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05 February 2025
For passionate surfer Joel Tasche, co-CEO of CleanHub, the groundbreaking work his company is doing to combat ocean plastic pollution before it even reaches the ocean just makes sense. CleanHub connects brands committed to sustainability with waste management services in underserved coastal communities, helping to prevent plastic from entering the ocean.
During the discussion with series co-host Elena Lambros, Joel shares his passion for the ocean and details about CleanHub’s unique approach, including how they’re working in countries like India, Indonesia, and Guatemala to provide scalable waste management solutions. He also highlights the importance of holding brands accountable for plastic waste and the role legislation plays in driving meaningful change.
"Plastic pollution starts on land, and if we can stop it there, we can keep it from entering our oceans," says Joel Tasche.
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Elena Lambros:
Hello and welcome to ESG Matters at Ashurst. You're listening to the second season of Game Changers and Transition Makers. I'm Elena Lambros, an Ashurst Risk Advisory partner specialising in sustainability.
In this series, we meet global entrepreneurs who are embracing disruption to boost business performance and drive the sustainability agenda. In today's episode, you'll hear my conversation with Joel Tasche, the founder and co-CEO of CleanHub, an organisation on a mission to end plastic pollution in the ocean. And so, without further ado, let's jump in and hear the discussion.
Hi Joel, thanks for joining me today.
Joel Tasche:
Happy to be here.
Elena Lambros:
I thought it'd be really nice if you could tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your business, CleanHub.
Joel Tasche:
Yeah, maybe I start with myself because in the end, that's what led to CleanHub. I grew up at Lake Constance, which is the biggest lake in Germany. This is where I'm from. I always had a passion for water sports, specifically sailing, when I was growing up, but I also spent my entire childhood in and around the lake. And at some point that it wasn't cool enough anymore and maybe people in Australia can't relate that much, but surfing is a very exotic free time activity in Germany because we don't have a lot of good waves. But at the same time, this is what I wanted to do. And so I started traveling and went to Senegal, Indonesia, the Philippines, a lot of places around the world to actually follow what became my passion. I lived in Hawaii for six months, basically chose the universities that I attended based on whether or not I can surf there.
And through that I only deepened my passion for the oceans. And oftentimes it was just a very different picture from where I grew up to where I was traveling, which is exactly what you're looking for when you're traveling. But I think the one thing that we can all agree on is that nobody likes to see pollution. And unfortunately, that was often one of the starkest contrasts. So where I come from, we don't have pollution. It's one of the more established areas of Germany. Also, I would say the area where Porsche comes from and all the big famous brands, so a economically strong area.
And then, if you go to Bali, if you go to other parts in Indonesia, plastic pollution was just a problem that I saw. And through surfing, I literally got in touch with it and I wanted to understand more about it. And this is what eventually led me to start CleanHub. So this passion for the ocean, and for protecting that and for protecting the playground, led to CleanHub.
Elena Lambros:
Well, thank you for the overview. You've absolutely got my mind thinking about Hawaii, thinking about the beaches here in Australia, and I really loved that you chose your universities based on surfing.
Joel Tasche:
I wish, retrospectively, it would've been in Australia, but...
Elena Lambros:
You'll get there. So maybe then, just given that the passion and you think about the ocean, obviously we've all heard about how important it is, the impact of the ocean around climate change and keeping it clean of plastics and pollution. What is the idea around CleanHub and what are you doing through this work?
Joel Tasche:
Before I started CleanHub, I was working in a software company and that was obviously a startup, so the word that gets thrown around the most is scale, scale, scale. And I think this is exactly what we need for plastic pollution as well. So when I was in my research phase for CleanHub, I said that I wanted to come up with a solution and scale that has the ability to scale. To understand why we have plastic pollution, maybe we step one step back and look at it. So roughly two and a half billion people around the world are not connected to waste management services. So there's nobody that's coming to pick up their trash from the backyard. It sounds very unsexy, but this is where plastic pollution starts. Because people still consume, people still produce waste, and especially as prosperity grows, people produce more waste.
And this is what we see in many emerging countries. Plastic is consumed and if nobody comes to pick it up, what are the options they have? They dump it in the next river, they dump it in the ocean, they dump it in the environment. Not because they're bad people, but because there's no choice. Right? The service is just not provided, but you still need to get rid of the plastic waste.
And we said, "Okay, this is where we have to start." There's a bunch of players out there that collect it from the ocean directly. This is obviously needed because plastic is already in the ocean, so we need to collect it from there as well. There's a bunch of people that are doing fantastic work in the rivers of the world, collecting it before it actually goes into the ocean. And we said, "Okay, if all that is already, not solved, but if people are working on that, we need to go one step back and actually start on land and connect these two and a half billion households to waste services."
And I think that model itself is already quite established in many parts of the world, so we didn't have to reinvent the wheel. But the actual problem is funding, because that is a service, and services cost money and don't yield profit. That's the nature of a service, unless you have a customer that pays for it. So what we said as CleanHub is, we need to find brands that want to see a cleaner future, they want to see clean oceans. And this is what we did. We started to look for sponsors for waste management activities. On the other side of the spectrum, we started looking for local entrepreneurs in the communities in India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Tanzania, we're now also in Guatemala, who want to run waste management services in their community, who might already do that and want to expand their business.
And in the end, this is the platform that we're building. On the one hand we have the sponsors, and on the other hand we have the community waste managers. And what we do then on top is make sure that the entire integrity is given so that there's compliance, that we build track and trace software to make sure that we can actually verify the collection of the plastic waste, we can verify working conditions in the hubs. And that's the entire idea behind CleanHub. And the mission that we're on is basically to put a CleanHub into every coastal community that needs one, to stop plastic before it goes into the ocean.
Elena Lambros:
That's a pretty great mission. Essentially, what you're doing is you're matching the funders with people actually providing the services in areas that really need it most, and then adding that really kind of important verification method, make sure that we do know that the plastic isn't getting into the ocean.
Joel Tasche:
Yeah, that's a perfect summary. Because I think, in the end, right, it's like who really believes or trusts their waste manager that they're doing... ?
Elena Lambros:
You all know the story is like they take it out and it doesn't actually get to where it needs to be, right?
Joel Tasche:
Yeah, exactly. And we believe that every transaction requires trust, and the more this industry is trusted, the more investment will go into the industry. And we're essentially providing that trust layer into the market, but in a technological way.
Elena Lambros:
Yeah, no, that's a great idea and really important to focus on the trust. So that's where you are now and that's what CleanHub does. In terms of achieving your mission and being in every kind of coastal area that needs it, what does success look like to you then in terms of getting to that mission, achieving it, and how are you going to go about it?
Joel Tasche:
A big mission has a lot of upsides and a lot of downsides. On the one hand, it's very motivating to put it out there, right? It's easy to rally people around it. The tough part is then to deliver on that promise. And I think CleanHub needs to be a generational company to achieve that. I don't think that we can get it done within the next five years, and this is why you have to focus on, let's say, baby steps there.
So in the end, it will have to be thousands of CleanHubs around the world, and we're happy if we build 10 over the next three years and prove that it works.
So we just finished construction of the first proper one in India where we also funded the CapEx of the construction site. And this is about to go live actually before this podcast airs. So when you listen to it, we are already operating in India, collecting roughly 6,000 tons a year in Kerala. We have two more in planning in the pipeline. And yeah, that's basically what it is. Look at it on a short-term perspective, but always have the long-term in mind.
And in the end, what we've proven over the past four years is that this funding and this building of trust has a high potential of solving the problem in many different areas of the world. We are in tiny little islands in Indonesia that are super remote. We are in Tier II cities in India, and the model is always the same and it always works. And I think replicating that is the interesting challenge of the years ahead.
Elena Lambros:
It's great to hear about the plastic that you're already removing and then being able to replicate that across different communities that need it, I think is an incredibly important focus. In terms then of reimagining what the current system looks like or changing the game to be able to keep replicating that, keep the model growing, what do you think is key to doing that?
Joel Tasche:
I always say the biggest bottleneck, or our biggest limitation to grow, is the willingness of brands to actually pay for the damage that they cause. Currently, our customers are not the ones that are causing the damage. Currently, we're not working with the brands that are selling into Indonesia, into India. Currently, we're working with entrepreneurs, with founders who have the heart in the right place and to know that plastic pollution is an issue. So it can be smaller brands actually. We also have customers in Australia. They care a lot about the environment and they see that we are all dependent on the ocean, and then they fund it. But at the risk of sounding like a broken record, and it's very easy to pick them out as a villain, that comes with different challenges. And what we need for those big brands to actually pay up, as boring as it sounds, is proper legislation and laws.
In the end, the governments need to make sure that if a brand is bringing plastic waste into the economy, these brands are also responsible for taking it out. That's what's called Extended Producer Responsibility, that's what's, for example, funding the waste management system here in Germany. Very successfully so. I'm not saying that everything is going well in German waste management, but we don't have plastic pollution.
Elena Lambros:
Yeah, it's really like focusing on changing that behaviour and taking that accountability for the end-to-end life cycle of that product, essentially. Making sure that you're thinking about where it ends up at the end of its life and what you do with it. So I think that's probably a really important connection.
Joel Tasche:
It's to some degree almost unfair that you try and make a profit off of some of the more marginalised communities out there and sell them individually packaged goods. And you're happy to take their money, but then you're not willing to actually take over responsibility towards the waste that you're producing in these communities.
Elena Lambros:
Yeah, I think there is definitely a big shift towards thinking through, again, probably that accountability piece around the way that you're thinking about your product and the way that you are delivering it, selling it, all of those things. So I think that's probably definitely one of the complexities around reducing the amount of plastic that gets into the ocean. Just because I feel like CleanHub isn't enough focused around net-zero and the environment, do you have a personal commitment to net-zero or to nature over the next 12 months?
Joel Tasche:
Yes and no. I think, given the nature of the business that I'm in, I come across a lot of companies that make it easier for me to reduce waste, to reduce my emissions. I think we need to be very careful that we don't put the responsibility for net-zero on the consumer for two reasons. And we will be 8 billion people living on the planet, or we already are, and what it takes on a personal level is behaviour change to actually reduce pollution, to reduce emissions and all that. And I think it's going to be incredibly difficult to drive behaviour change in 8 billion people. That should not be an excuse to not look after yourself, which is why, obviously, one of the first things that everybody can do is actually sort their waste in their home, make sure that the organics go into the organic bin and...
Elena Lambros:
The things that everyone should know, right?
Joel Tasche:
Yeah, exactly. But we need to be careful that we don't shift the entire responsibility on the consumer because it's such a complex topic that education will be almost impossible and we won't see behaviour change in 8 billion people around the world.
So the more interesting part, I think, is to work directly with companies who can change the business models that people consume. And there we have to make sure that the more responsible the business models, the ones that actually will help consumers go towards net-zero, are equally convenient because that's what humans strive for. That's in our biology. We don't like to extend more energy than we have to get a task accomplished. We are striving for safety, we're striving for food safety. We always want to eat, and this is why these business models have to be as convenient as the current model that is strongly polluting now. That's more it. I can tell you which deodorant I'm using because it's zero waste. There are so many small things in my life that are changing, but I never sat down and said, "Okay, and this is what I want to achieve in the next 12 months."
Elena Lambros:
No, it's a good point though around that balance between the personal choices and change versus the one things that the other ones that will make such a big, big impact. And then finally, if you could provide listeners with just one action to take away, what would that be?
Joel Tasche:
Sort your waste.
Elena Lambros:
I love it. Pretty simple.
Joel Tasche:
Yeah. I don't know from which municipality you're listening into and what the waste management system in your local area is. Please listen to the municipality. Don't become a cynic and say like the waste managers are doing everything wrong. The effect of throwing something into the wrong bin is going a long way, because if you just throw a banana peel or whatever in your dry waste that is contaminating that entire unit and makes it way, way harder to actually recycle that.
So I think the one action that everybody can do is really sort your trash. If organic goes back into producing soil, that's fantastic. If paper goes with paper and you can recycle that, that's fantastic. If plastic goes with plastic, there's more to it because not all plastic is equal, that already increases the chances to actually turn it into a new product and save resources. And I think that's a very easy thing to do on a household level.
Elena Lambros:
I agree. Thank you. Thank you for that. Well, thank you for coming on the podcast. I've really loved hearing about your background and about CleanHub and kind of feeling a bit inspired about how you can help reduce some of the complex issues around plastic in the ocean. So thank you.
Joel Tasche:
Yeah, thank you very much for having me.
Elena Lambros:
Thank you for listening to this episode of ESG Matters at Ashurst. I hope you found this episode engaging and inspiring. To subscribe to future episodes of Game Changers and Transition Makers, and to hear previous episodes, click on the link in the show notes or search ESG Matters at Ashurst on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please feel free to leave a rating or a review. And finally, to learn more about all Ashurst podcasts, visit ashurst.com/podcasts. In the meantime, thanks again for listening, and goodbye for now.
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