February 5, 2026 • 51 mins
Look around -- how many objects in your immediate vicinity contain plastic? This malleable, durable material has become ubiquitous -- you can find in the depths of the oceans, at the summits of the highest mountains. And, if you're like most people, plastic will be here long after you're gone. Historically, manufacturers have claimed plastic pollution can be solved by recycling... but what if there's something they don't want you to know?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist, how much of you is plastic?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I think a credit card size amount per day day
and your brain crosses the brain blood barrier.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Your body overall. Yes, especially if you are a person
carrying a child inside of you, now that they probably
are going to get a dose of plastics too.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Basically lego at this point, guys.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, Look, if you're not driving currently or operating heavy machinery,
take a pause and look around your environment and ask
yourself how many objects in your immediate vicinity contain plastic? Spoiler,
it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's so damn convenient, even if you are driving. About
how much of a.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Car is plastic nowadays versus I don't know what fifty
years ago.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Coding on the gear shifts, the dash panel, all the rubber.
I mean, I guess that's different than plastic, But it's plastic.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
You can go to some of the most inaccessible parts
of the Earth and you might reach a place where
humans have never been in recorded history. But you know
it, it probably beat you to the punch.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Plastic. Yeah, it really insists upon itself, as you would say, Ben,
and it likes to spread its plastic seed.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
And now historically manufacturers ever since the dawn of plastic
can bake light and so on. They have claimed plastic
pollution can be solved by recycling. But as we learned
in twenty twenty, there's more than a little bit of
stuff they don't want you to know on that one.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
(01:41):
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Hello, and welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
My name is Noah, our rider, die compatriot and colleague.
Our better third Matt Frederick is on adventures somewhat off
the grid, but we'll be returning soon, so say hello
if you see him in the wild. They call me Ben.
We are joined today with our super producer Alexis code
name Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you, You
(02:26):
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. Before we begin today's episode, take a second,
if you're in a safe place and not driving, and
look around just your immediate area. Don't think outside of
your room. Don't just the stuff you can see or
the stuff you can touch. Try counting how many things
(02:48):
you can identify as being made of plastic. Just take
a second and think about it.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, man, just on my desk right here, I've got
this tiny little plastic ummy bear that my kid uses
to make necklaces. So there's one a McDonald's cup. I've
got a bunch of little trinkets, you know. I got
a little plastic squirrel with a beanie. Like this guy
is the camera focusing on this cute little I'm really
(03:17):
bad at centering on this because it's off to the side.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Got a bunch of like a bottle of hand sanitizer cords,
you know, Like I've got an ethernet cord that's wrapped
in rubber with plastic ends on it at the very least. Yeah, man,
a lot so this camera that we're recording into these
little cameras.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I live with a life sized plastic skeleton because that's
where I'm at, and.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Life don't spoil. I wanted to believe that Agent Scully
was in fact a real skeleton.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
I think it is a huge injustice for us to
say that the nature of her physical material decides whether
or not she's real. But I'm very you know, just
like a pro pro b what you want kind of person.
But you're right, you know, and a lot of our
fellow listeners just did the same thing. You see the
(04:12):
objects on nearby counters, shelves, tables, right, and also think
about the furniture, Think about the device you're using to
play this episode. Think about the clothing you're wearing. Right,
what percentage of that is a synthetic polymer? The short
answer is they're probably For many of us in the
audience today, there are more plastic things around you than
(04:34):
you can easily count. Plastic is ubiquitous, Plastic is everywhere.
So today's question, how did it get here? When did
we know about it? And what does this mean for
the future. To answer this, we do have to start
at what maybe kind of a boring place, but it's
important for the rest of the episode. So here are
(04:57):
the facts. Plastic.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
A brief history of plastic. Yeah, technically, plastic is a
it's like a catch all term sort of. It's a
word or for a group of things, for any material
that can be shaped, molded, or manipulated into any form.
Some of these things occur naturally. These substances occur naturally,
(05:21):
but most are man made. And today the word plastic
is really used to refer to a category of materials
that we collectively call polymers.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And plastics. First, shout out to everybody who's already remembering
that scene in the Graduate. It's great scene. Plastics were
often for times seen in the future. The science is fascinating.
A lot of children don't know this growing up in school,
But plastics are made from oil, right, the same kind
(05:53):
of oil that is, roughly speaking, the same kind of
oil that's used to make gas. Oil is car been rich.
That's what makes it such a popular fat these days.
And plastics are these large carbon containing compounds, if you know,
like you pointed out in all we're referring to them
in the modern sense. These polymers, these large molecules. They're
(06:15):
composed of these repeating units of shorter and shorter carbon
containing compounds called monomers. Chemists combine these different types of
monomers to make a vast a monopoly of plastics that
all have different chemical chemical properties, like how in the
Justice League or in the X Men or Avengers people
(06:37):
have different superpowers. Most of this stuff is inert and
the big, the big win for humanity is that it
often won't react chemically to other substances you can put
soap and plastic, right.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
But it makes me think of that scene in Breaking
Bad where you know, they want to dissolve some bodies
right in acid, and the material that Walter White asks
Jesse to go get is are these plastic bins, which
seems like, you know, acid would melt right through polymer
bins instead. Jesse thinks this is absurd, so he does
(07:14):
it in the bathtub and the acid dissolves right through
the floor, showering you know, goo and dissolved body parts
all over the living room. But right, isn't that right?
Ben Like, there's something about the chemical makeup, the inertness
of plastic that even something as caustic as acid won't react.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
With it, right, Yeah, And it depends on it depends
on the plastic, right exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
And I think that's a big plot point in Breaking Bad,
which I just rewatched a lot of it, but in
a very lazy way. I just rewatched my favorite scenes,
So I think it holds up. So how do we
get here? How do we get how did our lives
become inundated with this stuff? The story of plastic dates
back to the eighteen hundreds. In eighteen thsfty six, a
(08:00):
guy named Alexander Parks created something called park Scene. This
is generally considered the first thermoplastic. A guy named John
Wesley Hyatt in eighteen sixty nine saw an offer by
a business in New York to give away ten thousand
dollars to anyone who could make a substitute for ivory,
(08:22):
you know, ivory elephant tusk, and this inspired John Wesley
Hyatt to invent what we call celluloid today. The whole
reason there was an ivory shortage, by the way, was
because billiards was growing massively popular. It was the pog
or the Pokemon of its time, right, So this guy
(08:43):
invents this guy invents celluloid, and people were like, whoa,
this is amazing. But it didn't stop there. That's not
even the real revolution yet.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, and celluloid, which is a ton twister and of itself,
is also still what people think of when they think
about film from cinema. It's printed on celluloid. It's sort
of I think that's probably not exactly accurate anymore, but
it's certainly what the original material was that was used
to project film. Then, in nineteen o seven, a guy
(09:15):
by the name of Leo Bakeland invented what he very
self aggrandizingly referred to as Bakelite, which was the first
fully synthetic plastic, So that meant that it had no
molecules that were found in nature. It was pure laboratory magic.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
You're right, Noel Bakeland definitely definitely had his eye on
some marketing there. These two major publicly known successes got
the attention of the big players in the chemical industry,
so they just started throwing money into the potential of plastic,
the R and D the development. As a matter of fact,
(09:53):
there was a time when they just started seeing They
decided that they would just discover and invent new types
of plast and then later they would figure out what
that stuff was good for. They just wanted to be
kind of the first past the post in the invention game.
And then World War let's fast forward. World War two
sparks this massive, unprecedented expansion of the plastic industry. Think
(10:16):
about it. Natural resources are at a premium. We want
a safe, viable, affordable alternative, and that's why production of
plastic increased by three hundred percent in the US. And
this pattern continued in one way or another at the
end of the war. For a time, people thought plastic
(10:39):
would save the world. Plastic was a miracle substance that
may one day prove as historically important as the so
called Philosopher's Stone of alchemy. Except plastic was real, or
at the very least sliced bread. You know, but sliced bread.
It's got this cool.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Thing about it where you know, you eat it and
then it's gone and you don't have to worry about
it hanging around for generations. But it turns out as
far back as the sixties, folks in the US already
were realizing that plastics, while they were durable and lightweight
and able to be molded into any number of amazing shapes,
stuck around for a long long time, and they're already
(11:23):
kind of started to be this I don't know if
distrust is the right word, but a certain awareness and
trepidation around, like, should we really throw our whole lot
in with this material when we're already seeing that studies
are showing that it causes problems with the environment.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, the apprehension was growing. In nineteen sixty one, study
found that five percent of birds had plastic on some
sort in their stomachs. And then people also very pressing
in people started raising concerns about the possible long term
effects of plastic on human health. But here's the problem.
(11:59):
We're already that's the point of Prometheus and Pandora. The
lid of the jar been unscrewed. We knew the fire
of this new technology. We as a society had already
doubled down upon plastic. And today plastic is virtually irreplaceable.
(12:20):
I mean, there are obviously biodegradable alternatives in certain fields, right,
Like you can get biodegradable straws, cups, bags, and so on.
And there are a lot of environmental cleanup programs, they're
recycling initiatives, but for better or worse, plastic is here
(12:41):
to stay.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And I will say, Ben, you're right, there are alternatives, right,
But those biodegradable straws they suck, They deteriorate, they fall apart.
They just don't work as well as a plastic straw.
And this is coming from someone who tries to avoid
getting a plastic straw whenever humanly possible metal straws. Okay,
that's cool, but they make everything you drink taste kind
(13:03):
of metallic and that's not cool. It's really just that
the the Pandora's box you are describing ben is less
the greed of monopolistic corporations and more just the malaise
of consumers and just realizing that, Okay, sure there are problems,
but gosh, it's sure as convenient, isn't it. It's like,
(13:25):
we know all these problems with Amazon today, but you
don't see very many people giving up their Amazon despite
knowing all the labor problems and the monopoly problems and
all that stuff. It's a very similar example, and it
really does all translate to the almighty dollar at the
end of the day.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Agreed. And there's one Leviathan when big piece of this
story that does not get as much press as it deserves.
It's this, how much did the big manufacturers know about
the dangers of plastic and when did they know it?
Perhaps most importantly, what did they do about it? We'll
(14:07):
tell you afterword from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. Well,
they knew about it. They knew they knew way more
about it than the average person. And they went on
their merry way to the factories and to the banks.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
And the average person knew enough about it already for
it to be a red flag. I mean, there were
these studies about the bird stomachs and all of that
stuff that was out there. But yeah, you're right, Ben,
they just waltzed their happy asses to the bank and
cash those checks like forever. I mean, because this really
is the kind of thing where you're placing a long
(14:50):
term bet on plastics if you're one of these companies.
So concerns about plastic became even more mainstream in the seventies,
you know, ecology and recycle, reduce, reuse and all of
that stuff. The oil, chemical and plastic industries grew a
little bit anxious because they're like, how do we spin this?
You know, we don't want to be the big bad guys.
(15:12):
We got to figure out a way to sell plastic
back to the consumers in a way that they can
feel good about. Right.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
So they hatched what can accurately be called a conspiracy.
It's an insidious one. In fact, it is a conspiracy
that you may have participated in with the best of intentions.
It's one that many of us have played a role
in this conspiracy in a large way. I hate to
ruin this for everybody is the concept of recycling plastic
(15:41):
That is the conspiracy in today's episode. At the first
National Conference of Packaging Waste in nineteen sixty nine, the
chief environmental manager of Dow Chemical presented a paper on
the explosive growth of what are called single use plastics.
We've all seen those. You know, you go to a
fast food place, you get your bag and your you
(16:04):
get your whopper in these trying times to that's an
Easter egg for just the three of us talking off air,
and then you get.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Your you're here with you with your flame world whopper
to give you comfort during these are trying.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Times, standing DeVito with an egg, but now it's a whopper.
So you see these in cafeteria's, universities, restaurants, et cetera.
And this environmental manager takes an interesting approach because he says,
you know, he extols the virtues of these things. They're
(16:41):
durable materials, they might conceivably last forever, but he also
points out the disposal problem, that's what he calls it.
He says, there's a coming deluge of plastic waste and
the industry is turning a blind eye to it, and
that they're going to continue turning a blind eye to
it for as long as possible. We a lot of
(17:04):
people didn't know the extent of this conspiracy until reporters
working with National Public Radio and a couple of other
outfits found documents that proved from the very beginning, the
same corporations telling customers that recycling was on them. Those
same corporations knew that large scale plastic recycling was a
(17:28):
pipe dream. It was a plastic pipe dream. It was
unrealistic to think it would actually work in an economically
feasible way at that scale.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Ben, I'm pretty sure we've talked about this on the
show before, But remember that iconic ecological ad campaign with
the Native American gentleman and the single tier, you know,
because there's like piles of garbage behind him and was
presumably his native land or whatever. You know, I remember
freaking the guy's name. It turns out that dude wasn't
(17:58):
even a Native American at all. I think used like Italian,
and that ad campaign was developed by a lot of
these waste producing corporations.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
That's right, Yes, Yeah, that's an actor from spaghetti westerns
and we're talking about the Keep America Beautiful. Campaign. Also
known as kab Yeah, this is a great example of
how Big Plastic. That's just what we'll use as mental
shorthand for all these trade groups. Big Plastic decided that
(18:32):
instead of putting money into a solution for the problem
of plastic waste, which they correctly predicted would grow out
of control, instead of trying to solve that, they spent
money funding pr campaigns to blame you, the customer, for
the pollution. The world is going to hell in a handbasket,
(18:53):
not because of these massive corporations throwing this stuff everywhere,
but because you use a plastic straw monster.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
You know, I would call it brilliant if it wasn't
so evil, you know what. You know what, let's say
it's both. It can be both. It's brilliant and evil,
because that's right. Then they're punting the responsibility from them
because they're just giving you what you want. They're just
you know, continuing that legacy of convenience. It's your fault
for for throwing it in the in the in the ocean.
(19:23):
You're the one throwing it and making that Indian cry.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
You did that, even if you've never been to the ocean. Yeah,
I let's see if we importmante to that. How about Evilian?
Love it believal?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
It's also done done with Gusto. No I like Avilian
because it makes me think of it bulliant. So it's
sort of like it's evil and brilliant, and it's done
with ebuliance because how how else do you sell it
if it's not like, got some rasmatas to it, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Aviliant? Yes, all right, booked, We'll we'll get Matt, we'll
get Mad on board with that too. Actually, let's just
we'll tell him, let's mess with his mind and tell
him that we always use that word right exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Uh so this large scale mind and media manipulation is
quite successful today. A lot of people still don't know
that Keep America Beautiful to your point, Noal was founded
by that industry and through twisting the narrative right of littering,
which you shouldn't litter that's that's not even a hot take,
(20:32):
put stuff in trash cans. Through that, through that Pavilian's move, Uh,
they were able to get public support. Even though Keep
America Beautiful was founded to prevent state bands on single
use plastic packaging like it was it was founded to
(20:55):
keep the one time use fork spice flowing the lack
of a better word. Yeah, and we know this because
there are documents from these companies.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
That's right. You know, it's sort of like it reminds
me of the story we did on the material that's
in nonstick pans with the lawyer who kind of spearheaded
the whole investigation into uncovering very similar kind of secret
documents about what they knew, when they knew it and
how they essentially colluded or you know, yeah, that's that's
(21:27):
probably accurate to cover it up and to keep it
from the public. And this is no different. So what
they did was they did, like you said, Ben, manipulated
this narrative to they did have a solution at least
to the whole like making everyone sad, about making the
Indian cry and about feeling this guilt of all this
stuff they've been pumping out into the world. No, no, no, no,
(21:48):
there's another way, folks. It's called recycling, and it's something
that you too can be a part of and making
America beautiful, keeping America beautiful. You can be a part
of it. How cool is that? Man? That's like, you know,
they're literally selling you a gold star, the ability to
feel like you're doing your part. Not only can you
(22:09):
have your cake and eat it with a plastic fork too,
you can then turn that plastic fork into another plastic
fork or whatever else its upperware. The sky's the limit
recycling plastic.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
And it feels good to do it too. Right where
you are, somehow, you are, somehow more aware, you're a
better steward of the planet. That's the idea that they're selling.
And if recycling worked the way that they described it,
then this would to a large degree be true. But
(22:46):
the problem is multiple internal company documents have indicated that
this was a move of self preservation on the part
of the plastics industry. They needed to make people leave
plastic was sustainable. When I throw that fork in the
right bin, then I am really just giving someone else
(23:10):
in the future another fork, or another jug of milk
or something like that. The lobbyists in the plastic and
oil industry fought very hard and quite successfully to mandate
that triangle recycle symbol, you know the one.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
It's like the ecological uroburros, but like in a good
way where it kind of like feeds back into itself.
You know what I mean, so it's what could this
It says all you need to know. It's like, hey,
you can be part of this amazing continuum of manufacturing.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, I was thinking ecological illuminati. I think both answers
are acceptable. I would even say, you know, all of
the above there. It did make an impact because it
gave us this belief that all of those items bearing
that mark could potentially be turned into new products. The
(24:05):
thing is, the vast majority of them were not turned
into new products. The vast majority of them are still
not turned into anything new. They can be we have
the technology. There's just not a market for these things.
It's not a market for this recycled plastic, and in
many cases there's not a compelling financial reason to make them.
(24:30):
And that's because recycling has problems when we talk about plastics.
They are huge problems with recycling.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Yeah, I mean, remember we were talking at the top
of the show about how like this one particular type
of plastic might you know, be able to hold acid,
and there's other types of plastic that can hold rubbing, alcohol, etc.
I mean, you know, typically polymers are versatile and non
reactive in that way. But to your point, Bend, there
are different ones. There's a bunch of different ones, and
so you know, they don't all necessarily play nice together
(25:00):
because you would actually have to combine them and they
would have to gel chemically and in order to be
repurposed into something else. And so all of the plastic
that this that would be needed to do this properly
or effectively would have to be sorted by hand to
separate out this is this type of plastic, This is
(25:20):
this type of plastic. This is this type of plastic.
They can't commingle, So consumers don't know what that is, right,
I mean, that's not and there's not enough bins in
a recycling you know, container to even deal with that
on the front end, right, So that means it's way
expensive to sort all of the plastics to make new
plastic from old plastic. Then it would be just to
(25:41):
make it from oil.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yep, just make new stuff. It's true that this is
the episode of where we're somewhat ruined recycling, So.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
That's the subtitle. That's the sub But I mean this
isn't to say that no plastic is recycled, right, Ben.
I mean we if you read about usually kind of
bespoke products often that are more expensive to buy to
the consumer, that are in fact made of all recycled materials,
are all recycled plastic. But you're paying a premium for
that privilege of knowing that you're buying something that was
(26:15):
made with recycled plastic. That's because it takes more work
to make it that way.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
It has to be sorted by hand, you know, Like
you said, you have to find the plastics that play
well together. And then just for an example, yeah, there
is there is actual recycling a plastic. Sometimes it's sold
it at a premium, as you mentioned, but the stuff
that's recycled is often not used in the ways you
(26:41):
think it would be used. Like take a plastic milk chug.
Don't with your plastic milk chug. You wash it out
because you don't want it to smell up your house
or your trash bag. And then while you're doing that,
you say, oh, wait, I recycle, so I'm going to
put this in the blue the blue receptacle, and then
you think, okay, off on your journey. Well, plastic jug, bro,
(27:04):
I wish you luck in this your secular version of reincarnation.
That plastic jug can only get recycled a few times
because it degrades in quality every time it's recycled. So
this means it can only happen it can only be
recycled a finite number of times. So what happened to
the used plastic? Well, in the US, we did something
(27:26):
that's very popular in a lot of disposal strategies of
this country. We shipped it somewhere where we couldn't see.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
It, you know what I mean, out of sight, out
of my like a child. It's not I can't see it.
It's not there anymore. We Yeah, Unfortunately, that is an
all too common thing that we as Americans fall a
victim to. And to your point, Ben, like even like
the idea, this is interesting to me, and this is
maybe more of a question than I have if it
(27:57):
can only be recycled to a number of times, Like
how do you know when you're done, when you've no
longer got a viable product? Isn't that something you have
to track as well?
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah? I mean that's a really good point because then
we have this whole logistic aspect to it, right logistical
aspect to it, where we can't just do our best
to recycled stuff. We also have to make sure that
we're recycling something into something viable. The complications alone could
(28:26):
cripple the entire project, So shif it off to China. Right.
For a long time, labor was cheaper there. Also, environmental
laws were lacks right, or at least on paper. The
US laws were more strict the country of China and
businesses in China. Eventually, we're no longer able to find
(28:46):
uses for all of this discarded plastic, so now they've
largely stopped accepting it. There's just not much of a
market for this recycled stuff. And that means that a
lot of the plastic in this country, in the US
ends up getting discover and it piles up, piles up,
And I don't know about you, this gives you an
existential crisis. There's there's a question I have to ask
(29:08):
at the very.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
End of this. Yeah, and you know, and maybe you
can answer this, Ben, I know, you know, And I
live in Decatur, Georgia, and the city of Decatur has
been plagued with corruption in terms of like you know,
overcharging people for utilities, and there was like a big
lawsuit all this stuff. But I've also heard rumor that
my little blue recycling bin hopper that I you know,
(29:29):
roll out kick onto the curb every Monday, that that
just ends up in the landfill more often than not.
That a lot of municipalities don't do a good job
of recycling, even when you think that's what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yeah, it's true, and that's that's something that is unfortunately
not historically uncommon, you know what I mean. Like, consider
a lot of office buildings where you know, people think
they are throwing that aluminum can, that plastic bottle into
the recycling bin, and then night, maybe you're working late,
(30:02):
then you see that the people who do custodial services
in that office just throw it all in the same place.
And then maybe you tell yourself there's a magical Sussian
sorting machine that handles everything like a.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Harry Potter had of some sort.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
You know. Yeah, but it goes to trash hat.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
But it goes to the whole point that we started
with here, is that it's all about optics. It's all
about selling you the dream. It's not actually about the practice.
It's more about like the image. Right. So what happened
as as this continued, you know, especially after China's sort
of rejecting this material, I believe that that study reference
(30:41):
earlier about birds having plastics in their stomachs. I think
the number then was about five percent. But by the eighties,
and you know, in true eighties excess fashion, that number
increased to eighty percent.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Eighty percent of birds in a similar study twenty years
later had plastic in their stomach And now as we
record this, multiple studies indicate that almost ninety seven percent
of all birds have some sort of plastics somewhere in
their system. Today, as we record this, about a million
birds going to die this year due specifically to their
(31:19):
stomachs being stuffed with plastic.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Man, a good way to go. And you know, my
qualms with the bird population been but even I don't
think they deserve to go out like that. Agreed.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
And so you know, the one thing you want for
an enemy you respect, I would imagine from your perspective,
nole is to is that they have an honorable death right.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I mean, at least, let let it be spectacular. Let
their stomachs explode from eating wedding rice or something. You know,
I'm kidding, And bird people out there, please don't don't
cancel me. I'm very much kidding, But no, it turns
out that the concept of recycling as it's been sold
to the United States public and other places around the
world is at the very very least misleading. Is an
(32:06):
optics first kind of thing, as opposed to, like, what's
the actual end result of this whole operation?
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Right, yeah, exactly. I like the way one industry insider
put it. They said, selling recycling sells plastic. And then
there's an interesting statement by a guy named Larry Thomas,
who's a former president of the Society of the Plastics
Industry which today is known as PIA Plastics Industry Association.
(32:36):
He was at the helm at, one of the most
powerful trade groups for the industry in DC, and he
said that if the public thinks that recycling is working,
then they are not going to be as concerned about
the environment. And to be fair, the industry's current position
is that there is no conspiracy afoot I wanted to
(32:59):
give voice to the other side, to their perspective. Guy
named Steve Russell, a representative for the plastics industry who
was for a while the vice president of Plastics for
the American Chemistry Council, says the industry has never intentionally
misled the public about recycling and that they're committed to
(33:21):
ensuring one day that all plastic is recycled. And he says,
you know, public commitment to recycling programs, public pressure, and
evolving technology will all play huge roles in helping recycle
all plastic. Essentially, he's saying, no one ever intentionally misled anyone,
(33:47):
and maybe one day recycling can do what the industry
for decades claimed it was already doing. Just think about
the double think in that statement. It's Orwellian.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah, kind of mind blowing. I don't even know how
to respond to that, Ben.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
I mean, we're not saying, we have to be clear,
we are not saying recycling is anything other than an amazing, awesome,
potentially world changing, world saving concept.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Do you remember, though, Ben, like being a kid and
going to like the recycling center and getting a tour
and all that stuff. I mean, it was something that's
sold to you as early as as ah, you know,
elementary school, recycled, reduce, reuse, all of that stuff and again,
and we're gonna we're gonna continue on. But I do
want to say, like recycling paper it's great, recycling paper works.
(34:39):
You can smush all that stuff together and make all
kinds of cool stuff, uh, you know, and pulp and
you know make You can even buy recycled paper for
your copy paper if you want. There's all kinds of
uses for recycled paper. But the plastic part just a
much more tricky. Let's call it supply chain problem, right.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And again, like I I'm conflicted about this because I
love the idea of recycling, and I love the idea
of individual people being able to make a fundamental difference
in the world around them, you know what I mean.
I love the power of the individual. But what we
(35:20):
are saying here is that the idea of recycling in
the world of plastic the way it's been practiced is
not near as widespread as the plastic industry would want
you to believe. And this will probably continue to be
the case until there's some revolutionary technology that Harry Potter
(35:41):
trash hat which is a great phrase, until it comes online,
or until it becomes somehow more profitable to recycle and
reuse plastic rather than to make new plastic. Neither of
those things have happened yet, neither of them. And to
compound the issue here, we are still learning the full
(36:02):
scope of this problem. We may not know the long
term consequences of this issue for years and years and
years to come, And that doesn't mean it doesn't affect us.
It means that we don't know what's going to happen,
has never happened on Earth before, We have no idea
what plot twister ahead.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah, I mean each year human beings produced three hundred
and sixty million tons of plastic, and according to one study,
around eight million tons of it enters the ocean, and
until recently, the fate of what's called microplastics, which is
plastics that contain particles less than five millimeters in size
(36:44):
in the ocean has been unclear, But to your point,
been a recent study. We're at least starting to get
a whiff of what these microplastic particles are doing when
they settle in marine sediments, following the pattern of a
lot of other pollutants. So we're not just talking about
like hard goods that stick around. We're talking about the
(37:07):
chemical impact of plastics and how it can actually saturate
and contaminate soil and water and beyond.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah, you're right, nol microplastics and nanoplastics, which are they
have a diameter of less than point zero zero one millimeters.
Both of these form from the abrasion of larger pieces
of plastic dumped into the ocean, so the stuff keeps
kind of breaking itself into smaller and smaller chunks, and
(37:40):
research in wildlife and in laboratory animals has established some
pretty compelling links between tiny plastic and infertility, inflammation, even cancer.
Microplastics have polluted the entire planet, from the Arctic to
your neighborhood park to the depths of the ocean. Like
(38:04):
you probably saw not too long ago, scientists being startled
to get to a very remote part of the world
under the ice in Antarctica and then see that there
was plastic there. This is happening.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Yeah, you ever heard you ever thought of the concept
of airborne plastic ben Again, this the old school model
of plastic pollution is much more just a nuisance, right
or like, okay, it gets in birds, The physical chunks
of things get in birds and like choke them or
caused them to have a horrible digestive problems that can
ultimately kill them. But yeah, airborne plastic Apparently, human beings,
(38:45):
according to a previous study that we found for this episode,
have shown people eat and breathe in at least fifty
thousand particles of microplastic a year, and that MicroPlace plastic
pollution is absolutely just raining down upon city dwellers, and
(39:08):
it's not going away anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
No, it's not, which means that to a large degree,
this conspiracy was successful because the profit margins stayed consistent.
But now it's coming to a head, and we have
to ask ourselves what does this mean for the future.
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. We've returned,
(39:36):
and let's open this segment about the future with a
quote from Rolling Stone that gives us a troubling summation
of the dilemma we face. No could I ask you
to do the honors here?
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Absolutely, sir. Rolling Stone puts it out like this. More
than half the plastics now on Earth has been created
since two thousand and two, and plastic pollution is on
pace to double by twenty thirty. At its root, the
global plastics crisis is a product of our addiction to
fossil fuels. The private profit and public harm of the
(40:14):
oil industry is very well understood. And again this is
all quote from this Rolling Stone article by Tim Dickinson,
which absolutely recommend fully reading. Let's continue, oil is refined
and distributed to customers who consumers rather who benefit from
gasoline's short useful lifespan in a combustion engine, leaving behind
(40:36):
atmospheric pollution for generations. By the same pattern, and the
same tragedy of the commons is playing out with another
gift of the oil and gas giants whose drilling draws
up the petroleum precursors for plastics.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Yep, yep. It's they're troublingly similar cycles, right, and you
know the proof is out there. Companies knew about the
issues with fossil fuels dating back to the seventies and
didn't say a word about it.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
So that's where we're at.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Since nineteen fifty, the world has created six point three
trillion kilograms of plastic waste. Ninety one percent of that
has never been recycled even once. This trend is only
going to accelerate as emerging economies increase their plastic consumption.
Like think about this. In twenty eighteen, advanced economies in
(41:32):
the world were using twenty times more plastic than per
capita than consumers in places like Indonesia or in India
and now people are on the way up right, there's
a higher demand for plastic, and the industry itself, Big Plastic,
is counting on that growing demand to keep selling stuff
(41:55):
even though a great deal of it will still be
around long after and probably long after everyone listening to
this podcast or watching this YouTube clip today has been
long dead. And this is that existential crisis. I wanted
to ask you about this. Everyone, you know, you doc,
(42:16):
all of us listening along at home or in our
cars are counting the pieces of plastic around us. Do
you experience existential dread when you hold like a plastic
fork and realize just how much longer it will be
(42:36):
around than you, how much more permanent it is in
the scheme of things than you, a living being that
it bothers me?
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, it bothers me too, And you know who else
it bothers ben kids who, as you well know, kids
these days. I say that as someone who's potentially becoming
an old grandpapa. But kids these days are what the
kids these days call pretty woke. They are hip to
all these societal problems, political and environmental and otherwise. And
(43:08):
you know else, kids like legos and apparently a lot
of kids who are fond of Legos begged the Lego
Corporation in the form of letters that they wrote to
the company to stop using single use plastic bags in
their packaging. So Lego heard that. The Lego Group Chief
(43:30):
executive Officer Nils B. Christiansen said, we have received many
letters from children about the environment asking us to remove
single use plastic packaging. We've been exploring alternatives for some time,
and the passion and ideas from children inspired us to
begin to make changes. So apparently they are looking to
(43:53):
roll this out in the very near future and it
will be replaced with paper, which again, like we said
earlier in the episode, is much more viable as a
recyclable good for single use materials. It's investing four hundred
million dollars over three years to improve its sustainability efforts overall,
the Lego Corporation. Unfortunately, you know, legos themselves made of plastic,
(44:20):
but at least kids aren't throwing their Legos in the ocean.
Presumably it's something you keep around and pass down to siblings,
and you know, so that's I think that's fine. Yeah,
I mean they're so expensive, they are quite expensive.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
You're a parent. You're aware of that.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
I am aware of that. They're also murder on your
bare feet, as every parent knows when you're walking around. Thankfully,
my kids more into bracelets than she has legos. But
that's plastic beads. But again, those are meant to be
kept around and given to friends and hopefully not just chucked.
But yeah, our super producer Doc Holliday off Mike just
(44:56):
kind of during our ad break exasperatedly exclaimed, Oh, this
is depressing, you know, And then you're not wrong, Doc,
You're not wrong. But hopefully we can sort it out
before we wreck the planet entirely, not to sound too
tree huggry about it, but sure feels like we're hitting
a tipping point with all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
It's not a look. Extinction doesn't care about vague, the
vague stories we have made up for ourselves. Extinction does
not care about political leanings. It doesn't care about religion.
It doesn't care about money the economy, which again is
just another religion. I put out the clarion call a
(45:38):
long time ago. I don't think anybody has successfully proven
a difference between the concept of an economy and the
concept of a religion. But there is one fascinating point,
and I appreciate it so much man, that you brought
a little bit of light here. There's one fascinating point.
The plastics crisis is different from climate change and the
(46:00):
way it's been treated. Remember, like I mentioned, oil corporations
put a lot of money into denying the concept of
climate change for a very long time. But the folks
over what we call big plastic, and to be fair,
there are a lot less like two separate entities and
a lot more like fingers on the same hand. But
(46:22):
whatever you want to call big plastic, they are not
denying the problem anymore. They're seeking to convince consumers and
regulators that despite the fact they put all this pollution
out on the planet, they can be the trusted experts
to make plastic use sustainable. It's something they call a
circular economy, so that plastic does actually get recycled continually
(46:48):
and doesn't degrade. The cynical way to translate that, honestly,
is this recycling?
Speaker 3 (46:54):
You know?
Speaker 1 (46:56):
For real?
Speaker 2 (46:56):
This time? Sure, I like that it's got a nice ring,
not on a down note, but it just somebody just
popped into my head that we hadn't even talked about
what about plastic garbage bags? Like, I mean, don't they
just end up in like landfills? Like that's a question forever.
I don't know. It's I'm sorry. I took us down
(47:17):
a peg. You brought us up a peg and no, no,
it took us right back down. But what I don't know?
Are there any environmental scientists out there? Any polymer scientists
out there? You know, Lego's talking about exploring alternatives even
to the plastic bricks.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Why are we so hooked on plastic?
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Let us know, Yeah, let us know, Let us know
how you think this is going to work out. We
are all ears, honestly everybody should be. We cannot predict
the future, but we do see troubling trends and we
want to hear from you. You can find us on Instagram.
You can find us on Twitter. You can find us
on Facebook. We love to recommend our favorite page on
(47:58):
the good old inter and that is our Facebook community page.
Here's where it gets crazy. But wait, you can find
us as individuals too, should the spirit move you to
do so, you certainly can.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
You can find me exclusively on Instagram where I am
at How now? Noel Brown. You know, I post a
lot of like crazy cosplay videos from my kid, who's
a delight and also very much into the environment, and
you know, cooking experiments under lockdown, occasional drumming exercises, and
I'm starting to get into yoga, Ben. I just did
(48:34):
like three days straight of a beginner yoga YouTube video.
Starting to really enjoy that. So maybe you'll see me
in cow pose or I don't know the names yet,
but you could see that. Where are you Ben on
the internets?
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Uh, you know, it's interesting mentioned the yoga stuff. Nol
my Pale, Alex your pal as well. It's got super
into yoga recently.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
He's the one who told me which videos to watch
yoga with Adrian for anyone else out there that's trying
to dip their toe in the yoga pool.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Nice credit to you, Alex. If you're listening to this show,
if you're already on the internet, you can find me
having any number of misadventures on Instagram where I'm at
them bulling, and can find me on Twitter where I'm
at Ben BULLINGHSW. You'll recognize it's me because you'll see
a tweet that I wrote before I came into this episode,
(49:25):
saying that the research really got to me. The plastic
is everywhere. I will aim to make less depressing tweets
in the future.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
It's when you started getting into the airborne plastic that
it really started getting dark. This is all pretty dark,
but I don't know. It's always darkest before the dawn.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
How far away are we from children being born with
plastic in them? Anyhow? Tell us about it. You can
also give us a phone call if you are not
the type to sip the social needs.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
That's right, We're one eight three three STDWYTK. Leave us
a voicemail memo message. Try to keep it concise. Much
more likely to get on one of our handy dandy
listener mail episodes if you do that. But if you
got something that needs to be broken up into a
couple of these, I think what's the limit been a
couple of minutes for each of these. Feel free, but
(50:15):
you know we may have to condense it a little bit.
And also please let us know if we can use
your name on the on the show and.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Get weird with it, you know what I mean. My
favorite listener mail is still that guy with a uniquely
infectious laugh. If you're listening, sir, you made my day.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
The truck driver, the kookie truck driver with the Hong
Kong Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Morfect residents, check it out. That's somewhere in the title
of that episode.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Absolutely, as we've said time and time again, you can
also join our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy,
where you can exchange memes and barbs and and no
not barbs, definitely polite discourse with your fellow listeners. All
you got to do is name one of the members
of the crew of this conspiracy posse, and then you
will find yourself in the door. If you don't want
(50:58):
to do any of that stuff and you'd rather just
get in touch with us in an older of fashioned ways,
you can do so by sending us an email.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (51:27):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow conspiracy realist, how much of you is plastic?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I think a credit card size amount per day day
and your brain crosses the brain blood barrier.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Your body overall. Yes, especially if you are a person
carrying a child inside of you, now that they probably
are going to get a dose of plastics too.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Basically lego at this point, guys.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, Look, if you're not driving currently or operating heavy machinery,
take a pause and look around your environment and ask
yourself how many objects in your immediate vicinity contain plastic? Spoiler,
it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's so damn convenient, even if you are driving. About
how much of a.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Car is plastic nowadays versus I don't know what fifty
years ago.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Coding on the gear shifts, the dash panel, all the rubber.
I mean, I guess that's different than plastic, But it's plastic.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
You can go to some of the most inaccessible parts
of the Earth and you might reach a place where
humans have never been in recorded history. But you know
it, it probably beat you to the punch.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Plastic. Yeah, it really insists upon itself, as you would say, Ben,
and it likes to spread its plastic seed.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
And now historically manufacturers ever since the dawn of plastic
can bake light and so on. They have claimed plastic
pollution can be solved by recycling. But as we learned
in twenty twenty, there's more than a little bit of
stuff they don't want you to know on that one.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
(01:41):
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Hello, and welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
My name is Noah, our rider, die compatriot and colleague.
Our better third Matt Frederick is on adventures somewhat off
the grid, but we'll be returning soon, so say hello
if you see him in the wild. They call me Ben.
We are joined today with our super producer Alexis code
name Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you, You
(02:26):
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. Before we begin today's episode, take a second,
if you're in a safe place and not driving, and
look around just your immediate area. Don't think outside of
your room. Don't just the stuff you can see or
the stuff you can touch. Try counting how many things
(02:48):
you can identify as being made of plastic. Just take
a second and think about it.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, man, just on my desk right here, I've got
this tiny little plastic ummy bear that my kid uses
to make necklaces. So there's one a McDonald's cup. I've
got a bunch of little trinkets, you know. I got
a little plastic squirrel with a beanie. Like this guy
is the camera focusing on this cute little I'm really
(03:17):
bad at centering on this because it's off to the side.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Got a bunch of like a bottle of hand sanitizer cords,
you know, Like I've got an ethernet cord that's wrapped
in rubber with plastic ends on it at the very least. Yeah, man,
a lot so this camera that we're recording into these
little cameras.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I live with a life sized plastic skeleton because that's
where I'm at, and.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Life don't spoil. I wanted to believe that Agent Scully
was in fact a real skeleton.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
I think it is a huge injustice for us to
say that the nature of her physical material decides whether
or not she's real. But I'm very you know, just
like a pro pro b what you want kind of person.
But you're right, you know, and a lot of our
fellow listeners just did the same thing. You see the
(04:12):
objects on nearby counters, shelves, tables, right, and also think
about the furniture, Think about the device you're using to
play this episode. Think about the clothing you're wearing. Right,
what percentage of that is a synthetic polymer? The short
answer is they're probably For many of us in the
audience today, there are more plastic things around you than
(04:34):
you can easily count. Plastic is ubiquitous, Plastic is everywhere.
So today's question, how did it get here? When did
we know about it? And what does this mean for
the future. To answer this, we do have to start
at what maybe kind of a boring place, but it's
important for the rest of the episode. So here are
(04:57):
the facts. Plastic.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
A brief history of plastic. Yeah, technically, plastic is a
it's like a catch all term sort of. It's a
word or for a group of things, for any material
that can be shaped, molded, or manipulated into any form.
Some of these things occur naturally. These substances occur naturally,
(05:21):
but most are man made. And today the word plastic
is really used to refer to a category of materials
that we collectively call polymers.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And plastics. First, shout out to everybody who's already remembering
that scene in the Graduate. It's great scene. Plastics were
often for times seen in the future. The science is fascinating.
A lot of children don't know this growing up in school,
But plastics are made from oil, right, the same kind
(05:53):
of oil that is, roughly speaking, the same kind of
oil that's used to make gas. Oil is car been rich.
That's what makes it such a popular fat these days.
And plastics are these large carbon containing compounds, if you know,
like you pointed out in all we're referring to them
in the modern sense. These polymers, these large molecules. They're
(06:15):
composed of these repeating units of shorter and shorter carbon
containing compounds called monomers. Chemists combine these different types of
monomers to make a vast a monopoly of plastics that
all have different chemical chemical properties, like how in the
Justice League or in the X Men or Avengers people
(06:37):
have different superpowers. Most of this stuff is inert and
the big, the big win for humanity is that it
often won't react chemically to other substances you can put
soap and plastic, right.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
But it makes me think of that scene in Breaking
Bad where you know, they want to dissolve some bodies
right in acid, and the material that Walter White asks
Jesse to go get is are these plastic bins, which
seems like, you know, acid would melt right through polymer
bins instead. Jesse thinks this is absurd, so he does
(07:14):
it in the bathtub and the acid dissolves right through
the floor, showering you know, goo and dissolved body parts
all over the living room. But right, isn't that right?
Ben Like, there's something about the chemical makeup, the inertness
of plastic that even something as caustic as acid won't react.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
With it, right, Yeah, And it depends on it depends
on the plastic, right exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
And I think that's a big plot point in Breaking Bad,
which I just rewatched a lot of it, but in
a very lazy way. I just rewatched my favorite scenes,
So I think it holds up. So how do we
get here? How do we get how did our lives
become inundated with this stuff? The story of plastic dates
back to the eighteen hundreds. In eighteen thsfty six, a
(08:00):
guy named Alexander Parks created something called park Scene. This
is generally considered the first thermoplastic. A guy named John
Wesley Hyatt in eighteen sixty nine saw an offer by
a business in New York to give away ten thousand
dollars to anyone who could make a substitute for ivory,
(08:22):
you know, ivory elephant tusk, and this inspired John Wesley
Hyatt to invent what we call celluloid today. The whole
reason there was an ivory shortage, by the way, was
because billiards was growing massively popular. It was the pog
or the Pokemon of its time, right, So this guy
(08:43):
invents this guy invents celluloid, and people were like, whoa,
this is amazing. But it didn't stop there. That's not
even the real revolution yet.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, and celluloid, which is a ton twister and of itself,
is also still what people think of when they think
about film from cinema. It's printed on celluloid. It's sort
of I think that's probably not exactly accurate anymore, but
it's certainly what the original material was that was used
to project film. Then, in nineteen o seven, a guy
(09:15):
by the name of Leo Bakeland invented what he very
self aggrandizingly referred to as Bakelite, which was the first
fully synthetic plastic, So that meant that it had no
molecules that were found in nature. It was pure laboratory magic.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
You're right, Noel Bakeland definitely definitely had his eye on
some marketing there. These two major publicly known successes got
the attention of the big players in the chemical industry,
so they just started throwing money into the potential of plastic,
the R and D the development. As a matter of fact,
(09:53):
there was a time when they just started seeing They
decided that they would just discover and invent new types
of plast and then later they would figure out what
that stuff was good for. They just wanted to be
kind of the first past the post in the invention game.
And then World War let's fast forward. World War two
sparks this massive, unprecedented expansion of the plastic industry. Think
(10:16):
about it. Natural resources are at a premium. We want
a safe, viable, affordable alternative, and that's why production of
plastic increased by three hundred percent in the US. And
this pattern continued in one way or another at the
end of the war. For a time, people thought plastic
(10:39):
would save the world. Plastic was a miracle substance that
may one day prove as historically important as the so
called Philosopher's Stone of alchemy. Except plastic was real, or
at the very least sliced bread. You know, but sliced bread.
It's got this cool.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Thing about it where you know, you eat it and
then it's gone and you don't have to worry about
it hanging around for generations. But it turns out as
far back as the sixties, folks in the US already
were realizing that plastics, while they were durable and lightweight
and able to be molded into any number of amazing shapes,
stuck around for a long long time, and they're already
(11:23):
kind of started to be this I don't know if
distrust is the right word, but a certain awareness and
trepidation around, like, should we really throw our whole lot
in with this material when we're already seeing that studies
are showing that it causes problems with the environment.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, the apprehension was growing. In nineteen sixty one, study
found that five percent of birds had plastic on some
sort in their stomachs. And then people also very pressing
in people started raising concerns about the possible long term
effects of plastic on human health. But here's the problem.
(11:59):
We're already that's the point of Prometheus and Pandora. The
lid of the jar been unscrewed. We knew the fire
of this new technology. We as a society had already
doubled down upon plastic. And today plastic is virtually irreplaceable.
(12:20):
I mean, there are obviously biodegradable alternatives in certain fields, right,
Like you can get biodegradable straws, cups, bags, and so on.
And there are a lot of environmental cleanup programs, they're
recycling initiatives, but for better or worse, plastic is here
(12:41):
to stay.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And I will say, Ben, you're right, there are alternatives, right,
But those biodegradable straws they suck, They deteriorate, they fall apart.
They just don't work as well as a plastic straw.
And this is coming from someone who tries to avoid
getting a plastic straw whenever humanly possible metal straws. Okay,
that's cool, but they make everything you drink taste kind
(13:03):
of metallic and that's not cool. It's really just that
the the Pandora's box you are describing ben is less
the greed of monopolistic corporations and more just the malaise
of consumers and just realizing that, Okay, sure there are problems,
but gosh, it's sure as convenient, isn't it. It's like,
(13:25):
we know all these problems with Amazon today, but you
don't see very many people giving up their Amazon despite
knowing all the labor problems and the monopoly problems and
all that stuff. It's a very similar example, and it
really does all translate to the almighty dollar at the
end of the day.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Agreed. And there's one Leviathan when big piece of this
story that does not get as much press as it deserves.
It's this, how much did the big manufacturers know about
the dangers of plastic and when did they know it?
Perhaps most importantly, what did they do about it? We'll
(14:07):
tell you afterword from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. Well,
they knew about it. They knew they knew way more
about it than the average person. And they went on
their merry way to the factories and to the banks.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
And the average person knew enough about it already for
it to be a red flag. I mean, there were
these studies about the bird stomachs and all of that
stuff that was out there. But yeah, you're right, Ben,
they just waltzed their happy asses to the bank and
cash those checks like forever. I mean, because this really
is the kind of thing where you're placing a long
(14:50):
term bet on plastics if you're one of these companies.
So concerns about plastic became even more mainstream in the seventies,
you know, ecology and recycle, reduce, reuse and all of
that stuff. The oil, chemical and plastic industries grew a
little bit anxious because they're like, how do we spin this?
You know, we don't want to be the big bad guys.
(15:12):
We got to figure out a way to sell plastic
back to the consumers in a way that they can
feel good about. Right.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
So they hatched what can accurately be called a conspiracy.
It's an insidious one. In fact, it is a conspiracy
that you may have participated in with the best of intentions.
It's one that many of us have played a role
in this conspiracy in a large way. I hate to
ruin this for everybody is the concept of recycling plastic
(15:41):
That is the conspiracy in today's episode. At the first
National Conference of Packaging Waste in nineteen sixty nine, the
chief environmental manager of Dow Chemical presented a paper on
the explosive growth of what are called single use plastics.
We've all seen those. You know, you go to a
fast food place, you get your bag and your you
(16:04):
get your whopper in these trying times to that's an
Easter egg for just the three of us talking off air,
and then you get.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Your you're here with you with your flame world whopper
to give you comfort during these are trying.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Times, standing DeVito with an egg, but now it's a whopper.
So you see these in cafeteria's, universities, restaurants, et cetera.
And this environmental manager takes an interesting approach because he says,
you know, he extols the virtues of these things. They're
(16:41):
durable materials, they might conceivably last forever, but he also
points out the disposal problem, that's what he calls it.
He says, there's a coming deluge of plastic waste and
the industry is turning a blind eye to it, and
that they're going to continue turning a blind eye to
it for as long as possible. We a lot of
(17:04):
people didn't know the extent of this conspiracy until reporters
working with National Public Radio and a couple of other
outfits found documents that proved from the very beginning, the
same corporations telling customers that recycling was on them. Those
same corporations knew that large scale plastic recycling was a
(17:28):
pipe dream. It was a plastic pipe dream. It was
unrealistic to think it would actually work in an economically
feasible way at that scale.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Ben, I'm pretty sure we've talked about this on the
show before, But remember that iconic ecological ad campaign with
the Native American gentleman and the single tier, you know,
because there's like piles of garbage behind him and was
presumably his native land or whatever. You know, I remember
freaking the guy's name. It turns out that dude wasn't
(17:58):
even a Native American at all. I think used like Italian,
and that ad campaign was developed by a lot of
these waste producing corporations.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
That's right, Yes, Yeah, that's an actor from spaghetti westerns
and we're talking about the Keep America Beautiful. Campaign. Also
known as kab Yeah, this is a great example of
how Big Plastic. That's just what we'll use as mental
shorthand for all these trade groups. Big Plastic decided that
(18:32):
instead of putting money into a solution for the problem
of plastic waste, which they correctly predicted would grow out
of control, instead of trying to solve that, they spent
money funding pr campaigns to blame you, the customer, for
the pollution. The world is going to hell in a handbasket,
(18:53):
not because of these massive corporations throwing this stuff everywhere,
but because you use a plastic straw monster.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
You know, I would call it brilliant if it wasn't
so evil, you know what. You know what, let's say
it's both. It can be both. It's brilliant and evil,
because that's right. Then they're punting the responsibility from them
because they're just giving you what you want. They're just
you know, continuing that legacy of convenience. It's your fault
for for throwing it in the in the in the ocean.
(19:23):
You're the one throwing it and making that Indian cry.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
You did that, even if you've never been to the ocean. Yeah,
I let's see if we importmante to that. How about Evilian?
Love it believal?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
It's also done done with Gusto. No I like Avilian
because it makes me think of it bulliant. So it's
sort of like it's evil and brilliant, and it's done
with ebuliance because how how else do you sell it
if it's not like, got some rasmatas to it, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Aviliant? Yes, all right, booked, We'll we'll get Matt, we'll
get Mad on board with that too. Actually, let's just
we'll tell him, let's mess with his mind and tell
him that we always use that word right exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Uh so this large scale mind and media manipulation is
quite successful today. A lot of people still don't know
that Keep America Beautiful to your point, Noal was founded
by that industry and through twisting the narrative right of littering,
which you shouldn't litter that's that's not even a hot take,
(20:32):
put stuff in trash cans. Through that, through that Pavilian's move, Uh,
they were able to get public support. Even though Keep
America Beautiful was founded to prevent state bands on single
use plastic packaging like it was it was founded to
(20:55):
keep the one time use fork spice flowing the lack
of a better word. Yeah, and we know this because
there are documents from these companies.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
That's right. You know, it's sort of like it reminds
me of the story we did on the material that's
in nonstick pans with the lawyer who kind of spearheaded
the whole investigation into uncovering very similar kind of secret
documents about what they knew, when they knew it and
how they essentially colluded or you know, yeah, that's that's
(21:27):
probably accurate to cover it up and to keep it
from the public. And this is no different. So what
they did was they did, like you said, Ben, manipulated
this narrative to they did have a solution at least
to the whole like making everyone sad, about making the
Indian cry and about feeling this guilt of all this
stuff they've been pumping out into the world. No, no, no, no,
(21:48):
there's another way, folks. It's called recycling, and it's something
that you too can be a part of and making
America beautiful, keeping America beautiful. You can be a part
of it. How cool is that? Man? That's like, you know,
they're literally selling you a gold star, the ability to
feel like you're doing your part. Not only can you
(22:09):
have your cake and eat it with a plastic fork too,
you can then turn that plastic fork into another plastic
fork or whatever else its upperware. The sky's the limit
recycling plastic.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
And it feels good to do it too. Right where
you are, somehow, you are, somehow more aware, you're a
better steward of the planet. That's the idea that they're selling.
And if recycling worked the way that they described it,
then this would to a large degree be true. But
(22:46):
the problem is multiple internal company documents have indicated that
this was a move of self preservation on the part
of the plastics industry. They needed to make people leave
plastic was sustainable. When I throw that fork in the
right bin, then I am really just giving someone else
(23:10):
in the future another fork, or another jug of milk
or something like that. The lobbyists in the plastic and
oil industry fought very hard and quite successfully to mandate
that triangle recycle symbol, you know the one.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
It's like the ecological uroburros, but like in a good
way where it kind of like feeds back into itself.
You know what I mean, so it's what could this
It says all you need to know. It's like, hey,
you can be part of this amazing continuum of manufacturing.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, I was thinking ecological illuminati. I think both answers
are acceptable. I would even say, you know, all of
the above there. It did make an impact because it
gave us this belief that all of those items bearing
that mark could potentially be turned into new products. The
(24:05):
thing is, the vast majority of them were not turned
into new products. The vast majority of them are still
not turned into anything new. They can be we have
the technology. There's just not a market for these things.
It's not a market for this recycled plastic, and in
many cases there's not a compelling financial reason to make them.
(24:30):
And that's because recycling has problems when we talk about plastics.
They are huge problems with recycling.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Yeah, I mean, remember we were talking at the top
of the show about how like this one particular type
of plastic might you know, be able to hold acid,
and there's other types of plastic that can hold rubbing, alcohol, etc.
I mean, you know, typically polymers are versatile and non
reactive in that way. But to your point, Bend, there
are different ones. There's a bunch of different ones, and
so you know, they don't all necessarily play nice together
(25:00):
because you would actually have to combine them and they
would have to gel chemically and in order to be
repurposed into something else. And so all of the plastic
that this that would be needed to do this properly
or effectively would have to be sorted by hand to
separate out this is this type of plastic, This is
(25:20):
this type of plastic. This is this type of plastic.
They can't commingle, So consumers don't know what that is, right,
I mean, that's not and there's not enough bins in
a recycling you know, container to even deal with that
on the front end, right, So that means it's way
expensive to sort all of the plastics to make new
plastic from old plastic. Then it would be just to
(25:41):
make it from oil.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yep, just make new stuff. It's true that this is
the episode of where we're somewhat ruined recycling, So.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
That's the subtitle. That's the sub But I mean this
isn't to say that no plastic is recycled, right, Ben.
I mean we if you read about usually kind of
bespoke products often that are more expensive to buy to
the consumer, that are in fact made of all recycled materials,
are all recycled plastic. But you're paying a premium for
that privilege of knowing that you're buying something that was
(26:15):
made with recycled plastic. That's because it takes more work
to make it that way.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
It has to be sorted by hand, you know, Like
you said, you have to find the plastics that play
well together. And then just for an example, yeah, there
is there is actual recycling a plastic. Sometimes it's sold
it at a premium, as you mentioned, but the stuff
that's recycled is often not used in the ways you
(26:41):
think it would be used. Like take a plastic milk chug.
Don't with your plastic milk chug. You wash it out
because you don't want it to smell up your house
or your trash bag. And then while you're doing that,
you say, oh, wait, I recycle, so I'm going to
put this in the blue the blue receptacle, and then
you think, okay, off on your journey. Well, plastic jug, bro,
(27:04):
I wish you luck in this your secular version of reincarnation.
That plastic jug can only get recycled a few times
because it degrades in quality every time it's recycled. So
this means it can only happen it can only be
recycled a finite number of times. So what happened to
the used plastic? Well, in the US, we did something
(27:26):
that's very popular in a lot of disposal strategies of
this country. We shipped it somewhere where we couldn't see.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
It, you know what I mean, out of sight, out
of my like a child. It's not I can't see it.
It's not there anymore. We Yeah, Unfortunately, that is an
all too common thing that we as Americans fall a
victim to. And to your point, Ben, like even like
the idea, this is interesting to me, and this is
maybe more of a question than I have if it
(27:57):
can only be recycled to a number of times, Like
how do you know when you're done, when you've no
longer got a viable product? Isn't that something you have
to track as well?
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah? I mean that's a really good point because then
we have this whole logistic aspect to it, right logistical
aspect to it, where we can't just do our best
to recycled stuff. We also have to make sure that
we're recycling something into something viable. The complications alone could
(28:26):
cripple the entire project, So shif it off to China. Right.
For a long time, labor was cheaper there. Also, environmental
laws were lacks right, or at least on paper. The
US laws were more strict the country of China and
businesses in China. Eventually, we're no longer able to find
(28:46):
uses for all of this discarded plastic, so now they've
largely stopped accepting it. There's just not much of a
market for this recycled stuff. And that means that a
lot of the plastic in this country, in the US
ends up getting discover and it piles up, piles up,
And I don't know about you, this gives you an
existential crisis. There's there's a question I have to ask
(29:08):
at the very.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
End of this. Yeah, and you know, and maybe you
can answer this, Ben, I know, you know, And I
live in Decatur, Georgia, and the city of Decatur has
been plagued with corruption in terms of like you know,
overcharging people for utilities, and there was like a big
lawsuit all this stuff. But I've also heard rumor that
my little blue recycling bin hopper that I you know,
(29:29):
roll out kick onto the curb every Monday, that that
just ends up in the landfill more often than not.
That a lot of municipalities don't do a good job
of recycling, even when you think that's what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yeah, it's true, and that's that's something that is unfortunately
not historically uncommon, you know what I mean. Like, consider
a lot of office buildings where you know, people think
they are throwing that aluminum can, that plastic bottle into
the recycling bin, and then night, maybe you're working late,
(30:02):
then you see that the people who do custodial services
in that office just throw it all in the same place.
And then maybe you tell yourself there's a magical Sussian
sorting machine that handles everything like a.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Harry Potter had of some sort.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
You know. Yeah, but it goes to trash hat.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
But it goes to the whole point that we started
with here, is that it's all about optics. It's all
about selling you the dream. It's not actually about the practice.
It's more about like the image. Right. So what happened
as as this continued, you know, especially after China's sort
of rejecting this material, I believe that that study reference
(30:41):
earlier about birds having plastics in their stomachs. I think
the number then was about five percent. But by the eighties,
and you know, in true eighties excess fashion, that number
increased to eighty percent.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Eighty percent of birds in a similar study twenty years
later had plastic in their stomach And now as we
record this, multiple studies indicate that almost ninety seven percent
of all birds have some sort of plastics somewhere in
their system. Today, as we record this, about a million
birds going to die this year due specifically to their
(31:19):
stomachs being stuffed with plastic.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Man, a good way to go. And you know, my
qualms with the bird population been but even I don't
think they deserve to go out like that. Agreed.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
And so you know, the one thing you want for
an enemy you respect, I would imagine from your perspective,
nole is to is that they have an honorable death right.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I mean, at least, let let it be spectacular. Let
their stomachs explode from eating wedding rice or something. You know,
I'm kidding, And bird people out there, please don't don't
cancel me. I'm very much kidding, But no, it turns
out that the concept of recycling as it's been sold
to the United States public and other places around the
world is at the very very least misleading. Is an
(32:06):
optics first kind of thing, as opposed to, like, what's
the actual end result of this whole operation?
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Right, yeah, exactly. I like the way one industry insider
put it. They said, selling recycling sells plastic. And then
there's an interesting statement by a guy named Larry Thomas,
who's a former president of the Society of the Plastics
Industry which today is known as PIA Plastics Industry Association.
(32:36):
He was at the helm at, one of the most
powerful trade groups for the industry in DC, and he
said that if the public thinks that recycling is working,
then they are not going to be as concerned about
the environment. And to be fair, the industry's current position
is that there is no conspiracy afoot I wanted to
(32:59):
give voice to the other side, to their perspective. Guy
named Steve Russell, a representative for the plastics industry who
was for a while the vice president of Plastics for
the American Chemistry Council, says the industry has never intentionally
misled the public about recycling and that they're committed to
(33:21):
ensuring one day that all plastic is recycled. And he says,
you know, public commitment to recycling programs, public pressure, and
evolving technology will all play huge roles in helping recycle
all plastic. Essentially, he's saying, no one ever intentionally misled anyone,
(33:47):
and maybe one day recycling can do what the industry
for decades claimed it was already doing. Just think about
the double think in that statement. It's Orwellian.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah, kind of mind blowing. I don't even know how
to respond to that, Ben.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
I mean, we're not saying, we have to be clear,
we are not saying recycling is anything other than an amazing, awesome,
potentially world changing, world saving concept.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Do you remember, though, Ben, like being a kid and
going to like the recycling center and getting a tour
and all that stuff. I mean, it was something that's
sold to you as early as as ah, you know,
elementary school, recycled, reduce, reuse, all of that stuff and again,
and we're gonna we're gonna continue on. But I do
want to say, like recycling paper it's great, recycling paper works.
(34:39):
You can smush all that stuff together and make all
kinds of cool stuff, uh, you know, and pulp and
you know make You can even buy recycled paper for
your copy paper if you want. There's all kinds of
uses for recycled paper. But the plastic part just a
much more tricky. Let's call it supply chain problem, right.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And again, like I I'm conflicted about this because I
love the idea of recycling, and I love the idea
of individual people being able to make a fundamental difference
in the world around them, you know what I mean.
I love the power of the individual. But what we
(35:20):
are saying here is that the idea of recycling in
the world of plastic the way it's been practiced is
not near as widespread as the plastic industry would want
you to believe. And this will probably continue to be
the case until there's some revolutionary technology that Harry Potter
(35:41):
trash hat which is a great phrase, until it comes online,
or until it becomes somehow more profitable to recycle and
reuse plastic rather than to make new plastic. Neither of
those things have happened yet, neither of them. And to
compound the issue here, we are still learning the full
(36:02):
scope of this problem. We may not know the long
term consequences of this issue for years and years and
years to come, And that doesn't mean it doesn't affect us.
It means that we don't know what's going to happen,
has never happened on Earth before, We have no idea
what plot twister ahead.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah, I mean each year human beings produced three hundred
and sixty million tons of plastic, and according to one study,
around eight million tons of it enters the ocean, and
until recently, the fate of what's called microplastics, which is
plastics that contain particles less than five millimeters in size
(36:44):
in the ocean has been unclear, But to your point,
been a recent study. We're at least starting to get
a whiff of what these microplastic particles are doing when
they settle in marine sediments, following the pattern of a
lot of other pollutants. So we're not just talking about
like hard goods that stick around. We're talking about the
(37:07):
chemical impact of plastics and how it can actually saturate
and contaminate soil and water and beyond.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah, you're right, nol microplastics and nanoplastics, which are they
have a diameter of less than point zero zero one millimeters.
Both of these form from the abrasion of larger pieces
of plastic dumped into the ocean, so the stuff keeps
kind of breaking itself into smaller and smaller chunks, and
(37:40):
research in wildlife and in laboratory animals has established some
pretty compelling links between tiny plastic and infertility, inflammation, even cancer.
Microplastics have polluted the entire planet, from the Arctic to
your neighborhood park to the depths of the ocean. Like
(38:04):
you probably saw not too long ago, scientists being startled
to get to a very remote part of the world
under the ice in Antarctica and then see that there
was plastic there. This is happening.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Yeah, you ever heard you ever thought of the concept
of airborne plastic ben Again, this the old school model
of plastic pollution is much more just a nuisance, right
or like, okay, it gets in birds, The physical chunks
of things get in birds and like choke them or
caused them to have a horrible digestive problems that can
ultimately kill them. But yeah, airborne plastic Apparently, human beings,
(38:45):
according to a previous study that we found for this episode,
have shown people eat and breathe in at least fifty
thousand particles of microplastic a year, and that MicroPlace plastic
pollution is absolutely just raining down upon city dwellers, and
(39:08):
it's not going away anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
No, it's not, which means that to a large degree,
this conspiracy was successful because the profit margins stayed consistent.
But now it's coming to a head, and we have
to ask ourselves what does this mean for the future.
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. We've returned,
(39:36):
and let's open this segment about the future with a
quote from Rolling Stone that gives us a troubling summation
of the dilemma we face. No could I ask you
to do the honors here?
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Absolutely, sir. Rolling Stone puts it out like this. More
than half the plastics now on Earth has been created
since two thousand and two, and plastic pollution is on
pace to double by twenty thirty. At its root, the
global plastics crisis is a product of our addiction to
fossil fuels. The private profit and public harm of the
(40:14):
oil industry is very well understood. And again this is
all quote from this Rolling Stone article by Tim Dickinson,
which absolutely recommend fully reading. Let's continue, oil is refined
and distributed to customers who consumers rather who benefit from
gasoline's short useful lifespan in a combustion engine, leaving behind
(40:36):
atmospheric pollution for generations. By the same pattern, and the
same tragedy of the commons is playing out with another
gift of the oil and gas giants whose drilling draws
up the petroleum precursors for plastics.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Yep, yep. It's they're troublingly similar cycles, right, and you
know the proof is out there. Companies knew about the
issues with fossil fuels dating back to the seventies and
didn't say a word about it.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
So that's where we're at.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Since nineteen fifty, the world has created six point three
trillion kilograms of plastic waste. Ninety one percent of that
has never been recycled even once. This trend is only
going to accelerate as emerging economies increase their plastic consumption.
Like think about this. In twenty eighteen, advanced economies in
(41:32):
the world were using twenty times more plastic than per
capita than consumers in places like Indonesia or in India
and now people are on the way up right, there's
a higher demand for plastic, and the industry itself, Big Plastic,
is counting on that growing demand to keep selling stuff
(41:55):
even though a great deal of it will still be
around long after and probably long after everyone listening to
this podcast or watching this YouTube clip today has been
long dead. And this is that existential crisis. I wanted
to ask you about this. Everyone, you know, you doc,
(42:16):
all of us listening along at home or in our
cars are counting the pieces of plastic around us. Do
you experience existential dread when you hold like a plastic
fork and realize just how much longer it will be
(42:36):
around than you, how much more permanent it is in
the scheme of things than you, a living being that
it bothers me?
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, it bothers me too, And you know who else
it bothers ben kids who, as you well know, kids
these days. I say that as someone who's potentially becoming
an old grandpapa. But kids these days are what the
kids these days call pretty woke. They are hip to
all these societal problems, political and environmental and otherwise. And
(43:08):
you know else, kids like legos and apparently a lot
of kids who are fond of Legos begged the Lego
Corporation in the form of letters that they wrote to
the company to stop using single use plastic bags in
their packaging. So Lego heard that. The Lego Group Chief
(43:30):
executive Officer Nils B. Christiansen said, we have received many
letters from children about the environment asking us to remove
single use plastic packaging. We've been exploring alternatives for some time,
and the passion and ideas from children inspired us to
begin to make changes. So apparently they are looking to
(43:53):
roll this out in the very near future and it
will be replaced with paper, which again, like we said
earlier in the episode, is much more viable as a
recyclable good for single use materials. It's investing four hundred
million dollars over three years to improve its sustainability efforts overall,
the Lego Corporation. Unfortunately, you know, legos themselves made of plastic,
(44:20):
but at least kids aren't throwing their Legos in the ocean.
Presumably it's something you keep around and pass down to siblings,
and you know, so that's I think that's fine. Yeah,
I mean they're so expensive, they are quite expensive.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
You're a parent. You're aware of that.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
I am aware of that. They're also murder on your
bare feet, as every parent knows when you're walking around. Thankfully,
my kids more into bracelets than she has legos. But
that's plastic beads. But again, those are meant to be
kept around and given to friends and hopefully not just chucked.
But yeah, our super producer Doc Holliday off Mike just
(44:56):
kind of during our ad break exasperatedly exclaimed, Oh, this
is depressing, you know, And then you're not wrong, Doc,
You're not wrong. But hopefully we can sort it out
before we wreck the planet entirely, not to sound too
tree huggry about it, but sure feels like we're hitting
a tipping point with all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
It's not a look. Extinction doesn't care about vague, the
vague stories we have made up for ourselves. Extinction does
not care about political leanings. It doesn't care about religion.
It doesn't care about money the economy, which again is
just another religion. I put out the clarion call a
(45:38):
long time ago. I don't think anybody has successfully proven
a difference between the concept of an economy and the
concept of a religion. But there is one fascinating point,
and I appreciate it so much man, that you brought
a little bit of light here. There's one fascinating point.
The plastics crisis is different from climate change and the
(46:00):
way it's been treated. Remember, like I mentioned, oil corporations
put a lot of money into denying the concept of
climate change for a very long time. But the folks
over what we call big plastic, and to be fair,
there are a lot less like two separate entities and
a lot more like fingers on the same hand. But
(46:22):
whatever you want to call big plastic, they are not
denying the problem anymore. They're seeking to convince consumers and
regulators that despite the fact they put all this pollution
out on the planet, they can be the trusted experts
to make plastic use sustainable. It's something they call a
circular economy, so that plastic does actually get recycled continually
(46:48):
and doesn't degrade. The cynical way to translate that, honestly,
is this recycling?
Speaker 3 (46:54):
You know?
Speaker 1 (46:56):
For real?
Speaker 2 (46:56):
This time? Sure, I like that it's got a nice ring,
not on a down note, but it just somebody just
popped into my head that we hadn't even talked about
what about plastic garbage bags? Like, I mean, don't they
just end up in like landfills? Like that's a question forever.
I don't know. It's I'm sorry. I took us down
(47:17):
a peg. You brought us up a peg and no, no,
it took us right back down. But what I don't know?
Are there any environmental scientists out there? Any polymer scientists
out there? You know, Lego's talking about exploring alternatives even
to the plastic bricks.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Why are we so hooked on plastic?
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Let us know, Yeah, let us know, Let us know
how you think this is going to work out. We
are all ears, honestly everybody should be. We cannot predict
the future, but we do see troubling trends and we
want to hear from you. You can find us on Instagram.
You can find us on Twitter. You can find us
on Facebook. We love to recommend our favorite page on
(47:58):
the good old inter and that is our Facebook community page.
Here's where it gets crazy. But wait, you can find
us as individuals too, should the spirit move you to
do so, you certainly can.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
You can find me exclusively on Instagram where I am
at How now? Noel Brown. You know, I post a
lot of like crazy cosplay videos from my kid, who's
a delight and also very much into the environment, and
you know, cooking experiments under lockdown, occasional drumming exercises, and
I'm starting to get into yoga, Ben. I just did
(48:34):
like three days straight of a beginner yoga YouTube video.
Starting to really enjoy that. So maybe you'll see me
in cow pose or I don't know the names yet,
but you could see that. Where are you Ben on
the internets?
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Uh, you know, it's interesting mentioned the yoga stuff. Nol
my Pale, Alex your pal as well. It's got super
into yoga recently.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
He's the one who told me which videos to watch
yoga with Adrian for anyone else out there that's trying
to dip their toe in the yoga pool.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Nice credit to you, Alex. If you're listening to this show,
if you're already on the internet, you can find me
having any number of misadventures on Instagram where I'm at
them bulling, and can find me on Twitter where I'm
at Ben BULLINGHSW. You'll recognize it's me because you'll see
a tweet that I wrote before I came into this episode,
(49:25):
saying that the research really got to me. The plastic
is everywhere. I will aim to make less depressing tweets
in the future.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
It's when you started getting into the airborne plastic that
it really started getting dark. This is all pretty dark,
but I don't know. It's always darkest before the dawn.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
How far away are we from children being born with
plastic in them? Anyhow? Tell us about it. You can
also give us a phone call if you are not
the type to sip the social needs.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
That's right, We're one eight three three STDWYTK. Leave us
a voicemail memo message. Try to keep it concise. Much
more likely to get on one of our handy dandy
listener mail episodes if you do that. But if you
got something that needs to be broken up into a
couple of these, I think what's the limit been a
couple of minutes for each of these. Feel free, but
(50:15):
you know we may have to condense it a little bit.
And also please let us know if we can use
your name on the on the show and.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Get weird with it, you know what I mean. My
favorite listener mail is still that guy with a uniquely
infectious laugh. If you're listening, sir, you made my day.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
The truck driver, the kookie truck driver with the Hong
Kong Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Morfect residents, check it out. That's somewhere in the title
of that episode.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Absolutely, as we've said time and time again, you can
also join our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy,
where you can exchange memes and barbs and and no
not barbs, definitely polite discourse with your fellow listeners. All
you got to do is name one of the members
of the crew of this conspiracy posse, and then you
will find yourself in the door. If you don't want
(50:58):
to do any of that stuff and you'd rather just
get in touch with us in an older of fashioned ways,
you can do so by sending us an email.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (51:27):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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