Mimi founded one of the world’s only post-consumer plastic bag recycling companies in a country – Myanmar – which consistently ranks in the top 20 hardest countries in the world to conduct business. Her company successfully diverted 4 million pounds (1,800 metric tons) of plastic waste from waterways over 3 years.
Mimi is an impact-driven founder, Board Member, consultant, and advisor with deep operational expertise in global plastics waste management, circularity technologies, and infrastructure systems. She has intimate experience working in the Global South, having lived in Myanmar and Uganda for 11 years.
Mimi’s on-the-ground experience not only founding and operating Myanmar Recycles but also spending hours in open pit dumpsites and working with waste collectors lends authority to her deep understanding of the challenges that most of the world faces when tackling plastic production, reduction, and management. She takes an uncommon view compared to the “West” that unlocking our global green transition requires investing in the Global South’s infrastructure and hardware technology.
Since returning to the US in 2021 after Myanmar’s military coup, Mimi has been working with industry leaders, startups, and VCs on projects that implement waste collection systems and sortation facilities in Southeast Asia, global supply chain traceability, river cleanup and mangroves re-wilding, and advanced recycling solutions for hard-to-recycle plastics. She is Secretariat of the Innovators Alliance for a Global Plastics Treaty, a coalition of SME implementers and technologists driving critical solutions to solve our plastic pollution crisis.
– Plastic waste and its impact on climate change and ecological disaster.
– Plastic’s petroleum origins – and market economics.
– Single-use plastic and throw away culture are major causes of the plastic pollution crisis.
– Microplastics are literally everywhere – examining their impact on human health.
– Exploring the plastic waste management chain, starting at your trash can.
– Why is only 9% of plastic recycled globally and what can we do about it?
– Plastic pollution demands physical solutions and infrastructure.
– Why is there so much plastic garbage in the ocean? Learn about how the world manages its waste.
– Market economics: Recycling is a business; supply vs demand – and the nuances of quality supply.
– Regulations are a critical lever to enable technology and process adoption, design, standards and limitations, and market shifts.
– Corporations bear responsibility for this crisis – explore the complexities behind packaging design shifts and easy solutions.
– Green Transition: Investing in the Global South to fight plastic waste in the West.
– Why is only 9% of plastic is recycled worldwide?
– Can we recycle our way out of the plastic pollution crisis? / Accelerating alternative solutions is vital to combat plastic pollution.
– Governments and corporations bear the responsibility for solving the plastic pollution crisis – but we can also champion sustainable practices within our organizations and communities.
– Innovative Financing for Plastic Reduction.
– How Mimi started an industrial-scale business in a foreign country with zero experience.
– Soft skills that are key to success.
– How to get the ask.
– Navigating business challenges and mistakes.
Mimi’s mission and legacy are to accelerate our global society towards a zero plastic waste future by reducing plastic production and consumption, building basic waste infrastructure for all communities, and scaling innovative solutions.
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