VIDEO: TOOLING UP – A Hands-On Look at Biodegradable Gloves

Narrator: This video is brought to you by SHOWA. Always innovating, never imitating. Welcome to Tooling Up, a series by MSC Industrial Supply Company, the show that provides real world insights and is brought to you by leading industry experts aimed at improving the efficiency and productivity of your operation. And now the host of Tooling Up, Mitch Free.

Mitch Free: Welcome to Tooling Up, a series that's dedicated to improving productivity in the manufacturing industry. I'm Mitch Free. If you're new here, be sure to subscribe and hit that like button. My guest today is Matt Piotrowski. He's the senior product manager with SHOWA. Matt, thanks for taking the time to join me today.

Matt Piotrowski: Appreciate it Mitch. And again, thank you for inviting me and appreciate being part of this experience. I think it's going to be an interesting conversation that we can have here. Good to see you again to Mitch, and you and I have had some conversations in the past, so I'm looking forward to the opportunity.

Mitch Free: Well, certainly you've had an impressive career and you seem to have found a really great niche for yourself in a very, very focused path. I'd love to hear a little bit about your path, how you got to where you are today.

Matt Piotrowski: Well, it's an interesting story. So last year, now that we're in 2023, I celebrated my 20th year in the hand protection industry. So I've spent two decades of my adult life with four fingers and a thumb, I like to say all the time and worked my way up, spent five years in Perfect Fit, and kind of found a love for the business.

And it was kind of an interesting, different kind of aspect of life for me. And after five years there, I got courted by the original owner of Perfect Fit Glove, Mr. Frank Stookey, and I got exposed to every facet of that business all the way from human resources to finance to purchasing, to manufacturing. Spent time in each of those departments almost deliberately.

And then about five years ago, this is my fifth year now with SHOWA, I decided to change positions and moved over here to SHOWA to be the product manager.

Mitch Free: Matt I’d love to talk a little bit about SHOWA. You know, SHOWA has a great reputation for being a leader in implementing technology and constantly innovating. I'm sure that's what drew you to the company and keeps you excited every day. What are some of the other core values that you embrace and that your customers appreciate?

Matt Piotrowski: Sure. Yeah. And that's a great point that you bring up. Our company motto actually is always innovating, never imitating. And SHOWA is well known in the industry for being arguably the most innovative of the glove manufacturers today. We're producing a product, it's actually our 10th year anniversary for it. So 10 years ago we actually invented this particular technology and everyone is kind of chasing us again.

This biodegradable technology allows single use gloves or disposable gloves, I think as most people would probably understand them in the industry, allows for these particular products, once they're thrown away into a landfill environment or into a garbage receptacle or any kind of thing like that, where it allows for that product to actually biodegrade much faster.

Mitch Free: Matt, a big part of Tooling Up is continued education and learning from industry leaders like yourself. And when we spoke a while back, I was fascinated when you told me about what all goes into making nitrile gloves, the science behind it. I think our viewers would be interested as well, if you don't mind expanding on that for a moment.

Matt Piotrowski: Sure. Sure. The science is really kind of the coolest part of the biodegradable technology, as we refer to it at SHOWA as EBT is the acronym that we use, which stands for Eco Best Technology®. But, you know, to the layperson, understand, as a biodegradable technology. What's cool about it is we're not really changing the structure of how you manufacture nitrile.

It's a process that we add into the actual manufacturing. And basically what it does is it increases the time frame that something biodegrades. We wanted it to be something so simple that the customer could continue to to use the product as they were without having to change anything, without having to have some extra steps.

So all they do is they use this glove, they take it off, they throw it away in a garbage can. Once that garbage eventually makes it to a landfill, that's where the magic starts to happen with the technology for biodegradation. Our EBT technology allows for faster biodegradation than typically a nitrile glove that doesn't have it.

Mitch Free: It seems like this product has really broad market appeal. Is there any target customer segment that you would define or is it just extremely broad?

Matt Piotrowski: It's a great question Mitch, and the easy answer to that is anyone who uses a disposable glove. And when we think about the sheer amount of disposable gloves that are used globally every year, the estimate is going to be over about 500 billion with a B. That's a significantly large number. 

So when you think of that in the sheer volume amount of gloves that are used globally that's where we decided and understood that, hey, take a look at how many gloves are being used every year. What can we do to help the environment because all of them end up in a landfill at some point.

Mitch Free: Yeah. And am I correct that these are made in the USA?

Matt Piotrowski: Correct. Yes. A lot of these single use gloves that we're talking about, these disposable products are made in our USA facility. As I said before, we were the first to invent the nitrile glove and it was invented right here in the United States in Mississippi in 1990. We held the patent for 20 years on it, and we've continued to make that product as it is. The packaging has changed a little bit, but the product is still being made in the exact same way.

Mitch Free: Matt, thanks so much for joining me today. It's been a pleasure learning about SHOWA and about your background. Really impressive, the commitment to manufacturing in the USA. It’s been a real pleasure.

Matt Piotrowski: Thanks, Mitch. I appreciate it and I appreciate the support from MSC. Always a very good customer of SHOWA’s and a partner over the years and appreciate the opportunity to speak Mitch.

Mitch Free: Absolutely. If you enjoyed the interview with Matt as much as I did, subscribe to our channel where you will find many more interesting interviews just like this one. To learn more about SHOWA, their nitrile products for single use and their commitment to the environment, visit mscdirect.com/showa-ebt. See you next time on Tooling Up.

Narrator: Want more insights and ideas to improve the efficiency and productivity of your operations? Check out the Tooling Up video playlist to hear tips that can take your company to the next level. And, subscribe to our channel so you won't miss out.