Mundy eyes market for paper straws
Former Steelers DB gets eco-friendly with alternatives to plastic product
Woodland Hills graduate and former Steelers defensive back Ryan Mundy earned the nickname “Wonderlic” in the NFL because of his score on the league’s pre-draft intelligence test.
After graduating from Michigan, Mundy transferred to West Virginia for his final season and left with a master’s degree. In the NFL, he earned an MBA while on injured reserve.
Now, he’s applying his education and intelligence to an eco-friendly venture.
SWZLE, a Chicago-based startup, provides sustainable straws as an environmentally conscious alternative to plastic straws.
“I think you’d have to be living under a rock,” Mundy said, “to not catch a news headline or a story about the impact on plastics that is happening across the globe.”
Straws contribute to plastic pollution, which activists say is a threat to marine life. According to Google Trends, interest in straws spiked in July 2018 as Seattle became the first major U.S. city to ban plastic straws in bars and restaurants.
“Plastics, in all forms — straws, bottles, packaging, bags, etc. — are choking our planet,” wrote then-California governor Jerry Brown in a signing message with a law restricting plastic straws in the state last fall.
Mundy’s business partner, entrepreneur Phil Causgrove, is an Erie Prep grad and Penn State alum. The two connected through a mutual friend and eventually began working together.
“We thought to ourselves,” Mundy said, “if they ban straws, then there needs to be a solution or an alternative.”
“Every time I read about plastic straws,” Causgrove said, “I never really heard anybody suggest great alternatives.”
SWZLE raised more than $21,000 last August and September on Kickstarter and is now in the beginning stages of operation. The business is two-fold. It provides paper straws in bulk to restaurants and commercial customers to replace their plastic stock. A case of 6,000 paper straws is listed at $210 on its website. That’s more expensive than plastic straws, where a case of 10,000 can be bought for $31.
Mundy says they have the capacity to produce 100 million paper straws per month. That would make a small dent in the 500 million plastic straws that Americans, per Causgrove, use and dispose each day.
For consumers, the company is trying to make personal metal straws, kept in a colorful case, mainstream. SWZLE offers a four-pack of metal straws for $10, or you can buy the “SWZLE Pack,” which contains two straws, a cleaning brush and a carrying case, for $20.
The trick will be persuading people to pay for something they’re used to getting free.
“Fifteen years ago, were people carrying around water bottles in their bag? No, they weren’t,” Mundy said. “Fast forward to 2019, you see tons of people walking around with their own personal water bottle. We like to think of the consumer stainless steel straws as an opportunity to extend your personality.”
Mundy set a school record for receiving touchdowns at Woodland Hills and was drafted in the sixth round by the Steelers as a safety in 2008. He played 68 games with the Steelers, making six starts, appeared in the 2011 Super Bowl and was a member of the Super Bowl-winning team following the 2008 season.
Mundy started all 16 games with the Chicago Bears in 2014, but back surgery cost him the 2015 season.
With another year remaining on his contract before the injury, Mundy joined an MBA program at the University of Miami while collecting his paycheck from the Bears. After that, he called it quits.
“I wanted to leave the game on my own free will instead of being forced out,” he said.
“He was a tremendous athlete, student, and an allaround good kid.” said George Novak, Mundy’s high school coach.
Armed with a degree, Mundy entered the business world, starting other ventures and ultimately launching SWZLE with Causgrove.
“He comes from an NFL background, he is an incredibly personable figure and well-connected,” Causgrove said of Mundy, “but I think what a lot of people don’t realize, digging beneath the surface, is Ryan is an incredibly intelligent guy.”
Now, he is trying to use his intelligence and experience to help the environment.
As for the name SWZLE . . . “My business partner actually came up with the name,” Mundy said. “Those straws, that are kind of, like, loopy and have circles in them, I think they’re called swizzle straws? So, we just kind of took that and ran with it.”