Recycling Update: How’s It Going?

It’s been about a decade since Josh and Chuck last checked in on recycling and since then a lot has changed. A global commodities market dealing in recyclables has developed and recently crashed. Jump back into the fascinating world of recycling. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast again. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chaz Bryant, there's Jerry Jerome
Roland over there, and this is Stuff you Should Know again.

(00:24):
Why are you say it again? Well, so, before we recorded,
I want to tell all of you, Chuck confided in
me a tabit of concerned. Right, can we reveal all
this or is this going to get edited out? We'll reveal.
So we we have done an episode on recycling again
or before this is again? Um? Before it was from

(00:46):
my understanding, it was the premise was is what you're
recycling actually getting recycled? Right? That was the basis of it.
That's kind of everything, and then we just kind of
went over recycling here there. Yeah, I mean it was
it was year two of the show. It's about a
half an hour in linked that was long for back then,
and probably eight minutes of that covered the garbage patch,

(01:11):
which we went on to do in an episode just
on that did. Yeah, for sure, we talked about the
eight minutes of the garbage patch something. Yeah, I mean
the name of the episode was recycling in the Great
Pacific garbage Patch. Did we combine those two into one?
I don't know. I think I'm having some sort of
weird like flashback or yeah. So here's the deal, though, folks.

(01:36):
We're redoing recycling. Updating is what it's called. We're updating
with new information. And there may be some of the
same stuff. But I listened to that episode, and we
weren't very good at what we did back then. I thought,
I thought we. I'm almost positive we did a separate
episode on the Great Pacific Garbage We may have. But
all of this to say is don't freak out and

(01:59):
say you as are repeating yourselves. Are we Are we
already there? Because no, we're not. No, No, this is
an update. This is so important, and things have changed
enough since what two it may have even been nine. Yes,
quite a bit has changed since back then. As a
matter of fact, Um, we've gotten better recycling, we've gotten

(02:22):
worse at recycling. Simultaneously, recycling has turned into a huge business.
We understand it more. And then there's been major colossal
changes just this year to the global recyclable material commodities
market that is going to change everyone's life one way
or another. If you care at all about recycling because

(02:45):
of China. Yeah, and you know what, we'll we'll get
to that, but I'm just gonna come out and say
it good for China, all right, but depending that one. Right,
we've been putting pins all over the place. I'm afraid
that we have just bins everywhere. No, we've been going back.
I don't think we've left a single pin in place,
which is unusual for us because we do that a lot.

(03:06):
And I also want to say that it's nice that
we're all three together again. Yeah, Jerry is back again.
She keeps leaving, but she's back, and she has a
summer cold. Yeah, that's just the worst that that to
me is like that is a clear indication that you
have been working too hard. If you go on vacation
and get sick because you're like work, work, work, and
then you relax on vacation and your your immune system

(03:28):
goes down. You interesting, you gotta take it easy, You
gotta you need like a step down vacation like a
work and then staycation and then vacation. Jerry. Jerry gave
a thumbs up, sickly thumb it's a little pale green.
Uh so chuck, Yes, I think I think also, Uh,

(03:51):
we agreed that you're going to participate even more and
I'm going to participate less. Well, the last one it
was pretty funny to listen to. You should give it
a listen. Oh, we'll see if you notice. Oh I've
noticed before, like sometimes I'm just like cringing and pinching
the bridge of my nose, like shut up, josh. Uh.
So that is the last we will speak of that episode.

(04:11):
And let's just pretend like we're starting a new or
updating recycling. What is it? So let's talk about recycling. Yeah,
one of the three the third best of the three rs.
That's your favorite one, or it's the your least favorite
of Well, it's not the least favorite, it's it should
be the third option. As a green human, you should

(04:32):
try and reduce and reuse first. Yes, And that's why
they put them in that order, because recycling is the
the last line of defense. Yeah. I thought it just
kind of float off the tongue a little more. I
didn't realize that they had them in order. It's in
order of preference. Well that's cool, okay, So you it
is best to reduce reuse and then when all else
fails recycle. That's an ideal world, right, yeah, because if

(04:55):
you go to a website and you look up like
can I recycle my toilet paper tubes and the recycling
ben Sure. Yeah. But if you go to like you know,
tree Hugger and all these other sites are like, well
you can, but what you should really do is this,
And then it's they first, find a way to not
use toilet paper at all, and so you don't have
those that would be the reduce. Turn it into the

(05:17):
stand for like a pipe cleaner tree. Well, that's everything else,
that's the reuses. They're they're like, there are so many
crafty things you can do with toilet paper too. You
can use it as a telescope, which will eventually end
up in the trash. You can use it as a harmonica.
Maybe I can do this all day. We should so,
actually I don't think we should. So when you recycle

(05:37):
that toilet paper too, when you drop it into a
bin out front, you may notice that you're also dropping
in like glass like you're your old like Captain Morgan's
bottle or um it took you eight years to drink? Sure, uh,
you're drinking them run these days? Oh, I love rom
I'm not big on Captain Morgan, but I love rom alright,

(05:59):
It's one of my highest favorite I'm like, wow, I
really like Rum. I say that every time I take
a sip of rum. Just look at my glass and go, wow,
I really love romdd everyone in the house Momo rolls,
rolls her little eyes, um, big eyes, so um. You

(06:19):
dump all this stuff together in a single bin, and
you may stop and be like, wait, wait, this is crazy.
How am I dumping all this stuff in a single bin?
Didn't we used to have to separate? Yes, we did.
But thanks to the event of single stream recycling, people
recycle a lot more stuff than they ever did before.
Recycling participation is up. You may have noticed, like back

(06:41):
in the nineties, early two thousands, they gave you like
a little tiny bin. Now you get like a big
old garbage can with wheels on it so you can
put even more stuff in it. That's how much recycling
participation is up. Programs all over the country, everybody's recycling.
So on the one hand, it's really good that we
have single streamer cycling because it makes people more likely

(07:03):
to recycle. On the other hand, it also makes us
more likely to recycle stuff that we really shouldn't be
recycling or or using as much up to begin with. Right,
But even if it's stuff that, like, um that, even
if you're you're reducing and reusing, you people still have
a tendency to throw stuff in that recycling ben even

(07:24):
though it can't be recycled. Yeah, with that one article
you sent called it aspirational recycling. Yes, like, I don't
really know if this can go in there, but I'm
gonna do it because it makes me feel good, right,
I hope, So I hope it can be recycled. So
that doesn't sound like that bad of a deal, you know,
if like you're like, okay, well it can't be recycled,
so it doesn't get recycled, it cares you know, it
just disintegrates into nothingness magically. Right, it's actually not what

(07:47):
happens that stuff ends up at the landfill. Right, So
you're basically saying, here, recycling company, throw this away for me,
will you. Yeah, And if you listen to our show
on landfills, which was a good one, yeah, um, we
we sort of had glowing praise for landfills and that
was I think in terms of in the context of hey,
if you're going to have a landfill. They're really have

(08:09):
made leaps and bounds from the old days. Yeah, for sure,
but obviously we want to do this instead of the landfill. Yeah.
The ideal situation would be for us to UM to
basically close the loop on our all of our materials,
on our metals, on our plastics, on our paper and that,
and figure out a way to reuse them. And now

(08:31):
there's enough of everything, and we never have to cut
down another tree, we never have to dig up another
piece of box site, we never have to do anything.
We've got enough, and then we just have these perfect
like reusing UM reprocessing techniques and we've just got to
close the loop of these materials. That would be ideal.
We're pretty far from that, right, um, But it is
a good step in the right direction that we are recycling. Right.

(08:56):
So when you recycle, when you put that stuff in
that bind, we're gonna get to all this really great stuff.
I just tease something that you don't even know what
I'm talking about yet, dear listener, what box eye. That
was one thing, um, But the the aspirational recycling turns
into play later on. So when you recycle, you put
it out on the bin, and then some people come
up and what looks like an old garbage truck or

(09:17):
a modified garbage truck, except it's usually much cleaner, maybe
a pleasant blue or pleasant green color. Uh. And there's
no juice usually dripping out of the back garbage juice. Um.
And they pick it up and they cart it off,
and that begins the the plastic bottle or the toilet
paper tubes journey. Yeah. And um, this is a grabstar article.

(09:41):
It's nice to work from one of those. Again. Head
points out though, that when things are recycled, it's pretty
rare that, um, you get the same thing as the
original material. So like that soda can, that beer can
may not end up a beer can. Right. Does that
make you sad that person out there listening. Um, well,

(10:03):
that's that's what I was saying. Like in an ideal world,
it would it would become another beer can, right, Yeah.
But we're not there yet because when we recycle stuff,
it degrades. Yeah. And that's why you can't recycle paper
and think that it's going to be the next thing
that you print something on. Uh, it's not gonna come
back like clean Lily White does printer paper No, and

(10:24):
that's called downstream recycling, where that that office paper you
printed on that you recycle ends up becoming like, um,
a coffee clutch for your coffee. And then you recycle
that and it becomes low grade like napkin, and then
after that it just basically ends up in landfill because
it can't be recycled, an then it becomes airport toilet paper.

(10:47):
It's just the lowest form of paper. Yeah, it's pretty bad.
Like it's just you can see right through it. Yes,
doesn't do anything anything, It just provides a false sense
of security and then your fingers go right there. Uh uh.
Up cycling is a little different, and that's pretty rare,
but that's when something is made more valuable than the

(11:07):
original product. Yeah, and I like the example that egg games.
You could take a hub cap and turn it into
a decorative bird bath. Yeah, that counts. Good job, ed. Hey,
I'm all about that. Uh, found Art, like those people
do a valuable service. We should redo that episode, remember
that one found Art that we didn't do that? Now

(11:31):
I think you're joshing. No really, I'm promised. All right,
I'm gonna have to look that one up. Uh, let's
talk about the history a bit though, because Ed makes
great pains to point out that it's interesting that, um,
most people probably think like man in the seventies, in
the sixties, that's when it all started, But recycling actually

(11:51):
kind of started because of the Industrial Revolution. Yeah, And
it wasn't like necessarily it didn't have green and d well. No,
it was more like do you remember when we did
the extinct job titles when and we talked about armors
and you can't find a suit of armor from the
fourteenth or fifteen centuries because they reused that stuff that

(12:13):
was just par for the course back then. Yeah, Like
things were just too valuable to throw away. You just
found a way to reuse it. And that was pretty
much the way people lived for many many years until
basically the post war economic boom led to this consumer
society that we live in today where it's just very

(12:35):
very cheap to produce stuff, including like packaging and materials,
and we use it out the yen yang and we
just throw it away typically. And it wasn't until the
I think the first Earth Day that recycling came back again. Yeah,
and that's when it definitely had a more of a
green tent on it. For sure, which is good. Um

(13:00):
add points out to that that you know, there were
some leneers here and there. I think recycling the United
States really had its heyday in the nineties. That's when
I first remember it becoming like this thing is a
thing now. Yeah, And I've got a couple of stats here. Um,
it peaked in actually it peaked in recent years. And

(13:20):
this is you know, I believe how many tons are
diverted from the landfill. So if you're going by that stat,
it peaked in two thousand eleven at thirty four point
seven Um, what is that million tons? Yeah, there are
thirty or four point seven percent. I would think, oh yeah, yeah,
thirty four point seven percent of the hundred and whatever.

(13:43):
What have we send today? About a hundred and fifty
million tons? I saw, so I saw different things, like
I think that that's from the e p A. Right, yeah, yeah,
Actually in the eighties it was about a hundred and fifty.
Now we're down to about a hundred. I think that's
going to the hundred million tons that's going to the
and fill. Yes, yeah, yeah, but but our recycling is up,

(14:04):
But are I think our actual waste production overall is
up to Yeah, and more people of course, Stu, Yeah, exactly.
But that's that's actually a thing that we'll talk about
that recycling masks. Um Like, we're throwing away way more
stuff and luckily we're recycling more than ever, so we're

(14:25):
actually putting less than ever in the landfill. But if
we would do that first thing, reduce, and then the
second thing we use, we could really have a significant
impact on it without recycling. Yeah, for sure, recycling is
much What would be your guests as to the the
number one thing recycled in the United States? My guests

(14:46):
would be aluminum cans, that is all the way down
to number eight. What, um, I'm gonna say, rubber chickens then, well, yeah,
you nailed it, um, acid batteries. Batteries are the number
one thing. Like people, what multiverse did you come from? Today?

(15:06):
I think people understand, they seem to have an understanding
that you just don't throw batteries away anymore. What do
you do with them? You recycle them? Where do you
recycle them? Seriously, you throw batteries away, I just like
throw them in the closest body of water I can find. Well,
they were known to float. Where do you recycle these?

(15:26):
Like in your recycling bid. Well no, I mean you
have to take them somewhere. Where do you take them?
Like a recycling place? Yeah, like like there are places
that accept batteries. Are you talking about little batteries? Are
you talking about car batteries? Lead acid batteries? Is that
a car battery? Actually, I don't know. I think that's
a car battery. Okay, yeah, yeah, I know you recycle cars.
That makes sense because you get a little juice when

(15:48):
you buy your new battery if you plunk down your
old one. Yeah, that would make sense. But still you
would think aluminum Kansas number eight, Yeah, number two was
corrugated at boxes number three, steel number four or his newspaper,
and then all the way down to number numbers eight
and nine or soda and beer cans and bottles. That
is really bizarre. Yeah, but that you know, how did

(16:10):
they say Brenstein? I don't know. I'm not sure. But
at any rate, we've we've been bouncing around over the
last decade, somewhere in the thirty two to thirty five
percent range. So peaked is a percentage of waste diverted,
Like you can't say peaked then, like it's been inching downward.
I predict it's going to continue to inch downward, and

(16:34):
then it's going to start going up again more than
the peak, the recent peak. Yeah, in the next ten
to fifteen years. That's my prediction. Would be great. In America,
if you wanted to know, is number five in the world,
behind Austria, Germany, Belgium, in Switzerland as far as um
most recycling participation or something. Yeah, diverting the most tonnage

(16:57):
away from landfills. Number what number five? That's not good,
it's okay, And and numbers three through six are virtually tied.
It's really Austria and Germany or like ten percent twelve
percent more those guys will recycle anything. Uh. And then
America's only city on the list. Take a guess there,

(17:17):
I bet you know that one. I M say Portland's
good guests, Seattle closer, uh, further away somewhere in Wyoming.
San Francisco is the number one city or recycling. It's
the only American city to make like the All Star
Recycling list. So I think that means we're done, right.
I'll bet we didn't mention that before in the last episode. No,

(17:40):
oh yeah, we're not mentioning that should we take a break.
Then let's take a break, man, all right, we'll talk
a little bit more about landfills and all kinds of
recycling stuff. All right, Chuck, I think this is going

(18:14):
very well. So far. Great, So let's get back to
that process we kicked off and then abandoned, and now
we're getting back to it. When you drop something in
your recycling bind and the people come and pick it up,
and it begins this beautiful journey of discovery, coming of
age maybe of um, really coming to understand oneself. For

(18:38):
the say, plastic water bottle that you set off, and
when it's collected, depending on where you are, it may
be either collected by a city worker or a worker
for like a private company, um, and it will be
taken somewhere along this chain. What this is a big picture,
and this is something I didn't quite understand fully but

(19:00):
for until this time around researching this article, Like that
water bottle or that beer can, or that toilet paper
roll you just threw out that you just recycled, You
just threw it away as trash. It's just it's being
put into a different trash stream, the recycled stream. Right,

(19:21):
So When you do that, it becomes you were saying, here,
this actually has value. I don't want anything in return
for it. I just want the peace of mind that
it's going to have another life. It's going to stay
away from the landfill. You do whatever you want with it,
and it enters with that exchange into a global commodities market,

(19:43):
where it goes from a sorting facility to a place
where it's put together with other stuff similar to its kind,
sent into put into bails, and then sold on the
commodities market to be reprocessed back in of raw materials
and then sold the manufacturers who use those raw materials

(20:04):
to make new stuff that you then buy that then
you hopefully ideally recycle and the whole process continues again.
That's what happens when you drop it in a bin
and it goes off. That's ideally. Yeah. And China, like
we mentioned, is a big I think, like the number
one buyer of US garbage. They were until like late

(20:25):
two thousand seventeen ish when they said no on certain things.
So here's why I said, UM, good for China. UM.
China said that they did not want to be the
world's garbage dump any longer. And um. One of the
reasons why why recycling rates kind of started to climb

(20:47):
in the eighties and nineties is because there was a
market for this stuff. Right. If there had never been
a market for it, it just would not have been viable.
It would have cost too much to pay somebody to
reprocess it. But the fact that you could sell it
to somebody who could then reprocess it and then sell
it as raw materials to manufacturers that men have value

(21:08):
to it. So okay, now we've got like something going here.
And the way that this was able to go, the
reason why there was value to it is because China said,
you know what, We're gonna become manufacturers to the world.
Give us all materials you can you can send us.
And one of the things they got into was reprocessing
things like paper and plastic, and so countries around the world,

(21:29):
especially in the West and the developed West, started sending
all of their trash, but they're recyclable trash to China,
and China would reprocess it, make it into like little
plastic toys or paper goods or whatever, and then sell
it to the world. And because of that, recycling was
able to take off well. China finally said, you know what,

(21:50):
this is not working any longer. We're actually on our
feet economically more than we were before. And you guys
have been sliding in a lot of your trash with
these recyclable materials, and we don't want it anymore. Well,
and China had has not historically done a great job
with their own trash, like they hadn't even sorted that

(22:12):
out much less to be able to take on all
this trash from all over the world. And we're talking
hundreds of millions of tons of recyclable materials and I
saw something like ten percent of that weight was just
straight up trash that was slipped in with this stuff. Yeah,
it says here and estimated one point three to three
point five million metric tons enters the oceans from China's coastline,

(22:36):
right because it just was falling out of this out
of the recycling stream, right, unbelievable, and into the into
the oceans. That was how many tons, one point three
to three point five million metric tons, So that's out
of like twelve million metric tons worldwide, So about a
quarter of the plastic entering the ocean was going into
it from China. Yeah, that's a huge amount, Right, So

(22:59):
China finally said this is not okay, this is not sustainable.
We're just we're stopping, like we're not going to accept
this any longer. We're not going to accept that any longer.
And the stuff we do accept can't be any less
than one percent to half of a percent impure, meaning
like if we're buying a bail, a giant biale of
plastic bottles, no more than half of a percent of

(23:21):
that bail bail's total weight can be anything but the
plastic bottles that we're buying. So this this is a
big deal because the world's market since the nineties and
as far as like recyclable materials has been sent to China,
like a third of the world's recyclable materials goes to China,
and China was buying it, and they said we're done,

(23:43):
We're not doing that anymore. And so the market just
went came to a screeching halt. And so what happened.
All that stuff that you were recycling, um that was
originally going to China is now just being diverted to
landfills because America's recycling recyclers, the UK's recyclers, Europes recyclers
don't know what to do with it. The market just stopped,

(24:05):
and so they they're just sending it to landfills. Now,
So the stuff you're recycling a lot of people, not
all of it, and not not everything that everybody's recycling,
but a significant amount has been going to landfills so
far in two thousand. Yeah, and this is not the
old school argument where people, you know, ten years ago,

(24:26):
we're like, oh, they don't even take it to recycling anyway,
they just throw it in the trash. I know, if
you believe that, then now you're saying, see there, I
told you this is something new because of a new
policy within the last year, right, So this is not
like that old line. I just want to make that clear.
And again, the reason why that that argument didn't hold
before is because China was there to buy the stuff,

(24:50):
So why would you throw it would be like throwing
away money. So that was a stupid argument. Now it's
not even argument, it's just a fact, like they're having
to divert some of this and their stockpiling. These people
who are basically recyclable material distributors are actually stockpiling the
stuff in warehouses hoping that the market will come back,

(25:12):
and there are countries taking up the slack. I think
like Malaysia, India, UM, Indonesia. They're starting to buy more
of this than they were before. But China accepted so
much of it, bought so much of it that you
just can't fill that void. It's gonna take a little while,
and then hopefully one of the ways that we will
handle this is countries like America or like the UK

(25:35):
will say maybe we should start getting into the reprocessing
business more than we were before and start handling our
own recyclables. Yeah, I'm all for it. Yeah, So let's
talk about that loop. Let's let's say, let's talk about
let's give an idea of what happens to your recyclables

(25:55):
when they're carted away, and let's say it just stays
in country. Okay, okay, alright, so let's uh. I guess
we can start with paper because that's one that is
widely recycled. And there's a bit of a um not
a misnomer, but you know, trees are are grown to
be used for paper. Um. It's there's a couple of misnomers.

(26:18):
It's not like people go out and cut down these great,
old old forests to make the paper that you print
on they have, you know, they do this from pulp
with trees. However, a lot of times old growth forests
are chopped down to create room to plant these pulp
with trees. Ter. Yeah, so it is a bit of
a thing like while they may not be making paper

(26:39):
out of it, they are clearing area to plant the
pulp would trees to make the paper, right, it would
be a pretty pretty big waste of those old growth
trees to just turn them into paper when you can
make like furniture and stuff out of them. But they
are cutting them down for this paper stuff. But once
that happens, it's not like they're growing the old old
growth or us back again. Right, No, right, okay, uh

(27:03):
so then that paper is sorted and you're gonna hear
a lot of the word sort a lot, because that's
what happens at a sorting facility, depending on how heavy
it is. What color apparently, like really brightly colored paper
isn't good to recycle, um at all? Or good to
look at? Yeah, like construction papor sure like um you
know neon green flyers, Oh good lord, they'll get your attention,

(27:26):
but they're bad for the environment. They're bad for the environment. Uh,
A hot chemical and water bath can reduce the stuff.
And that's really what you want to do, is to
make this slurry, the soupy mix of fibrous you know
what was once paper. Uh. Then they have like if
you always wonder should I take my my paper clips
and staples off? If you got a minute, it's probably

(27:49):
not a bad idea. But they do have magnets and
things and filters to get out the glues and the
staples and all that stuff. Yeah, they basically have a
lot of different rings along this line that um or
the stream that that can handle your laziness. Yeah, I
mean from paper clips to a little bit of mayonnaise

(28:10):
left in the jar a little bit, a little bit,
they can handle that. But well, I was gonna say,
like I said in the previous episode, I'll just say
it again, that's stuff stinks in your kitchen anyway, So
that's why you should clean it out right or stinks
next to your house, Like who want? Who wants a
gross dirty mannai'se jar? Nobody beside their house, certainly not

(28:32):
your local recycler. No. Uh, so they're gonna get the
staples and all that stuff out generally with the magnets,
but if you want to do it yourself, that's great too.
They remove the ink a lot of times chemically, or
sometimes this is really interesting, they'll blow it to the
surface and skim it off, bleach that pulp, and you've
got this pulpy slurry where they can then uh spray

(28:54):
it and roll it into a sheet, press it and
dry it and it becomes paper. Again. Remember we talked
about making paper in our toilet paper episode. That one.
How it's made, that hypnotic how it's made episode, it's
pretty cool. Um, So that what you just described probably
doesn't take place in like your local town or something
like that. That's gone from your your curb to your

(29:17):
town's sorting facility to like a material um material recovery
facility or MURF is what that's called. And then probably
what you just described has done it like a someone
who specializes in paper reprocessing, right, Um, their money right exactly.

(29:38):
But along the way, your town made money by not
sending something to landfill, because most towns have to pay
for landfill stuff. So by diverting this from the landfill,
the town just saved money. And if it's a big
enough town because say millions, tens hundreds of millions of
dollars in fees um, and then once it entered that

(29:58):
murf then they start to sort it for resale to
reprocessors and the money started to come in right about that, Yeah, right,
all right, So what about glass glasses like similar to paper,
and that they'll usually sort it. And again, so sorting
is can be done by machines in a lot of cases,

(30:18):
but there are a lot of human beings who are
employed in this process whose job it is to say,
brown bottle goes here, green bottle goes here, clear bottle
goes here. I really like Rome, right exactly, Captain Morgan's
and they drop them down these different shoots and it's
a convey convey about going past them, and they're like
kind of I love Lucy's style, like just grabbing the

(30:39):
stuff and mixing it around and putting it sorting it themselves. Right, Yeah,
And glass is significant because, um, you've also heard people
say that you know you do you burned just and
there have been people that have taken great pains to
try and prove that recycling actually uses more energy than
just making new stuff and throwing it away. Uh uh,

(31:00):
and that is very fair about it. He points out
that it really depends on your material as a whole recycling,
I think without question, um uses less energy as a
whole from what I understand. Yeah, but if you want
to break it down to the individual things, some of
them are a little tougher to get, you know, your
money back out of or your energy usage. But glass

(31:22):
is one of those that has a significant energy cost savings,
right and and in some cases UM glass recycling basically
is just the intact bottle is being washed and sterilized
and then reused again. Sometimes so when you drink out
of like a glass coke bottle or something that may
have been used because it's nineteen, you're at the soda jerk.

(31:46):
But I mean, if you think about it like that's
if you could buy just glass bottles, you're probably it's
probably better off as far as recycling is concerned, because
they probably are just reusing the bottle as long as
you don't smash it on the ground, then sweep it up,
put it in the recycling bin. Well, that's another thing
that can be done with glass, right. They might reuse
it like wash it out, burn the label off, put

(32:07):
the go put have it go through the whole process again,
so it's basically like new, or they may smash it
up into pieces and um, those pieces will get melted
down and turned into glass again, which is another reason
why the glass gets sorted, because if you have a
bunch of different colored glass mixed together when you melted down,
it has like kind of a modeled color that nobody

(32:28):
would want. So it's very important to have your green
glass over here, and your clear glass over here, and
your brown glass over there. Yeah. And I think I
said on the show they announced in our county or
maybe city that they were not doing glass anymore, and
so they set up the big ben's like in certain
places around the county. That's for you and your wine
o friends congregate. Right, Absolutely, what a great bottle that

(32:53):
was so um. Hey, you know something You can reuse
a wine bottle by putting a candle in it. Yeah,
make it into a candle holder, or make it a
water a feeder for your plants. That I've tried that before.
I've never gotten it to work. What does it? What
does it do? Well? You fill it up and then
you plunge it into the soil, and I guess like

(33:14):
the I don't think it's ever come out. It's either
stuck in there or it's just poured out. I don't remember,
but I was like, I don't think this is working. Interesting.
Has it worked for you? You know? It comes out
very slowly, like it's not like you're gonna see go
glug glog glog globe, because then you might as well
just pour the water on it. No, I know, I
think I left it in there for a good week
or two and this plant is dead now. It didn't work, huh,

(33:38):
I don't know. You're sure it was water like on
no way to put grain alcohol alcohol. It was weird.
Uh So is that good on glass? They ground it
up into culor it. Yeah, that's like the ground, the
ground stuff that they eventually melt down. Yeah. Well, the
neat re reuses of glass or recycle the one of

(33:59):
the neat things that glass and be recycled into his fiberglass.
It can be extruded into fiber ak a fiberglass, meaning
it's glass. It may have been your coke bottle at
one time, and now you're keeping your house. Sure, yeah,
I hadn't thought about that. I always think of like
house installation it's like the pink panther. Yeah. What about

(34:20):
steel steal is a big one. It's usually recycled. At
least of American steel is recycled. Is made of recycled
steel from what I couldn't find that anywhere but in
this in this article. But yeah, he's smart. But the
the reason why is number one is just useful to

(34:41):
recycle steel. But also apparently it's very easy. You just
melt that stuff down and reuse it. Yeah, and Ed
mentions the giant machines at shred cars. Uh did you
see these videos? I've seen it before. It's about the
best thing ever to watch, Yeah, is to see a
man e van just get sucked into a a tooth machine.

(35:05):
It's really amazing. Yeah, and it feels like there's nothing
that can clog this thing. No, I mean a minivan
can't clogg it. Yeah, nothing can can't. Yeah, man, I
could have watched that stuff for hours. And steel too.
So they don't just do minivans, chuck. They do buildings,
old buildings, Um they do. Uh, there's something called ship breaking,

(35:25):
where like you know those old huge ships, Well they
get torn apart and recycled eventually. Um, that's actually one
that's not necessarily very good for the environment because there's
so many like toxic metals and like old diesel and
stuff like that that gets like leached out into the environment.
But an old ship is probably one of the worst
like environmental disasters. It's it's pretty bad. But what are

(35:47):
you gonna do? Just like sink it. You have to
do something with it. So, um, that's steal. Another one,
this one stuck out to me is um plastic water bottles. Right. Yeah,
So with plastics and general, it's tricky because if you
ever get into an argument with somebody who's just hell
been on proving that recycling is actually not green because

(36:08):
they like to rain on people's parade or whatever. Um,
they will point to plastic and they are absolutely right.
Like you, you just can't argue it's cheaper and probably
less polluting to produce plastic new than it is to
recycle plastic. It's just that's how cheap making plastic is.

(36:30):
We've got to do an episode on plastics. It's just
like we live in a plastic age, right, So, um,
that is true, it is. It's it's it's more costly
both environmentally and I think economically to recycle plastic than
to just make it new. But that's not to say
that you just shouldn't recycle plastics. So if you do

(36:51):
recycle like a plastic water bottle, one thing that I
ran across it I didn't know before is screw that
cap on tightly. And if you'll notice that plastic cap
is a different type of plastic than your plastic water bottle. Um.
But if you throw the cap away separately, it'll just
end up in the landfill, even if it's in your

(37:11):
recycling bin, if you screwed on the The way that
the plastics reprocessors are set up these days is that
whole bottle goes through and the plastic is separated by density.
So the stuff in the cap, I believe, floats and
the stuff in the bottle sinks in in like whatever
liquid bath they create for it and melt it and

(37:32):
then they separate it like that. But if it's just
your caps or whatever, it's not going to make it
through the machine. The machines are set up to separate them.
Connected with your cap connected to the to the water bottle,
still screwed on. A commonly argued that we now have
given you the answer to, Yeah, and now I think back,

(37:52):
I'm like, how many times I've been like, well, I
got to unscrew the cap and throw it in separately,
had no idea. Now I know I won't be doing
in that again. I can assure you, Chuck, I'll chick
through these recycling symbols real quickly. For plastic, instead of
going into great detail, there is one through seven that
you will see stamped on the bottom usually of whatever,

(38:14):
or you know sometimes on the side of your plastic.
Number one is p E, t E or PET. Number
two is hd p E, Number three is V or PBC,
final four is ld p E. Number five is PP
and these all have you know, longer scientific names. Number

(38:34):
five is like your yogurt container. From what I've seen
yogurt containers catch a bottles or bottles, medicine bottles, although
most pharmacies ask you to bring back here script bottles. Yeah,
I am so green. I just go and like make
a little basket out of my hands, just say, put
the pills in here, just dump dump it into my hand.

(38:55):
Number six is polystyrene. That's styrofoam. And then number or
seven is other and miscellaneous. That's where everything else goes.
So every single one of those plastics can be recycled.
This is like one of the big things about recycling.
We can recycle. About seventy of the stuff that we
throw away can be recycled. We recycled what about thirty

(39:18):
of it? And the reason why is in large part
because there's no money in recycling some of those other ones,
like styrofoam. You can recycle styrofoam, but the process for
recycling styrofoam is so difficult and expensive that it is
it costs money to recycle styrofoam. Therefore, no one recycles styrofoam.
And when you step back and think about all the

(39:39):
styrofoam packaging out there, and the styrofoam peanuts and all
that stuff, it's not getting recycled. You put it in
with your even though it has the recycling symbol, it's
saying this can be recycled. In theory, there's no one
out there, almost no one out there that recycles it,
so it's just going straight to the landfill. The problem
is even worse than that, though, and this is thing

(40:00):
I was talking about before, Chuck at the very beginning.
You put that styrofoam in there, you put enough styrofoam
in there. Then you might do what's called contaminating the batch.
Where these the recycle um sorting center, the murph might say,
it's not even worth paying human beings to sort through
this stuff. There's so much styrofoam in here. Just send

(40:22):
that whole batch to the landfill, including the stuff that
can be recycled. So that's another big deal. Why we're
not recycling a lot of stuff is because we're mixing
stuff that can't be recycled or won't be recycled in
with the stuff that can and should be recycled, and
it's diverting the whole batch off to the landfill, which
is a big problem. Which is the way the best

(40:45):
way to address that is for people like you and
me to go onto our local recycling website and say
what can I actually recycle in my area and they'll
tell you, and then the stuff that can't be it
feels terrible to throw it away eight but throw it away,
like I can tell you by like with experience. It's

(41:05):
not a good feeling to throw a big piece of
styrofoam away into a dumpster that's going to the landfill.
But you can take solace in the fact that it's
not going to spoil the batch of recycling that actually
is going to the recycling center. Yeah. So our community
has a styrofoam recycling day like twice a year, and

(41:27):
I'm gonna start bringing my styrofoam to your No, don't
do that, because we already have loads. Uh. And that
stuff does is recycled, but it's you know, you gotta
look out for it. It's very specific programs that ask
for your styrofoam, uh, and they do recycle it. So
you know, it's sort of like electronics recycling, right, it's
really expensive. It's uh to do it costs money. Um.

(41:51):
So our community like twice a year again, in fact,
I think it's at the same time has electronics recycling
and you actually have to pay and you go and
pay them some money to donate your old whatever you know. Um.
Very ironically, I was going through stuff you should know
Selects and I can't remember what episode it was, but
in the listener mail, we basically read a p s

(42:13):
A for something called free I t Athens. Do you
remember that, Yes, And it's freed to I think is
what it's called. But um, I looked it up and
they're still around, but you can give them, at least
in Athens, Georgia, your old e waste, your old electronics
and and um specifically computer stuff, and they take it,
refurbish it and then donate it to people in need.

(42:35):
And they're still doing it. And I guarantee that that Athens,
Georgia is not the only town in the country that
has a program like this. So rather than paying somebody
like a chump to recyclist, give it to somebody who
can refurbish it. Well, yeah, because a lot of times
like this old Mac is just out of date. It
works fine, yeah, and just let me throw it in

(42:55):
the trash. Yeah, got an old got an old computer monitor?
You can you can trade that to an anarchist for
their goods and services. They love those things. So to
quickly finishing up on these symbols, they say avoid three,
six and seven, look for two, four and five. They're
considered to be the safest um and number one is

(43:18):
considered safe. But that's the one that's soda bottles, water bottles, um,
salad dressing containers, mouth wash, peanut butter. Uh. It can
be recycled and it is safe. But they're just I
think they're on a mission to try and get people
to use less of that stuff. Especially in ED points
out one of the gripes against recycling, one of the

(43:40):
few they actually agree with, is people recycle. So they're like,
I'm I buy a case of water every two weeks,
but it's fine because I recycle it. It encourages maybe
for some people to think, because I'm doing this thing right,
and then I can just keep buying water bottles right Precisely.
That's probably the biggest argument against recycling today is it

(44:01):
allows for this consumer society to keep flourishing and thriving.
Let's take a break real quick and come back. Okay, chuck.

(44:33):
So all that stuff has been sorted and um depending
on what it is, say like um aluminum cans or
plastic bottles or something like that, it is put into
these huge enormous bails and then sent off to the
reprocessors who then do things like you described with the paper.
They basically um clean it, burn off any impurities, scrape

(44:57):
off any impurities, get to the raw cial again and
then turn it into small little things like um if
it's aluminum in gets or if it's um glass. They're
trying to cull it um or if it's plastics, they'll
melt it down into nerdles. I can't remember what they're called,
but those are mermaids tears, remember that's what they break

(45:18):
down to and fish eat them and die. Um. And
then those things go to manufacturers and they buy it.
So that's that's this. That's the current state of recycling
right now. And that last part, the last two parts
them where the reprocessors by the stuff and then the
manufacturers by the stuff from the reprocessors that has been

(45:41):
disrupted with China coming in and saying we're not doing
that anymore. So there's a lot of things that can
change as a result of this. Right if all of
these if these things that actually do have value start
to build up as they are in all of these
warehouses and facilities, um, so there another market is going

(46:02):
to develop because these things do have value, because consumers
do want to see like, oh, this thing I'm using
was made with you know, post consumer recycled material. I
feel good about that. I'm gonna buy this package over
that package. There's value to this stuff. Right, So there
will be a market that develops, But will it be

(46:22):
this continued thing where we're like here, developing country, you
don't have like um regulatory and safety and environmental protections
like we have in our country. So take this and
we can feel good about ourselves because it's out of sight.
That's that's basically how the recycling commodities market developed in

(46:43):
the nineties and up till two thousand eighteen, it was
just like here, you take our our thing, and we
can feel good about things, but but unwarranted and unwarranted
feeling of of feeling good about um about recycling. So
it's possible that the actual like real deal will develop

(47:05):
and that will will continue to recycle and feel good
about things, but it'll be you know, justified. That's what
I'm hoping. That's what I think is going to happen.
I think that single stream recycling is going to go away.
I think that we're gonna have to start like being
more conscientious and just know what we're doing more. Because
if you put the average person who recycled in the

(47:26):
nineties up against the average person who recycles today, do
you remember back like in the nineties, like people knew
what they were talking about with recycling and way more sideburns.
Sure more so, but like I think of my dad
like he's still just a religious recycler. Now. He got
like the bug in the nineties because there's such a
good campaign, a good public campaign, and yes, fewer people recycled,

(47:51):
but the quality of the stuff that was entering the
recycling stream was way better than it is today. Good
stuff in the nineties it was so great because so
depending on where you live in the country, in the
United States and reckon all over the world, UM, you
might have different options for recycling. The Abuse Center research

(48:12):
study UM found that of the United States has something
available to them UM, which is great. Uh, thirty percent
has curbside only, drop off only and forty pcent and
had a mix of both. And of any town with
a population over a hundred and twenty five thousand have

(48:33):
curbside pick up now and in the US over a
hundred still yeah, a lot of America. Yeah. So those
are the general ways that you're going to recycle, either
at a recycling center, uh, like a drop off center,
curbside pickup, which you know we love UM buy back centers.

(48:53):
You know, if you've ever seen the aluminum can machines,
we can collect aluminum hands, throw them in there and
make some money. Uh, and then that's kind of part
of the deposit refund program where you know in the
good old days when you would you would drink a
soda that you actually actually paid extra for that bottle.

(49:15):
That Yeah, if it has like a five cent refund,
it's called a refund for a reason because you paid
an extra nickel to drink that coke out of the bottle.
Out of the bottle. But you can always go take
it back, sonny, and they'll give your five cents back.
Then they take that bottle, wash it out, sterilize it,
may fill it with coke again. Yeah. I don't drink those.
I don't drink cokes at all. But there's something about

(49:37):
that iconic bottle that I love. That green tinted, green
tinta that's bright ribbed. No, no, no no, that the original
coke bottle has that really faint green. It's not green
green like this bright bottle. But yeah, and it's got
like that. It's ribbed and it has that curve ribbed
for your pleasure. It's very sexy bottle. They think about it.

(50:00):
I wonder I loved it. You just went Should we
talk about um stuff? You shouldn't recycle absolutely. Well, let's
get to that. But let's talk about the criticisms. One
of the ones we talked about was that it gives
you and this is the one I think it sounds
like we both fully agree with, is that recycling gives

(50:21):
you a false sense of um, like you're doing something
for the environment. Yeah, which you are, but not to
the point where you can just be like, hey, I'm
just gonna buy everything and but I'm recycling it. Yeah,
that's definitely true. But also you're not fully like it's
amateur hour with recycling these days, where before you you

(50:42):
there was less being recycled, like only one to three
percent of that stuff was being diverted to the landfill.
Today there's like fifty increase in the amount of stuff
that's being recycled, but up to like of that is
being diverted to the landfill. Yeah. Right, So if you
could just keep that number up, the increase over like

(51:05):
the early nineties, and then decrease what's going to the landfill,
that'd be fantastic. And you do that by teaching people
what not to recycle. You should be the e pH
chief I am. You know, like my pen cost me.
You might actually want to protect the environment. There, it's
right there in the job title. We're gonna get some

(51:27):
email for that. Politics. Uh, this is one that we
touched on a little bit. But um that it's basically
a zero sum game. Uh with with the you know,
the energy used, okay to recycle and like we said,
it sort of you know, very much depends on the product.

(51:47):
But many of the most common things we recycle. It
is not a zero sum game. No. But even if
even if Chuck you took all of material manufacturing and
all of material recycling and it turned out that it
was totally evened out energy energy wise, pollution wise, you
would still be it's still be worthwhile to recycle because

(52:11):
recycling has a demonstrably better impact on the economy. Like
there are more jobs associated with it, there's more revenue
associated with it. Um, there are more goods and services
associated with it. It just has a greater economic impact
than sending waste to the landfill does. Like there's money
and sending sending waste to the landfill, it's true, but

(52:34):
recycling actually has way more of a positive economic benefits.
So even if pollution is the same, energy uses the same,
it's just shown overall recycling is better money wise. Take
the pin out of that one. Yeah. Uh, there isn't
a garbage problem to begin with. There is no garbage crisis.
Plenty of landfill space. Um, so we don't need to

(52:57):
sweat it this one. You just say, can you just
lean forward a little bit and you kick them in
the butt. Yeah, technically there is plenty of landfill space.
That does not mean that we should fill it as
quickly as possible. Right, that's probably the easiest way to
debunk that, right, Yeah, I mean it's just because there
is space doesn't mean all right, then fill it with

(53:19):
drash exactly? Like who thinks that? Do you look at
the ocean and go, well, we could dump a lot
of stuff in there, Like that's just that's just that's
just dumb. I'm sorry that you're a dumb person if
you think that. I don't say that very often, but
when I do, I mean, alright, so I think now
we can talk about things you're recycling wrong. Okay, So again,

(53:43):
listen up, everybody, because if we can tell you what
not to recycle or how to recycle things better, and
you can tell other people and everybody just kind of
figures this out and actually becomes like primo recyclers like
we used to be in the nineties. This would have
a signal forgetting positive impact on at the very least

(54:03):
the amount of stuff going to the landfill, which we
can all agree is not a good thing. Correct. Okay,
So throw away that Starbucks cup. That's a that's a
sad one. It is because you want to even if
you wash it out with water and it's clean as
a whistle, you cannot recycle that and you're gonna get
stared at and people are gonna shoot spit balls at you,

(54:25):
even though they don't have straws anymore. You just say stop, stop,
I'm I'm I'm on your side. You don't understand. Yeah,
tell him, Josh, that you know is what you should
say back. Don't don't mention chuck. But yes, those disposable
coffee cups have wax on them. It's a very fine
film and you you know you can tell by looking
at them. Um, that's why your coffee doesn't leak out

(54:47):
all over through the paper, that's right, because yeah, it's
either wax or plastic, I think. And the problem is
is very tough to separate from the paper when they
start running it through that reprocessing process. Yes, And there
was a group of people at um stand Earth who
did a little experiment where they actually had tagged these
Starbucks cups and uh and where Denver, Colorado that went

(55:11):
to the recycling bin and then they traced them. They
ended up in the landfill. So yeah, with like electronic tags,
they were tracking a dolphin. Yeah, or like your child.
So throw them away. I'm sorry, Okay, but don't just
throw the whole thing away. You feel dressed that thing, right,
You pull the coffee clutch off, you pull the lid off,
both of those can be recycled, and then you throw

(55:31):
the cup away. Here's the even better thing to do
by one of those like ten or fifteen dollar travel
mugs and say I would like my Starbucks in this please,
and they'll go okay, great. Or if you're sitting in there,
I don't know that of Starbucks does this, but every
mom and pop coffee shop will serve you your coffee
and a big, delicious giant mug. Yeah. I think Starbucks

(55:54):
does too, if you Yeah, but that that's the point,
Like re reducing the number of paper cups that you
have to throw away, so much the better. Yeah, and
what I do is um my, uh germophobes might think
is creepy, but I take the little sleeve off what
do you call it clutch to keep it from your
hand from getting warm. I just stick that back in

(56:15):
the thing with the other ones. What do you mean, Well,
I use it and I take it off and I
put it back where I found it. Oh, I see smart,
just for the next person. So that's the second are
yeah nice? Use nice? Just as long as you keep
your hands clean. Yeah, I try to poopy hand. We've

(56:35):
talked about pizza boxes before, but it is definitely worth
saying again, we've talked a lot about pizza boxes. I
think it's even they say a little grease is okay,
a tiny amount. I think it's best to just cut
out the grease spot and throw and throw the rest
in the recycling bin. Or usually there's only grease on
one side, the side where the pizza has been sitting.
The other side's fine, just tear that off and throw

(56:57):
the non greasy side and the recycling through the greasy
side in the track. I'm saying, go the extra mile
and cut around the grease because all those corners are recyclable.
You go you know. Okay. And here's the other thing
I said, throw the greasy side in the trash, no
light it on fire. The that that, um, that can
be composted. Uh yeah sure. The cardboard box almost always

(57:18):
can be composted if even if it has grease on it.
Yeah okay, so um, pizza boxes, no grease equals recycling. Right,
And I already talked a little bit about food stuffs.
A little bit of food stuffs is okay. But again
I just recommend like taking an extra thirty seconds and
rents out that mayonnaise jar, right, rent it out. Um

(57:39):
if if it if it has like the oily sheen
from the mayonnaise and it's still that's fine. The plastic
reprocessor is set up to deal with that. If it
has lumps of mayonnaise and it's still, it's not it's
too dirty. Um. Same with like peanut butter is another one. Um,
if you have like a to go like plastic food
tray or something like that, like like get the crumbs out,

(58:01):
just get it, like, don't don't sit there and scrub
it as I think this is A New York Times
article points out like you're'll actually be wasting water at
some point, but you do want to you want to
kind of get it prepped. Don't just throw it in
there like it's like you would the trash um like
because it's trash. And again, if there's enough stuff in
this batch that's going to the recycling center, they're gonna

(58:22):
throw it away. So don't throw stuff that shouldn't be
recycled in with the recycling. Yeah, I get we have
a lot of guilt about take out containers. Yeah, so
ordering in that's that's the one thing where just like man,
I love ordering in food, love that Chinese delivery yeah,
but all that waste. Yeah, and like the Chinese delivery boxes,

(58:44):
I mean their waterproof too for a reason, so they're
not getting recycled either. You've gotta just awsome. I saw
something like this is made up. But it's something like
seventy or eighty percent of plastic trash is one time
use food packaging, like just some ridiculous amount. Where if

(59:07):
and this is the weird thing, what are you gonna do?
You're gonna take like your own dishes to the Chinese
food place or your own like tupperware and say put
it in this please? People do that? Do they? But
I mean, you are pretty hardcore if you're doing that,
So there's gotta be another way. And chuck. This is
another another thing we can do besides you and me
being smarter and better at recycling, like just just making

(59:31):
that like a side thing. It's demanding that manufacturers who
make packaging make it with this end of life and mind.
Make it so it can be reused, or make it
so it can be very easily recycled, or make it
so it has a minimal design rather than a bunch
of like styrofoam and wrapping and all this stuff. And

(59:51):
if you, I mean, just the smallest little things can help.
Like if you're picking up food to go, uh, and
they're throwing in a bunch of utensils that you take home,
yeah to say no, Yeah, like you don't use that
stuff if you're taking it home, So what do you do?
You probably throw it away or there's a drawer in
your house with those things, you know. Uh. Plastic straws

(01:00:12):
are a big deal right now to like cities are
banning them. I think Starbucks just said they weren't gonna
use them anymore, So that's a big one. Um. And
plastics again, plastic bags are really bad zip block bags,
bubble wrap. None of that stuff should be in your recycling,
none of it. None of it. Yeah, like don't. I've
seen people take a bag full of alumium cans and
throw the whole thing in there, Right, that bag is

(01:00:33):
going to good like they're they're gonna say, well, this
whole bag is trash, even though everything inside can be recycled,
it's trash now because it's just not worth their time
to empty the bag out. The conveyor belts going too fast. Yeah,
dirty diapers can't recycle those that has human bio hazardous
waste in it, even if you're even if you're using

(01:00:56):
the diapers that do have plastic in them, get judge.
But I wouldn't use those either. But that's there the
reason you might think you can recycle them because well,
it's plastic. I can recycle plastic. You can't recycle like
eight different kinds of plastic that are in the diapers.
They again, they melt them down, and then yes, once
you add the whole dimension of poop to it, it's

(01:01:18):
bad news from your child who was eating plastic that
was plastic in the poop. I can't wait to do
a plastic episode. It's gonna knock everybody's socks off, chuck. Uh.
So we're going to stop here and we'll pick this
up again in eight years. Okay. Yes, if you want
to know more about recycling, go to your local recycling

(01:01:39):
website and figure out what you can recycle and what
you can't and do it. Okay. And since I said
do it, it's time for listening mail. I'm gonna call
this Zambardo follow up. Hey, guys, big fan of the
show and also a fellow movie crusher. Well nice, thank you. Alex.
Let's thing to the Stanford prison experiment and reminded me

(01:02:02):
of my own discovery of Zimbardo. In high school, I
took a psychology class and the teacher didn't really have
a lesson plan for any day. He would periodically just
put on episodes of the PBS show called Discovering Psychology,
hosted by some middle aged guy who looked a bit
like a Star Trek evil doppelganger. The episodes are pretty elementary.

(01:02:22):
He seemed to be designed for student audience. The host
would introduce himself, talk about something like perception or learning
for a bit, and then read and then do a
reading rainbow esque graphic. Uh cutaway to a famous experiment
on the subject. Fast forward to this semester. We're given
some free time to research UH, and I was trying

(01:02:43):
to pick something good and I discovered the Standford prison experiment.
It was only then that I realized that Zimbardo was
the one hosting that PBS special that I had been
watching for the past month. Frankly, guys, im will surprise
at UH, the guy that had the lead role in
when of the least at the cool psychology experiments was
given Well, let's be fair, it wasn't one of the

(01:03:04):
least ethical. Ever. Things have gotten way worse, But for
as big as it was, I just want to be clear,
they're poorly, poorly put together. I'm I'm surprised he was
given a hosting role for an educational TV show targeting
students twenty years after. Okay, fair enough, that's Alex's point

(01:03:25):
of view. That is from Alex Aberman. Alex from Falls Church, Virginia,
nice town, buddy NICs area. Yes for running it? Oh yeah,
have you ever been to um oh? Man, I can't
remember the name of the place. They're famous for peaking
duck there. Oh really? Yeah? I can't remember. There's one specific,

(01:03:45):
amazing Chinese restaurant that has the best peaking duck you'll
ever had. Wow, try it all right, okay, um duck,
but oh well, don't bother me. The rest of the
food is pretty good too, but the peking duck is
off your socks off. Um. So, if you want to
know more about oh no, I already said that. If
you want to get in touch with us, go to

(01:04:07):
our website, Stuff you Should Know dot com. It has
all the links to all our social meds, and you
can also send us an email, wrap it up, spank
it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff
podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
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