World Cup 2026: Bounty Uncharted Goes Offshore with Aduro Clean Technologies: “From Waste to Water”

[00:00:00]The ocean doesn't [music] clean itself and with every tide comes more than the perfect catch. It brings what people leave behind. A growing problem carried by the current and that's where Aduro Clean Technologies comes in. This Canadian company is transforming [music] plastic waste into something valuable.

[00:00:22]Today, Ofer Vicus, CEO of Adoro, joins us on the water to fish, share a meal, and talk sustainability [music] alongside Major League Soccer Commissioner and CEO Don Garber and AstroTurf's [music] Rob Mitchell. But out here, plans can change quickly.

[00:00:44]Yeah, it got pretty exciting and pretty quick because whatever kind of day you were having, whatever your your day was is stopping right now and you're in nature. This is Bounty Uncharted.

[00:00:58]>> Oh my lord. Are you kidding me?

[00:01:01]>> It was magical.

[00:01:04]I'm Jeff Ragavan. Look, you got to see this.

[00:01:08]>> The best part of fishing isn't always the fish. It's the friends beside you.

[00:01:13]the meals you make together and the stories [music] that come home with it.

[00:01:19]This is Bounty Uncharted.

[00:01:28][music] We had another very exciting episode.

[00:01:32]Incredible people coming together. We had Ofer Vikas. He's the CEO of Adoro.

[00:01:36]He came in from Toronto last night after ringing the bell.

[00:01:40]>> My wow week. Oh, that was my wild month.

[00:01:43]At 9:30 a.m. I ring the Toronto Stock Exchange bell at 6:00 in the morning on Friday. I've been out uh in New York and uh you know, Xis is meeting you uh early in the morning of Saturday. We had Don Garber. He's the CEO and commissioner of Major League Soccer. Obviously, everybody's talking about the World Cup.

[00:02:04]Don has [music] two free days in June and he chose to spend one of them with [music] us. And then we had Rob Mitchell, VP development for AstroTurf, really working on incredible solutions around sustainability.

[00:02:17]We had a very tight window. Super important that everybody [music] got there exactly on time because that window was so small. It's this quiet moment when you get some [music] time to think of yourself. You meet the team and somehow you know it's going to be okay.

[00:02:31]>> So, we're fueled up. We're at 100%.

[00:02:34]Excited to [music] uh hang out with these guys.

[00:02:40]Yeah, it's an awesome feeling. Often I'll get out there, I could see the sunrise before anyone else. When we got there, it was it was like it was really like glass.

[00:02:48]I was very excited about that cuz I knew there would be mirror [music] kind of image with the sunrise coming up. And this morning it was more like serene, beautiful reflection, very calm, exceptional, and spectacular. And Mike really captured that from above in such [music] a way that kind of gives you a little bit of the chills. One of the most impressive sunrises I think I'm, you know, ever going to be able to see it. It was nearly endless. Just spectacular.

[00:03:17]>> You're a very considerate driver.

[00:03:25]>> We got out there and actually there were a lot of boats very early because it's Saturday. It's early summer. Yeah. You know, going away from the fleet is always a good move for us. saw some birds circling about half mile away >> and that panned out for us.

[00:03:38]>> This is Montalk point. Can I get a radio check?

[00:03:41]>> I mean out in Montalk there's just so many little ridges and and shors that you can fish. The current working it was just perfect conditions.

[00:03:48]>> Loud and clear. Frisbee's off Montour.

[00:03:50]>> Roger [music] that, Cap. Thank you. Uh the boat has some amazing technology comport and and kind of using that to try and find some of the the fish that we were looking for, but then also using nature.

[00:04:03]>> Okay.

[00:04:03]>> There's a lot [music] of resident stripe bass that stick around like in the rivers that are much smaller, but these are big. These are big fish.

[00:04:10]>> That first cast, I think I was first cast out and within a few cranks, I hooked a fish and it was I could tell it was a very big fish.

[00:04:18]>> Oh, this is this is heaven. Don, you know, got his line in. Ofer got his line in. Mikey got his line in. It was one, two, three. Big stripe bass. Like 40, 42 in fish.

[00:04:32]>> I see another big boy.

[00:04:34]>> Oh yeah.

[00:04:36]>> Oh my god.

[00:04:38]>> Holy sh.

[00:04:39]>> Get a nose here.

[00:04:41]>> All over slots. We're not keeping them anyway, so we got the biggest ones that we could find.

[00:04:47]>> Oh my lord. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? OH MY [groaning] GOD, >> that is a beast.

[00:04:54]>> That's what we're talking about.

[00:04:56]>> Holy >> First fish on the boat. Massive. I mean, huge.

[00:05:02]It was like big then larger then larger.

[00:05:06]And there was no sloth fish. There were no small fish. And so just everybody's reaction of like, wow, that's a that's a big stripe bass. Once we found a spot and we went, it everything seemed to hit very, very quickly. Everyone's got lines in. We're getting bites. You know, Jeff and Donna are catching fish.

[00:05:24]>> Hey Jeff, that's one of the biggest bass I've ever seen. [laughter] >> And we managed to catch five fish. And that was just a completion uh you know, an adding great adding to the day. So, when we were fishing and the [music] drag was screaming, like just screaming out of that reel, the sheer joy on Ofer's face and the sheer joy on Don's face when they were hooked up and that stripe bass was running really hard [music] was magical. We had about five fish. We lost a couple, but it was literally lock and load.

[00:05:56]>> Mikey, tell me when you're uh when you're close.

[00:06:01]>> Woo! That's a big fish right here.

[00:06:03]>> Oh, yeah.

[00:06:05]you know people on the video, you don't know people in hand, right? And you know, just to speak to to Don and understand a little bit of the points of the angle that he's coming, it's very different to talk to a [music] person face to face. And I think overall we just got to know each [music] other, which was significant important for me.

[00:06:25]It was super important just to to know the person behind a little bit and and that was great. And then when we uh got together and we met Dawn [music] and we start talking about the reality of uh what can we do you know in the environment of FIFA in the environment of Astro [music] and how Aduro can help.

[00:06:43]You can see that those things become a little bit more meaningful in general people think of a negative connotation around plastic and [music] here we have people that are really thinking about how do we take the stuff that's already out there and make it more sustainable.

[00:06:57]But thankfully there's companies like Aduro that are able to take these things [music] and turn it into other use cases. Some of it.

[00:07:04]>> Yeah.

[00:07:05]>> Yeah.

[00:07:06]>> Plastics.

[00:07:07]>> So plastics. All of those.

[00:07:10]>> Every how would you do without it? You have polymers here probably. You have, you know, this is >> Is this plastic? What is this?

[00:07:18]>> That's probably some form of material.

[00:07:20]Yeah, polymeric material. Of course. to walk the dogs every morning on the beach and we're picking up a bag full of plastic. I try to remind myself that, you know, they're really smart people working on this issue. I can't personally do a lot so you can get to the point where you feel helpless. But then we're on this boat today and we have a duro on here and and these guys were upycling plastic.

[00:07:42]Everything around recycling or chemical recycling [music] is pretty hard. So organizations that has to undergo and to collect it or sort it and then process [music] it, it's an issue.

[00:07:55]>> There has been a negativity surrounding the use of plastics. [music] One of the main reasons they're used is because of their longevity, because of their performance, because of their ability to stand up to nature's conditions. when those come to an end, we now need to find ways to to break [music] those down and do those in a way that is sustainable, helping the environment and helping nature [music] versus adding, you know, more stress on it. Aduro is based on [music] this very unique phenomena.

[00:08:23]We take care of long and heavy molecules [music] in order to make them lighter and with a higher values. We have a very very strong platform that takes waste plastic and turn it into an oil that in return could participate in the circularity and those are serve as the building block for building new plastic.

[00:08:47]I think the problem is bigger because uh [music] beyond people you need to have an industry a foundation that will actually take care of it. uh the people are already there. [music] They they sold it's it's where you know what do you do after that >> US stadium relationships with their leagues and [music] the like very very very focused on recycling. Many of them we have recycling centers where people are tailgating outside and they're bringing [music] their plastic bottles.

[00:09:14]>> We we grow up to see the damage that [music] this thing is happening. None of us really wants that. We want to have life around us. a view among players, particularly in Europe, we're used to playing on grass and many in the US have grown up playing on turf surfaces. You almost can't have the number of fields that we want throughout our country without having artificial surfaces.

[00:09:35]They're more affordable. They they're easier to maintain. You really don't have to worry about that when you have artificial surfaces.

[00:09:42]>> Based on what you're saying, a little bit of a balance between organics. the more we get the requests from our customers, from our clients saying, "Hey, we want to see something [music] done with this at the end of life."

[00:09:53]>> I think it's a cultural revolution, the next generation, they they would never think about throwing a plastic bottle in the garbage.

[00:10:00]>> They're just wired. There's a movement.

[00:10:02]>> It is a hard hard job. And I just to give you illustration, Rob, I mean, this is clean material. See, this is clean material that could be processed, right?

[00:10:10]Synthetic turf is, you know, made with a couple of different coatings, a primary back and then a secondary coating that goes on it.

[00:10:17]>> At the end of the day, those material builds of different chemical component.

[00:10:21]There's no free lunch here. You mix them all together, you get where we can come in is with this ability to take a little more contaminated material. What ends up is is that type of liquid.

[00:10:35]>> Wow. And that is uh basically liquid hydrocarbons and approximately on from this package about 85% of that will end up to be a usable material. And what do you do with this? We will [music] send it to a chemical plant that is buying virgin hydrocarbons from fossil fuel and they'll mix it together and next time when you order uh maybe a a pile of this you'll get maybe 10% or 15% or 20% circular material in it. A [music] lot of other different materials that are part of our you know overall turf system. [music] If you give a current recycler this bag of goodies they would be happy. They would be like great this is clean clean polyethylene who's doing this.

[00:11:22]>> Yeah. How you know but then that's what I'm talking about. How do you invest in the infrastructure so that we [music] can start getting the materials like this for then you guys to put it into you know your technology.

[00:11:33]>> Are there deals happening over here?

[00:11:35]>> Well, I'm trying to fish for you guys.

[00:11:37]>> I mean it's been an epic morning so far, right?

[00:11:40]>> It has.

[00:11:40]>> We've got the oyster farm to go to and harvest oysters. We're going to have those as an appetizer tonight. 22 people tonight for dinner and then we're off to the angller's club. The Anglr's Club in Montalk is one of my favorite places to hang out, get drinks, but they have an incredible marina, incredible tackle shop. Used to be called Gone Fishing. It was a marina when I was a kid. We used to keep our boat there, but now it's Angller's Club and Will Cornaki and his [music] dad own it.

[00:12:11]>> We crushed it on your rods.

[00:12:13]>> Amazing. custom made >> called Jack >> Don 1 minute in the water 1 minute >> very cool >> and then we were the only boat everybody was at the fleet >> amazing >> and we were alone [music] >> nice bass >> gorgeous the beasts >> 25 41 in >> that place very well stocked anything you need you can get from there >> look how much material is used in this >> right >> plastics and polymers >> like all of this and the tide was coming in and what's really amazing is that you can feed what they call the dock pets there. One striper came, then two stripers came, then there was 10 stripers and they were massive. It was a very interesting perspective to see that we were out off of Ma catching these very large bass, but then there was also resident bass that are friendly and [music] you know, you can feed them and no one's going to catch them cuz they're pets. They're like our dogs.

[00:13:15]I thought it was appropriate to take a little visit to the oyster farm, show them about South Fork Sea Farmers and the Eastampton Town Shellfish Hatchery.

[00:13:23]It's obviously a super important nonprofit [music] that I've helped start out here. Uh it's all about letting others who are around us be stewards of their own marine environment. And so having them take part in how we're actually helping with [music] clean water is super important with the mission around sustainability in all of their jobs and [music] their businesses.

[00:13:43]Barley and his team really run everything here. All of these tanks that you guys see, these are basically tanks that are holding uh baby spat of oysters and also scallops, which we saw the one-year-olds and [music] clams. And we're going to go in in a little bit and uh check them out and eat them later.

[00:14:02]Well done. Can't wait.

[00:14:03]>> Yeah, that was actually a really nice moment of the day. I think anything about being outside for these guys was just like almost a vacation even though it was a lot of work, but it was fun work. So, you guys see how we got here?

[00:14:15]It was like super calm and now the wind is starting to pick up.

[00:14:19]>> There used to be natural oysters and wild oysters that that that filter that they were their natural cleansers of filters for the for the ocean. Uh oysters need, you know, a hard surface why they form [music] reefs. Not only does each oyster in that reef clean 50 gallons of water, but by building up a reef, they create kind of like a natural storm barrier. That's the bonus. You know, I keep oysters and uh you know, we maintain the cages and that helps clean everything and then [music] ultimately we can eat them if we want to.

[00:14:50]So, we're going to clean these. So cool.

[00:14:53]I didn't even know they were in this one. They grow like so they grow alongside each other without like fighting for the same.

[00:14:58]>> Yeah. They're just doing the same thing.

[00:15:00]Yeah.

[00:15:00]>> You look at everyone around you that all they want to do is just very curious and interested in the best of whatever this this day will be.

[00:15:07]>> Very impressive to to see and it starts [music] running the hamster wheel in my head to say, "Okay, how do we even incorporate things [music] back into sustainable oyster farming?" We came home, we made some of the oysters. We're doing kind of a riff on the first episode because it was so good. So, we had a bureau ham, breadrumbs, [music] a little butter, and some manego. We've got purple [music] asparagus, purple broccoli.

[00:15:35]We're also doing a little bit of a surf and turf because we have so much incredible seafood. We're also pairing it with grilled New [music] York strip and fillets from Dizzy Creek Farms. We went over to Stewart's in Amigansit and we picked up some yellowofin that was super local. Just came in from [music] the canyons yesterday. So we're doing a fur and mirin. We're going to grill that very easy [music] on a bed of roasted leaks. And then we got a beautiful huge piece of halibit.

[00:16:05]Delicious white flaky beautiful fish. We have the nice lemon zest. Some fancy peasant olive oil. Of course, we got some beautiful caviar from Cababie my also very sustainable as it's farmed.

[00:16:18]We've been prepping, running around, trying to get everything ready. I'm really excited to get everybody together and really celebrate the bounty from today. But like enough of this, we got to get into the kitchen because we've got 22 people coming [music] and I don't have my usual crew.

[00:16:41]>> [music] >> You know, I want I want to cook more because like I have sort of better better stuff to use >> right here.

[00:16:53]>> You're right.

[00:16:55]>> Both these the oysters we harvested today. Oh, >> that is impressive.

[00:17:03]Amazing.

[00:17:09]>> That looks good. Wait, not Rob. Not like that. Okay, I'm just kidding.

[00:17:15]>> He's like, "Oh, dear."

[00:17:18]>> And when you [music] can get out on the water and talk about things that are related to the experience. So in this case, you know, Aduro with [music] their desire to recycle plastic, which is such an enormous issue in the context of the environment [music] for Duro to be part in something that is so close to nature. Wonderful experience.

[00:17:47]Jeff and uh Don and everyone for the team. I thank you very much for for [music] having me right there. I'll come back anytime.

[00:18:08]>> Breaking bread with people. So I think it is there is something primal about this that in in us as humans but most people will still put down their phones to eat a meal and that's that's a big deal.

[00:18:20]>> So good to see everybody of right there in the middle with the blue shirt. He he rang the bell last night in Toronto for his company. [applause and cheering] >> So just cheers to our guest on the show.

[00:18:37]>> Cheers.

[00:18:40]These three gentlemen are so incredibly busy and the fact that we all came together and shared such an incredible moment, neither of us will ever forget what happened today.