Meet your Maker: Simon Clark

He’s kind, gentle, and insatiably curious.

I knew that about Simon the instant we met at NetSuite TribeHR in Kitchener, two years ago. What I didn’t know at the time was that we’d only be colleagues for a few short months. Certainly, I had no idea then that the next time we’d be talking would be over coffees at the eclectic Queen St. Commons, down the street from his office, laughing about that time he built rocket launchers with his daughters and showed them what not to do. Ahem.

A picture of their project below.

(Not to scale. OK fine. Also not really a picture of their project. But a girl can dream, right?! Photo from Pexels.)

(“Getting Shit Done Time,” he calls it, when he takes his two girls to Diyode, his local Makerspace, to teach them life’s greatest secret weapon — and by that I’m not explicitly referring to rocket launchers. At Diyode, Simon teaches his daughters the power of curiosity and how to confidently solve problems on their own. These GSD sessions overlap with “Maker Princess Parties,” when Simon and Maker Sean bring their collective four children together to Get Shit Done.)

In the land of startups people talk a lot about timing, mostly as it relates to product market fit. In this case, Simon and I got connected at the perfect time.

I’d just launched my crowdfunding initiative to help publish my first manuscript, and I knew I wanted to use it as an opportunity to help give back to the community. But I had no idea how. And as someone who has always been on the outside of “Community” looking in, I had no idea how to get started.

But then Simon and I got to talking, and I learned what he’s doing to help locals in Haiti recover economically while also managing their garbage.

Simon is building simple machinery that takes used plastic, a precious resource mined from mountains of refuse, and turns it into priceless building material; and he’s taking his machinery with him to Haiti to help locals set up sustainable recycling businesses.

With Lenise’s assistance (below), Simon’s going to take this:

Hi there. My name’s Lenise. I mine plastic resources in Jacmel by sorting through plastic, and identifying which pieces we’ll be able to process into usable items. (Photograph from Sarah Wallace.)

And process it using this:

Simon says: “The laser cut stainless steel for the shredder, fresh from the laser cutting service. When they arrived, the knife blades were all nicely rounded off. Good for safety, not good for shredding. It turned out the software that the laser cutter was using did this automatically. I had to blindly teach the operator in China how to trick the software that I’d never seen into cutting a sharp edge. Good times.” I say: “Holy crap.” (Photograph from Simon Clark.)

To turn it into things like this:

Picture borrowed from https://preciousplastic.com/en/creations/

And he’s doing it by adapting blue prints that Precious Plastics, an organization dedicated to helping every single person transform plastic waste into valuable objects, has made available free of charge.

“Plastic is used everywhere, but it also ends up everywhere. Damaging our planet. Which is weird. It’s a precious material laying everywhere for free. We could also turn this waste into something new. Unfortunately, we haven’t got the machines to do this ourselves. They’re only for the Big Boys.”

But Simon’s not doing it alone and truth be told, he can’t. No one can solve the world’s problems by themselves, and not everyone has access to the tools and space required to build shredders (those tools the Big Boys like to keep to themselves).

Together, with the support of his friends and family and Diyode, Simon is taking his Maker curiosity and problem solving skills, and using them to solve some big, hairy ass problems.

Thank you Bill Watterson, for making these two heroes come to life.

It’s clear to me that Simon cares.

(Sarah, founder of Olive Tree Projects, is an Alberta transplant in Haiti. Also Simon’s cousin. She cares too. In fact, she’s the one who introduced Simon to the idea of Precious Plastics in the first place! She’s a real life baby-catching super hero. More to come on her in future posts.)

Better people than me have already begun spreading the word about what Simon’s up to, so you can catch up by reading Jessica Lovell’s article in the Guelph Mercury Tribune and this Diyode Blog post.

After learning more about Simon’s story I knew what I wanted to do to help. What I want to do to help.

I want to help people like Simon continue to do what Simon does best: Be curious, and solve problems with confidence, because then these little critters will too.

Howdy! My name is Everson. I was delivered at The Olive Tree Projects’ maternity center situated outside of Jacmel, Haiti this past May which makes 1/2 a year old! I’m thriving and loving life thanks to awesome people like Simon and Sarah. (Photograph by Sarah Wallace.)

What I love most about the Kitchener-Waterloo region is the community’s underlying culture of curiosity. Curiosity thrives here, and seems to have always thrived here. And I’m a firm believer that curiosity drives compassion. So by supporting people like Simon, supporting the organizations that help them do what they do best, I can support the growth of curiosity. The growth of compassion. That’s what I can do to help give back to the community.

But how?

Since connecting with Simon I’ve been thrashing about, trying to find my way forward. I’ve met with Makers and tech workers, artists and friends. People who I believe understand the spirit of curiosity, where the best of the arts and sciences overlap in innovation, that I want to help preserve. People who, like me, are invested in seeing this spirit scale as our community rapidly grows so that we don’t dilute out that special part of our DNA.

In a short time I’ve learned a lot. Mostly, I’ve learned that I know a lot of nothing about what I’m getting into (good times indeed, Simon).

I’m honoured that Simon has chosen to share his story with me, and that he’s given me permission to share it with the world. Over the coming weeks I look forward to sharing updates about his Precious Plastics project. I hope to talk more about the other new people I meet along the way, because Simon is just one of many who are curious enough to help to solve other people’s problems, and show their compassion.

Thank you for reading,

Donna

Simon’s build

Simon Says: “Milling mounting holes into the shredder sides. When we ordered the laser cut stainless steel parts, I had a very different idea of how to mount it on the chassis. Plans change as the design evolves, so, I needed drill some very precise holes in the shredder frame.” (Photograph by Simon Clark.)

Simon Says: “The laser cut stainless steel for the shredder, fresh from the laser cutting service. When they arrived, the knife blades were all nicely rounded off. Good for safety, not good for shredding. It turned out the software that the laser cutter was using did this automatically. I had to blindly teach the operator in China how to trick the software that I’d never seen into cutting a sharp edge. Good times.” (Photograph by Simon Clark.)

Simon Says: “Shredder 1: almost all assembled for the first time. The shredder design was adapted from the preciousplastic.com design. A few refinements were needed to make the pellet sieve more usable, and to account for differences in available material. The rest of the machine was redesigned from the ground up to make use of easily scavengable parts in a third world country. One of our core goals is to build machines that can be maintained and repaired with scrap parts and basic skills.” (Photograph by Simon Clark.)

(Photograph by Simon Clark.)