I’d like to take you back about seven years in my life.  I was called into a meeting that was already in _______. That meeting turned out to be my exit interview. I was _______, along with several others. I was 64 years old at the time.  I signed a stack of papers, gathered my _______ belongings, and left to join my wife who was waiting for me at a nearby _______, completely unaware. Fast-forward several hours, we both got really silly drunk.

So, 40 plus years of continuous _______ for a variety of companies was over. I thought I’d be just _______. I was an engineer in manufacturing and packaging.  Retirement was, like for so many people, _______ not an option for me.

And then an idea began to _______ root, born from my concern for our _______. I wanted to ________ my own business, designing, manufacturing green packaging from waste and ________ the toxic, disposable plastic packaging to which we’ve all become ________. This is called clean technology, and it ________ really meaningful to me. A venture that could help to reduce the billions of pounds of single-use plastic _________ dumped each year.

And so now at age 66, with 40 years of ________, I became an entrepreneur for the very first time. However, there are lots of issues to ________ for a start-up, but hardly ________ for me. But five years later, I’m proud to ________ with you that we have no debt, and our patent was ________, with 20 awards for the work that we’ve done. But ________, we’ve made a small dent(进展) in the worldwide plastic pollution crisis.