August 30, 2022 • 50 mins
Since the advent of single-use plastics, we’ve become awash in waste. Barrels of petroleum are extracted, turned into plastics that contain products, which are then opened and the containers thrown away. It’s a bonehead process start to finish.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Jos
and there's Chock and we're just a couple of dudes
yacking it up about packaging waste because this is stuff
you should know. Let's go. Yeah. Uh, it's always fun,
(00:25):
even after all these years, to just sort of not
know what's going to come out of your mouth at
the beginning of an episode. Same here, Um, oh like
as yourself. Yeah, I think this is a nice little
addendum or not addendum, but just in the same bucket
as our recent bottled water episode, and um, we did
when I'm Littering and the Ultra Processed Foods episode all
(00:47):
touched on this too. Yeah, and also of course recycling
in landfills. And I just I love at the end
of our whole career, we're gonna have these lovely buckets
of content, and this is one I'm most proud of,
our sort of environmental bucket. Yeah, it's good stuff. What
about our civics lessons bucket? Sure those are great, like
how to do a will and stuff like that. No, no,
(01:09):
like why jerrymandering is horrible? Oh sure, yeah those are
great too. Um, yeah, but these are recycling ones are
great and true crime forget about it, because you know
we're basically a true crime podcast. That So we're talking
today about packaging waste. And if you are alive today
in or the future, if you're listening to this in
(01:32):
the future, hello future, um, you are probably pretty well
aware that we have a lot of packaging. We use
a lot of packaging to put stuff in. Like I
remember buying a bottle of Crown Royal years and years
ago at the liquor store and they put it in
a paper bag when he thought it was the fanciest
(01:55):
liquor totally and you and you would leave with paper
bag and take it home and you would pull the
box of Crown Royal out of the paper bag, you'd
pull the velvet bag that the Crown Royal was an
out of the box, and then you'd pull the bottle
out of the velvet bag. And then finally, after you
unscrewed the cap, you could get to what you were
(02:16):
after all along, which was the delicious Crown Royal. Right,
and you would put your bag of weed and the
velvet bag and you would go to the Motley Crew concert.
That's right with your little nineties bowl, the little brass bowl,
that's right. And hey, this is not to disparage Crown
Royal because they have been friendly enough to send us
their delicious ryeh over and over again. They really took
(02:38):
care of Remember they gave us those bags that were monogrammed.
So yeah, no, not not anything to disparage on Crown Royal.
But it's it always struck me even back then, like
this is a lot of packaging, and how necessary is this?
And we finally reached the point where the rest of
society is caught up to me and are asking these
questions now. And the answer that we seem to be
(03:01):
coming up with is a lot of this stuff is
totally unnecessary, and the stuff that is necessary we have
to learn to make better and reuse better because we
are awash in garbage. And here in America it's kind
of tough to see unless you drive past the landfill
because we don't literally we used to. But what we
do is we dump our stuff either in landfills or
(03:21):
else we exported to other less developed countries to use
them as our landfills, which is really morally uncool, you know, oh,
absolutely uh, And it's funny I just noticed the other day. Uh,
the very popular by knacks now COVID at home COVID tests. Uh,
COVID came through our house again. We all got out everybody,
(03:43):
We're all great, We're all fine, but p s A
still out there. Be careful. But long and long and
short of it is, we're taking a lot of these
tests over the course of the two weeks, and they
are smaller now. I had to order some more, and
they are now. I don't know if you've used these.
They're not in the giant long box. And I thought, oh,
is there only one in there now? And no, they
(04:04):
just didn't need that big box. It's like the old
CED long box, the same. Yeah. And they came in
the mail. I was like, oh, well good, this thing
is probably not half the size, but probably close to it,
because there was no reason for those two COVID tests
just to be flopping around with all that real estate. Yeah,
so good for them, Yeah, good for you. By an X.
Did you get him in the mail because Joe Biden
(04:25):
sent him to you? Joe Biden, I did, uh send
off for the free one from the government. But I
also had to you know, we we just keep a
stock in the house because we like to just make
sure we're keeping everyone safe. Definitely. And you have a
bowl full of condoms by your front door too, exactly
(04:47):
except ours is like, uh, give a penny, take a penny,
You take a condom, you gotta leave it, the condom
of equal or lesser size? What they? What am I
doing to call them? Like Coney Island whitefishes? That's right,
he's in New York. Oh God, and you need to
clean that bowl out, chuck. Oh. Can we talk about
(05:07):
packaging waste? Yes, let's talk about this because give this.
In the United States, of municipal solid waste, that's everything
that includes old washing machines for Pete's sake. Of municipal
solid waste is packaging containers, stuff that the stuff we're
actually buying comes in, or is shipped in, or is
(05:27):
transported to the story in right, So if we can
do something about that, if we can reduce the amount
of packaging or make the packaging we use more recyclable,
that would have an enormous impact on our landfill footprint
just out of the gate. Uh, and we do a
decent you know, I don't even know. Decent is such
(05:48):
a term that it's all over the place according to
who you are. So I don't even want to use it.
But we have put a dent in this packaging waste
with our recycling, at least compared to the past. Maybe
that's the safest way to say it. Yeah, we've definitely
gotten better because in nineteen sixty about a tenth of
packaging waste was recycled. Uhen was the most recent year
(06:11):
we have. We're up to packaging waste being recycled, but
that still means that they're uh, let me see here.
Plastic ten million what is this tons? Yes, ten million
tons of plastic still end up in the landfills out
of million total. Yeah, seven million out of twelve million
(06:32):
of wood aluminium. You would think that's the easiest thing
to recycle. Everyone throws their aluminum cans recycling, right, Not true?
About half one million aluminum cans end up in landfills
with two million total. Yeah, that's unconscionable. Yeah, aluminum is
I've seen it described as infinitely recyclable. You can just
(06:54):
keep making the same aluminum can over and over again,
if you'll just recycle it rather than diverted to land
all that's pretty bad. Two million or one million landfilled
out of two million. On the other end, cardboard, we're
really really good that recycling cardboard. People recycle it. It's
also easy to recycle, so it gets recycled. Out of
(07:15):
forty two million tons of paper and cardboard that was
generated for packaging alone, just packaging everybody, I'm not including
like you know, um uh, construction paper from elementary schools,
none of that. This is all just packaging. In two
thousand and eighteen in the U S alone, out of
forty two million, only five million of that five million
tons ended up in the landfill. So that's really really good.
(07:37):
So cardboards not the problem as far as like packaging
and shipping and all of that stuff goes because a
lot of it, most of it gets recycled. The big
problem isn't even aluminum cans. The problem, chuck is polastic. Yeah,
plastics a big problem, and a lot of this again
overlaps with our bottled water up. But and we'll talk
(07:58):
about plastic all throughout this episode. Yeah, and when when
you think plastic, that's usually especially when you're talking about
plastic packaging waste, you think bottled waters or something like that,
or water bottles. Um but it can be any kind
of single use plastic where it can be like a
derrito wrapper that's made of plastic, styrofoam packing peanuts, that's
a kind of plastic too, it's a polystyrene um. Plastic
(08:22):
shows up in all sorts of other ways in other places,
especially with plaques or packaging. And the other thing that
you have to remember is this, think about how light
plastic is. Okay, ten ten million tons of plastic. That
is so much plastic in real terms, in real life
(08:43):
terms out there in landfills are in the environment even
worse that we're throwing away every year, every single year. Yeah,
it's really unnerving when you get a product that is
shrink wrapped in plastic that doesn't need to be. It's
you know, yeah, I blame the Thailand All Poisoner for that. Yeah,
(09:05):
but really remember they were the ones who triggered tamper
proof packaging and like putting everything in like shrink wrap
and stuff. Yeah, but as a tape measure, it's going
to be tampered with. But I think that that's an
extension of that impulse that was originally created by the
Thailand All Poisoner that tamper proof packaging got extended to everything. Yeah,
(09:27):
I guess so, And I know some of it is
to protect the thing. But like, let's say you go
out and get like a screwdriver set. They're not gonna
sell you eight screwdrivers in a little like vinyl bag.
Like they sell you eight screwdrivers and one of those
huge square, you know, molded plastic things that are a
impossible to open. So they're annoying. But it's just it
(09:51):
just drives me crazy, drives me crazy. Have you tried
practicing opening them screw driver? Sure, you gotta get a
like a carpet knife? What what brand do you use?
Carpet knife? No? But I mean you're you're screwdriver. When
you're buying that big box of screwdrivers? What brand are
(10:11):
you buying? I feel like in being set up for
something that I don't understand. So I'm just gonna go
and say Craftsman. Okay, that's why it was. It was
a rhetorical question. There's no wrong answer. But I I
don't have a problem opening and closing the plastic box
with de Walt brand tools. Well, I got a lot
of d Walt stuff. I love the Walt. In fact,
(10:33):
most of my major power tools are de Walt. But
you know, I'm I'm just remembering. I shouldn't have said screwdrivers.
I should have said like wrenches, because the wrenches I
bought the wrench set came like that. I actually found
a screwdriver set where it had twelve screwdrivers in and
it was plastic, but it was in one little plastic
(10:53):
screw lid container, and it seemed a lot better than
the other alternative at least. Yeah. The next best step
after that is there's just some dude who hangs out
at the store that carries him home in his arms
and dumps him onto your floor and then leaves like
that kind of packaging. Yeah, he opens his overcoat and
they're all all the screw drives are hanging there. Right.
(11:15):
You just take your pick. Uh, let's talk a little
bit about the history before we break. I think because
I always think of Emily's grandparents, Charlie who has left us,
and then Mary, who was still chugging along at a
hundred and one years old. Believe it or not. Uh,
they didn't have garbage collection for almost their entire lives
in rural Ohio. Uh. They didn't want to pay for it,
(11:38):
and they didn't need it because they reused, recycled, and
when I say reused, they really reused. They composted. Um.
They did all the old things because they're that old
school Depression era generation to where you appreciate things like
that and you don't want to waste. And that's the
way that used to just be the norm. Pele would
(12:00):
buy and ship things and barrels and wooden boxes and
they would reuse those, and glass bottles that they would reuse.
They would wrap up cheese and meats and things and
cloth forever that you would reuse and then eventually like
butcher paper. Uh. And that was just they didn't even
have regular garbage pickup until about the mid eighteen hundreds here, right,
(12:22):
because because again they didn't need it. I mean, yeah,
somebody sent you something and it wouldn't crate. You'd build
an addition on your house exactly. It was like that,
Like they would use glass bottles and then if the
glass bottle broke, they would fix it. And I was like,
how would they fix it? And apparently there's something called
um water water glass. It's sodium silicate and it's a
(12:44):
spread herble kind of glass where if you heat it up.
It basically fills in all the cracks and it's good
as new. I wonder if that's how they do. Should
ask Emily's dad the window chips, Oh, I wonder too.
Emily used to do that for a little while because
her dad has a Syneco glass. If you're in near Akron, Ohio,
that's the place to get your windows replaced. But Emily
(13:05):
did that for a summer, she fixed glass chips. Yeah,
you should definitely ask her that. So. Um, so, we
didn't have garbage pickup because we didn't need it because
everybody was reusing stuff food waste, like you said, they
were composting it, or they would just throw it out
to for the livestock, the hogs, the chickens, whatever they
would eat the whatever food wasting. I would guess that
(13:26):
they had much less food waste than we have today.
But again, there wasn't much need for garbage collection. That's
not to say there wasn't garbage. I saw in the
eighteenth century in New York they built appear in the
East River, purpose built to dump garbage into the East River.
The downside, not like they weren't doing it, but it
was just so minuscule compared to the amount of waste
(13:47):
that we generate today that it is essentially negligible. Yeah. Absolutely,
eighteen fifty six is kind of a fun little fact
to keep in your pocket. Uh. Corrugated paper, what would
become corrugated cardboard, was invented in eighteen fifty six in
England because of those big tall hats to keep those
things stiff. Pretty cool, I think so too. But then
(14:08):
it became a thing. Well, yeah, the slowly started replacing
the wooden crates right for shipping, so you couldn't build
an addition on your house anymore, that's right. But it
was a lot lighter, it was a lot easier, It
used up a lot less coal on the ship to
move across the sea. Um. It was kind of a
step up for sure. Um. And then Nabisco was the
first one to start selling single serve individual packaged foods
(14:33):
all the way back in uh. And it it makes sense,
you know, in in in one way, but if you
you know, start caring about the environment, it makes like
zero sense whatsoever. Um. But they were the ones who
kicked all that off. Yeah. I found that kids, and
I remember this about myself, are very into those things.
I think just because they're small. Like I remember being
(14:54):
obsessed with the kids who could afford the little individual Pringles,
not the ones they sell in the store now, but
they used to sell these little plastic peel away top
Pringles servings, and the kids in school that had those.
I was so jealous of the they're rich kids. I
had my Charles Chips tin can basket out of your
(15:17):
shirt and carried around school till lunch. But Kellogg's you mentioned,
or maybe you didn't, but they were the first cereal box,
obviously in nineteen o six, and then beer cans. We're
steel originally they started in ninety six, Thank you Cores.
Then they switched to aluminum in fifty nine. But uh,
(15:39):
and this is very cool when you go look at
an old like I think smoking the Bandit even had
these where you had to use a can opener to
open a beer back in the day. Very cool. Yeah,
they should bring that back. The poll tabs better because
you have to keep a can opener on you, you
know well. And the poll tabs, even though they were
bad for the environment. You could make an emergency phone
call at a telephone booth if you really you could
(16:01):
use that as a fake coin of slug now and
in war Games, Matthew Broderick can dow this trick where
he unscrewed the receiver where you're talking to it, and
then like, I don't think it's true at all. I
think they literally just made this up for the movie
and used a poll tab to make it like an
electric connection and like kind of hot wired the phone.
Just give it a dial town. I'm sure it was
(16:24):
not true. I got you. But used to see those
all over the place, the poll tabs all over the
place on the ground. Yeah, I was up in my
attic the other day, um, and there was an old
poll tab old Milwaukee Can. It's funny, how old is Yeah,
it's funny when you find those these days. Now. I
know it doesn't go back any any earlier than nineteen
that's right. So, Um, like we said they were using
(16:47):
dumps and horrible places like the they would use wetlands
back in the day to dump trash, and apparently Boston's
Back Bay was a wetland that was originally a garbage dump.
And if you've ever been into back Bay, that's fairly
ironic because it's one of the more well healed parts
of Boston today, they built up real she she um
(17:07):
area that has like an anthropology and everything on it. Yeah,
and we should do an entire episode, I think on
Fresh Kills. That is basically what Staten Island used to be,
almost entirely. Well that's not true, but it was a
twenty two hundred acre landfill on Staten Island after I
(17:27):
believe after World War Two. Yeah, and I just it's
such a rabbit hole. I started looking into Fresh Kills
and I had to stop and I was like, we
just need to make this an episode because it was
a remarkably large It was the largest one in the world,
largest landfill, and they're reclaiming it and it's by thirty
I'm sorry, by uh, it's gonna be finished as as
(17:51):
a park, fresh Kill Park. I've seen some of the
artists rendering of it. It's gonna look really neat, very peaceful. Yeah,
it would be a good episode, though. I think it's
interesting history. Okay, deal, So those those dumps that we
started to generate, like every city starting in the twentieth
century really started to need more and more dumps and
(18:11):
more and more space for landfills um and it grew
because our single use packaging grew, we just started throwing
stuff away, And in our Littering episode, I think we
specifically said that the plastic garbage bag people basically got
together and said, we need to teach everybody to start
throwing things away. They keep reusing this plastic stuff. So
(18:34):
they basically created a public information campaign to teach everybody
to throw stuff in the trash and to take their
trash out to the garbage can every night, and to
do this every single day. They taught America to throw
stuff away, which is just so villainous, But that really
kind of was the beginning around the middle of the
last century of our obsession with single use um packaging. Basically, yeah,
(18:59):
I think that glad bag first came around the late sixties,
and then in the mid just before that, in the
mid sixties, the grocery bag, the little light groceries bag
that has been such a problem in the world, that
came around in sixty five. But if you don't remember
those when you were like like our age and you
(19:19):
were a kid in the seventies and eighties, it's because
they people still generally used paper sacks. They were really
slow to catch on those plastic bags. But eventually, in
night five there was a conference of the Society of
Plastic Engineers, and then someone stood up on a stage
and said, hey, these things are twenty four dollars per thousand.
(19:40):
Paper bags are thirty dollars per thousand, And that changed everything.
Six or six dollars. Yeah, yeah, they were really working
at the Plastic Grocery sec Set Council. That was a
thing in nineteen eighty six. They got their hands on
the l A Times and said, hey, you make sure
you tell everybody that we've concluded plastic bags can be
reused in more than seventeen different ways. They said, it
(20:03):
can be used as a rap for frozen foods, a
jogger's windbreaker, or a beach bag. And then I'm gonna
go on, I'll bet the other what fourteen are like.
And a library bag and a school bag, and a
school lunch bag and a work lunch bag. Right, you
can then sacrifice a child with them, right. Well, actually, yeah,
(20:24):
that was a thing they had to teach Americans. These
things are really dangerous. Right. There's a famous photo of
plastics researcher with a i think a dry cleaning bag
over his head trying to take a breath, and they
really got the got the point across for sure also
though from the very not from the very beginning, but
once they caught on uh, in the mid eighties, people
(20:46):
did start kind of rallying against them. In a lot
of cases. Uh. There was a five hundred thousand member
group called the General Federation of Women's Clubs who in
eight six said, uh, no, these things are clearly not
going to be good for the environment, so let's let's
not use them. And that was six long time ago,
it was. And they got absolutely nowhere because I saw
(21:08):
UM about a decade ago they estimated that between five
hundred billion and one point five trillion plastic bags are
consumed globally each year, at a rate of more than
a million a minute. So they got nowhere. But there
have been some successes. UM McDonald's was the first actually
to pioneer single use packaging for food, and that meant
(21:31):
that they didn't have to have dishwashers at their restaurants,
they didn't have to have waiters to clear away plates,
and within I think forty years they finally were like, okay,
we'll give up our phone packaging, which I mean, there
are a few things more nostalgic for me. Then looking
at pictures of the old colored like phone packaging that mcdonald'
received that it's McDonald's phone packaging blue. There's no describe it, definitely,
(21:56):
but the mc d lt was the breaking point for everybody.
They're like, just too much got side hot, cool, side cool.
That's right. So that was the end of that, But
we still have a plastic problem, all right, So let's
take a break. Uh, we'll come back and we'll talk
about Amazon right after this this episode sponsored by Amazon. Well, uh,
(22:41):
we got to talk about it because especially, I mean
Amazon has been shipping things for a long time, but
especially I think when COVID took over, people really really
really started getting a lot of things delivered that they
used to routinely go to stores for. And um, they
have changed the way packaging works and the world and
(23:02):
especially the United States. Uh. There was a report by
a group called Oceanica uh that found that worldwide, Amazon
generated almost six million pounds of plastic packaging waste and
that um almost twenty four million pounds of that ended
up in waterways and oceans. And Amazon said that's a calculation.
(23:24):
They didn't show their math, but they so that's just
waterways and oceans, that's not landfill stuff. Um. And there's
I mean, there's a significant amount of what's called plastic
film used to make those puffy air pillows that they
use instead of styrofoam peanuts, which a lot of ways
are are much preferable to styrofoam peanuts. But there's way
better alternatives to even those um shipping pillows too, um
(23:47):
because it's made of plastic film, which is the same
type of plastic that those plastic grocery bags are made from,
and they're really hard to recycle. It takes a special facility.
So if you ever get the plastic pillow like shippers
and the mail from Amazon, and you have your plastic
grocery bags from publics or whatever grocery store you go to,
(24:08):
and you save those and you take them to your
grocery store and put them in the plastic bag recycling thing,
they will actually go take them and recycle them and
turn them into useful things like um, composite decking for
your house or something. That's a good tip. So it is,
but but just don't don't just throw it away, and
also don't use them to hold your recyclables and put
(24:29):
them in your recycling container because that that whole bag
of recyclables will get thrown out because those things will
screw up the normal recycling process so badly. Another good tip.
I got another good tip for you. Here in Atlanta,
we have a place called Charm uh the center for
hard to recycle materials. And Charm is one of our
favorite places to go to because you pull into Charm
(24:52):
and there are all these people in this huge parking
lot and all these various stations to help you recycle
anything you can think of. It can be your shredded documents,
it can be car batteries, it can be paint cans,
it can be your old uh computer desktop. Uh. They
(25:12):
they recycle almost anything you can think of. And I
guarantee you there are places in every major city and
probably even a lot of smaller towns that have a
Charm like place. Uh. And all you gotta do is
just save that stuff though in your car, take it
over there and they'll take care of it for you. Yes,
it's great. So um like Amazon is easy to pick
(25:35):
on because they're they're shipping so much stuff. They use
up so much material for shipping and packaging and um
cushioning and all of that. UM. But they're also easy
to pick on because if you look at what they're
doing in other countries, it shows like they could totally
revise stuff whenever they're forced to. They find innovative ways
(25:56):
to replace that stuff with more sustainable packaging. They don't
just say, like India says, hey, you can't use uh
this kind of tape anymore and these kinds of uh
packing peanuts. They don't say, oh, well, I guess we're
not gonna ship to Indian anymore. They figure it out
and they just don't implement those policies across the entire company,
which is maddening. Yeah, which we'll see. India has really
(26:20):
taken maybe the world's leadership stance on single use plastics
and dealing with it as a country. Germany's following suits.
So Amazon saying okay, well we'll start doing the same
thing in Germany. But it rather than just being like, okay,
it makes sense for us to just do it for
every country. If if they're not making money doing that
in other countries, they're going to hold out until they're
(26:42):
legally forced to or until enough countries require them to
that that's just what they use across the board, because
then it is cheaper than making two different kinds depending
on where they're shipping to. Uh. Those meal kit services
that everyone loves so much. Uh, this is a bit
of a mixed bag because on the surface, you look
(27:03):
at their packaging and the fact that some of these
boxes have up to two dozen individual packages of things. Uh.
And then you're talking about the packaging, you know, the
big box that it comes in and the smaller phone
box to insulate it. And then these ice packs that
a lot of times have chemicals that are very hard
to recycle. UM. But I did some digging in and
(27:26):
there are a lot of companies doing a lot better job. Um.
One thing that they do tout, which I think is true,
is that they really reduce a lot of food waste.
And so what you want to do is look at
the entire environmental footprint of an operation versus just buying
groceries at a grocery store. UH. And you know, it
kind of comes out even in some cases some companies
(27:48):
are better than others. I did see that Blue Apron
has about recyclable packaging and drain safe ice packs. Um
that you can just you know, drain yourself and then
recycled that package. So some are better than others. But
you know, if if you care about that kind of
thing and you like meal kits, I would encourage you
to investigate the services that speak to you environmentally. Yeah.
(28:11):
One two thou nineteen study found that Blue Apron specifically
had thirty three percent less emissions for from the same
meal that you would buy at a grocery store. Yeah,
and they haven't sponsored us in a long time, so no, no,
this is not bail. Right, So there's actually a pretty
big widespread push to innovate new packaging materials that are
(28:34):
easier to recycle, that are made from more recycled materials,
that are made from sustainable materials that are easily composted.
And there's you know, some competitors are better than others.
Some are already proving themselves is probably not the way
we want to go, but some other ones are like,
how it's a really good idea and we should figure
it out. Yeah. We talked about corn and quite a
(28:55):
bit in the bottled water up. Because they can take corn,
they can make it into a plastic. It's called p
L a polylactic acid, right, sure, and it's a plastic
resin it is uh not petroleum based. It can be composted,
but and I think we said this in the water
(29:16):
bottle water one too, Um, it's not compostable as in like, great,
I'll just buy corn bottles and throw them in my
compost bin. You can't do that in your backyard. It's
got to be like industrial composting, which is still good,
but you have to take to a industrial composting facility
or be involved in a program that will do that
for you, because there are those out there too. Yeah.
(29:38):
And then anything made with corn, they also have corn
based packing peanuts, um, which really they should figure out
how to make them from peanuts, don't you think just
to make it fully appropriate, or just put in popcorn
so the spongey and then everyone could just have a
snack eat it. Be like this popcorn is not very good,
but it's sustainable. I'll reuse it. The problem is is
(30:01):
anything you're making from corn, whether it's plastic or those
packing peanuts, is you're growing corn and you're diverting it
from the food system, um to other purposes. And I
remember we were all about ethanol back in the day. UM,
Corn based ethanol and and it's just for the same
reason it didn't pan out, because we should be using
(30:21):
food um crop land for growing food, not for growing plastic. Right.
Mushrooms is a really interesting alternative mycelium based packaging. It's
been around for a little bit since about the mid
two thousand's and uh, it seems like there's almost nothing
mushrooms can't do and fun Guy except get me to
(30:42):
eat them. But there's a really cool documentary about mushrooms
that Emily and I are going to watch them that
a couple of friends have told us about. It's sort
of a wonder uh not product but species um yeah,
food no thing. I think it's a kingdom. Okay, a
wonder kingdom. That's even better. Yeah, totally is like that
(31:04):
a lot. I could see that on a cape. But
they they have found that they can use it as
an alternative to styrofoam and even even other plastics. Is
for like cushioning things. Yeah, and what's cool is you
can grow fun Guy sustainably on like agricultural refuse right
that that's being composted. You could grow your your fun
(31:25):
Guy into exactly the shape that you want. Yeah, like
um our friend Addison Rex who runs wine Spies. When
you get a box from him, have you ever noticed, like,
how is this this cushioning exactly the right size for
this large bottle and the next to it is the
small bottle? And I'm not quite sure, but it's possible.
It's my celium packaging material and you can grow it
(31:47):
like that. The only thing that I saw that would
be problematic, it seems like at this point is a scalability. Uh,
and then lead time to produce, because I saw it
can take like seven days to grow a container. O. Interesting. Yeah,
I'll have to ask Addison. I owe him a phone call.
I tried to ask him, and he hasn't texted me
back yet. Forget that phone call. That's right, Thank you
(32:12):
for sticking up for him. Each Algae is another interesting alternative.
There was a contest just this year that offered over
a million bucks for developing plastic alternatives, and five of
the eight finalists were algae or seaweed based. Yeah. By
the way, that contest was um created by Tom Ford,
(32:32):
the fashion designer. Yeah really I love that guy. Man.
Does he make algae clothes? I guess he's going to
from now on. But he yeah, it was. It was
straight up for you know, to find an alternative plastic.
But it was a tom Ford Prize. Um, and what
did you say? Five of the eight finalists seeweed, seaweed
or algae, and I was looking at one of them.
(32:54):
There's a company from Berkeley I think called Sway, and
they basically grow seaweed like so automatically you're not using
terrestrial crop land. Um. It's also supposedly really restorative to
grow seaweed like off the coast for ecosystems and things
like that. And then also when you grow and make
(33:15):
plastic how to, algae is really easy to bio to graden.
In some cases you can actually eat it after you're done,
like that my popcorn peanut idea exactly. And this is remarkable. Um.
It depends on how far the algae is broken down
into the chemicals that make it up, but uh, some
(33:36):
of them, if they want to engineer this could even
retain some uh like anti microbial properties in the packaging itself.
The future is in fungi and algae. I feel like
it wouldn't algae or seaweed like a fuel source to like, yes, yeah,
they have not figured it out yet. But yes, it's
(33:56):
some some sort of by product you can raise algae
that will create some sort of fuel, biofuel. I don't
remember much about it. Very interesting. So there's another way
to make all this work. And it seems to be
figuring out how to make stuff more recyclable, how to
make packages more sustainable on a big scale. And a
(34:16):
lot of people have concluded that that is not going
to happen until countries and states and cities start requiring
that be the case from from manufacturers. And I say
we take a break and then come back and talk
about that. How about that, let's do it all right?
(34:54):
So you said that there is a better way forward,
but as we can tell from their practice is of
some large scale shipping companies, unless they are forced to,
then they're not gonna make those changes because it costs
them a little bit of money. Um. Obviously, the you know,
we could talk all day about going back in time
(35:14):
and doing things like we used to as far as
reusing things, and there are some companies that are doing
some cool stuff. I know that there are a couple
of like cleaning product home cleaning product companies where you
buy the glass bottle with the spray tops, and you
you mix your own like countertop spray and stuff like
in toilet spray, and you get these little packets and
(35:35):
you keep your glass bottles. And there are companies out
there doing things like this, but that is not likely
to catch on countrywide because people love just grabbing the
thing off the grocery shelf and buying their plastic bottle spray. Uh.
So that what it takes, and what you tease before
we broke was it's gonna take either people demanding it
(35:57):
or more probably the law saying you have to do it. Yeah,
you you you want to say that just consumers demanding it,
like you're saying would would make a change, But there's
not enough people doing that, right, So you want to
instead turn that ire to your elected officials and say, hey,
you need to do something about this. And it's happened
in some places, and it's all based on something called
(36:18):
the polluter pays principle, which dates all the way back
to nine two and basically says, if you're the one
who's manufacturing this plastic bag that gets thrown away in
a river, it should be up to you to deal
with that, like you should have to factor that into
your production costs. And uh, it's not to punish anybody,
but it's to do what's called internalizing the negative externalities.
(36:42):
So negative externality is you know that plastic bag, we
all pay because of that pollution that breaks down the
environment and effects the food chain. That's a negative externality
that's not included in the production cost of that that
plastic bag. And what the this this kind of polluter
pays principle says this, we need to figure out how
to include that in the cost so that the people
(37:03):
who are creating this this waste are the ones who
are actually paying for it in the end rather than
the rest of society, right. Uh. And that became the
basis for what's called extended producer responsibility e p R,
which means you ship something to a person and you
don't just go, well then uh no, that thing that
you package is still your responsibility as a company across
(37:25):
the entire life cycle of that product and when it
came in is the manufacturer should be responsible for for
whatever it is that they're putting out into the world. Uh.
There's something called the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
the o e c D that was established, I think
in seventy two, and they put out a report that
(37:49):
said that ten O E C D governments have some
kind of legislation in place for extended producer responsibility and uh,
the u S is not one of those. Correct, No,
it wasn't, and that was back in nineties six that
they released that report. So that's pretty impressive. But we
actually are familiar with them to some extent. If you've
(38:09):
ever taken your paint to a special center um or
your oil, your used car oil you took it back
to like the auto parts store or something like that,
you were probably engaging in some sort of extended producer
responsibility where the company that made that oil um is
responsible for making sure that it gets recycled and paying
(38:30):
for it to be recycled. That's just because some state
or city said that that's the law, and they have
to do that if they want to do business there.
But what they're trying to figure out with extended producer
responsibility laws today is to include all packaging, all shipping material,
all of that waste figuring out how to make that
fall into an extended producer responsibility model. And that's proving challenging,
(38:55):
Like you said, especially in the United States. Yeah, I
think India has a pretty good idea in creating a
kind of competition among companies. Um, they require that a
percentage of plastic produced by any manufacturer uh ends up
getting recycled, like it's a requirement. And if you do
better and if you overperform, you get credits basically, and
(39:15):
you can sell those credits to other companies who are underperforming.
So all of a sudden you have this competition going
on where a company is manufacturing something and they're really
incentivized too because not only are they are they getting
these credits, but like their competition um potentially is having
(39:36):
to pay them money because they're underperforming. So that's a
really good way to say, like, well get it in
gear then, because you're paying your competition to take care
of your waste for you. Yeah. Do you remember those
carbon trading schemes from you know, back in the two
thousand oughts that were kind of like buying carbon offsets. Yeah,
the same thing. It was, they put a cap on
carbon emissions and companies that didn't admit as much could
(39:59):
sell their cred it's or there whatever to the other
companies that did. And yeah, it's a great idea, so
it would makes sense to make an extended producer responsibility
scheme out of that. But that's that's that's how wide
open it is. Like people are like, however, you could
figure it out. That's the stage that we're out at
right now. However, you could figure out how to hold
people accountable, and we're just we're just not quite there yet. No, Uh,
(40:22):
it depends, you know, it's come down to the state level,
of course. Uh. One that was a coalition of states.
The lawmakers got together. They were known as the EPR
for Packaging Network and they I believe California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland,
New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington all got
together to introduce bills uh that you know, basically to
(40:45):
give some teeth and legislation to this kind of thing.
And I think that main past one a really big
one that saw that Basically, it was a fund that
manufacturers had to pay into. So based on how much
they were, uh like, what kind of packaging they produced,
they would pay into this fund, depending on how recyclable
(41:06):
it was, and it was like a sliding scale, and
that would that fund was then used to help municipalities,
um manage that packaging material, right, And then California saw
this and said, hold my kombucha, and they passed definitely
the strictest EPR packaging law in the country back in
I think two thousand, also known as I don't know
(41:31):
I said it like that. But under this law, by
two and ten years, all packaging in the state has
to be either recyclable or compostable. That's a huge leap forward.
Packaging has to be reduced in total by great of
all packaging has to be recycled aft for use. And
you might say, well, wait a minute, I mean, like,
(41:52):
how how would the companies make that happen. California said,
figure it out, make it happen. And you packaging industry,
you have to create uh an organization that basically oversees
this and make sure that industry is doing business in
California are recycling of their stuff. Um, even after they
(42:13):
sell it to somebody. You have to figure out a
way to make sure that the consumer out there who
has your Derrito bag in their hand is going to
recycle it. Yeah. Here's the problem though in America is
half of the country will say well yeah, but every
single penny of that is going to be passed down
to the consumer because the company isn't gonna take the hit,
(42:35):
so they'll just raise prices on products, and then that'll
lead to inflation and it comes out of our pocket.
So we'd rather just throw everything in the trash because
I don't even see what happens to it after at
least my house anyway. So I mean, that's a really
good point. I don't know if it's actually how it
would pan out. You'd think that that, of course the
company would pass along that cost, but I think there's
(42:57):
plenty of people out there who are like, you know,
I pay a little more for something that I knew
was going to be recycled, but I don't, I don't know.
I don't know. And the thing is, when more and
more of these laws come about, companies are going to
start creating subdivisions in their research and development divisions that
(43:18):
are figuring out new packaging that are going to like
follow these laws. And then I mean, if we sick
industry on a problem like sustainable packaging, and we make
it worth their while because they're required to figure this
out by law, it's going to get solved pretty quick.
I would guess. And then yes, at first, products probably
will be more expensive than they are pre you know,
(43:40):
the pre passing or inaction of these laws. But after
a while, those prices are going to come down because
those technologies will have been developed and will have been
deployed widely, and they'll be ubiquitous. And now all of
a sudden, all of our shipping and packaging material will
be able to be composted at home or recyclable, or
we'll just turn into pixie dust in your hands the
(44:01):
moment you finish that last. Well, we're in a situation though,
where we're so divided politically in this country, we are
having a hard time even getting together on something is
easily uh and obviously bad as plastic grocery bags. You know,
a lot of states have stepped up and said, you
know what, you can't use these anymore. You just can't
use plastic grocery bags. Or you know what, if you
(44:22):
want to use one, if you insist, then pay a
nickel for it, so we can at least take care
of the recycling. Uh. And then there are a lot
of states in this country that pass preemptive bands on
the bands and I looked it up and there. It's
on ballot pedia dot com if you want to look
at a list of them all. But there are a
lot of states that are like, you know what, We're
gonna pass a law that says there will never be
(44:44):
a law that bands plastic bags, that the citizens of
the state of North Dakota have a right to use
those plastic bags forever. I wrote an expletive on my line.
It's so maddening, I mean, and these are the same
people who are screaming about states rights. You know, it's
just disgusting, dude. A band on a band, a preemptive
(45:06):
band on a band for a municipality is just gross, unless,
of course it's you know, they're preventing discrimination or whatever.
I guess there's places for it or not. But yeah,
I guess when it's something that I agree with and
they're banning it, then I had a problem with it,
you know what I mean? Um, with the plastic bags, though,
there there always is another side of the coin. Like
(45:27):
obviously plastic grocery bags are are are pretty bad for
the environment, but um, they did do some studies in
California when they did ban these plastic bags, and it
did reduce use of those plastic bags. But they did
find that people started buying like a lot of people
reuse those things for like dog poop or uh b
lining trash bins or whatever. Like there's all like little
(45:49):
carb trash bends or or bathroom trash bends. Uh, they
all of a sudden had to start buying the thicker
plastic bags to do that stuff, which are or worse
for the environment. So uh, and then you know, of
course people would switch to like a cotton tote bag,
which is far and away like the worst kind of
thing that you can get as a cotton toat apparently,
(46:12):
so I saw that compared to plastic bags, just because
of the sheer number of plastic bags out there and
just the fact that they're petroleum based and all the
emissions that takes in creating them, that a cotton toat
is still better than plastic bags in Jenica. But if
you compare one cotton tote to one plastic bag, yeah,
the cotton toe is way worse because there's all sorts
(46:32):
of um pesticides and industrial fertilizer inputs required there. You know,
they they use fourth labor in China, which which supplies
the world with its cotton. There's some problems with cotton,
for sure. And I saw that one study found that
a cotton tote would have to be used every day
for fifty four years to outlive its environmental footprint. So yeah,
(46:56):
there's problems with cotton totes. The idea is there. It's
a good idea, but we've also seen like, okay, we
need to figure out something else. And there's this, um,
this designer name on your hind March who's just an
awesome designer. She uses like rainbow colors and everything, so
I like her stuff. She created a cotton tote back
in two thousand seven or eight and kind of kicked
(47:18):
off the trend of using you know, reusable shopping bags.
Um and it said like, I'm not a plastic bag. Well,
since then, since it's become clear that cotton toats are problematic,
she's created the same thing, but it's made out of
recycled plastics and it says, I am a plastic bag.
That's what you that's what you need to seek out. Yeah,
for sure, So do you got anything else? I got
(47:41):
nothing else. I don't either. Since we talked about on
your hind March, everybody, I think that means it's time
for listener mail. I'm gonna call this Shall we take
a break? Hey, guys, thanks for all the equality and lightning, information, humor,
and all the joy of the pot as brings me
and so many others. Is it time for a break? No?
(48:03):
Not yet. That's not that hard, right. I'm not sure
what it takes to convince one another to actually defer
taking a break, but it's been a fun anticipation game
for me for the better part of a year. I
almost did that today, just to sort of give Tony
here a little a little thrill, but I didn't. I've
listened since. But sometime late last year a dawned to me.
(48:25):
I couldn't actually recall either of you turning down taking
a break when you offer it up to each other.
I think we've done that before, at least once. Yeah,
it's almost always posted as a question, which seems like
it's giving your counterpart an option, yet the response is
always the same. I'm not sure if you guys have
a pack to never defer, but if you read this
out loud, then the beginning part of this email gives
(48:46):
me the joy of at least hearing a break question
atypical response, So thank you for that. Take care, keep
up the good work. And that is from Tony uh
coasters and um, the closest his middle name is an
I saw that cod. The closest you guys have come
(49:08):
recently to deferring a break was in the Infant Formula
episode and you have me on edge. Uh So, Tony,
just to let you know, we don't have a formula
for that per se, but we uh, we generally shoot
for about forty five minutes an episode ish and that
would mean the breaks fall around fifteen and thirty minutes. Yeah,
(49:28):
so we keep an eye on the clock and there
always just seems to be a natural sort of organic
spot within that rough time frame. Yeah, usda organic spot
to break in for sure. We don't have a pact
or anything like that either to differ. But also can
you imagine if one of us was like, and we're
about to take a break, so we'll be right back,
(49:48):
you know, like that the other one I think would
feel a little bit stepped on, I think, so I
know I wouldn't. I wouldn't want you to feel stepped
on either. So of course we're going to ask one another,
you know. Yeah, we don't step on each other. No,
and when we do, we edit it out. That's right. Uh, well,
thanks a lot, Tony and the Coasters. We appreciate that email.
It was a good one, a little mind boggling too,
(50:10):
And if you want to boggle our minds like Tony did,
you can send us an email. It's a stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Jos
and there's Chock and we're just a couple of dudes
yacking it up about packaging waste because this is stuff
you should know. Let's go. Yeah. Uh, it's always fun,
(00:25):
even after all these years, to just sort of not
know what's going to come out of your mouth at
the beginning of an episode. Same here, Um, oh like
as yourself. Yeah, I think this is a nice little
addendum or not addendum, but just in the same bucket
as our recent bottled water episode, and um, we did
when I'm Littering and the Ultra Processed Foods episode all
(00:47):
touched on this too. Yeah, and also of course recycling
in landfills. And I just I love at the end
of our whole career, we're gonna have these lovely buckets
of content, and this is one I'm most proud of,
our sort of environmental bucket. Yeah, it's good stuff. What
about our civics lessons bucket? Sure those are great, like
how to do a will and stuff like that. No, no,
(01:09):
like why jerrymandering is horrible? Oh sure, yeah those are
great too. Um, yeah, but these are recycling ones are
great and true crime forget about it, because you know
we're basically a true crime podcast. That So we're talking
today about packaging waste. And if you are alive today
in or the future, if you're listening to this in
(01:32):
the future, hello future, um, you are probably pretty well
aware that we have a lot of packaging. We use
a lot of packaging to put stuff in. Like I
remember buying a bottle of Crown Royal years and years
ago at the liquor store and they put it in
a paper bag when he thought it was the fanciest
(01:55):
liquor totally and you and you would leave with paper
bag and take it home and you would pull the
box of Crown Royal out of the paper bag, you'd
pull the velvet bag that the Crown Royal was an
out of the box, and then you'd pull the bottle
out of the velvet bag. And then finally, after you
unscrewed the cap, you could get to what you were
(02:16):
after all along, which was the delicious Crown Royal. Right,
and you would put your bag of weed and the
velvet bag and you would go to the Motley Crew concert.
That's right with your little nineties bowl, the little brass bowl,
that's right. And hey, this is not to disparage Crown
Royal because they have been friendly enough to send us
their delicious ryeh over and over again. They really took
(02:38):
care of Remember they gave us those bags that were monogrammed.
So yeah, no, not not anything to disparage on Crown Royal.
But it's it always struck me even back then, like
this is a lot of packaging, and how necessary is this?
And we finally reached the point where the rest of
society is caught up to me and are asking these
questions now. And the answer that we seem to be
(03:01):
coming up with is a lot of this stuff is
totally unnecessary, and the stuff that is necessary we have
to learn to make better and reuse better because we
are awash in garbage. And here in America it's kind
of tough to see unless you drive past the landfill
because we don't literally we used to. But what we
do is we dump our stuff either in landfills or
(03:21):
else we exported to other less developed countries to use
them as our landfills, which is really morally uncool, you know, oh,
absolutely uh, And it's funny I just noticed the other day. Uh,
the very popular by knacks now COVID at home COVID tests. Uh,
COVID came through our house again. We all got out everybody,
(03:43):
We're all great, We're all fine, but p s A
still out there. Be careful. But long and long and
short of it is, we're taking a lot of these
tests over the course of the two weeks, and they
are smaller now. I had to order some more, and
they are now. I don't know if you've used these.
They're not in the giant long box. And I thought, oh,
is there only one in there now? And no, they
(04:04):
just didn't need that big box. It's like the old
CED long box, the same. Yeah. And they came in
the mail. I was like, oh, well good, this thing
is probably not half the size, but probably close to it,
because there was no reason for those two COVID tests
just to be flopping around with all that real estate. Yeah,
so good for them, Yeah, good for you. By an X.
Did you get him in the mail because Joe Biden
(04:25):
sent him to you? Joe Biden, I did, uh send
off for the free one from the government. But I
also had to you know, we we just keep a
stock in the house because we like to just make
sure we're keeping everyone safe. Definitely. And you have a
bowl full of condoms by your front door too, exactly
(04:47):
except ours is like, uh, give a penny, take a penny,
You take a condom, you gotta leave it, the condom
of equal or lesser size? What they? What am I
doing to call them? Like Coney Island whitefishes? That's right,
he's in New York. Oh God, and you need to
clean that bowl out, chuck. Oh. Can we talk about
(05:07):
packaging waste? Yes, let's talk about this because give this.
In the United States, of municipal solid waste, that's everything
that includes old washing machines for Pete's sake. Of municipal
solid waste is packaging containers, stuff that the stuff we're
actually buying comes in, or is shipped in, or is
(05:27):
transported to the story in right, So if we can
do something about that, if we can reduce the amount
of packaging or make the packaging we use more recyclable,
that would have an enormous impact on our landfill footprint
just out of the gate. Uh, and we do a
decent you know, I don't even know. Decent is such
(05:48):
a term that it's all over the place according to
who you are. So I don't even want to use it.
But we have put a dent in this packaging waste
with our recycling, at least compared to the past. Maybe
that's the safest way to say it. Yeah, we've definitely
gotten better because in nineteen sixty about a tenth of
packaging waste was recycled. Uhen was the most recent year
(06:11):
we have. We're up to packaging waste being recycled, but
that still means that they're uh, let me see here.
Plastic ten million what is this tons? Yes, ten million
tons of plastic still end up in the landfills out
of million total. Yeah, seven million out of twelve million
(06:32):
of wood aluminium. You would think that's the easiest thing
to recycle. Everyone throws their aluminum cans recycling, right, Not true?
About half one million aluminum cans end up in landfills
with two million total. Yeah, that's unconscionable. Yeah, aluminum is
I've seen it described as infinitely recyclable. You can just
(06:54):
keep making the same aluminum can over and over again,
if you'll just recycle it rather than diverted to land
all that's pretty bad. Two million or one million landfilled
out of two million. On the other end, cardboard, we're
really really good that recycling cardboard. People recycle it. It's
also easy to recycle, so it gets recycled. Out of
(07:15):
forty two million tons of paper and cardboard that was
generated for packaging alone, just packaging everybody, I'm not including
like you know, um uh, construction paper from elementary schools,
none of that. This is all just packaging. In two
thousand and eighteen in the U S alone, out of
forty two million, only five million of that five million
tons ended up in the landfill. So that's really really good.
(07:37):
So cardboards not the problem as far as like packaging
and shipping and all of that stuff goes because a
lot of it, most of it gets recycled. The big
problem isn't even aluminum cans. The problem, chuck is polastic. Yeah,
plastics a big problem, and a lot of this again
overlaps with our bottled water up. But and we'll talk
(07:58):
about plastic all throughout this episode. Yeah, and when when
you think plastic, that's usually especially when you're talking about
plastic packaging waste, you think bottled waters or something like that,
or water bottles. Um but it can be any kind
of single use plastic where it can be like a
derrito wrapper that's made of plastic, styrofoam packing peanuts, that's
a kind of plastic too, it's a polystyrene um. Plastic
(08:22):
shows up in all sorts of other ways in other places,
especially with plaques or packaging. And the other thing that
you have to remember is this, think about how light
plastic is. Okay, ten ten million tons of plastic. That
is so much plastic in real terms, in real life
(08:43):
terms out there in landfills are in the environment even
worse that we're throwing away every year, every single year. Yeah,
it's really unnerving when you get a product that is
shrink wrapped in plastic that doesn't need to be. It's
you know, yeah, I blame the Thailand All Poisoner for that. Yeah,
(09:05):
but really remember they were the ones who triggered tamper
proof packaging and like putting everything in like shrink wrap
and stuff. Yeah, but as a tape measure, it's going
to be tampered with. But I think that that's an
extension of that impulse that was originally created by the
Thailand All Poisoner that tamper proof packaging got extended to everything. Yeah,
(09:27):
I guess so, And I know some of it is
to protect the thing. But like, let's say you go
out and get like a screwdriver set. They're not gonna
sell you eight screwdrivers in a little like vinyl bag.
Like they sell you eight screwdrivers and one of those
huge square, you know, molded plastic things that are a
impossible to open. So they're annoying. But it's just it
(09:51):
just drives me crazy, drives me crazy. Have you tried
practicing opening them screw driver? Sure, you gotta get a
like a carpet knife? What what brand do you use?
Carpet knife? No? But I mean you're you're screwdriver. When
you're buying that big box of screwdrivers? What brand are
(10:11):
you buying? I feel like in being set up for
something that I don't understand. So I'm just gonna go
and say Craftsman. Okay, that's why it was. It was
a rhetorical question. There's no wrong answer. But I I
don't have a problem opening and closing the plastic box
with de Walt brand tools. Well, I got a lot
of d Walt stuff. I love the Walt. In fact,
(10:33):
most of my major power tools are de Walt. But
you know, I'm I'm just remembering. I shouldn't have said screwdrivers.
I should have said like wrenches, because the wrenches I
bought the wrench set came like that. I actually found
a screwdriver set where it had twelve screwdrivers in and
it was plastic, but it was in one little plastic
(10:53):
screw lid container, and it seemed a lot better than
the other alternative at least. Yeah. The next best step
after that is there's just some dude who hangs out
at the store that carries him home in his arms
and dumps him onto your floor and then leaves like
that kind of packaging. Yeah, he opens his overcoat and
they're all all the screw drives are hanging there. Right.
(11:15):
You just take your pick. Uh, let's talk a little
bit about the history before we break. I think because
I always think of Emily's grandparents, Charlie who has left us,
and then Mary, who was still chugging along at a
hundred and one years old. Believe it or not. Uh,
they didn't have garbage collection for almost their entire lives
in rural Ohio. Uh. They didn't want to pay for it,
(11:38):
and they didn't need it because they reused, recycled, and
when I say reused, they really reused. They composted. Um.
They did all the old things because they're that old
school Depression era generation to where you appreciate things like
that and you don't want to waste. And that's the
way that used to just be the norm. Pele would
(12:00):
buy and ship things and barrels and wooden boxes and
they would reuse those, and glass bottles that they would reuse.
They would wrap up cheese and meats and things and
cloth forever that you would reuse and then eventually like
butcher paper. Uh. And that was just they didn't even
have regular garbage pickup until about the mid eighteen hundreds here, right,
(12:22):
because because again they didn't need it. I mean, yeah,
somebody sent you something and it wouldn't crate. You'd build
an addition on your house exactly. It was like that,
Like they would use glass bottles and then if the
glass bottle broke, they would fix it. And I was like,
how would they fix it? And apparently there's something called
um water water glass. It's sodium silicate and it's a
(12:44):
spread herble kind of glass where if you heat it up.
It basically fills in all the cracks and it's good
as new. I wonder if that's how they do. Should
ask Emily's dad the window chips, Oh, I wonder too.
Emily used to do that for a little while because
her dad has a Syneco glass. If you're in near Akron, Ohio,
that's the place to get your windows replaced. But Emily
(13:05):
did that for a summer, she fixed glass chips. Yeah,
you should definitely ask her that. So. Um, so, we
didn't have garbage pickup because we didn't need it because
everybody was reusing stuff food waste, like you said, they
were composting it, or they would just throw it out
to for the livestock, the hogs, the chickens, whatever they
would eat the whatever food wasting. I would guess that
(13:26):
they had much less food waste than we have today.
But again, there wasn't much need for garbage collection. That's
not to say there wasn't garbage. I saw in the
eighteenth century in New York they built appear in the
East River, purpose built to dump garbage into the East River.
The downside, not like they weren't doing it, but it
was just so minuscule compared to the amount of waste
(13:47):
that we generate today that it is essentially negligible. Yeah. Absolutely,
eighteen fifty six is kind of a fun little fact
to keep in your pocket. Uh. Corrugated paper, what would
become corrugated cardboard, was invented in eighteen fifty six in
England because of those big tall hats to keep those
things stiff. Pretty cool, I think so too. But then
(14:08):
it became a thing. Well, yeah, the slowly started replacing
the wooden crates right for shipping, so you couldn't build
an addition on your house anymore, that's right. But it
was a lot lighter, it was a lot easier, It
used up a lot less coal on the ship to
move across the sea. Um. It was kind of a
step up for sure. Um. And then Nabisco was the
first one to start selling single serve individual packaged foods
(14:33):
all the way back in uh. And it it makes sense,
you know, in in in one way, but if you
you know, start caring about the environment, it makes like
zero sense whatsoever. Um. But they were the ones who
kicked all that off. Yeah. I found that kids, and
I remember this about myself, are very into those things.
I think just because they're small. Like I remember being
(14:54):
obsessed with the kids who could afford the little individual Pringles,
not the ones they sell in the store now, but
they used to sell these little plastic peel away top
Pringles servings, and the kids in school that had those.
I was so jealous of the they're rich kids. I
had my Charles Chips tin can basket out of your
(15:17):
shirt and carried around school till lunch. But Kellogg's you mentioned,
or maybe you didn't, but they were the first cereal box,
obviously in nineteen o six, and then beer cans. We're
steel originally they started in ninety six, Thank you Cores.
Then they switched to aluminum in fifty nine. But uh,
(15:39):
and this is very cool when you go look at
an old like I think smoking the Bandit even had
these where you had to use a can opener to
open a beer back in the day. Very cool. Yeah,
they should bring that back. The poll tabs better because
you have to keep a can opener on you, you
know well. And the poll tabs, even though they were
bad for the environment. You could make an emergency phone
call at a telephone booth if you really you could
(16:01):
use that as a fake coin of slug now and
in war Games, Matthew Broderick can dow this trick where
he unscrewed the receiver where you're talking to it, and
then like, I don't think it's true at all. I
think they literally just made this up for the movie
and used a poll tab to make it like an
electric connection and like kind of hot wired the phone.
Just give it a dial town. I'm sure it was
(16:24):
not true. I got you. But used to see those
all over the place, the poll tabs all over the
place on the ground. Yeah, I was up in my
attic the other day, um, and there was an old
poll tab old Milwaukee Can. It's funny, how old is Yeah,
it's funny when you find those these days. Now. I
know it doesn't go back any any earlier than nineteen
that's right. So, Um, like we said they were using
(16:47):
dumps and horrible places like the they would use wetlands
back in the day to dump trash, and apparently Boston's
Back Bay was a wetland that was originally a garbage dump.
And if you've ever been into back Bay, that's fairly
ironic because it's one of the more well healed parts
of Boston today, they built up real she she um
(17:07):
area that has like an anthropology and everything on it. Yeah,
and we should do an entire episode, I think on
Fresh Kills. That is basically what Staten Island used to be,
almost entirely. Well that's not true, but it was a
twenty two hundred acre landfill on Staten Island after I
(17:27):
believe after World War Two. Yeah, and I just it's
such a rabbit hole. I started looking into Fresh Kills
and I had to stop and I was like, we
just need to make this an episode because it was
a remarkably large It was the largest one in the world,
largest landfill, and they're reclaiming it and it's by thirty
I'm sorry, by uh, it's gonna be finished as as
(17:51):
a park, fresh Kill Park. I've seen some of the
artists rendering of it. It's gonna look really neat, very peaceful. Yeah,
it would be a good episode, though. I think it's
interesting history. Okay, deal, So those those dumps that we
started to generate, like every city starting in the twentieth
century really started to need more and more dumps and
(18:11):
more and more space for landfills um and it grew
because our single use packaging grew, we just started throwing
stuff away, And in our Littering episode, I think we
specifically said that the plastic garbage bag people basically got
together and said, we need to teach everybody to start
throwing things away. They keep reusing this plastic stuff. So
(18:34):
they basically created a public information campaign to teach everybody
to throw stuff in the trash and to take their
trash out to the garbage can every night, and to
do this every single day. They taught America to throw
stuff away, which is just so villainous, But that really
kind of was the beginning around the middle of the
last century of our obsession with single use um packaging. Basically, yeah,
(18:59):
I think that glad bag first came around the late sixties,
and then in the mid just before that, in the
mid sixties, the grocery bag, the little light groceries bag
that has been such a problem in the world, that
came around in sixty five. But if you don't remember
those when you were like like our age and you
(19:19):
were a kid in the seventies and eighties, it's because
they people still generally used paper sacks. They were really
slow to catch on those plastic bags. But eventually, in
night five there was a conference of the Society of
Plastic Engineers, and then someone stood up on a stage
and said, hey, these things are twenty four dollars per thousand.
(19:40):
Paper bags are thirty dollars per thousand, And that changed everything.
Six or six dollars. Yeah, yeah, they were really working
at the Plastic Grocery sec Set Council. That was a
thing in nineteen eighty six. They got their hands on
the l A Times and said, hey, you make sure
you tell everybody that we've concluded plastic bags can be
reused in more than seventeen different ways. They said, it
(20:03):
can be used as a rap for frozen foods, a
jogger's windbreaker, or a beach bag. And then I'm gonna
go on, I'll bet the other what fourteen are like.
And a library bag and a school bag, and a
school lunch bag and a work lunch bag. Right, you
can then sacrifice a child with them, right. Well, actually, yeah,
(20:24):
that was a thing they had to teach Americans. These
things are really dangerous. Right. There's a famous photo of
plastics researcher with a i think a dry cleaning bag
over his head trying to take a breath, and they
really got the got the point across for sure also
though from the very not from the very beginning, but
once they caught on uh, in the mid eighties, people
(20:46):
did start kind of rallying against them. In a lot
of cases. Uh. There was a five hundred thousand member
group called the General Federation of Women's Clubs who in
eight six said, uh, no, these things are clearly not
going to be good for the environment, so let's let's
not use them. And that was six long time ago,
it was. And they got absolutely nowhere because I saw
(21:08):
UM about a decade ago they estimated that between five
hundred billion and one point five trillion plastic bags are
consumed globally each year, at a rate of more than
a million a minute. So they got nowhere. But there
have been some successes. UM McDonald's was the first actually
to pioneer single use packaging for food, and that meant
(21:31):
that they didn't have to have dishwashers at their restaurants,
they didn't have to have waiters to clear away plates,
and within I think forty years they finally were like, okay,
we'll give up our phone packaging, which I mean, there
are a few things more nostalgic for me. Then looking
at pictures of the old colored like phone packaging that mcdonald'
received that it's McDonald's phone packaging blue. There's no describe it, definitely,
(21:56):
but the mc d lt was the breaking point for everybody.
They're like, just too much got side hot, cool, side cool.
That's right. So that was the end of that, But
we still have a plastic problem, all right, So let's
take a break. Uh, we'll come back and we'll talk
about Amazon right after this this episode sponsored by Amazon. Well, uh,
(22:41):
we got to talk about it because especially, I mean
Amazon has been shipping things for a long time, but
especially I think when COVID took over, people really really
really started getting a lot of things delivered that they
used to routinely go to stores for. And um, they
have changed the way packaging works and the world and
(23:02):
especially the United States. Uh. There was a report by
a group called Oceanica uh that found that worldwide, Amazon
generated almost six million pounds of plastic packaging waste and
that um almost twenty four million pounds of that ended
up in waterways and oceans. And Amazon said that's a calculation.
(23:24):
They didn't show their math, but they so that's just
waterways and oceans, that's not landfill stuff. Um. And there's
I mean, there's a significant amount of what's called plastic
film used to make those puffy air pillows that they
use instead of styrofoam peanuts, which a lot of ways
are are much preferable to styrofoam peanuts. But there's way
better alternatives to even those um shipping pillows too, um
(23:47):
because it's made of plastic film, which is the same
type of plastic that those plastic grocery bags are made from,
and they're really hard to recycle. It takes a special facility.
So if you ever get the plastic pillow like shippers
and the mail from Amazon, and you have your plastic
grocery bags from publics or whatever grocery store you go to,
(24:08):
and you save those and you take them to your
grocery store and put them in the plastic bag recycling thing,
they will actually go take them and recycle them and
turn them into useful things like um, composite decking for
your house or something. That's a good tip. So it is,
but but just don't don't just throw it away, and
also don't use them to hold your recyclables and put
(24:29):
them in your recycling container because that that whole bag
of recyclables will get thrown out because those things will
screw up the normal recycling process so badly. Another good tip.
I got another good tip for you. Here in Atlanta,
we have a place called Charm uh the center for
hard to recycle materials. And Charm is one of our
favorite places to go to because you pull into Charm
(24:52):
and there are all these people in this huge parking
lot and all these various stations to help you recycle
anything you can think of. It can be your shredded documents,
it can be car batteries, it can be paint cans,
it can be your old uh computer desktop. Uh. They
(25:12):
they recycle almost anything you can think of. And I
guarantee you there are places in every major city and
probably even a lot of smaller towns that have a
Charm like place. Uh. And all you gotta do is
just save that stuff though in your car, take it
over there and they'll take care of it for you. Yes,
it's great. So um like Amazon is easy to pick
(25:35):
on because they're they're shipping so much stuff. They use
up so much material for shipping and packaging and um
cushioning and all of that. UM. But they're also easy
to pick on because if you look at what they're
doing in other countries, it shows like they could totally
revise stuff whenever they're forced to. They find innovative ways
(25:56):
to replace that stuff with more sustainable packaging. They don't
just say, like India says, hey, you can't use uh
this kind of tape anymore and these kinds of uh
packing peanuts. They don't say, oh, well, I guess we're
not gonna ship to Indian anymore. They figure it out
and they just don't implement those policies across the entire company,
which is maddening. Yeah, which we'll see. India has really
(26:20):
taken maybe the world's leadership stance on single use plastics
and dealing with it as a country. Germany's following suits.
So Amazon saying okay, well we'll start doing the same
thing in Germany. But it rather than just being like, okay,
it makes sense for us to just do it for
every country. If if they're not making money doing that
in other countries, they're going to hold out until they're
(26:42):
legally forced to or until enough countries require them to
that that's just what they use across the board, because
then it is cheaper than making two different kinds depending
on where they're shipping to. Uh. Those meal kit services
that everyone loves so much. Uh, this is a bit
of a mixed bag because on the surface, you look
(27:03):
at their packaging and the fact that some of these
boxes have up to two dozen individual packages of things. Uh.
And then you're talking about the packaging, you know, the
big box that it comes in and the smaller phone
box to insulate it. And then these ice packs that
a lot of times have chemicals that are very hard
to recycle. UM. But I did some digging in and
(27:26):
there are a lot of companies doing a lot better job. Um.
One thing that they do tout, which I think is true,
is that they really reduce a lot of food waste.
And so what you want to do is look at
the entire environmental footprint of an operation versus just buying
groceries at a grocery store. UH. And you know, it
kind of comes out even in some cases some companies
(27:48):
are better than others. I did see that Blue Apron
has about recyclable packaging and drain safe ice packs. Um
that you can just you know, drain yourself and then
recycled that package. So some are better than others. But
you know, if if you care about that kind of
thing and you like meal kits, I would encourage you
to investigate the services that speak to you environmentally. Yeah.
(28:11):
One two thou nineteen study found that Blue Apron specifically
had thirty three percent less emissions for from the same
meal that you would buy at a grocery store. Yeah,
and they haven't sponsored us in a long time, so no, no,
this is not bail. Right, So there's actually a pretty
big widespread push to innovate new packaging materials that are
(28:34):
easier to recycle, that are made from more recycled materials,
that are made from sustainable materials that are easily composted.
And there's you know, some competitors are better than others.
Some are already proving themselves is probably not the way
we want to go, but some other ones are like,
how it's a really good idea and we should figure
it out. Yeah. We talked about corn and quite a
(28:55):
bit in the bottled water up. Because they can take corn,
they can make it into a plastic. It's called p
L a polylactic acid, right, sure, and it's a plastic
resin it is uh not petroleum based. It can be composted,
but and I think we said this in the water
(29:16):
bottle water one too, Um, it's not compostable as in like, great,
I'll just buy corn bottles and throw them in my
compost bin. You can't do that in your backyard. It's
got to be like industrial composting, which is still good,
but you have to take to a industrial composting facility
or be involved in a program that will do that
for you, because there are those out there too. Yeah.
(29:38):
And then anything made with corn, they also have corn
based packing peanuts, um, which really they should figure out
how to make them from peanuts, don't you think just
to make it fully appropriate, or just put in popcorn
so the spongey and then everyone could just have a
snack eat it. Be like this popcorn is not very good,
but it's sustainable. I'll reuse it. The problem is is
(30:01):
anything you're making from corn, whether it's plastic or those
packing peanuts, is you're growing corn and you're diverting it
from the food system, um to other purposes. And I
remember we were all about ethanol back in the day. UM,
Corn based ethanol and and it's just for the same
reason it didn't pan out, because we should be using
(30:21):
food um crop land for growing food, not for growing plastic. Right.
Mushrooms is a really interesting alternative mycelium based packaging. It's
been around for a little bit since about the mid
two thousand's and uh, it seems like there's almost nothing
mushrooms can't do and fun Guy except get me to
(30:42):
eat them. But there's a really cool documentary about mushrooms
that Emily and I are going to watch them that
a couple of friends have told us about. It's sort
of a wonder uh not product but species um yeah,
food no thing. I think it's a kingdom. Okay, a
wonder kingdom. That's even better. Yeah, totally is like that
(31:04):
a lot. I could see that on a cape. But
they they have found that they can use it as
an alternative to styrofoam and even even other plastics. Is
for like cushioning things. Yeah, and what's cool is you
can grow fun Guy sustainably on like agricultural refuse right
that that's being composted. You could grow your your fun
(31:25):
Guy into exactly the shape that you want. Yeah, like
um our friend Addison Rex who runs wine Spies. When
you get a box from him, have you ever noticed, like,
how is this this cushioning exactly the right size for
this large bottle and the next to it is the
small bottle? And I'm not quite sure, but it's possible.
It's my celium packaging material and you can grow it
(31:47):
like that. The only thing that I saw that would
be problematic, it seems like at this point is a scalability. Uh,
and then lead time to produce, because I saw it
can take like seven days to grow a container. O. Interesting. Yeah,
I'll have to ask Addison. I owe him a phone call.
I tried to ask him, and he hasn't texted me
back yet. Forget that phone call. That's right, Thank you
(32:12):
for sticking up for him. Each Algae is another interesting alternative.
There was a contest just this year that offered over
a million bucks for developing plastic alternatives, and five of
the eight finalists were algae or seaweed based. Yeah. By
the way, that contest was um created by Tom Ford,
(32:32):
the fashion designer. Yeah really I love that guy. Man.
Does he make algae clothes? I guess he's going to
from now on. But he yeah, it was. It was
straight up for you know, to find an alternative plastic.
But it was a tom Ford Prize. Um, and what
did you say? Five of the eight finalists seeweed, seaweed
or algae, and I was looking at one of them.
(32:54):
There's a company from Berkeley I think called Sway, and
they basically grow seaweed like so automatically you're not using
terrestrial crop land. Um. It's also supposedly really restorative to
grow seaweed like off the coast for ecosystems and things
like that. And then also when you grow and make
(33:15):
plastic how to, algae is really easy to bio to graden.
In some cases you can actually eat it after you're done,
like that my popcorn peanut idea exactly. And this is remarkable. Um.
It depends on how far the algae is broken down
into the chemicals that make it up, but uh, some
(33:36):
of them, if they want to engineer this could even
retain some uh like anti microbial properties in the packaging itself.
The future is in fungi and algae. I feel like
it wouldn't algae or seaweed like a fuel source to like, yes, yeah,
they have not figured it out yet. But yes, it's
(33:56):
some some sort of by product you can raise algae
that will create some sort of fuel, biofuel. I don't
remember much about it. Very interesting. So there's another way
to make all this work. And it seems to be
figuring out how to make stuff more recyclable, how to
make packages more sustainable on a big scale. And a
(34:16):
lot of people have concluded that that is not going
to happen until countries and states and cities start requiring
that be the case from from manufacturers. And I say
we take a break and then come back and talk
about that. How about that, let's do it all right?
(34:54):
So you said that there is a better way forward,
but as we can tell from their practice is of
some large scale shipping companies, unless they are forced to,
then they're not gonna make those changes because it costs
them a little bit of money. Um. Obviously, the you know,
we could talk all day about going back in time
(35:14):
and doing things like we used to as far as
reusing things, and there are some companies that are doing
some cool stuff. I know that there are a couple
of like cleaning product home cleaning product companies where you
buy the glass bottle with the spray tops, and you
you mix your own like countertop spray and stuff like
in toilet spray, and you get these little packets and
(35:35):
you keep your glass bottles. And there are companies out
there doing things like this, but that is not likely
to catch on countrywide because people love just grabbing the
thing off the grocery shelf and buying their plastic bottle spray. Uh.
So that what it takes, and what you tease before
we broke was it's gonna take either people demanding it
(35:57):
or more probably the law saying you have to do it. Yeah,
you you you want to say that just consumers demanding it,
like you're saying would would make a change, But there's
not enough people doing that, right, So you want to
instead turn that ire to your elected officials and say, hey,
you need to do something about this. And it's happened
in some places, and it's all based on something called
(36:18):
the polluter pays principle, which dates all the way back
to nine two and basically says, if you're the one
who's manufacturing this plastic bag that gets thrown away in
a river, it should be up to you to deal
with that, like you should have to factor that into
your production costs. And uh, it's not to punish anybody,
but it's to do what's called internalizing the negative externalities.
(36:42):
So negative externality is you know that plastic bag, we
all pay because of that pollution that breaks down the
environment and effects the food chain. That's a negative externality
that's not included in the production cost of that that
plastic bag. And what the this this kind of polluter
pays principle says this, we need to figure out how
to include that in the cost so that the people
(37:03):
who are creating this this waste are the ones who
are actually paying for it in the end rather than
the rest of society, right. Uh. And that became the
basis for what's called extended producer responsibility e p R,
which means you ship something to a person and you
don't just go, well then uh no, that thing that
you package is still your responsibility as a company across
(37:25):
the entire life cycle of that product and when it
came in is the manufacturer should be responsible for for
whatever it is that they're putting out into the world. Uh.
There's something called the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
the o e c D that was established, I think
in seventy two, and they put out a report that
(37:49):
said that ten O E C D governments have some
kind of legislation in place for extended producer responsibility and uh,
the u S is not one of those. Correct, No,
it wasn't, and that was back in nineties six that
they released that report. So that's pretty impressive. But we
actually are familiar with them to some extent. If you've
(38:09):
ever taken your paint to a special center um or
your oil, your used car oil you took it back
to like the auto parts store or something like that,
you were probably engaging in some sort of extended producer
responsibility where the company that made that oil um is
responsible for making sure that it gets recycled and paying
(38:30):
for it to be recycled. That's just because some state
or city said that that's the law, and they have
to do that if they want to do business there.
But what they're trying to figure out with extended producer
responsibility laws today is to include all packaging, all shipping material,
all of that waste figuring out how to make that
fall into an extended producer responsibility model. And that's proving challenging,
(38:55):
Like you said, especially in the United States. Yeah, I
think India has a pretty good idea in creating a
kind of competition among companies. Um, they require that a
percentage of plastic produced by any manufacturer uh ends up
getting recycled, like it's a requirement. And if you do
better and if you overperform, you get credits basically, and
(39:15):
you can sell those credits to other companies who are underperforming.
So all of a sudden you have this competition going
on where a company is manufacturing something and they're really
incentivized too because not only are they are they getting
these credits, but like their competition um potentially is having
(39:36):
to pay them money because they're underperforming. So that's a
really good way to say, like, well get it in
gear then, because you're paying your competition to take care
of your waste for you. Yeah. Do you remember those
carbon trading schemes from you know, back in the two
thousand oughts that were kind of like buying carbon offsets. Yeah,
the same thing. It was, they put a cap on
carbon emissions and companies that didn't admit as much could
(39:59):
sell their cred it's or there whatever to the other
companies that did. And yeah, it's a great idea, so
it would makes sense to make an extended producer responsibility
scheme out of that. But that's that's that's how wide
open it is. Like people are like, however, you could
figure it out. That's the stage that we're out at
right now. However, you could figure out how to hold
people accountable, and we're just we're just not quite there yet. No, Uh,
(40:22):
it depends, you know, it's come down to the state level,
of course. Uh. One that was a coalition of states.
The lawmakers got together. They were known as the EPR
for Packaging Network and they I believe California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland,
New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington all got
together to introduce bills uh that you know, basically to
(40:45):
give some teeth and legislation to this kind of thing.
And I think that main past one a really big
one that saw that Basically, it was a fund that
manufacturers had to pay into. So based on how much
they were, uh like, what kind of packaging they produced,
they would pay into this fund, depending on how recyclable
(41:06):
it was, and it was like a sliding scale, and
that would that fund was then used to help municipalities,
um manage that packaging material, right, And then California saw
this and said, hold my kombucha, and they passed definitely
the strictest EPR packaging law in the country back in
I think two thousand, also known as I don't know
(41:31):
I said it like that. But under this law, by
two and ten years, all packaging in the state has
to be either recyclable or compostable. That's a huge leap forward.
Packaging has to be reduced in total by great of
all packaging has to be recycled aft for use. And
you might say, well, wait a minute, I mean, like,
(41:52):
how how would the companies make that happen. California said,
figure it out, make it happen. And you packaging industry,
you have to create uh an organization that basically oversees
this and make sure that industry is doing business in
California are recycling of their stuff. Um, even after they
(42:13):
sell it to somebody. You have to figure out a
way to make sure that the consumer out there who
has your Derrito bag in their hand is going to
recycle it. Yeah. Here's the problem though in America is
half of the country will say well yeah, but every
single penny of that is going to be passed down
to the consumer because the company isn't gonna take the hit,
(42:35):
so they'll just raise prices on products, and then that'll
lead to inflation and it comes out of our pocket.
So we'd rather just throw everything in the trash because
I don't even see what happens to it after at
least my house anyway. So I mean, that's a really
good point. I don't know if it's actually how it
would pan out. You'd think that that, of course the
company would pass along that cost, but I think there's
(42:57):
plenty of people out there who are like, you know,
I pay a little more for something that I knew
was going to be recycled, but I don't, I don't know.
I don't know. And the thing is, when more and
more of these laws come about, companies are going to
start creating subdivisions in their research and development divisions that
(43:18):
are figuring out new packaging that are going to like
follow these laws. And then I mean, if we sick
industry on a problem like sustainable packaging, and we make
it worth their while because they're required to figure this
out by law, it's going to get solved pretty quick.
I would guess. And then yes, at first, products probably
will be more expensive than they are pre you know,
(43:40):
the pre passing or inaction of these laws. But after
a while, those prices are going to come down because
those technologies will have been developed and will have been
deployed widely, and they'll be ubiquitous. And now all of
a sudden, all of our shipping and packaging material will
be able to be composted at home or recyclable, or
we'll just turn into pixie dust in your hands the
(44:01):
moment you finish that last. Well, we're in a situation though,
where we're so divided politically in this country, we are
having a hard time even getting together on something is
easily uh and obviously bad as plastic grocery bags. You know,
a lot of states have stepped up and said, you
know what, you can't use these anymore. You just can't
use plastic grocery bags. Or you know what, if you
(44:22):
want to use one, if you insist, then pay a
nickel for it, so we can at least take care
of the recycling. Uh. And then there are a lot
of states in this country that pass preemptive bands on
the bands and I looked it up and there. It's
on ballot pedia dot com if you want to look
at a list of them all. But there are a
lot of states that are like, you know what, We're
gonna pass a law that says there will never be
(44:44):
a law that bands plastic bags, that the citizens of
the state of North Dakota have a right to use
those plastic bags forever. I wrote an expletive on my line.
It's so maddening, I mean, and these are the same
people who are screaming about states rights. You know, it's
just disgusting, dude. A band on a band, a preemptive
(45:06):
band on a band for a municipality is just gross, unless,
of course it's you know, they're preventing discrimination or whatever.
I guess there's places for it or not. But yeah,
I guess when it's something that I agree with and
they're banning it, then I had a problem with it,
you know what I mean? Um, with the plastic bags, though,
there there always is another side of the coin. Like
(45:27):
obviously plastic grocery bags are are are pretty bad for
the environment, but um, they did do some studies in
California when they did ban these plastic bags, and it
did reduce use of those plastic bags. But they did
find that people started buying like a lot of people
reuse those things for like dog poop or uh b
lining trash bins or whatever. Like there's all like little
(45:49):
carb trash bends or or bathroom trash bends. Uh, they
all of a sudden had to start buying the thicker
plastic bags to do that stuff, which are or worse
for the environment. So uh, and then you know, of
course people would switch to like a cotton tote bag,
which is far and away like the worst kind of
thing that you can get as a cotton toat apparently,
(46:12):
so I saw that compared to plastic bags, just because
of the sheer number of plastic bags out there and
just the fact that they're petroleum based and all the
emissions that takes in creating them, that a cotton toat
is still better than plastic bags in Jenica. But if
you compare one cotton tote to one plastic bag, yeah,
the cotton toe is way worse because there's all sorts
(46:32):
of um pesticides and industrial fertilizer inputs required there. You know,
they they use fourth labor in China, which which supplies
the world with its cotton. There's some problems with cotton,
for sure. And I saw that one study found that
a cotton tote would have to be used every day
for fifty four years to outlive its environmental footprint. So yeah,
(46:56):
there's problems with cotton totes. The idea is there. It's
a good idea, but we've also seen like, okay, we
need to figure out something else. And there's this, um,
this designer name on your hind March who's just an
awesome designer. She uses like rainbow colors and everything, so
I like her stuff. She created a cotton tote back
in two thousand seven or eight and kind of kicked
(47:18):
off the trend of using you know, reusable shopping bags.
Um and it said like, I'm not a plastic bag. Well,
since then, since it's become clear that cotton toats are problematic,
she's created the same thing, but it's made out of
recycled plastics and it says, I am a plastic bag.
That's what you that's what you need to seek out. Yeah,
for sure, So do you got anything else? I got
(47:41):
nothing else. I don't either. Since we talked about on
your hind March, everybody, I think that means it's time
for listener mail. I'm gonna call this Shall we take
a break? Hey, guys, thanks for all the equality and lightning, information, humor,
and all the joy of the pot as brings me
and so many others. Is it time for a break? No?
(48:03):
Not yet. That's not that hard, right. I'm not sure
what it takes to convince one another to actually defer
taking a break, but it's been a fun anticipation game
for me for the better part of a year. I
almost did that today, just to sort of give Tony
here a little a little thrill, but I didn't. I've
listened since. But sometime late last year a dawned to me.
(48:25):
I couldn't actually recall either of you turning down taking
a break when you offer it up to each other.
I think we've done that before, at least once. Yeah,
it's almost always posted as a question, which seems like
it's giving your counterpart an option, yet the response is
always the same. I'm not sure if you guys have
a pack to never defer, but if you read this
out loud, then the beginning part of this email gives
(48:46):
me the joy of at least hearing a break question
atypical response, So thank you for that. Take care, keep
up the good work. And that is from Tony uh
coasters and um, the closest his middle name is an
I saw that cod. The closest you guys have come
(49:08):
recently to deferring a break was in the Infant Formula
episode and you have me on edge. Uh So, Tony,
just to let you know, we don't have a formula
for that per se, but we uh, we generally shoot
for about forty five minutes an episode ish and that
would mean the breaks fall around fifteen and thirty minutes. Yeah,
(49:28):
so we keep an eye on the clock and there
always just seems to be a natural sort of organic
spot within that rough time frame. Yeah, usda organic spot
to break in for sure. We don't have a pact
or anything like that either to differ. But also can
you imagine if one of us was like, and we're
about to take a break, so we'll be right back,
(49:48):
you know, like that the other one I think would
feel a little bit stepped on, I think, so I
know I wouldn't. I wouldn't want you to feel stepped
on either. So of course we're going to ask one another,
you know. Yeah, we don't step on each other. No,
and when we do, we edit it out. That's right. Uh, well,
thanks a lot, Tony and the Coasters. We appreciate that email.
It was a good one, a little mind boggling too,
(50:10):
And if you want to boggle our minds like Tony did,
you can send us an email. It's a stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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