Back in 2005, as a part of the Coca-Cola Company Environmental Team, April Crow was a pioneer working on the concept of sustainable packaging. In the mid-2000s, despite stories on the great pacific garbage patch, ocean plastic waste was not high on policy or corporate agendas. April believed this was due to a lack of scientific data on the scale and threat of plastic waste. To fill this gap, April’s team partnered with Ocean Conservancy to convene leading scientists to help fill these knowledge gaps. Their research found the majority of marine plastic pollution stemmed from five Asian countries that lacked waste management infrastructure, which if fully in place, could reduce leakage by 45 percent. This insight raised a challenging question—how can companies and aid agencies bring funding to these markets to facilitate better infrastructure and prevent plastic leakage?

April left Coca-Cola and helped launch Circulate Capital in 2018 where following the concept of catalytic capital, her team looks for investable opportunities to achieve sustainable waste value chains, investing in waste collection systems, processing technology, and creating a “second life” for post-consumer plastic materials. The first seven investments in South and Southeast Asia could prevent five million tons of plastic from leaking into the ocean. We sat down with April to discuss her innovative work on plastic waste reduction.

China Environment Forum (CEF): What aspect of the plastic waste problem are you solving? Why is this work so important to build a circular economy?

April Crow (AC): At Circulate Capital, we are looking at opportunities to show this is truly an “investable space.” Our funding is dedicated to India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines. We did our original landscape assessment work in these countries to look for investable opportunities. The investment we have made to date is throughout the value chain, looking at collection systems, processing, technologies that can create additional uses for these materials.

Many of these projects have had trouble finding investment through traditional means. We are trying to build an on-ramp for institutional investors and demonstrate the pipeline of these investable opportunities and attract others.

We announced our first investment at the beginning of last year in Indonesia. At the end of last year, we announced several diverse investments within India ranging from increasing food grade recycled content to increasing capacity and improving the quality of recycling. Some investments are focused on building more collection materials, others are based on technology, like apps that can share knowledge to help the waste collectors within the informal sector.

CEF: We learned from Circulate Capital’s investment project with the Indonesian recycling company Tridi Oasis that it is not only about funding their work but helping them with market and technology access. Could you tell us more about the impacts of your work with Tridi Oasis and local communities in Indonesia?

AC: I am excited because we have the ability to make local connections and bring the support far beyond just dollars. By looking at the “how” questions—what equipment they are purchasing, and the companies’ quality standards—we help advance connection points in the future. Our work is unique in that we are involving global companies and are able to bring their supply chain and technical knowledge along with the investment. We can help Indonesian companies like Tridi Oasis with their overall business model and end markets to make them more sustainable in the long run.

Based on my experience, a lot of important individual philanthropic efforts were made in the past, but to build a real solution is to build sustainable financial models.

With just the first seven investments, we are expecting to prevent 5 million tons of plastics going to the ocean, and also decrease greenhouse gas emissions. In local communities, it is also about job creation and improving the livelihoods. During a lot of my travels to Indonesia and the Philippines, I realized that investment opportunities come with deep engagement with local communities. The resulting social economic benefits and the recognition from the communities as being a part of the solution are really exciting to see.

CEF: What are the challenges that hinder the progress of your work?

AC: We realize that lots of solutions must be built from the ground. Our funders are in these countries and looking to help. The challenges also appear in the question of whether the projects are scalable. Our investment team goes through hundreds of opportunities, looking at which are suitable to bring into our portfolio. Clearly in the current environment of COVID, the investees have to pivot and often drive more innovative solutions for business stability.

We saw the most investment opportunities in India and Indonesia, where our team members were first on the ground. Now India has been a little easier, in part because of the strong startup community.

CEF: What sort of gender or equality issues can be involved in your work?

AC: A lot of women are involved in the waste recycling space, in Indonesia in particular. I started working on the plastic leakage issue with missing information. The turning point was when science and data came together. Hardly any academics were in this field a decade ago. Then we started to know Jenna Jambeck, as well as other academics like Kara Lavender Law and Chelsea Rochman and others. These women are all the game changers leading us down a path and bringing the industries and societies to action. It is really difficult to champion any change without the scientific data based research. With the help of solid information, you can have a really intelligent science and business driven conversations which lead to solutions.