on three or four times a day. So we have, we are in constant contact with each other. And the, the, the approach we have, and that is to find the right people for the right task. And that means that we have, it's a Norwegian company. We would set up a plant in the UK, I'm Sweden, and we are working together product, product organization in the U S so we worked most of the day from early morning, till late day, because different time zones and we are very synchronized. And I'm a great believer in putting a good team together and let them work to their ability.

Host - Pat Sweet: Yeah, that, that's fantastic. And I think it's a great example of this, this globalization of business and, and, and one of the things that I gotta be very careful about how I phrase this. One of the things that we have learned through the course of the pandemic is, is you really can work with folks all over the world, no matter where you are. It's really forced that issue. Otherwise we've been, you know, spent the last year and a half sitting on our hands, which is luckily for us, we've not had to. What would you say are your most pressing challenges right now as a CTO of a startup? What are the things that, that you're really working hard on these days?

Guest - Henrik Selstam: I would say it would be to find you and the solutions that we have, because the approach we have taken is that we use existing equipment from the existing manufacturers and picking the right equipment from anywhere in the world, put them together into one sort of a known technology. And it's, it's not really rocket science. We are using, you know, exactly what everyone else is using, but we will add on a few things on top of that. So we have the, if you want, if you want the investors interested, they don't want risk. So we have chosen commercial equipment to do this, and we will make it very consistent. That's the, that's the trick of this, because one of the products is carbon black that is used in plastics and tires, new tires to strengthen them, and also for plastic to keep it for assistance from UV lights and all that. So we will improve that technology and make it consistent because it's been a constant problem for all in all the economy, recovered carbon black manufacturers, that the quality is very different from one day to another. And you cannot trust that product. It is not consistent quality. So we are focusing on quality and improving the how much of the how much of the material we can recover.

Host - Pat Sweet: Right, right. That makes sense. And that's an interesting challenge is to do something new, right? To really bring some, some new value to the world while at the same time convincing folks that it can be done at low risk, right. Using, using commercial equipment and really making it work. That's a, that's a fascinating challenge. And I think, I think what you describe here is probably a common challenge for, for a lot of startups, right. To do something different while at the same time, not, you know, putting, putting your neck on the line, doing something so wild and no one believes it can work. Yeah.

Guest - Henrik Selstam: And since we did find the right solution from the beginning, we had the people are all listening to us and said that if you would do it like this, then we will be able to buy your product. So we listened to the professionals in their business and applied this according to what the annual student wants or, or the trader wants. And and then we listened to them when we were choosing the organization for development or the projects we used to develop tech, very, very professional, extremely knowledgeable company. They had all the skills we needed to put this together very quickly. And that, that com that gives the comfort for the investor, but using a traditional technology and experienced for this.

Host - Pat Sweet: So this is something that I wasn't expecting to talk about here, but, but I think is really interesting is the, the emphasis you're putting on how important it was to listen to the end user and understand exactly what they needed as an end product. And I think a lot, a lot of us, as, as technical people, as technical experts have a hard time with that. At times, we, we come up with brilliant ideas, quote, unquote, we get struck with inspiration, but, but a good idea without an end customer is, is an interesting puzzle at best, right. It's not going to make a product. What, what, what was it that, that I assume there was an experience maybe earlier in your career or, or maybe a venture that, that didn't go well, that, that emphasize that lesson, or really made that, made that a priority for you? What was, was there something there for you that that drove that?

Guest - Henrik Selstam: Yeah. that's, that's interesting reflection because previously I was similarly in the translation. I'm not the translator myself, but I'm a scientist and programmer and we set up a translation effort for Volvo and and I developed a quality assurance software for that to make sure that's the textbook, you know, actually end up in their framework. And one, one instance, we had a question from a Marvel that we have this display and we can, we can show Korean characters in this play in a certain way. You think it's good enough? And I looked at it and I said, well, game in my experience, I don't think the end user will be happy for this because the Korean radiographs are very close to connected with their history. And the, you know, there there was some king who said that 1,450 or something that this is the language, this is our identity and don't mess with it. So they stepped away from Chinese and, right, right. So they sent the text material to Korea for, you know, get some experience from the clients. And they said, oh, it looks cute. It looks like a poem. We don't like it.

Guest - Henrik Selstam: So, so I have a lot of experience from adapting to different kind of languages and traditions. And we had our translation that birth became the largest in the world. So we delivered a bit more languages and more words than anyone else. And so we were very successful. And the lesson I learned from that is quality assurance and make sure that the end user likes your product and we have the same year. Yeah.

Host - Pat Sweet: That's brilliant. That's a really fun, fun story. I appreciate that. Thank you. I wanted to shift gears a little bit and chat about circular economy. Is that something that came up earlier in our chat and I think is, is central to the way waste front operates. Could you explain what a circular economy is in broad terms and, and how waste front is participating in a circular economy?

Guest - Henrik Selstam: Sure. the broad concept is we used to have a linear economy you take and you make, and you throw it away, Chuck it afterwards, straight into the ground. Usually they used to be like that. And sometimes they burn with burnt instead. That is that's a, that's a wrong way of doing things to be very moderates. I mean we should use whatever resource we have in as good as possible and reuse and reform and, and recover whatever we can. Because if profitability is the only goal you have with the company, it's very easy to do whatever you want to do to get into that profitability. Then you only measure the profitability of the company. When you sell your products, you don't measure what, what do you call us on the way to the unresolved? So in a circular economy, you make sure that you reuse and recycle whatever you're using in the production, even being in the plants.

Guest - Henrik Selstam: So a good example is the plant we are planning to build in the UK. It will last about 30 years, probably. So we made a life cycle analysis. What does this consume in transport and building material, concrete, huge footprint on carbon dioxide. So we made an analysis and looked at it into 30 a production. It will mean that we will save 1.8 million tons of carbon dioxide during its lifetime six 60,000 ton a year. And just because we are recycling and putting the carbon back into the end product. So if certain colonies that make that whatever you have in the input should be used as an output. And the input is that you use from waste, then you have a circular economy going to actually make sure that you utilize the resources in the best manner.

Host - Pat Sweet: So that makes a lot of sense. I'm a systems engineer by training. And one of the things that we do in systems engineering particularly with respect to things like cost analysis is we evaluate full life cycle from, from cradle to grave, so to speak. And what you're arguing here is grave. Shouldn't just be that end point, but which, which I think is, is, is brilliant.

Speaker 5: How, how difficult

Host - Pat Sweet: Is it to to keep investors happy in a startup when you're using nonfinancial metrics to make investment decisions, right? You, you, you've got this factory and you're saying, well, we've got to think more about more than the capital cost upfront. That can't be the end of the decision, but, you know, for, for any startup, the cash you have on hand has to be treated with the utmost respect, right? You don't, you don't have a runway forever. How do you, how do you balance those competing interests in, in, in the now?

Guest - Henrik Selstam: Well, the, I think the, the carbon dioxide economy that we are, you get, you get money back, so to speak. If you capture the carbon, that has helped a lot with the you know, you get so, so much for each ton of carbon dioxide that you save, and that has made a lot of difference and it makes the companies focus on this one because it's, it's a good good PR if they treat this in the right way. So that's the good stocks. But for in, in our case, we are looking at the carbon dioxide, of course, but I also look at the sulfur and how software will be distributed into the different products and is the WC. Then it should be in the, in the, on product. If it's not, then we should collect it in a, in a way that we will, the software size or the sulfur, the fuels in the best way.

Guest - Henrik Selstam: That's beside the economy because no one is giving us anything for that, more than a slap on the shoulder or whatever, but it's it's the, it's the right thing to do. It's a philosophy that we, we were trying to do with the utmost to to be kind to the nature as possible to be, to put it neatly, right. It's just the right thing to do. Yeah. It's the right thing to do. And if you speak to a technician that there are no problems, it's just something that has to be solved usually. So if you put the engineers through something, it could be solved usually, or most, most of the cases. But if you, if you don't give this tool to the politicians or the investors or the people who make the decisions, how would you describe the law and what you can do and what, what you can't do if you don't give them these tools. And then of course that would be mistakes. Yeah, of course,

Host - Pat Sweet: Of course, that, that, that, that makes perfect sense. I wanted to chat a little bit w w we've touched on circular economy and we've talked about the way, the way waste front looks at circular economies and, and the importance of making decisions based on full life cycle. But at some point you need to rope in partners generally for, for, for a circular economy to work. And, and you've mentioned partnerships already in this chat, how hard has it been for waste front to find other industrial partners to, to work with and, and play ball, so to speak, because there there's an awful lot of coordination and back and forth, I assume, to, to make something like this work and be sustainable in the long run. How, how have you, and how has waste front approached bringing partners in?

Guest - Henrik Selstam: Yes, it's actually been easier than I anticipated her. I thought it would be difficult. Let's take an example. We would produce carbon black. It's a fine powder used in many applications in tires, in plastic and in the, in payments, for instance. And the problem we had was that, well, once you produce your comment back, we will test it and see if it fits. And if it doesn't, you know, we would not use it. And okay. For how long we like to try these files. So we're testing, or if you've talked to the big tire manufacturers they have on the two years of testing of your products, and if we cannot start up our plants 2,500 for commercially and produce 22,000 ton a year of carbon black and weights for them to decide if they want to use it.

Guest - Henrik Selstam: So, so the trick has been to find these potential off-takers and, and a startup before we have the plants with a similar equipment using the same equipment in other places, and produce with UK tires, then what we assume will be the unproductive given all this different circumstances and supply number there. So we do the testing before we actually start producing that has been a challenge, but we do need an off-taker that says that we want this or that, or we want that quality, or we prefer this, and you get better paid if you do this before we make the fine adjustments in how the plants work.

Host - Pat Sweet: Yeah. And that sounds like the, kind of the kind of struggle that any, any startup would have, particularly a B B2B organizations. You've got to find someone who's willing to jump on board with you, right? Yeah. I can only, I can only that, that your company's sense of mission plays a role in that. And this is something I imagine plays a role internally, too, right. That you've got this really strong sense of we're we're here to do something good, something important. How has that played a role with respect to finding partners and finding folks to, to jump on board with you? And, and I guess I'd have the same question about internal internal culture as well. I, I can only imagine that this is this, this is a big deal.

Guest - Henrik Selstam: Yeah, it is. Yeah. It's part of our mission and we have some bad experiences from before. Where did this didn't work out? We did get the work and the team to work well together. And we had different missions and missions in, in, in the management. And if that happens, you don't lie to go to work. For instance, you don't sleep well at night. Nowadays, I mean, it's fantastic. We have a fantastic team with a very good team spirit, a lot of knowledge. So it's always fun to discuss problems or issues because everyone will continue on tributes. And of course the end product is something that we, we are proud of and we sleep well at night. Right. So it does make, it does make a difference with what of team you choose to use and and your approach and the philosophy. One of

Host - Pat Sweet: The things that I read a recent interview that that you gave last month, and you were asked about things you wished someone had told you before you started. And, and one of the things you mentioned, which I thought was really interesting was to adjust your perception of success, you said not every startup will become a unicorn, but that doesn't mean you won't make an enormous impact on the world. What does success look like for you, but both personally and for waste front as a whole?

Guest - Henrik Selstam: Yeah, it's a, it's difficult to subject because most people measure success in how wealthy they get. And if you, if you, if you stick to that philosophy, most people will be unhappy. You have to set the goal where you want to go and believe in. It's no matter if it time, times get really tough at times, just 10 years ago that it was really challenging, not even being able to fill up the car with gas because that's close to back down. And but I still believed in this would be possible to do and navigate up on that idea. And eventually you get there and you have to believe in it enough, and you have to put anything, everything on, on stake, basically. Otherwise it won't be close to your heart.

Host - Pat Sweet: Absolutely. Absolutely. You, you, you need to be going for more than a certain number in the bank account, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like to change in an instant, right? Yes, yes, exactly. The number of dollars you have there. Doesn't

Speaker 6: Just that very much it,

Guest - Henrik Selstam: Yeah, that's true. And, and once you make some, some money out of it, out of it how do you use it? We'll use responsibly to make something even better the next time, or if it will adjust for consumption or whatever. That's also worth mentioning that that's use your resources responsibly money to refills. Yeah, of course,

Host - Pat Sweet: Of course, absolutely. Henry, this has been an awful lot of fun just to to, to close things out here. I'd love to know what what's next for you. And what's next for wasteful

Guest - Henrik Selstam: Restaurant. It's a pretty linear, we will, of course improve our products, but we plan to have another, yet another plant in the UK before we we challenged the us markets. So we have plans to enter the U S market. And then of course, several other products on the go. So we have set up the plan. We have the milestones done. We are meeting every milestone thing, thanks to our product development team. So it's pretty linear. We will, we will expand and become the largest producer of carbon black, every recovered, common black and end of life tire fields. That's, that's pretty straightforward. For me, I would like to contribute as much as I can. And if, if it becomes too challenging I'm willing to step down and give this to one of the, from the younger generation with the capabilities to take us, take this even further. So we're just on this train for awhile and make the best out of it.

Host - Pat Sweet: That's great. Thank you so very much Henrik, if people would like to learn more about you or your company, w what's the best place for them, for them to go to

Guest - Henrik Selstam: These this way, it's the going to waste johns.com and the going through the links that are not in the information. And then it's sort of, it's quite funny moving there. Yeah. If you, if you want to look

Host - Pat Sweet: Very good Henry [inaudible]. Thank you so very much for being here with me today. It's a pleasure.

Guest - Henrik Selstam: Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Take care. You too,

Host - Pat Sweet: Again, Henrik for your thoughts, your insights. There's a lot of really good stuff to come out of that conversation. And a few things stood out to me in particular. One was the importance of end user consultation. This is really important for any project, any company, any startup to really understand the, the needs and desires of the people that you're trying to serve. When it comes to something like recycling, old tires, there are any number of directions you could go with it. And I really appreciated the, the value and importance that Henrik placed on actually consulting with people who would be downstream actually receiving and using their products. And this is a lesson I think we can all learn no matter what we're doing, whether or not we're designing a new product, a new process, some sort of system, you name it, engaging with the people who are actually going to interact with your end product is hugely important.

Host - Pat Sweet: So I really appreciated him digging into that. Another thing that Henrik really dug into was, was his focus on mission and in particular, his belief in it. And he mentioned here that story about 10 years ago, having some difficulty, even funding the money to put gas in the tank of his car. I thought that was really quite inspiring, actually, that for Henrik, this idea and, and the importance he places on the mission of the organization is so important that it was worth going through those hardships. And obviously today, life is very good for Henrik and waste. Brunt is doing very well and promises to do really big things. So again, if, if you within yourself can see that much value and place that much importance on what it is your doing at work, that's a really good sign. That's a really good sign. And it means they're going to be able to push through the hard times and with anything important, anything worthwhile, there will be hard times.

Host - Pat Sweet: So I thought that was a really important lesson learned as well. And related to that at the very end of the interview, I asked Henrik about what was next for him, what was next for the company? And one of the things that he mentioned, which I thought was a little bit surprising was his willingness to hand the reins over to the next generation in the name of making, making it happen, achieving the mission. And I thought that was a special kind of selflessness in that we already talked about how important this mission was to Henrik specifically, but for him, it goes beyond his personal involvement in the achievement of the mission. The mission itself is what's important. And he really does feel that if, if there comes a point where he's not the best person to to carry things forward, that he wants to pass the Baton to the next generation. And I think that's, that's brilliant that dedication to the service of the mission over himself. And I think we can all learn a thing or two about that. If you wanted to investigate any of the resources or links, we mentioned during the show, just go to the show notes@engineeringandleadership.com slash episode 32 up next, we've got the engineering and leadership mailbag.

Host - Pat Sweet: Well, my friends, you know how this works, this is the part of the show where I read your messages and answer your questions. I to read absolutely everything you send me. And I promise to read my favorites here on the podcast. I got a note from Chris McCauley over LinkedIn, who said, Hey, pat, just thought I would send you a quick note. Since we connected on LinkedIn, I noticed it podcast and have been spending some time with it over the last couple of weeks. It's a really good podcast. I'm glad I found it. Just listen to the episode with Ben Ritter and a lot of the things he talked about really resonated. So thanks. So thank you, Chris. Really, really glad to have you have you as a fan of the show. And I couldn't agree more. There's a lot that, that Ben had to share that was was a lot of fun, was really interesting, really practical.

Host - Pat Sweet: So I do recommend people go back and check that out. That was episode 30 with Dr. Ben redder on self-leadership. So really, really good material there next Rob Loblaw, who's a, a great friend of mine. So it was great to get a message from Rob. He, he commented on the latest podcast and it said, really think hard about the value creation of blue work and red work and take a deeper think of how does remote working effect he's working styles. And I thought that was a really great point is it could be difficult to the best of times to organize work remotely and understand what kind of mode your, your people are in. And if you listen to the last episode, episode 31 with David Marquet, we talked a lot about red work and blue work, red work being kind of the heads down, get things done, phase and blue work, being the thinking planning, analyzing phase, and the importance of really separating those two and allowing yourself to really truly be in one mode or another when people are working remotely can be even more difficult to understand as, as someone on a team, what mode you're in, what mode you should be in and as a leader to communicate permission to be in one mode or another.

Host - Pat Sweet: So I really appreciated that insight from Rob. I think that's, that's really important, particularly as we move into remote work, one of the episodes I've got coming up, I've already recorded. The interview is all about remote work and some of the challenges associated with that. So do stay tuned for that. Finally, there was a note from David Inman, who also commented on the last podcast who said, great conversation, topics like these, get the mind to expand and help others. There's understanding group dynamics and how to communicate effectively without being coercive. I'm definitely going to have to pick up this book by David Marquet and give it a read. Thank you very much, David that book of course, is leadership is language from David Marquet. And one of the big lessons learned from that book. And one of the things we talked about during that conversation was about how the language we use as leaders is really borrowed from the industrial revolution.

Host - Pat Sweet: It's, it's a very old way of thinking about the relationship between the leaders and their teams. And essentially a lot of the language we use is coercive. It's it's about the leader, trying to get the team, do what the leader wants done as opposed to really, truly collaborating with the team and moving toward a common goal together. And Marquet really boils this down to the language we use and whether we intend to or not. We're essentially trying to coerce our team into action. And the whole book is about a better way of approaching things, a more efficient, more effective, more human way of interacting. So David and min, thank you very much for the note. I really hope you enjoyed the book. Again, that last episode was episode 31 and you can learn everything you need to know about that by going to engineering and leadership.com/episode 31. Yeah. It's all the time we have for the show today. I'll be back next week with our next episode with Neil Thompson from teach the geek on the importance of public speaking for engineers and how to improve as a public speaker.

Speaker 5: If you enjoyed the show, please

Host - Pat Sweet: Leave an honest review and let me know what you thought was most interesting from today's episode. This'll help me make the show better and help others find it as well. And finally, for more information and links to the resources mentioned today, just go to the show notes@engineeringandleadership.com slash episode 32 until next time, this is pat sweet reminding you that if you're going to be anything, be excellent. [inaudible]

Host - Pat Sweet: You've

Host - Pat Sweet: Been listening to the engineering and leadership podcast with pat sweet. If you'd like to learn more, go to engineering and leadership.com where you'll find more free articles, podcasts, and downloads to help engineers thrive. That's engineering and leadership.com.

Summary

Today, I speak with Wastefront’s CTO, Henrik Selstam, about his company and their mission to address one of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges: dealing with end-of-life tires.

By some estimates, over 1.5 billion tires are discarded each year. They’re notoriously difficult to recycle, and many end up in landfills where they leach toxins into the soil and water.

By almost any measure, this is a huge problem, and growing.

That’s why Wastefront, a startup based in Norway, has been working to develop methods of  recycling old tires to create products that can be used in tire production, mechanical rubber goods or as a filler for plastics.

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Main segment Music Urbana-Metronica (wooh-yeah mix) by spinningmerkaba featuring Morusque, Jeris, CSoul, Alex Beroza. ccmixter.org/files/jlbrock44/33345. CC Attribution (3.0).

Intro/ Outro Music – Move Like This by spinningmerkaba featuring Texas Radio Fish, Alex Beroza, and Snowflake. ccmixter.org/files/jlbrock44/33397. CC Attribution (3.0)

Mailbag keychee – driptrips – 120bpm – samplepack by keychee. ccmixter.org/files/keychee/32541. CC Attribution (3.0).

Engineering 101 eBook

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June 21, 2021

By Pat Sweet

Pat is the president of The Engineering & Leadership Project. He's a recognized expert in leadership, project management, systems engineering and productivity.

Free Leadership eBook

Engineering Leadership 101

Practical Insights for Becoming an Engineering Leader at Any Stage

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