2025 Impact NextGen Honoree: Mac Sellars

MAC SELLARS
Strategy & Innovation Lead
r.World

A HIGHER PURPOSE
Only Pollstar NextGen honoree to graduate from Harvard Divinity School.

Though he’s a lifelong musician, Mac Sellars has found his niche in live in a totally different place: helping venues cut down on waste and, in turn, making the world more sustainable.

Sellars, the strategy and innovation lead at reusable serveware provider r.World, develops novel products, partnerships, and processes that allow r.World to deliver on its environmental mission. 

And delivering it is: the 300-use r.Cup is now present at more than 200 music and sports venues and has even made its way to the White House. That’s starting to put a dent into one of the least sustainable parts of live: a 2024 report from Upstream found that the live-events industry contributes more than 4 billion (with a b) single-use cups to North American landfills, making single-use serveware the second-biggest contributor to the live industry’s carbon footprint, trailing only fan travel.

r.World aims to reverse — or at least arrest — that trend, looking to expand beyond live events and large gatherings to create a reuse-heavy paradigm across society.

For now, Sellars is happy to contribute to the attainable sustainable goal: putting r.World products where single-use has been ubiquitous for decades. In 2024, major players like Portola festival in San Francisco and Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena and Peacock Theater made the switch. But it was scores closer to home that made Sellars beam with pride: scoring two grants to launch operations in Minnesota, r.World’s home state, which is not just a warm-and-fuzzy, it’s part of r.World’s “hub” strategy to build manufacturing and wash facilities across the country to cut down on the carbon footprint of shipping products cross-country.

A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Sellars got to work for r.World in 2021 as grant program manager, then moved to partnerships manager before stepping into his current role in January 2024.

It’s right place, right time for a guy whose only previous gig in the live industry was “playing shows as a high schooler at the local VA.”

But, for the environmentally inclined, there’s no time like the present to find a niche, Sellars says, believing that his generation has “more opportunities than ever to get involved in sustainability work.”

The man with the divinity school background and the environmentally-focused mind has one more piece of advice for making the world feel a little less fraught.

“Get off social media and talk to your neighbors!”

And don’t forget to turn in your cup.