We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Joel Sugarman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Joel below.

Hi Joel, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

For most of my adult life, I have been passionate about protecting the environment. After working in an unrelated field for 40 years, it felt like the time was right to start a company that was dedicated to changing the materials and improving the sustainability of the products we use in our daily lives. Initially, I became interested in selling hemp plastic as a more sustainable alternative to 100% petroleum derived plastics. This material, being not yet ready for prime time, led us to look at other alternative and more sustainable bio polymers to sell as petroleum plastic alternatives. PHA, poly hydroxy alkanoates looked like the best alternative. We continue to collaborate with different companies to identify and source additional material alternatives of bio polymers and natural fibers to offer carbon sequestering and sustainable material alternatives to our clients. Our corporate vision is that we operate and contribute to a circular economy model in our day to day operations. After manifesting my dream of relocating to Costa Rica, we have added additional focus to creating the first bio-refinery in Central America, that will process agro-waste into usable and saleable fiber, pulp and other commercially valuable materials. Our circular thinking also led us to sell a unique, food safe, organic insecticide that only kills insects, so that the waste material that we process is free of harmful insecticides when we process it. In addition, our food supply needs less poison to grow it, and we have an answer. This gives us a unique and valuable position in the sustainable materials industry, without the usual greenwashing that we see so often in this growing market area.

Joel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I had seen a post on LinkedIn by a guy who said he had created a 25% hemp filled plastic, and decided it would be something that I could sell as a hybrid material that could replace traditional petroleum derived plastics. When we found that our clients were looking for other sustainable materials they could switch to, and decided to expand into more truly compostable or non-toxic biodegradable materials such as home compostable PHA bio-polymer resins. Then when we heard about the amount of usable natural fiber that was discarded as waste from farming practices, and decided that we could begin converting this plant waste into usable fiber and pulp, we jumped on that train as well. We researched and developed ways to harvest and process this agro-waste into materials we could sell and were in demand by clients. Agro-waste fiber has been a profitable industry in Asia for many years. In the Americas and the EU, however, the only sources that have existed for true bio-polymers and agro-waste natural fibers were the Asian sources. Once supply chains and shipping channels were disrupted during Covid, clients looked more closely at sourcing these materials closer to home. Earth Polymer Design provides a reliable and truly sustainable sourcing option for these customers. We are proud to offer a more circular way of doing business, where we look at supply, logistics and end of life reliability for our customers.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met my co-founder, Sonia, on social media. Since I was interested in moving to Costa Rica, I had many questions about what life, and also doing business, would be like there. I saw a photo of her in Costa Rica, and asked her if she could answer some questions about it. She said that she hadn’t lived there in many years, and was living in Argentina, but she was able to answer my questions anyway.
When I showed her the business I was building with Earth Polymer Design, she was very interested in what it was about. As I was in need of a Spanish speaking, bilingual assistant, I offered her an opportunity to work with me to build my company. It was one of the best decisions of my life. Not only do we have much in common and similar world views, her work ethic and dedication to growing our business is astounding. Sonia is the heart and soul of EPD, and much of our success can be attributed to her efforts and passion for us to grow and satisfy our mutual professional goals.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

My company, Earth Polymer Design, was originally started to develop and grow sales with bio-polymers. We realized after selling material like hemp plastic, that more chemical and engineering development work was needed before it would work in the applications where we had sold it.
On a phone call in 2021 with agricultural engineers and other agronomy connected scientists and administrators from the University of Costa Rica’s Technology Center, we were alerted to the fact that Costa Rica, the worlds number one pineapple producer, sprayed every one of their pineapple plants post harvest with the highly toxic herbicide, paraquat. At that moment of disgust, I decided that if we could harvest these plants immediately post harvest, to convert into fiber and pulp, there would be no need for paraquat use in this particular application and industry. I began partnering with a Costa Rica entrepreneur who was on that phone call and had a similar interest in this. Our goal is to raise capital to build the first agro-waste bio-refinery in Central America, to take advantage of the large volumes of waste biomass that is produced from agriculture there.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://earthpolymerdesign.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthpolymerdesign/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthPolymerIntl/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/earth-polymer-design-international/?viewAsMember=true