Imperfect Foods was founded in 2015 with a mission to reduce food waste and build a better food system for everyone

Imperfect Foods

Think about the time before existed and ask yourself, "Where would my car be if I wasn't driving it?" Probably in the parking lot, right? Similarly, before , your guest room would just remain unused until your friend came over to crash and left beer bottles behind. These are just a couple of examples of the business model. Uber Airbnb Trash to Cash How exactly does the “Trash to Cash” model work? The “ business model is a concept where companies turn waste and unused items into valuable commodities that can generate revenue. In other words, they are taking what would otherwise be considered trash and transforming it into a source of income. This model is based on the principle that , and it has been applied in a variety of industries with great success. Trash to Cash” one person’s waste can be another person’s treasure one person’s waste can be another person’s treasure So how did Airbnbs and the Ubers of the world pioneer this model? Let’s start with Airbnb, a platform that connects travelers with homeowners who have extra rooms to rent. This business model takes advantage of unused space in people’s homes and turns it into a source of income for homeowners. Airbnb has upended the traditional hotel industry and grown to become one of the world's largest accommodation providers, demonstrating the potential of the trash to cash model. Similarly, Uber has transformed the transportation industry by connecting people who have unused cars with those who need rides. The company’s innovative business model has created a new source of income for individuals, who can now earn money by using their personal vehicles as taxis. This has not only improved the lives of people who were previously unable to find work, but it has also reduced the number of cars on the road, which is better for the environment. The model is also extensible. For example, you may have a car idling in the garage, but you don’t have time to chauffeur others—you can put the car on . Or if you don’t have an unused room with a private bathroom, you can still rent out your RV at Turo . RVShare While Uber and Airbnb are great examples of monetizing underutilized resources, ? I present to you: and . can you think of a way of monetizing an absolutely unusable and usually thrown-away item Misfits Market Imperfect Foods They are both grocery delivery services that specialize in selling produce that would have otherwise gone to waste due to its aesthetic imperfections. They provide a solution for farmers who are unable to sell their misshapen or overstocked produce to grocery stores, and in turn, they offer consumers affordable and sustainable food options. This business model not only reduces food waste but also generates a profit for the companies and benefits the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with food waste. Interestingly, last year but are keeping the business separate for now. Misfits Market acquired Imperfect Foods The trash-to-cash model can also be applied to the fashion industry. One example is , a company that takes discarded clothing from large brands and gives it a second life through repairs and upcycling. This business model not only diverts waste from landfills but also provides consumers with affordable and sustainable clothing options. The Renewal Workshop We already covered some great examples, but how about we push the idea to the extreme and talk about how literal trash can be converted to $$$? Lo and behold, there is , a company that repurposes hard-to-recycle materials such as plastic, metal, and paper into new products. Another successful example is , which is a company that repurposes discarded materials into luxury furniture. The company is able to turn waste into high-end furniture and generate income from it. Finally, is another example of a successful trash to cash business model. The company takes discarded materials and recycles them into new products that can be sold. TerraCycle Upcycle 1–800-GOT-JUNK Another area where the trash to cash model can be applied is in the waste management industry. Companies like have created innovative solutions that help businesses reduce waste and increase recycling, while also generating revenue. Rubicon Global collects waste from businesses, sorts it, and sells the recyclable materials to manufacturers who can use them to create new products. This not only helps businesses reduce waste but also provides them with a new source of income. Rubicon Global In conclusion, the “trash to cash” business model has proven to be a successful and sustainable way to turn waste into a source of income. By taking advantage of unused or discarded items, companies are not only reducing waste but also generating revenue and creating a more sustainable future. This model has the potential to transform various industries and provide individuals with new sources of income. So next time you see something that would normally be considered waste, think about how it could be transformed into a source of income for someone else. You can follow me on / to get updates on stories like this. You can also support my coffee drinking habit ;) Twitter LinkedIn here

From Trash to Treasure: Unlocking the Potential of Trash to Cash Business Models

THE MOTHER AND HER CHILD

THE HEADLESS HUMANS

HOW WE MADE TONO-BUNGAY HUM

Bacteria: Chapter IX - DISINFECTION

Urizen shows his book of laws. Image Credit, William Blake Archive The Science of How Things Backfire When human endeavors so often go wrong we blame people for making bad decisions, whether from a moral, or political, or scientific point of view. This only raises our emotional temperature without fixing problems or heading off future catastrophes. However, there are recent theories that explain that many failures stem from general dynamical patterns. Let’s look at two of these patterns. They might someday be part of a science of how to get things done, a kind of moral philosophy of the practical. How the Deck Is Stacked First, let’s consider what we’re up against. As in, what are the background conditions for any human project, the constraints that we simply have to accommodate? given The first is commonly called Murphy’s Law: what can go wrong will go wrong. This is really the second law of thermodynamics. It says there are many ways for disorder to increase and very few for it to decrease. We ourselves are temporary thrusts against the gradient of disorder. Things we do to provide ourselves a safe environment are therefore also temporary. Murphy. This can happen at a low level of abstraction, as when things that we make wear themselves out, when our food rots, our bodies degrade, or when weather tears up our habitations. But it also applies at a higher level of abstraction. Case in point being software. It is hard-to-impossible to make a useful program that does not have ways to fail. Likewise, our social and cultural arrangements are subject to decay. Economists speak about a “law” of unintended consequences. We do something to solve a problem, but as a result, some other problem arises, something that we could not or did not predict. Examples are innumerable, but for now, remember that every drug has unwanted (so-called) “side” effects. The underlying core principle of unintended consequences is the familiar chaos theory, the butterfly wing effect. Unintention. The third thing we are stuck with is human nature, a conglomeration that includes some real downers. We have sociopaths. We have tribalism. Selfishness and free-riders cause problems directly and indirectly by causing trust issues. We find it hard to agree on basic facts because we are ruled by unconscious cognitive biases. Human Nature. One bias (that I have covered ) happens when we try to understand others’ motivations, a process called Theory of Mind. We over-generalize this, thus attributing agency to parts of nature that don’t have it. We then manufacture belief in supernatural forces whose whims we need to appease. The resulting behavior may be benign (nature worship), or harmless (folk tales), or horribly wrong (crusades, crucifixions, cleansings). elsewhere Another major “human nature” issue is in the scope of how many other people that a person cares about. This sets up conflicts between those who versus those who also care about larger groups or even humanity as a whole. care only about family or tribe So, we exist in a background of threats from: entropy, inability to foresee the consequences of our actions, and everyone’s often unconscious cognitive biases. There are also higher principles involved, dynamics that lead good intentions astray. Moloch, AKA the Multipolar Trap Moloch: by John Singer Sargent @ Boston Public Library An anonymous blogger, pseudonym-ed Scott Alexander, gave us a catchy name for the most destructive dynamic in the world. Moloch was an ancient Carthaginian god of human sacrifice. In Allen Ginsburg’s famous poem, , Moloch was identified with all the myriad horrors and miseries of civilization. Alexander, impressed by the analogy, used Moloch as the nickname for what he s. Howl termed multipolar trap These are situations that can arise whenever multiple parties are pursuing some valuable goal, . Nearly always the end in itself or some resource leading to it will be in short supply, and thus competition will arise. The bad dynamic occurs when someone decides to sacrifice some other value, , in order to get ahead. Any other parties will be out-competed unless they also sacrifice . Soon everyone who survives the competition will find themselves without and possibly have less of the original goal . G V V V G There can instead emerge a monopoly or oligopoly when one player or a few players sacrifice enough ’s to get all the . V G The Two-Income Multipolar Trap The more interesting cases are those where there are many players. Consider the story documented in Elizabeth Warren’s 2004 book, . Suppose the Goal is to live in a safe neighborhood with good schools. The game players are families raising children. To buy a home in an expensive school district, both parents have to work. The Values sacrificed include time with children, cultural opportunity, and diversity, as well as the money that is used for child care, higher taxes (because of higher joint income), mortgage increases, a second car, convenience foods, and tranquilizers. The Two-Income Trap Also sacrificed are the aspirations of people who can’t get good enough jobs to compete. These folks are not even in the original game; they are collateral damage. Meanwhile, the price of desirable houses goes up and up, taking the Goal out of reach for many. Without anyone making a decision to do so, other values are sacrificed as household stress, debt, divorce, and bankruptcy increase. Of course, as we know, it went further than that. Even back then Warren mentioned subprime mortgages as a dangerous development. Libertarian, greed-is-good schemes are Moloch’s favorite food. Now, in the continuing aftermath of the last crash, it’s Jurassic Park for the middle class, bunkers for the rich, and fascism for the rest. Moloch, indeed. So the first Failure (note capital F) dynamic is Moloch of the Multipolar Traps. ‘Multipolar’ because it is a competition of multiple parties. ‘Traps’ because once you are in the downward spiral, you are stuck until something gives, some limit is reached. In our two-income example, perhaps the limit is a pandemic with widespread unemployment, or… pick your own favorite show-stopper. Surrogation Traps The story above, of course, has a lot more going on than a multipolar trap. It has the basic background conditions mentioned earlier, and several doses of our second major type of Failure dynamic. That dynamic has several technical names from game theory, economics and even from artificial intelligence theory. But the name I like is a new-ish one, . It simply means the substitution of a surrogate goal for an actual goal. It sounds innocent enough. However, there are plenty of times when we get together and agree on totally admirable goals, and it still ends in tears. Surrogation Take a moment and remember the Phrygian king King Midas. Dionysus offered Midas anything he wanted as payment for a favor. What he wanted was riches, but his surrogate for that (“let everything that I touch turn to gold”), awarded literally by Dionysus, was a curse. Surrogation is the basis of legal systems. A prescriptive law is said to have a (its goal) which is to encourage some better state of affairs or to eliminate some problem. On the other hand, the of the law (its surrogate) specifies rules for bringing the spirit to fruition. Rules for shaping human behavior are often tricky, and so laws are imperfect. William Blake’s mythical being, Urizen (”your reason”), tried to constrain the universe by creating laws but made chaos and misery instead. spirit , letter We engage in projects whose ideal outcome might be easily stated and agreed upon, but whose execution has to be guided by a substitute. The surrogate is that which can be measured, or tracked, or is simply feasible for the situation. Effort can only be applied to the surrogate, not to the actual goal. Wise observers tell us that an enterprise based on surrogation very often misses its mark. The ill effect of surrogation is so reliable that there’s a version known as Goodhart’s Law. Economist Charles Goodhart said: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. So we can design a project (private or public, it doesn’t matter), and say (oh, so smugly) that we’ll know we’re getting there because we will measure X, Y, and Z. The measures are chosen because they make sense, they logically connect somehow with our project’s true goal. Often they are measures of the direct effects of particular policies that we think will help lead us towards our real goal. Perhaps in the past, they even occurred at times when we seemed closer to achieving the goal. So, we’re set, all happy because we have a good goal and good measures to lead us to it. We change our policies to set the project in motion and sit back to watch our success. In what way could anything go wrong? Let us count the ways, as Scott Garrabrant, one of those people who tries to imagine how we might get super AIs to behave admirably. explained by (1) People who have incentives to do things that change the Surrogate measures start to think of the Surogate as an end in itself. The Surrogate mentally becomes the new Goal. But optimizing for the Surrogate does not optimize for the Goal. Goal Drift. (2) The Surrogate and the Goal have been correlated in the past because they both are affected by other causes. But changing the Surrogate has no causal effect on the Goal at all. Or maybe you failed to realize that the Goal actually causes changes in the Surrogate, but not vice versa. You can’t make yourself taller by practicing basketball skills. Causal Disconnect. Sometimes the project itself changes the causal effect. We decide to place a wind farm in an area where there is a lot of wind. We calculate how many windmills to use and what our power output (the Goal) should be. But the presence of many windmills in an area actually the Surrogate measure, wind speed. decreases (3) The correlation of the Surrogate with the Goal is causal, but imperfect, because random other unknown causes are involved. When your actions increase the Surrogate measure, there might be no corresponding effect on the Goal. Statistical Regression. Sometimes you look at multiple Surrogate measures and pick the one that correlates best with the Goal. But (says basic statistical theory) that correlation, because it is high, is most likely to be high due partly to random factors. So when you start to use the Surrogate, its actual correlation with the Goal becomes less, i.e., it “regresses towards the mean”. Height is correlated with basketball ability, but unless you are the coach in a tiny town, you don’t just pick players based on height. (4) Perhaps the most powerful way that Surrogates fail to lead to Goals is also the one that is easiest to understand. People are getting rewarded for changing the value of the Surrogate. So, they find the easiest way to do that, which might have no effect on the Goal, or may even work against it. Gaming. Here are some classic real examples of surrogate gaming. Many more can be found in attempts to regulate the financial industry. The Cobra Effect. Offer a bounty in India for dead cobras, and people start raising cobras to turn in for the bounty. When the government wises up, the unused cobras get released, increasing the population that everyone wanted to decrease. Central Planning Confounded. Soviet factories that are rewarded for the Surrogate, number of nails, produce a lot of tiny useless nails. Moloch Eats College Loans I was tempted to write the TL;DR about college loans, which involves interlocking hierarchies of surrogation and the two levels of multipolar traps. Instead, readers can try to puzzle that out for themselves. The top-level goals are American national competitiveness in a knowledge economy, and rewarding careers for individuals. The surrogate policy was to have government guarantees of student loans, making them easy to obtain. The unintended results were rampant college cost inflation, the rise of fraudulent educational enterprises (even a disreputable real estate developer could start one), staggering student debt, adjunct professors living out of their cars, and higher unemployment for graduates. There’s probably also a multipolar/surrogate story for the U.S.’s absurdly expensive healthcare, or for any combination of <unfavorable adjective> &<tragic societal circumstance>. Can We Do Better Than Muddling Through? We need people to understand that there are dynamics, even nuances, to how things go wrong.  Most people prefer simple slogans to complicated (’blah blah, blah blah blah’) explanations. ...?  Maybe better education would help. Another barrier is the pervasive, eternal multipolar surrogate trap of power politics, which also is subject to the corrosive influence of sociopaths and narcissists. In fact, power politics might be a selective pressure for the elevation of bad characters. and What we need from political and business leadership is not competitive gamesmanship. They should help develop and then make use of a science of the possible; to use factual evidence, obtained by transparent processes; to acknowledge traps and weigh trade-offs, crafting better incentives, and making clear priorities. We also need to realize that we are chewing up planetary resources that took enormous, deep time to create. Thus, we are stuck in the biggest multipolar trap of them all: our own tar pit of hubris, myopia, and fear. And half the United States’ electorate still denies all of this. Also published behind a paywall.

Why Would Anything Ever Go Right?

Patrick Lee Scott on Fasting, Writing, Epiphany Bridges, and 10x-ing Impact

There must be some way outta here — politicians, global economy & democratic crisis — said the joker to the thief. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Is it time to automate politicians? — “[I]f we replaced…politicians with algorithms… might we be better off?….We already cede decision-making responsibility on health and finances to algorithms, why not with voting?…. 2016 election, candidates used social-media advertising to target different voters with different messages …. [So] can we replace politicians with robots? The answer is a soft yes. …. …. Big data and artificial intelligence allow us to understand public issues better and faster…[and] may be able to identify the most effective approaches to solving problems Predictive analytics…can predict voting habits from Facebook likes …. This raises the issue of what we want from our politicians and government ….[It’s] not just about understanding citizens’ views…[but] decision-making, human reason and emotion…[that] swirl together in…clashes and compromises and imperfect-but-necessary choices Political leadership is as much about leadership, vision and belief, as it is about information, analysis and communication …. .” [Since] truckers, lawyers, doctors, builders and now even chefs…are being automated, whether we automate our politics is up for serious discussion https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/07/31/is-it-time-to-automate-politicians _Civilization has inflated the “great man theory” of history. A19th-century idea in which history is largely explained…_medium.com Who Do You Trust? Global economy: Ten years after the financial crisis — “ …. Four big themes emerge from…the post-2008 era immediate post-crisis response, in which the banks were rescued and both the monetary and fiscal taps were loosened…. euro-zone crisis…. shift in the developed world after 2010 to a more austere fiscal policy…. rise of populist politics in Europe and America… [T]he immediate post-crisis response was necessary, but unfortunate in that executives in the banking industry paid too low a price for their folly…. …. Europe was slow…in dealing with the peripheral countries; and that the switch to austerity was a mistake [ …. T]he backlash against bankers, frustration with EU governments and the impact of austerity led to the rise of populism, the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote…a failure of political leadership Bush administration got its crisis measures through Congress only with support from Democrats, but bipartisanship stopped the moment Barack Obama took office …. …. [T]he most dangerous failure…[is] the unwillingness to deal with problems which lie at the heart of the…finance sector, which caused the crisis, looks remarkably unaltered ….[Bonuses] on Wall Street last year was $184,220, just shy of the 2006 record. Scandals over banks’ bad behavior, in areas such as price-fixing, money laundering and mis-selling continue to come to light In global terms, the amount of debt relative to GDP is about as high as it was before the crisis…[and] it is far from clear that governments will be willing to take decisive action when the next crisis hits…. The big change has been in the public mood…as voters peel off towards the far-left and nationalist right…. …. The level of co-operation that occurred in 2008 and 2009, such as when America’s central bank made dollars available to its cash-strapped European counterparts, may not be easy to achieve next time around Central banks brought a global economic heart attack to an end…[with] emergency surgery. But the patient has gone back to his old habits of smoking, heavy drinking and gorging on fatty foods. He may be looking healthy…[but] next attack could be…more severe and…techniques that worked a decade ago may not be successful a second time.” https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/08/04/ten-years-after-the-financial-crisis American democracy is in crisis, and not just because of Trump — “[A] crisis of governance has been building for decades…[so Trump’s] assaults on established beliefs, laws, institutions and values…[reveal] the true scale of pre-existing weaknesses and faultlines is becoming apparent…[and] bordering on national meltdown**….** [The] frequent use of ‘executive orders’ [is]…[a] wake-up call…[because] once issued, such orders are rarely overturned…[as] diktats and fatwas like the worst kind of unelected despot or ayatollah ….[FDR] interned Japanese-Americans…[and] Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation was an executive order …. . [T]he ‘imperial presidency’ is…one that Congress…failed to curb over the years…[with] two-party system, virulent partisanship and out-of-touch politicians are blamed for chronic failures of governance . The advantages conferred by incumbency are…reducing democratic choice…[and] Trump was the fifth president to win office despite losing the popular vote , thanks to the archaic…electoral college process Members of Congress are…overly beholden to corporations, wealthy donors and special interests…[and] seen as corrupt…[with] $6.5bn…spent by presidential and congressional candidates in 2016 — enough to give every teacher in the country a $2,000 pay rise . The average cost of winning a Senate seat was $19.4m…[House] seat in the midterm…cost an average $1.5m…[which] excludes many would-be candidates…and places others in hock to their financial backers …. [Worse] 40% of all television ads for political candidates are financed by secret donors with private political or commercial agendas…[and] untraceable money emanating from foreign governments or individuals, via agents and lobbyists …. [Trump’s ] behavior highlights these entrenched structural problems…[and] encouragement of ultranationalist, racist and neo-fascist forces…divisive demagoguery, relentless vilification of independent journalism, contempt for the western European democracies, coddling of dictators and rejection of the established, rules-based international order all reinforce perceptions that the global role of the US as shining democratic beacon is dimming rapidly…. …. .” The most urgent task is to recognize what is happening Radical, inclusive political reform is urgently required https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/07/american-democracy-crisis-trump-supreme-court _History teaches men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. [Eban]_medium.com Quicksand of Our Past Find more of my ideas on Medium at, . A Passion to Evolve Or click the Follow button below to add me to your feed. Prefer a weekly email newsletter — free, no ads, no spam, & never sell the list — email me with “add me” in the subject line. dochuston1@gmail.com May you live long and prosper!Doc Huston

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