The idea of “going green” has been rolling since the 1970s, and started becoming trendy in the early 2000s when organic food, sustainable products, and eco-friendly everything started popping up. The movement was largely powered by an effort to change the products, habits and sciences we already had order to make our lives less impactful on the planet. While I took notice of this surge in popularity, I never identified myself as an environmentalist. That all changed one day when I noticed how much left over food was discarded in my university’s dining halls and how many bottles, notebooks chip bags etc were thrown away in my dorm halls. I was stunned by the amount of waste. But it wasn’t some sort of eco-guilt I was feeling, it was excitement. Waste made the perfect raw material for building new consumer products because it has little to no cost (theoretically even a negative cost), which would allow a company to make eco-friendly products without charging a premium all while doing something good for the planet. A lifelong obsession with waste began!