Fiona
What did you want to be when you grew up?
David Katz
A psychologist, because I loved the way the mind worked, I loved that there were things that could influence people’s outcomes. And then you could look inside those people and see why.
Fiona
So, then where did your idea for The Plastic Bank originate from?
David Katz
Everything in our life, everything that we’re doing right now, that we will ever do, is always a combination and culmination of all of the decisions and all of the experiences that we’ve ever had. So, The Plastic Bank came from a life time of overcoming challenges; of being an entrepreneur, having a dysfunctional family… It came from my dad wanting to run away from my mom and building a sailboat sailing the sea. It came from growing up on the water’s edge and living next to the beach watching stuff come ashore, the combination of being online in my youth and seeing these pictures of the starving, full Albatross on Midway Island, a bit of everything. That’s really the authentic story, it’s not what people ask though. They look for the moment but there is no moment, it was moments, a lifetime of moments that led me to it.
Fiona
What has been the biggest mistake you have made throughout your career?
David Katz
One of the biggest mistakes was to think that I was making mistakes, to think that there was such a thing. To lie in the lament of what could have been, to waste a precious moment and a reflection of what was and not what was going to be.
Fiona
You’ve often shared that the entrepreneurial journey can be a lonely one. How do you deal with that feeling of loneliness on this journey?
David Katz
I become more powerful in life, I recognize that the joy lies inside of me already. Whether I am with someone or not with someone, I can seize unconditional joy, it’s a challenge I admit, I’m human and I like touch and other things, they give me a different type of feeling. The more I could become in my life the more I recognize that it’s my journey. There is no alone, I’m not actually alone. The more I journey the more I recognize that I have nothing but people around me. The decisions that I have to make, the hard decisions, the choices, the directions, those are my journey. I think what has happened in the past or the way that it was unfolding for me was that in those moments I wished that I had someone with me because I didn’t want to accept how hard it was. I didn’t want it to be just my responsibility, I held out hope that it would be easier and because it wasn’t I turned to thinking that I was lonely.
Fiona
Do you still wake up each day and pinch yourself when you think about what The Plastic Bank has become? That what you’re doing is real, and is globally change making?
David Katz
I have an out of body experience all the time. Oh, my goodness! I most often reflect on the power of word. I am in awe of the power of word and creation. And we chatted before, I’m not what would be considered religious, I’m highly spiritual, even philosophical, but I mean I don’t know anything about the Bible, I really don’t other than the power of word which is exhibited in Genesis as God created the earth. I think that it speaks as well in testament that God himself spoke the universe into existence. And I come to see the Bible as just a living testament of consciousness, a way to live. It’s not someone with a beard in the sky, it was just what occurs when you live, fully, appropriately. And God Himself spoke the universe into existence, that’s what he did first, just like us when we speak things into existence. And I’m an awe, awe of the power of speaking into existence.
I pinch myself in the reflection of the ease of creation, and the simplicity and power of it.
Fiona
When The Plastic Bank is recognised, such as at the Paris Global Climate Summit and you took home the prized award, what did that mean mean for The Plastic Bank?
David Katz
The Climate Summit at Bonn Germany this last year was bigger. They were both at global climate conferences. What did they mean? They meant conversation, they meant marketing, they continued to give word to people who needed that type of word, to then lie in the creation and existence of what I know to be a real.
Fiona
Would you say it helped to get The Plastic Bank recognised and helped to get people understanding the need for Social Plastic?
David Katz
I reflect back and say it created word for people so they could participate as well, yes. And so, you see when I make the statement, when I say it creates word and invites people into a new reality, think of the power of that, because that’s all I’ve done. I stood in the future and I used the word to create a reality, and I use words to invite people into that reality. And when they accepted it and they took it to be true, it became real for the world.
Just as you expressed, did it mean that more people would accept it or like it. Well all the award was, was a different expression of the word in a way that led people, invited people, the words were different, so that other people could be invited into that possibility, it’s the same thing.
Fiona
When you’ve shared with Forming Impact that you are the voice to the vehicle, the creator of the word, that is The Plastic Bank, do you see that to be leadership? And do you see leadership to be important within a company for growth and transformational change?
David Katz
I believe that the power of leadership becomes in the beginning, in the invitation to create a possibility and a new realm of being. And when you find one other that lives into that new realm of being they communicate from that new existence as well. And every other person that comes into that new realm of being communicates from that place, when it becomes the nest.
But the leadership lies in the creation of the word and the origination of it. Building the earth and the seas and then to give it light to distinguish the night from the day and then at the end to know when to rest, and to not rest until it has been created.
Fiona
What is the legacy that you hope to leave on the world?
David Katz
The pervasive legacy that I hope to leave to the entire world has been the theme of this conversation, which is that the power of your word, and the words that you create…. create universes.
Fiona
Where does this lead you to see Social Plastic 10 years from now?
David Katz
Everywhere. It’s the only type of material used in manufacturing.
Fiona
Amazing, I look forward to that.
David Katz
It’s coming.
Fiona
If you were to ask anyone reading this to make a social plastic action today what would that be?
David Katz
Everyone should be refusing single used material for sure, that’s critically important.
I think that my answer lies somewhere in the space of living into a reality for a world that is clean. Just living in a way that creates abundance and doesn’t deplete it, to be in the thought and consideration of all life.
Fiona
You are known for being a changemaker, what does that mean to you?
David Katz
It’s seeing things differently, it’s seeing things as they can be not as they are.
Fiona
If you were dropped on a deserted island what are the three things you could not live without?
We know plastic would not be one of them.
David Katz
Coffee! With cream in the morning.
People to watch while I’m having my coffee.
And laughing.