David Katz, Founder and CEO of The Plastic Bank

The Plastic Bank Founder and CEO David Katz discusses his model to reduce pollution in the world’s oceans by monetizing plastic to help alleviate poverty. 

On The Plastic Bank’s strategy to combat plastic pollution: “We’ve created a monetary system that uses plastic as an input. The Plastic Bank is, I think, best exemplified as a chain of stores for the world’s poor where everything can be purchased using plastic garbage. We’re most proud that we offer school tuition, medical insurance, pharmaceuticals, clean water, access to communications, cooking fuel, and everything else the world’s poor needs and can’t afford now, available to be purchased using plastic garbage.” 

On the state of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans: “It's one thing to go clean the ocean, but if we're not actually at the source and keeping plastic from entering the ocean to begin with, cleaning up the ocean is futile….Much of it is coming from the waterway, where people use the waterway as a source of waste management. There is no other opportunity than to throw it in the river, or in the stream, or the canal, or whatever else it is. Then it washes into the ocean.”