Welcome to Corazon Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Do you work in emerging tech, working on something innovative, maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.corazon.com-flashbrand. Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest has Nick Spina. Nick Spina is not just another founder in the clean tech space, he's leading a company with the potential to rewrite the future of recycling. As the CEO of Denovia, Nick and his team have developed game-changing, depolymerization technology that can turn plastic waste back into its chemical building blocks in just minutes. Most people know plastics are a problem, but few understand the science behind why recycling hasn't solved it. Nick explains complex issues in a way that's accessible and inspiring and hopeful, while also grounding the conversation in real-world solutions. Well, good afternoon, Nick. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. Making the time. You're an hour apart. You're in the eastern time zone of Toronto, Canada, that area anyway. I'm in Kansas City, so again, I appreciate you making the time. Nick, if we could, I'm going to jump right into your first question. Denovia's depolymerization technology can break plastics back into their chemical building blocks in minutes. What scientific breakthrough make this possible and how does it differ from traditional recycling methods? Fantastic. Yeah, that's a great question. So we developed this technology. I mean, it's a technology that has existed for some time. So the core of it is called methanolysis, and it's the way that we have spun methanolysis to be able to depolymerize rapidly. So from what it seems like, from all the data we've collected, we can depolymerize a flash depolymerize into 30 seconds. So it is extremely rapid, and it is something where essentially we break down at a molecular level, the core building blocks of plastic or monomers apart. And then what we do is we purify those monomers and then rebuild them back together again into new, virgins to a plastic, essentially trending plastic waste into a renewable resource, which is absolutely fantastic. But why this is so exciting is not only is it extremely sustainable, but we are able to help businesses and the world essentially turn trash into treasure. So you're able to take something that people typically landfill or incinerate or unfortunately ends up in oceans and we can take that exact plastic and upcycle it again and reuse it. So it's quite remarkable. That's amazing, really, really cool because they say there's this plastic recycling and you've heard all the horror stories out there from not actually getting recycled to not really done very well and that sort of thing. But I'm not really the engineer or scientist behind this stuff, but I think you mentioned that deep polymerization that processes methanosis, you basically break down at a molecular level, purify it and then rebuild these particles back into something that's truly recyclable. I think that's amazing. So I appreciate you sharing that with our audience. And Nick, you're skilled at breaking down complex science into hopeful, accessible narratives. How important is storytelling and driving public understanding in industry wide change around plastics? It's extremely important. I think that simplifying it to big hits, number one, understandable of what exactly is happening because in the typical method recycling is something called heat and mold, which is mechanical recycling and you're really, it's exactly as it sounds, you're heating up a piece of plastic and molding it into different shape. And we're not doing that. We're getting really down to the molecular level and rebirthing it essentially from its day one state again. Which number one, it kind of resets the integrity of that piece of waste into something that is brand new again. So on a number of different levels, it is really as good as this sounds. Thank you. What I really liked about that is you take these things again at the science level, but you message it. You make this complex science explainable to the average person and that's helpful. And you know, I've got all kinds of people in my audience here from quantum physicists to technologists to physicians. But I do have a lot of people that just are want to learn more about technology and science and I appreciate your message. And Nick, Denovia's process is fast and efficient. How do you ensure that advanced recycling not only works scientifically, but is also economically viable for large scale adoption? So essentially the chemicals that we use in our process is like they're readily available. It is something that you can actually reuse almost near 100% of everything that we put into the process. So which makes it extremely on a say profitability level, you know, the up dry high margin, you're able to not having to continuously buy any chemicals, but you can up cycle it or use it to sell the output. For example, like one of our chemicals you can turn into like a fertilizer or even some of the if it's a mixed plastic that goes into our process say on there's contaminants, you can actually take some of those contaminants and turn it into biochar on top of our process, upcycling the plastic components of it. So it is extremely on a financial level, quite exciting on top of being extremely sustainable. Thank you. Really appreciate that. And traditionally, and we're learning still, I think in this whole recycled process of how to make things better for the environment, obviously your process is 100% effective making this more sustainable as you mentioned less waste, more profitable. But I still think we have a long way to go in this world to do this stuff the right way, but you're definitely pioneering some of the great technology there and leading the way. So I appreciate that. You're welcome. The last question of the day, your team is piloting the ARC demo unit in Vancouver. What have we learned or you learned from real world deployment and how is it shaping your roadmap for commercial rollout? It's unbelievable. It is nothing shorter for marketable and the ARC is designed to be a unit that can be shipped around the world that can operate outdoors indoors if needed, but it is a full PLD polymerization technology built by us. We're showing the world that we can do what we do as fast as what we do it on a commercial scale. And so there's some amazing tests that we've done with the ARC with a number of different type of feedstocks going into the process, but one most importantly and most exciting is actually getting into textiles because we know how textiles are clogging up landfills all over the world with fast fashion, but we have a group that were as a partner of ours, if it 200 million pounds of textile polyester waste from the hospitals in Canada. So we're actually have successfully de-plumerized those polyester textiles down into its core of monomers rapidly. So we're looking at that we've also got shredded, bought a Nestle plastic water bottles and all that kind of fun stuff that we're running tests on. So in terms of all different types of plastics, we want to kind of put it through our machine and find the most optimized chemical balance in there to be able to de-plumerize as fast as possible. And so, anyways, extremely exciting results at the ARC and now we're just working on scaling that up about seven and a half times the size of that for when I'm working commercial partners. And then beyond that, it will be deploying the technology all over the world. Really love that. Very cool. The ARC, as you said, it's somewhat portable. I guess you're taking it to various places and it's able to be shipped around the world, but you're showing the world how this process is done at a commercial scale, which is amazing. And I like how you highlighted textile waste is now in your sites to prevent another million tons of annually of waste that we can certainly recycle and make the world a better place. So I appreciate that. It was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon. Thank you for having me, Brian. Much appreciated. Bye for now.
