Mark Nathan ’80 is not just toying around with the idea that we need to change our consumer habits. He’s all in as the managing partner of PlasTech, a company he co-founded in 2021 that aims to replace traditional plastics with compostable alternatives in items such as garbage bags, pet waste bags, reusable bags, and packing products.  

Mark had a lengthy career in the toy industry and a stint in the sports collectibles arena before this latest venture. New Jersey, the state in which he resides, announced in 2020 that it would ban single-use plastic bags. The law was enacted in 2022. “The way my mind works, [I’m thinking], ‘What’s going to happen when there are no plastic bags?’ Everyone lives on those things,” Mark said.   

Gene Benfatti is the other co-founder. They connected at an entrepreneur’s seminar. Mr. Benfatti was the vice president of the New Jersey Inventors Organization that ran the event.  

A challenge for the new company is educating the public on what some labels mean, such as biodegradable vs. home compostable.  

A biodegradable product will break down, but there are no requirements for how long it takes or what it breaks down into. For instance, even a car is biodegradable, Mark said. It will eventually break down — after many, many, many years. “When it does, it will leave nano- and microplastics in the ground, and that is what we’re trying to stop,” Mark said. To be certified as home compostable, which PlasTech products are, a product must break down within 180 days. “When it degrades, it leaves zero micro- and zero nanoplastics in the ground, which means it does not get into our food supply, our water supply,” Mark said. “Right now, each of us is eating about a credit card worth of plastic a week — a week — so it is in our bodies, which obviously is not a good thing. Our goal is to slow that down, stop it eventually from happening.”  

The Environmental Protection Agency says “plastic waste generated in the U.S. increased from 0.4% of total municipal solid waste in 1960 to 12.2% in 2018, reaching 13.2% in 2017. This predominantly consists of containers and packaging, which includes single-use products.”  

Mark, who has worked for and owned toy companies and has always enjoyed a good challenge, was doing consulting work for the toy industry when he decided to jump into this whole new area. Other countries, he said, are far ahead of the United States. “We’ve got to introduce the possibilities and solutions to the U.S. That how I pivoted from polluting the environment for 35 years to trying to help clean it up,” he said.  

One of his first jobs in the toy industry was at Mattel working with the Hot Wheels line. He helped expand the product beyond the traditional die-cast cars, still hugely popular, to other areas such as remote-control cars and Mattel’s sponsoring of an actual Hot Wheels race car team in the SCCA Trans-Am Series.    

He was at Mattel for about five years before moving on. One of his roles at Mattel was to review the products from the factory to ensure the colors were right and the decals were correct. So he ended up with plenty of those die-cast cars that were not right for whatever reason. “I asked my boss if I could take them with me [when I left the company],” Mark recalled, “and he said ‘Yes, no one wants those.’” A year or two later Hot Wheels collectors asked if he had any valuable items. Turns out those cars were “extremely valuable,” Mark said. He sold them.  

Mark is a graduate of Babson College, and when he got out of school, he thought he’d work in marketing and sales for a traditional company. A mentor said to him, “You’re going to be bored out of your mind.”  

“He told me,” Mark said, “’You will basically be put on a brand, and they will ask you to gain a half a share of market point every year, and you’ll get a bonus,” but knowing me — I like to move quickly — he said, ‘The only industry you’ll be happy in is the toy industry. You’re not asked to gain a half a point or a point. You’re asked to gain 100 points. You need to take over the market. You need to shine. You’ll shine for a few years, and then the toy will drop off.’”  

As Mark said, “You constantly have to come up with new ideas. That is what the toy industry is, and that is how I thrive, new ideas.”  

In addition to working for and owning toy companies, Mark worked for Forever Collectibles, which licenses various sports products. Forever Collectibles was founded in 1998, and Mark remembers being at a Fanfest for the 1999 All-Star Game that was played at Fenway Park. Forever Collectibles had come up with the idea of eight-inch plush bears embroidered with team logos and players’ names.   

“We were selling those from a folding table for $20 a piece,” he said. “I think we made 10,000 and figured we’d sell a few hundred at the [Fanfest] and then sell them to retailers. We sold all 10,000. We said, ‘Wow, we do have a company here.” It’s a company that still exists today. Ever notice those Santa-like hats at football games with team logos on them? That’s Forever Collectibles, he said. Bobbleheads were big, too. Mark came across many athletes in his time and owns various autographed items. He mentioned Wayne Gretzky, Cal Ripken, and Shaquille O’Neal. Even Fidel Castro, the late Communist leader of Cuba and a big fan of baseball, signed a ball for him when Mark was in Cuba.  

Mark was a two-year student at Loomis Chaffee and calls his junior and senior years here “life-changing.”  

“It was my first time away from home, and that quickly gave me a sense of independence and knowing I was on my own,” Mark said. “And the education — when I went to college, I was more prepared than most of the kids.”  

If he were to make a game about Loomis Chaffee, he said it would be built around the Senior Path that travels through Grubbs Quad. Only seniors get to use it. Of course, it would be a niche product, unlike the Phlatball, a big seller when Mark was part of Tucker Toys, a company he helped to build until it was bought by Goliath, a global toy company. The Phlatball — which starts as a flying disc but, when thrown, turns into a ball in the air — sold millions, he said, in the United States and around the world. Tucker Toys made sports-related toys designed to get kids outside. “With phones and tablets and gaming, it is hard to get kids outside to play and interact,” Mark said.  

Most of what Tucker made had some sort of “twist” to it, Mark said. It wasn’t as simple as a bat or a ball. The Crush-It Bat, for example, had high-tension strings that enabled you to hit it far, or “crush it,” in baseball parlance.  

Of course, not every idea sells in the toy world. Mark said Tucker thought it would have a big seller in a frisbee that had a blue-tooth speaker in it. As long as you were within about 300 feet of your phone, he said, you could have a catch with music coming out of the flying object. “We were all in on that,” Mark said. “That was not a seller.”  

So, in the toy world, you move on.  

“Come up with the ideas, be as quick to the market as possible, and take no prisoners,” Mark said. “It is important to be first in everything, so my motto is to ‘take risks, fail fast.’ Take as many risks as you can, and if you are going to fail, fail quickly so you don’t drain yourself, and jump on to the next project.”  

The fast-paced toy industry suited him.  

“I need that kind of environment,” he said. “I get bored quickly, so I need that constant excitement, I guess, and the challenge.”  

In a world filled with plastic, he is once again challenged.