Nate Seltenrich 0:00 Thanks for taking the time to chat, I was just hoping to learn a little bit more about how greenscreen might be, or is being used, for food packaging. My story is looking at both food packaging safety and sustainability. And you know how folks can assess existing alternatives to paper and plastics, and part of that includes, you know, making certain assumptions about chemicals. But having a screening process or some kind of a certification that speaks to that is really interesting and potentially useful down the line. So I'd love to learn a little bit more about what's going on there. So from what I heard, and well, I'll let you obviously, what you can fill me in is that maybe the state of Washington is teaming up with you guys to screen some PFAS-free foodware that they want to approve or encourage? And I've also heard potentially you guys are doing some screening on PLA. So yeah, and as I said, in the email, I couldn't find anything online about this. So I'm assuming it's not fully rolled out yet. But fill me in. Mark Rossi 1:29 Yeah, exactly. So yeah, you're not seeing anything online because this is all in development. And we just started the higher level to see, understand green screen. So I'll just describe green screen and then get into certification, and then into food service ware. So green screen is a program of clean production. It actually has two core products. So one product, which we call green screen for safer chemicals, assesses an individual chemical in terms of its inherent characteristics and benchmarks that on a scale of one red to four green. And these are called Green Screen Chemical Assessments. And so, we launched green screen in 2007, and so this has come up a lot like in the case of 'Oh, you want to eliminate PFAS and you want to go to alternative chemicals', what's that alternative chemical? Is it safer than PFAS? That was what we really set up green screen chemical hazard assessment to do and so currently, that hazard assessment method has been adopted in the building products sector, electronics, like Apple and HP. It's been used in retail and textile, in the apparel sector, to evaluate chemicals, and that's all driven by; I've got PFAS, I've got toxic flame retardants; I don't want a regrettable substitute. That was launched in 2007, and along the way, we got a lot of requests that, you know, it's interesting that you evaluate chemicals, but we want to evaluate products. And we're like, okay, now how do we pivot this too so there was a lot of effort to try and take this hazard assessment method which is really protective of human health and the environment. So our criteria and our structure is, I'll just say, the criteria are very clear and unyielding. And so. in certain cases where like if you're sitting on a chair, or you're at your computer, and you see that it's in black, the plastic is black. Well, that's because this is something called carbon black that's added to the plastic and carbon black, if it's in a fine particle form, and you inhale it, it is a carcinogen. It's a California prop-65 chemical, but like in green screen, that will always be a benchmark-one chemical. But we recognize that as you look at chemicals and products, you're going to want to make some different types of changes. So you may want to say okay, and this keyboard, you can't have any feedback chemicals. But you know, having carbon black because it's embedded into the plastic, it's okay to have it in the product. So, in 2017, we launched the product certification, looking at chemical leaders in textile manufacturing. So it's called Greenscreens Certified for Textile Chemicals, and that's at a business-to-business level. So like this would be a supplier of a chemical to a manufacturer that makes Levi's blue jeans right; like produces a denim for; that blue jeans would use the chemicals, and Levi's or any other company would say we want to have our blue jeans processed with green screen chemicals. And so we love green screen certified for textile chemicals in 2017. And this year, around all PFAS, and concerns about the PFAS issue, we launched greenscreen certified for firefighting foam. Not sure if you're familiar with that issue, but that concerns firefighting foam. And so the idea is like so this way, you're testing the product, you're ensuring that it doesn't have any PFAS and then you're evaluating the other chemicals in the product to ensure that they're not regrettable substitutes. And we have three tiers in green screen certified for firefighting foam. So we do a bronze, silver and gold level. And for each level, the level of rigor in terms of the chemistry evaluation becomes more rigorous, because there's predations around chemicals and their hazardous characteristics, and what you know about this hazard characteristics. And so now, we saw this issue, of course, with PFAS into service ware, where now I'm getting into the world where you're; I believe you're really familiar with the whole PFAS in the compostable food service, where they're like, Oh, this is really a problem; how do you, you know, should we go and create a certification that would certify with service wares avoiding PFAS, tested to be PFAS-free; I mean, I would say PFAS-free is in quotes, because you have to set a threshold level for that testing. And also avoiding these other hazardous characteristics. And so that's where we're in process and so when we create a certification, and we're developing a certification in partnership with Center for Environmental Health. And when we create a certification, what we do is we look at the product category instead. In this case, it's food service ware, so it's like cups, you know, anything that's used in, right takeout food service, where it could be the clamshells, it can be the salad bowls, you know, cutlery would all fall into that category. And we developed a set of draft criteria, we convened a peer review committee of scientists, NGOs, manufacturers of the products, purchases of the products, to evaluate. So we create criteria, we get feedback on the criteria from the peer reviewers. And at the same time, we go and pilot that criteria with manufacturers, because we want to understand; what we're trying to do is find this sweet spot of, a of set certification that is evaluating the products in terms of their chemistry, but it's not so rigorous that no product on the market is going to meet the criteria. Because if we create a set of criteria that is so rigorous, we're not creating the change in the world, because nobody can meet that criteria. So we need to understand where is the marketplace. What are these ideas, issues? Like, I go back to carbon black and the keyboard, like if we were creating a certification for keyboards, right, we would create a way of saying, 'Okay, these issues of carbon black and chemicals like that, and the product', we would create changes in the rule to address that type of chemistry. And so we look at those types of issues and in terms of developing this criteria. So yes, we are developing a greenscreen-certified for food service ware; it's more like that packaging offer takeout, not like what's going into the can on the shelf or like the frozen food aisle or things like that, right. It's not the stuff in the center of the store. It's more of all that takeout stuff. And so we are piloting the criteria with a couple of manufacturers. We're doing all of that, all of that work, and we'll be releasing certification on the chemistry of the products in the first quarter of 2021. But I'll just say the Washington State; they're in their own process because they had a bill that will enable the state to ban PFAS in food service ware. They just have to identify that there are safer alternatives. And so their process of going through and evaluating chemicals and materials is specific to their needs. Now, if we had greentrade-certified products on the market, that would help to inform their process. But since we're sort of running in parallel to them, there isn't an intersection between what we're currently doing and their process. Although, this is where some of the confusion can come into play; before when I say we have green screen; has an assessment method; they use that method to evaluate the chemicals, to say that there are safer chemicals for food service ware so they will use the green screen chemical hazard assessment tool to evaluate those chemistries. And they hire toxicology firms to go and do that work for them. So we created the green screen for chemical hazard assessment method. We licensed that method to toxicology firms, so like when Washington State goes to assess, let's say, if they're assessing PLA, they would go to that toxicology firm; you have the toxicology firm do the evaluation of the chemistry. So we don't know exactly what Washington State is doing and the chemicals that they're evaluating because they're working with the toxicology firms to evaluate the chemical. I hope that's clear. It's a lot of interconnections there. And I just trying to trying to clarify those differences. The ball of yarn is all mixed together, and I'm trying to pull your threads apart for you. Nate Seltenrich 12:15 Yeah, no, that helps. And so once it's launched, you have like a public interface? Can any manufacturer submit any kind of disposable foodware product to you? And you will, you know, screen slash certify. Mark Rossi 12:37 Exactly it has to be products and materials that would be part of a product that's either designed to be recyclable or compostable? Nate Seltenrich 12:46 Okay, but it could be a bioplastic or a fiber bowl or... Mark Rossi 12:53 Exactly. Any material. Yeah. Nate Seltenrich 13:02 My article has an international scope. So sounds like you're not limited to United States manufacturers or anything for any reason. It's kind of any, you can provide this for any company or manufacturer potentially? Mark Rossi 13:16 That's correct. That's correct. And so currently, like our green screen certified for textile chemicals, and the green screen certified for firefighting foam, those manufacturers are all over the world. So you got in somebody in France, somebody in the UK, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey, China, Thailand, India; certainly those countries there is; we've certified products manufactured in those countries. Nate Seltenrich 14:00 Okay. The last thing that would be useful, I guess, is to get a sense of what the screening process is like for these types of products, I guess, and what the criteria are. Is that something you can provide yet? Mark Rossi 14:15 I can provide a high level of; like using the example of our other certifications. So we follow that, so like the firefighting foam into the first order is that the manufacturer has to provide to us all of the intentionally added chemicals into the product. So if you've got let's say it's a plastic and it was a bio-based plastic like PLA, you'd have to say here's all the branches, you know, it's going to be like whatever 98% PLA and then we have these other additives that are added; to say it doesn't have any of those. They have to say all thse additives that are intentionally added, known to be added above zero ppm; have to be disclosed to us to evaluate that chemistry. So that's just something that we really work to make sure that they're getting the 100% chemistry, and we call this bi-homogenous material. So if you had, like, you're going back, like, if you had a bagasse bowl, and you had a chemical that was added into it to keep it held together, to be binding it, and then you had a coating added to it, those are really for us three separate materials. So you have to say, okay, we've got the bagasse that we've got this, and here's a cohesive agent; it's not quite the right term, but like an agent, a binding agent; you have to give us everything that's in that binding agent, and then you've got the coating and you have to give everything in the coating. Often times, what we find is actually that company that's making the ball just filled the notes in the binding agent, and doesn't know what's in the coating. And then often times, we have to go upstream to get that data from their suppliers, to know what's in the binding agents and what's in that coating. So when we look at a product, we break it out into... we call homogenous materials, the holistic material that's added into it, right, and you can have multiple of those material that is into a product, and all of that chemistry has to be disclosed. So that's like a first order activity and it's often very challenging for them to get the data. We also have a specific requirement around PFAS and the product ought to be tested to be PFAS. At the moment, I can't say what that method is; that we would choose; we go and look at what's your; there are methods out there that you can use, a certified laboratory to go and do the testing. So it has to be a certified laboratory that can be used for the testing. And then we also look at impurities. So they have to report any impurities and then we set a threshold level. What that threshold level will be for impurities is to be determined and it may vary depending on the chemistry but for like firefighting foam, we just say, you have to disclose to us all impurities above 100 ppm. Because it's a food service ware product, it's likely that we would have criteria that are more stringent than 100 parts per million because that's in contact with food. And then we can have chemicals; we've identified through what we call green stainless translator; we have a quick screening tool that enables you to quickly identify non-toxic chemicals and so you can't have any of these green screen lists translator-one chemicals that are in the product. You wouldn't be able to have PFAS in other classes of chemicals that are known to be of concern in food products. So we have a wide list of known problematic chemicals so that would be like you can't have any prop-65 chemicals right in the product. You can't have any chemical that says that this is an international; like the reach substances are of very high concern right, you can't have those chemical products. So we create a very extensive restricted substances list of chemicals that are not allowed in the product, and so you have to provide all the data, you have to test for PFAS and then actaully evaluate it to this criteria of what chemistries are not allowed to be in the product. Nate Seltenrich 19:29 Okay, so there's not any like endocrine disruption, like acids or anything like that, like toxicity tests in that sense? Mark Rossi 19:42 Yeah, no endocrinity acids. We do have a list, a chemical list, the endocrine disrupting compounds on it; like all these compounds, right, would be captured. [Salates???] would be captured. So a lot of the known endocrine disrupting chemicals would be captured. Nate Seltenrich 20:03 Yeah. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, that's that seems like one of the difficult areas out of all that you mentioned is that some of the plastics that go into the additives; that it seems like that's a big area where there's just hundreds or thousands of chemicals that aren't; and some of them might not be well known or, you know, the manufacturers themselves might not know what's in there; what they're like, etc. Is that a fair statement? That, that's kind of a one of the bigger unknown areas, like in that first step when they're identifying what's in the plastics, identifying concerns about some of the unknown attitudes beyond the phthalates, the big known names? Mark Rossi 20:52 Yeah, there are two parts to the unknown story. One is what are the chemicals that are in there? Question one, and then what are the hazards of those chemicals? What's the toxicity of those chemicals? So on the first one, and this is the part that's always; getting that complete chemical formulation of what is in the plastic is really hard , and the suppliers are often times unwilling to do that. So like, in some cases, that's why we will go and track down that information, and the suppliers will reject the information directly from the suppliers. So we do have to sign non-disclosure agreements to get that data, but then we're able to evaluate the chemistry. So one is the unknown of what is exactly in there, and you have to go upstream to suppliers and get that data. Then two is the toxicity of those chemicals, and so the way that we structure green screen certified is the bronze level is the entry point, right? But it's not perfect in terms of chemistry evaluations. And then silver and gold ramps it up. But what happens in bronze is; bronzes do not have any of these known problematic chemicals in your products, and so it's basically a negative list. We don't have these chemicals in our products, and therefore it passes. But then there's what's in there, and we know what's in there, but now you get to this point around well, okay, we don't know what the hazards of all those chemicals are. So at the green screen certified silver level, they would have to go and evaluate using the green screen method, the toxicity of all those chemicals. And then, every point there becomes costly. Let's just say it's $5,000 per chemical to evaluate, which is cheap in terms of evaluating chemical in terms of its hazard characteristics. But if you have 20 chemicals in your product. Now it's $100,000, right to evaluate your product chemistry. So you're correct in saying we don't know what the hazard characteristics are in these chemistries. And then when you go and evaluate them, there's a cost involved. And so that's where a company that wants to be a real leader has to say, okay, we're going to, you know, invest the money to go and evaluate the hazards of these chemicals using a third party tool like green screen to ensure that that chemistry is safer, right? And that's where you start to try and figure that out. So now like, do all these chemicals have endocrine disruption issues related to them? And then, even then, when you go and do that evaluation, now, you might find that you have data gaps. So now you've gone and you've done the evaluation; now we've got these data gaps in our evaluation of the chemistries, what do we do? And you, at that point, can go and try and get more testing of the chemical, you can go and say, oh well, we want to find chemicals that write complete test data available on them. So what you're trying to do is a multi-pronged push at transparency, knowing what's in the product, and cast data on the hazard characteristics of those chemicals. And what I see is like, you have to start this process and start the demand and also increase the value because there's no value in doing all that testing, which is alright; all of this is way beyond regulatory compliance, then rated companies won't invest. And that's why this sort of occasion becomes important because if I go and do all this work, and I spend all this money, and now I get it certified meeting this criteria, now I can go and market the product right as meeting this higher level of criteria, evaluated by a third party with criteria developed by a third party. So the certification helps provide that value proposition to why you would want to go and make that type of investment. Nate Seltenrich 25:36 Okay, and so you will have the same bronze, silver and gold levels with packaging. That's what you're saying. Mark Rossi 25:43 Yes, roughly. We will have those and the exact criteria within them will be roughly along those lines, the tiered levels of assessment. Nate Seltenrich 25:57 Okay. Well, thank you so much. It's really helpful. I'm glad that I can cover this. So you said the first quarter of next year? Mark Rossi 26:09 Yeah. Q1, 2021. Nate Seltenrich 26:13 Okay, this will be coming out in a couple of weeks in early December. Mark Rossi 26:23 What publication? Nate Seltenrich 26:25 So it's for in a nonprofit or journalism organization called Orb media and I'm a freelancer working on this for them, not a staffer, but they produce basically, packages for media organizations to be able to, to assist them in covering big topics, often related to sustainability and public health. So in this case, food packaging, safety and sustainability. So I'm working on a package that will be available to other media organizations to cover this issue worldwide. Yeah, so it's a little bit different than than the usual article, but I'll be writing kind of a traditional article as part of that, and then also providing resources. So this is one of the things that we can point to. Mark Rossi 27:17 Great. Will you be able to share it it's completed. Nate Seltenrich 27:23 Yeah, I think you have to like register as a media organization, essentially, to access the content. But I'll have to confirm that with my editors. It's my first time working with them. But as far as sources having to go through that, to be able to, because I definitely will share it one way or the other. But yeah, thanks again. I will let you know if I need any, if I have any questions on any of that, as I'm writing this up and pulling things together. Mark Rossi 27:58 Yeah, if you have any questions, just ping me. And if I don't reply by email, you can always send a text to this phone and say, hey, I have this question. Nate Seltenrich 28:09 Okay, yeah, nothing comes to mind now. I appreciate your time, but I will definitely reach out if needed. And if you don't hear from me, I'll let you know when when the whole thing's out. Mark Rossi 28:21 Okay, great. All right. Well, good luck with the article and have a nice Thanksgiving Nate. Nate Seltenrich 28:25 Thank you very much. Appreciate it. I'll talk to you again. Mark Rossi 28:27 Take care. Bye.