Our Founder
PLUVR founder Max van Praag grew up in the nation’s capital to a Swiss mother and English father, both of whom worked at the World Bank to change the world for the better; an ethos they instilled in Max.
During the summer break, when his parents were working, Max was sent to the English countryside to stay with his aunt, an avid gardener who grew all the produce enjoyed at every meal. To earn his keep, Max’s aunt, Josephine, taught him how to compost leftovers, transforming ‘waste’ into rich organic soil from which future meals were grown.
When Max’s mother suddenly passed away, he moved the family house. At this moment, Max became aware of the huge amounts of ‘waste’ generated by cities as more and more waste piled up in the roll-off dumpster outside his house, including the contents of the kitchen fridge. Naturally, Max became interested in where all of these things ended up and followed the trash trucks that collected the roll-offs; first to the transfer station in DC and then to the landfills in Virginia. Seeing this made Max question how we urban dwellers dispose of our food scraps, prompting his quest for a better, more sustainable solution.
PLUVR is the result of Max’s ‘lightbulb moment’ - to bring the natural sensibility of the countryside to the city by diverting food waste from landfills and composting the nutrient-rich materials into premium organic soils.
