July 25, 2023 • 43 mins
It's not an accident that there are actual mountains of plastic waste all over the world: it's advertising, baby. In part 1 of 2, meet the fourth horseman of the recycle-pocalypse: plastic. Plow through the dirty, ad-filled past -- and present -- of plastics recycling while Kat and Tiff provide a shoulder to cry on, or a bag to punch, on this entertaining green living podcast.
What To Watch
- 1990s Dupont Chemical ad for plastic recycling
- 1990s American Plastics Society ad, "plastics make it possible"
- 2020s ad that will make you want to rip your hair out after listening
Sources
- The Conversation on pandemic’s affect on plastic recycling
- Financial Times
- NPR & Frontline
- National Geographic
- PlasticsIndustry.org
- What plastic's made of (PlasticEurope.org)
- Alliance to End Plastic Waste (green hooey alert)
- The Guardian & Washington Post on enviro costs of recycling process
- DutchNews.nl and Plastic Soup Foundation on issues with Dutch recycling
- Ecology Center on plastic bags
- AP
- MyPlasticFreeLife.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
It's 1989. I am less than oneyear old. I'm seven, year seven.
And single use plastic iseverywhere. And people are
getting pissed. So this mannamed Larry Thomas was the
president. At the time of theSociety of plastics industry, he
(00:24):
called a meeting of executivesfrom, say Exxon Chevron down. He
said, This is a quote, the imageof plastic is deteriorating at
an alarming rate. We areapproaching a point of no
return. And do you want to knowthe brilliant plan that they
devised during the meeting? Theywere going to advertise their
(00:47):
way out of it? Of course,of course.
Hi, cat native.
How areyou? Oh, better every minute.
And how about youbetter every minute? Same thing
for sure. Awesome. Yeah, I'mjust hanging down in the
(01:11):
basement with my spiders.
Yeah. I haven't had a break andby the dog so far, so that's I
know,I was thinking that too. Yeah,
we record two at a time. So thisis our second recording if
anybody's confused, but yeah,go check out glass recycling
last week's episode, if youhaven't yet. Because you're
gonna need the palate cleanser.
(01:31):
I think you will maybe evenlisten that one after plastics.
We're talking about plasticrecycling today. And honestly, I
lost sleep.
Oh.
It's depressing. It's it'sactually not. It's depressing,
but it's more like infuriating.
So we'll see. But, but yeah,it's become such a month. It is
such a monster in all meaning ofthe word. Yeah. That we've had
(01:54):
to turn it into our first twoparter ever.
Yeah. So this is thecliffhanger. Except it's not
going to be two seasons. It'sgoing to be in the same season.
So you're not going to have tolike wait three weeks?
Oh, yeah. No, no, because one atleast. But yeah, it's a
behemoth.
Wow. I like all the monsternames we're coming up with it's
(02:17):
Godzilla.
The Gorgon that's like it? Well,yeah. But I did want to start
real quick with I meant to startthis waist season off with a
story because you know how youhave those, like, painful
moments in life that are so eyeopening? You might know more
(02:38):
what I'm talking about when Itell you the story. But if this
was a very painful moment, whereI was like, wow, I really need
to like get my shit together.
Oh, I'm intrigued. I haven't.
Okay, so I have been intodecluttering. Which is
interesting, because we're goingto talk about like decluttering
and stuff later, I think thelast episode of this season.
(03:00):
everyone's obsessed with it. Butso I went to Goodwill, which is
not my first choice to be clear.
But I kind of had like threeboxes of crap that I just needed
to get rid of. And it wasn'treally crap. But one of the
things was a this is so painful,but like a pretty nice pasta
maker. Oh, one of those littlecranky things to your table.
(03:27):
Yeah, it was pretty nice. Ihadn't used it in like, two
years. And I was like, oh, allthese Declutter. People online
are telling me if I don't use itin one year that I should just
get rid of it. Oh, no. Yeah.
clogging up my shelves. Oh,which they're not necessarily
(03:47):
wrong. But taking it to Goodwillwas a wrong choice. Because,
okay, I went through this wholeprocess of taping, there's two
parts to this thing. And it'sheavy metal. It's like a really
solid piece of equipment. Andanybody in the right mind would
have taken it on Freecycle. AndI've learned this now, but Oh,
there I know. So I taped thesetwo pieces together and like
(04:11):
made try to make sure that theywere like solidly taped
together. And then I walk overto the guy hand in my box, it's
outside, walk back to my car.
And when I come by the time Iget back, he's already going
through my box, right? See himtake my pasta maker and just rip
the two pieces apart. No, andthrow it in the box.
(04:36):
Meaning I don't blame him, butmeaning nobody's ever going to
use that again. No, you're goingto see it and be like, What the
hell is this thing? They don'tknow where's half the half of
apart unless by some miracle?
It's never it's just gone. It'sIt's It's landfilled and
useless.
(04:57):
I'm so sorry. So that's likebreaking
embarrassing and also no eyeopening.
You got to the people ofgoodwill are so over. I mean,
people just throw. I mean, it'slike wish cycling. Like we were
talking about last week, peoplejust throw trash in the
recycling and hope that it'srecyclable. It's the same with
goodwill, they just give trashaway. Yes.
(05:19):
And it's like an easy, it's justsuch an easy way. You don't
have to see it again. You justdrive up and hand it off. You
don't even have to have aconversation with the guy, you
know, like, right, so it'spainful. Yeah. I mean, this is
why I really love the BuyNothing group on Facebook.
And yes, yeah, we're gonna getinto more of that like a little
(05:39):
bit later in the season. But itwas just like hammer. Yeah. Oh,
it hurts. It still hurts me. Andyeah, so I've gotten into
freecycle. And I'm loving it. Wecan talk about that later when
we talk about the cluttering.
Yes. But yeah, anyway, I justhad to share because it's like,
I have a Salvation Army near me.
And I think they treat thingswith a lot more respect. At
(06:02):
least that's what it seems like.
But again, I don't blame theguy. It's like corporate
goodwill. Like one like, yeah,he's got 40 billion other people
coming. Yes. His day to like,drop off their trash and
Exactly.
And yeah, so anyway, there's mylesson. hard lesson learned
about waste.
It's fair. Yeah. Well, I guess Ishould say, Welcome to greening
(06:26):
up my act. Now. Yeah. Welcome.
This podcast about green living,we usually review products to
see if they're actually ecofriendly, sustainable, not full
of green hooey. And efficient,do what they're supposed to do
and are cost effective. So we dothat. But this season, we're
(06:47):
starting off with waste. Andwe're talking about recycling
specifically to start and thefour horsemen of the recycle
Apocalypse as we're callingthem. Yes. Which paper, aluminum
and glass ended up to be morelike My Little Ponies, whereas
we have reached death today,which is plastic. Yeah,
unfortunately, it truly is. It'smight feel a little bit like
(07:10):
death. So.
Okay, well, at the end of everyepisode, we give it a granola
rating from one to five granolasfive being breaker tooth off,
and one being soggy. So that's ayou want it to be crunchy. You
want it to be crunchy, becausewe've ever had soggy granola.
It's the worst. just gross. Sowe want crunchy granola. J. So
(07:31):
okay, Tiffany is going to. Ifeel like I'm going to a
funeral. I know.
I'm sorry. It's okay. No, it'sokay. This is really important.
So okay. Yeah. And you mightknow, but that's the thing. It's
like, I thought I knew and thenI was like, Oh my God.
I mean, that's how I felt aboutall the rest of the recycling
things. Yeah, we are souneducated in America. I mean,
(07:52):
it's just who has time. Exactly,which is why this podcast
exists.
So we're helping everybody out.
Hopefully get a little bit moreknowledge in that brain.
Yeah. So buckle up. This is atwo parter. This is one.
Yeah. So I'm going to start partone off with a story. Another
story. Good. Yeah. This isn'tpersonal. This time? Yeah. This
(08:16):
is from NPR and Frontline. Theydid a really had such a good
article about plastic recycling.
Good. Okay. One thing we do wellis NPR tell you what America
does. Great. NPR.
Yes. So it's 1989 I am less thanone year old.
Seven years seven.
(08:38):
Like a prayer by Madonna istopping the charts. And single
use plastic is everywhere. Andpeople are getting pissed. So
this man named Larry Thomas, whowas the president at the time of
the Society of plasticsindustry, he called a meeting of
(09:02):
executives from say Exxon,Chevron, Dow, DuPont, all the
fun, fun, industry giant. It'sa top friends of buddies and
people everywhere. Yes, or buds.
He call it Yeah. So we call thisprivate meeting at the Ritz
Carlton in Washington, DC. Hesaid, This is a quote, the image
(09:25):
of plastic is deteriorating atan alarming rate. We are
approaching a point of noreturn. And do you want to know
the brilliant plan that theydevised during the meeting? They
were going to advertise theirway out of it. Of course,
of course, favorite marketing.
That's what we do for a living.
(09:49):
So these plastics and oilindustries, proceeded to spend
$50 million per year on ads thatsaid Things like plastic makes
things possible. Oh boy. Andthey promoted the recycling of
plastic. Okay. The industry. Sothese industries also funded
(10:13):
things like sorting machines ornonprofits that were based on,
like focus on recycling orrecycling centers. So sounds
good. It's Yeah, it sounds good.
But then every single one ofthese projects that they had
started had failed by the mid1990s. Oh, like, five years
later, wow. Yep. But they, youknow, they could say, Oh, we did
all of these things even. Yeah.
(10:38):
So, these industry experts knewthat recycling plastic would not
work, that it was noteconomically viable. But they
went to Minnesota to start alocal plastics recycling program
anyway. Okay. Then. Well, Ithink they first created a
(11:01):
special group called council forSolid Waste Solutions, which is
so lovely. And they brought aman from DuPont. But this is the
same DuPont chemical that justlike last week, paid millions
and millions of dollars tosettle a case for poisoning
(11:21):
waterways with foreverchemicals. Oh, wow. They're a
great company. We love them.
Yeah. Friends of the podcast.
Big supporters. Yeah, financialbackers. That's why we're poor.
So these folks created thiscouncil for Solid Waste
Solutions. And they brought thisguy in from DuPont named Ron Lee
(11:46):
summer to run it. So this RonLisa Mark guy was the one that
they sent over to Minnesota tostart their plastics recycling
program. And when interviewedrecently, Lee summer says the
industry was focused on keepingtheir products on the shelves,
not tomorrow's solutions. Sothese people later in life are
(12:08):
sort of having Wake Up Callslike holy shit, what did I do
with my life? Oh my God, becauseNPR interviewed several of them,
and all of them are like, yeah,oh, I have some quotes from them
later. He. So also starting in1989, these sneaky bastards
begin discreetly lobbying tomandate the three arrow symbol
(12:31):
to appear on all plastic inalmost 40 states. And that was
even if the product wasn'teconomically viable my
god recycle is that the biggestGreen who we will avert our eyes
it actually getting gig that hasever happened. It actually the
mother of all green Hui?
(12:51):
Yes, they had the story in thearticle about this recycling.
The a woman, I think was a womanwho was running a recycling
center. And before all thesearrows started appearing, it was
like, she would get milk jugsand she would get like laundry
jugs. And that was it. And allthat was very recyclable. And
then all of a sudden, all thisother crap started showing up.
And she noticed all thesearrows, and they found out like,
(13:16):
oh, it's actually the industriesthat are putting these arrows on
these products.
Oh, wow. Okay, so it doesn'tmean it's recyclable. It's just
reminding you to recycle.
Yes. And that Yeah. And theywill. Their excuse was that they
wanted to make it easier forplastic like the for recycling
centers to sort out theplastics. But that's complete
(13:39):
bullshit. Because it didn't needthe arrows. If you just want the
number, just put the number.
Yeah, like the the arrows meanrecyclable? Yeah. So
what a lie. What a greatmarketing lie. Yeah.
And in 1993, there's proof thatthe society Society of plastics
industry, the same one was toldthat companies are misusing the
(14:02):
symbol as a green marketingtool. And they didn't give it
they didn't give a shit.
Wow. Yeah.
Monsters. Yeah, they really are.
So the takeaway is, one of thebig takeaways is that this is a
very new problem. This plastics,single use plastics, clogging up
our everything. And this isn'tsomething that our grandparents
(14:24):
ever dealt with, which is reallyhard to wrap our like, wrap my
mind around, because that's justbeen my life, but it's new and
one of the crazier, it's alwayspainful to say this. One of the
crazier statistics that I foundwas that the world has produced
more than 6.3 billion tons ofplastic waste since the 1950s.
(14:52):
And have a little over half acentury. Oh, well, almost as
well. Okay, we're getting, I'mlike, yeah, it's 2000. It's been
half a century. You know, it's,it's 75 years. Okay?
Whoa, 75 years that soundscrazy, but ya know, three
quarters of us. Okay, so in 75years, more than half of that
was produced in the last 16years. Oh, damn. I know, that
(15:17):
are that stat was from like 20Maybe 2018 2017, something like
that. But you know,last time the EPA was
functioning Wow.
Isn't that wild? Oh my god.
I know. So today, you know, wefind ourselves with the Great
(15:37):
Pacific Garbage Patch, which isa vortex of plastic waste and
debris that no nation wants totake responsibility for
according to NationalGeographic. Oh my god. Alright,
so my story's over. I'm gonnacite my sources real quick.
Okay,I'm gonna go cry into a corner.
So all right, yeah, like I said,I use NPR and Frontline that
(15:57):
amazing. They'd spent like soundlike months researching. Great
article, the conversation hadwebsite had an article and
pinned the pin. Well, thepandemic's effect on plastics
recycling. Financial Times hadsort of like the most famous
article about it came out in2018. But it was about plastics
(16:21):
recycling, post China's ban onrecycling. Okay, we had our ban
on taking imports. Not reallybad. Anyway, we'll get into that
later. That'll be next episodesweek, but okay. National
Geographic has mentionedplastics industry.org And I
looked up what plastic was madeof at plastic europe.org I found
(16:44):
Okay, so if you google anythingplastics, recycling, you're
gonna It's probably one of thefirst SEO things, frickin SEO.
Well, first things you're goingto see which is search engine
optimization. If anybody doesn'tknow that's a
marketeer. Non marketing. Who apeople Yeah, look it up because
itreally affects what you see on
Google anyway. You'll probablysee the Alliance to End plastic
waste, which is pure green Hui?
(17:08):
Oh, no. Pure Green Hui, youwould never know it until you
look at who pays for it. Turnsout it's a bunch of chemical
companies. Yeah. And oilcompanies. So okay,
just Yeah, washing theiractivities. Yes. No. So
other articles, one from TheGuardian, one from Washington
Post on the environmental costsof recycling plastic, which was
(17:30):
also mind blowing. Both of thesewere new articles, like within
the last couple of weeks, and Iwas like, holy moly, actually.
Yeah. Okay. I looked up Dutchnews.nl. And the plastic soup
Foundation, both of which areDutch, I'm pretty sure Dutch on
the issues with Dutch recycling,because I had mentioned that I
(17:51):
wanted to look into how they doit in the Netherlands and see if
they do it any better. Right,and we'll see. So I also looked
at the Ecology Center on theplastic bags, because I take my
plastic bags to the grocerystore. And I wanted to know if
that mattered, right. Andfinally, my plastic free
(18:11):
life.com This lady is supercool. And she started a blog,
turn it into a book about livingforming a life without plastic.
Like, it took a long time. Butshe she's doing pretty well. So
she has lots of tips. Great.
Okay, I need those. I know,don't we all? So, four basic
(18:31):
problems that I found withplastics, recycling, okay.
Number one, used plastic can beturned into new things, but
(18:55):
picking it up sorting it out andmelting it down is expensive.
New plastic is almost alwayscheaper to make than it is to
recycle. That's the problem.
Yes. And fracking for oilcontributes to the low cost and
also the pandemic plunging oilprices.
Okay, so, plastics even cheaperto make new now than it was 10
(19:16):
years ago?
Probably I'm not sure on that.
But maybe not anymore. But yeah,during the pandemic, okay. Yeah.
Yeah, the oil industry makesmore than $400 billion a year
making plastic. Okay. Andbecause of the the demand for
oil for cars is going down. Theyexpect plastic to be their
(19:36):
biggest moneymaker in thefuture.
So they're just going to doubledown on it. That and if you
thinkabout it, I'll talk about it a
little bit later. But recyclingis there competition is too
high. No. Yeah, I know all this.
None of this came from my brain.
All of it came from research andI was like, there's so much
(19:57):
Okay, so that's number two.
Number three plastic degradeseach time is reused, meaning it
can't be reused more than one tothree times.
So unlike our infinite glass andinfinite aluminum recycling,
oh, yeah, very different. Yep.
Okay. And number four, this wasthe more recent news. There's
(20:20):
evidence that recycling plasticmakes it more toxic.
Oh, boy. Okay. It really isdeath. You weren't kidding.
I'm so sorry.
I'm just looking at plasticlotion bottles. And guess
(20:43):
what I'm drinking out of aplastic cup, although it's not
single use at least but yeah.
Jesus Christ. Okay, so, on thatnote, what's plasic? Native?
Yes, please. I was like, What isthis substance?
Okay, so I didn't look a wholelot into it. But it's made of
natural materials likecellulose, coal, natural gas,
(21:06):
salt, and, of course, crude oil.
That's put through apolymerization or
polycondensation process. Okay,so I didn't look too much into
the process of like making newplastic, but I did look into the
recycling process. Okay. Becauseplastics are one of the hardest
materials to recycle. There aredozens of types that we use in
(21:27):
every day, and they cannot berecycled together. So we have to
separate each of those numbersneed to be needs to be separated
from each other. And aftersorting, the bales are sent to a
recycling facility to be furtherwashed and cleaned. Then they're
washed and they're dunked inchemicals to remove the labels.
(21:50):
Okay, then the plastic is allchopped up. So it kind of like
glass except, yeah. Terrible.
More chemicals. Yes. Less, lessphysical process more chemicals.
Okay, great. And so the flakes,there's like lid flakes and
bottle flakes. I guess they havedifferent weights. So they're
(22:11):
separated in a flotation pool.
Okay. And then the flakes aremelted into plastic pellets,
which takes energy and canproduce air pollution. And the
pellets, go figure. And thepellets are sold to
manufacturers. So what I learnedis that it is possible to do all
of this in an environmentallyfriendly way. I mean, this is, I
(22:34):
think I'm quoting here becauseenvironmentally friendly, I'm
not sure, but friendlier way. Soif you treat the wastewater
correctly, if you dispose of thechemicals properly, and you make
sure that your emissions areheld in and they don't escape,
so recycling can actually useless energy and resources than
making plastic.
(22:57):
New. Okay, you would I think wefound from every recycling
process what we've covered,yeah, it actually is true. But a
lot of times shortcuts are takenand the consequences can be
devastating. Oh, dear. Yes. Somore about recycling plastic,
not everything is recyclableeverywhere, especially after
China's ban, which we will talkabout next week.
(23:21):
Just teasing next week. Yeah,they, they put
in a policy into place thatreally, I would say open
people's eyes more thananything. Yeah. But it really
changed how we have to operateplastics, recycling, okay. So
not everything's recyclableeverywhere. And I looked at my
(23:41):
County's website and some of thethings surprised me that they
will take, they have to beclean, but they'll take pump
bottles, spray bottles, frozenfood trays, whoa. And number
five takeout containers whichare like the clear lid with the
black bottomright, which are notorious for
not being taken anywhere. Okay.
Wow.
(24:01):
I know. I was really surprised.
And then these all have to beclean though. Can't have a
dishwasher Indian food. Yep. Butthey don't take plastic bags. Of
course not that surprised aboutthat. plastic egg cartons. Okay,
which I'm really upset aboutbecause I've been putting those
in my recycling for a long time.
(24:24):
And I remember looking it up,they must have changed it
because I looked it up like twoyears ago. Yeah. So I think I
need to start buying thecardboard ones. They do not take
number one. plastic clamshellpackaging. Okay, which it's, I
don't know. That's probably oneverything.
Yeah, that's so much. Yeah, theydon't take
cereal box liners and which isnot surprising, but they don't
(24:47):
take Styrofoam either. I don'tknow if anyone should recycle
Styrofoam.
Bridwell. We'll talk about thembut they will do well
yeah, awesome. Okay, so Wow,about I mean, I just like you
ticked it off. When I was like Ihave wished cycled every one of
those items.
I know. So have I. So a littlequick bit about plastic bags. So
(25:12):
I mentioned there's no upside tothis, but it's not going to get
better, unfortunately. But so Itake my I actually wrote out I
was so frustrated. I take myeffing plastic bags to the GED
grocery store. Yep. Yep. Andguess what I found out? They
were probably not payingrecycled? Not really. Yeah. No,
(25:36):
this was from I'm trying toremember where I found this
Ecology Center. Okay. They seemlike they knew what they were
talking about. They, yeah, theywere saying, they went through
the whole process of that. Andthey said, Some stores, use
services that collect the bags,and then send them straight to
(25:59):
the landfill. So like you'regoing to the grocery store. I
don't know if everybody doesthis, but you take your bag to
the grocery store, you put themin a little white bin or the
little green arrow bin. Oh, wow,that just, I hit my thing, and
it made it dinging. So you takeit to the store, you put it in
the green arrow Recycle Bin. Youfeel really good about yourself,
(26:21):
which is what I do. Yeah, someof them just take it straight to
the landfill. And some of itsrecycled. But it's very hard to
follow. This isn't the same forlike Saran wrap. So plastic film
or plastic bags. It's it'salmost impossible to follow it
to the end product or even fineproducts made from recycled
(26:43):
plastic film. Yeah. So yeah,this website recommended, like
use paper instead of bagsinstead of plastic bags for
trash, which I never thoughtabout doing.
Yeah. Growing up. My mom did Imean, I really,
they did that in theNetherlands. My friends were
doing that. And I just didn'tthink about it. But yeah, yeah,
that makes sense.
(27:05):
Yeah. And they said, like,eliminate plastic wrap. So you
can use like beeswax cloth,which I do want to try. Do you
have any ofthat? I have. We have reusable
plastic bags that we use. Andthen of course my roommates
infinite glass jars,right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, bring
your own bags. Don't buy foodand pouches are packaged in
films, but it's hard. It's sothe kid arches are like the new.
(27:32):
Yeah, it's how you eat anything.
Yeah, I just bought yogurt in aplastic tub. Right? Like, I'm
sorry, that's not a plasticfilm, or dual layer plastic,
which is something else I'velearned about which has like,
plastic and aluminum or plasticand Oh, interesting. Two
different kinds of plastic.
Yeah, so like your, you know,granola pouch. Like any of those
(27:54):
pouches has plastic andsomething else. Yeah, kinds of
plastic. So they're impossibleto recycle. Yep. Yeah.
Yeah. It's it sucks. But yeah, Imean, even your yogurt tub. It's
like God, that's still plasticis still technically single use.
Soyeah. My sister uses she needs a
great dog toy. The dog likes tolick the yogurt out. Right? Does
it really does thesame thing. Yeah. Her like,
(28:15):
she's got like a line around herface when she comes out. Like,
oh, I've got my fix.
Yep. Wow. Okay. Yeah, I'm justI'm despondent.
Now. They know. I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry. Yeah, ruse thewhole time.
(28:37):
So back to more of the ruse. Sothat's just a little bit about
like plastic and recyclingplastic and whatever. As
mentioned from the intro story,the plastics industry sold us a
bill of goods. And the industryknew, like I said, and I have a
quote here, like knew thatplastics recycling would not be
(28:59):
viable or sustainable. But thisLarry Thomas guy who was the
former president of the Societyof plastics industry, he said,
if the public thinks thatrecycling is working, then they
are not going to be as concernedabout the environment.
And America in a nutshell,yes. And in 1974, an industry
insider wrote in a speech thereis serious doubt that recycling
(29:27):
plastic can ever be made viableon an economic basis. And that
was 1974Oh my god. Yeah. So there's no
responsible way to be involvedin in plastic manufacturing baby
basically. Or to use plastic?
I think not. Yikes.
(29:59):
I know It's really it's a hardpill to swallow. Yeah. And I
want to say the bigger problemis like, I don't know this to be
totally true. But I want to saythe biggest problem, or at least
the most solvable problem is thesingle use. Or the, you know,
two to three times you use itand throw it out. Rather than,
(30:21):
like, making car parts out ofplastic. It's still not ideal,
but it's not. Like, it's notideal, because that car part
will eventually need to gradeand you don't need to go out of
the car.
Or plastics. We still got. Yeah,there's all kinds of thing.
(30:41):
Right? And so elastic can createtoxic anyway. Yeah, yeah. And
like,yeah, and the one that feels
more controllable is like thesingle use because it's like,
you can't escape. Not everhaving, like, you can't get a
car without plastic.
Right? Well, I think plasticthere's a reason it exists. It's
convenient. Yeah, it is.
(31:03):
I mean, it's transformative forthe economy, honestly.
I mean, how would we getstrawberries delivered? You
know, you got to think about allthe little peanuts in wrapping
to deliver fragile goodsor, or like any product on
Amazon. Yeah.
Little plastic bags. Yeah. Oranything that's wrapped
(31:25):
individually wrapped to preserveit, or maintain its integrity.
You know, my headphones.
Or headphones. Yeah, actually,most of this equipment that I'm
using for podcasting today.
There's plastic.
Yeah. There's also a lot ofmetal. I'm proud of that. Yeah.
Yeah. Good Java. But yeah, likeit really has made modern living
(31:49):
possible.
Right. Right. And that's the bigpoint. That is a very good
point. I want to come back tothat for sure. Another big thing
is that consumers want it towork. Like we so badly want it
to work.
Ultimate wish cycling. Yes, isexactly product of this, this
(32:12):
packaging that makes our lifebetter and easier. And it never
breaks down. But if we canrecycle it, we're fine. It's
fine. You know, we can keepliving our easy lifestyles.
Yep. Yes. And what's sointeresting is that this is I
think it was the NPR article.
They talked about in Oregon inlike the very progressive part
(32:34):
of Oregon, where, oh, yeah, itwas that same recycling center
owner who had gone to the citycouncil meeting. And she tried
to tell the City Council like,hey, this recycling, like, all
these arrows are showing upeverywhere, and everybody's
throwing everything in. Andrecycling is not working
anymore. And it's actuallybecoming more expensive for me
(32:55):
to process recyclables than itis worth it. I'm not making any
money. And everyone at the citycouncil meeting, said, like they
said, like, she says it was asif heresy had been spoken in the
room. And everyone believed thatthis plastic was valuable. And
yeah, and that's probablybecause of the advertising. So I
(33:17):
have some examples here, whichis really wild. It makes us feel
better to believe it right? Anda probably a little bit out of
control to let go of thatbelief. But like one ad, I
watched it, we'll have tosomehow put on Instagram, from
DuPont, again,oh, our friends at DuPont, our
buddies. It's thiscartoon ad and it says the
(33:39):
bottle may look empty. It's likea recycling truck. And then a
guy who I think is supposed tobe working as a recycling
collectors and they this bottlekeeps popping out for some
reason. It's like this reallyterrible 90s from 1990. It's
really terrible commercial. Butit says the bottle may look
(34:01):
empty yet. It's anything buttrash. It's full of potential.
we've pioneered the country'slargest, most comprehensive
plastic recycling program tohelp fill valuable uses and
roles. Well, at DuPont. We makethe things that make a
difference. Huh? Like foreverchemicals in our water. Thank
(34:22):
you. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that hasmade a difference. And now Okay,
so these ads were like, Shutbeing shown all the time in the
90s. And we don't even rememberthem because they're just
ingrained in our minds. Butthat's, that had a huge impact
on how we think of recycling ingeneral, but mostly plastics
(34:44):
recycling.
Wow. Yeah. I mean, they love thenarrative. Yes.
And they owe it and they knewwhat they were doing and it's
evil. But now the interestingthing is that there are new ads
coming up about recycling andcleaning up plastic pollution. A
lot of it has to do with likethe ocean or whatever. One of
(35:06):
the ads says we have people thatcan change the world. And both
of the former industry officialsthat NPR interviewed say, it
sounds like deja vu. And itsounds exactly the same. So it
was interesting because theyinterviewed the NPR article
interviewed somebody from achemical company. And he said,
(35:28):
Oh, no, it's, we didn't do itvery well before, but it's
better. It's better now. It'sbetter. Everything's fine. We
have new technology, all thiscrap. And these two industry
insiders are like, bullshit.
Wow. Yeah. It's not better. It'sexactly what it was before. So
keep an eye out for any bad likethat.
(35:49):
Yeah, that's offsetting. I mean,yeah, let Yeah, if you've out
there see green Hui ads likethis. send them our way. Yeah,
we can dissect them,please do. So. Okay. The other
big thing that I sort ofmentioned that about the
competition, but this LarryThomas guy who used to run the
Society for whatever the hillscalled, plastic society of the
(36:12):
plastics industry. He said, Hethat he worked for an industry
that didn't want recycling towork. Because if the job is to
sell as much oil as you possiblycan, any amount of recycled
plastic is competition.
Okay, wow. Yeah. said that outloud. Yeah. Forgotten. Everyone.
(36:35):
Did.
It's like, Well, I'm glad youfigured it out. Now, after you
spent your whole career workingfor these assholes.
Good job.
Congratulate Hey, better latethan never, I guess. But yeah.
And I'm going to leave us on. Itshouldn't talk about kittens
after this. There's one thingYeah, leave us on, like a
terrible note, but were sorry,in advance. Where's plastic
(36:59):
production going? It's expectedto triple in the next 25 years.
Okay. Again, they think that itis that single use plastics or
to get is it using plastics andother places that I think that's
just plastic in general? No.
Okay. Because maybe there's somehope. Maybe it is using it in
places that it'll be usedlonger. Maybe. But you know,
(37:20):
like the earth ships in NewMexico. Have you seen those?
No. So they I think I've seenI've heard of them. Yeah.
Well, we should post this onInstagram. But it's really crazy
cool houses that people buildand they use like recycled
bottles for installation. Imean, just the plastic bottles
for installation.
(37:41):
Whoa, and that works. They justput bottles in their wall. Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah. So cool. There's thingslike that you can do with
bottles and things but yeah. Oh,God, how depressing.
Apologies. And apologies fornext week, because it's not
getting better.
We really are gonna have to dosomething really cheerful.
No, for real. I'll like sing asong or something.
(38:03):
a tub of ice cream? Ice cream.
But it's in a it's in a papercontainer. I felt like
well, that was one thing.
Somebody I think it was theplastic free life lady was like,
whatever recommendations was togo out to get ice cream and like
get in. I get it into the cone.
Yeah, that makes it. Okay, butthen you're driving. I guess it
(38:27):
offsets it enough thatI don't know. Yeah, it's all.
It's all hard. But anyway, thatwas. That's why I didn't sleep
very well. But that's totallyfair. Yeah. So that was round
one. And so in the next episode,I'm going to do the whole like,
granola rating. And, okay, we'regoing to talk let's see, what
(38:49):
are we talking about? We'regonna talk about China's ban
we're talking about, isrecycling environmentally better
than producing new plastic,which is interesting. Yeah.
Because we were just saying it'slike, oh, everything so far,
seems better. Right? And thenI'm going to talk a little bit
about like, Dutch, plastics,recycling. And then where do we
go from here? Okay, so Ineed a nap. I No need to go hug
(39:12):
my dog. No.
There anything of a funny story?
Let's see Charlie did some. Oh,yes. I have a funny story if you
want to end on that. Okay. Okay.
So Charlie is to a little bitover two. Yeah. She just started
talking. And it's just amazingbecause you get she like wakes
up every day. And I can just seeher mind. Opening up more. It's
(39:36):
like she just notices morethings and stuff. She just
didn't pay attention to it allbefore. Yeah, the funniest thing
happened the other day, becauseI was sitting next to her on her
little doll house we wereplaying and I farted and she has
never paid attention to that.
Ever. And this time she got thislike glaze. is looking. Alright.
(39:58):
And then she goes mommy pooping?
Because she thought I was likepooping in my diaper because
because we allwear diapers. Because I do
therefore she does, right. Like,I love color logic.
I love it so much. So we taughther what party was, like many
(40:22):
poops, it's just so amazingbecause it's like, you just see
her like, wake up to the worldin all these little weird ways.
Amazing. Yeah. So there's stillgood in the world. Don't worry.
Yeah, there's toddlers learning.
That is helpful. That is yes.
I'm glad. Okay, well, thank you.
Yeah. Thank you for listening.
(40:44):
Yeah, really? I've been likelooking for not looking forward
to but really interested in thistopic pressing lately? Yes.
Like, since we started thepodcast, I was like, oh, man,
that's gonna be a big and I knowyou've you've I've, you've given
these quotes to me before, but Ihaving them all in one sitting
is kind of likeI know, even for me, it's like,
(41:04):
I discovered a lot of stuff thatI did not realize before.
Yeah, this is plastic recyclingis trash.
Wow. 110%.
Okay. Well, maybe follow us onInstagram. So you can see ads
from the DuPont.
Yes, it's bad at greening up myact. I'm going to try to figure
(41:27):
out a way I think I can justrecord it. I don't think that
would be any sort of copyright.
I don't care. We're notmaking money off of it. We're
making money. Come on.
Yeah, man, people. Yeah. So I'llput that up for sure. In some
other interesting things. I'mnot sure what yet.
And shout out to everyone whodoes comment on our Instagram
posts. I Tiffany farm farms thatshe's She is the chicken that
(41:53):
hatches those eggs, and she doesa great job. So I came in today
and wrote a great tip. And Imisspelled tip. So it's a top
and I said, I mean to. Sothere's extra bad comments on
Instagram today, because Ilooked at it. But it really,
really appreciate theinteraction we have with our
followers. You guys are doingamazing things. And it's always
really great to hear what you'redoing. And I just love when
(42:16):
people comment. It's soexciting. It's my career. It's
like, oh, we're not the onlyones doing this. Yes. And if any
of our stuff has helped you thatmakes us feel better to so yeah,
totally.
One of our followers actually, Ithink it was Susan. Yeah. Who
was it? Well, I think she wastelling me that she used green
bleach did yeah. Is that the oneYeah. Oh,
I didn't read the I read herstuff about the dishwasher
(42:38):
detergent. Yes. Thanks. Shoutout, Susan. Yeah, whenever Oh,
geez. For sure. Yeah. And Don,my friend from Yes. Well, I
think Don Yeah, yeah, he's he'sgreat too. Susan and Don, we
love you. We do thing for sure.
Yeah. You're why we do this. Youare your purpose. Yeah.
Hopefully you listen to thisepisode and you haven't given up
(43:00):
after Areyou just crying so loudly that
you can't hear us? Alrighty,well take care
to dream of glass and aluminumrecycling.
Totally. Kind of paper but.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Okay.
It's 1989. I am less than oneyear old. I'm seven, year seven.
And single use plastic iseverywhere. And people are
getting pissed. So this mannamed Larry Thomas was the
president. At the time of theSociety of plastics industry, he
(00:24):
called a meeting of executivesfrom, say Exxon Chevron down. He
said, This is a quote, the imageof plastic is deteriorating at
an alarming rate. We areapproaching a point of no
return. And do you want to knowthe brilliant plan that they
devised during the meeting? Theywere going to advertise their
(00:47):
way out of it? Of course,of course.
Hi, cat native.
How areyou? Oh, better every minute.
And how about youbetter every minute? Same thing
for sure. Awesome. Yeah, I'mjust hanging down in the
(01:11):
basement with my spiders.
Yeah. I haven't had a break andby the dog so far, so that's I
know,I was thinking that too. Yeah,
we record two at a time. So thisis our second recording if
anybody's confused, but yeah,go check out glass recycling
last week's episode, if youhaven't yet. Because you're
gonna need the palate cleanser.
(01:31):
I think you will maybe evenlisten that one after plastics.
We're talking about plasticrecycling today. And honestly, I
lost sleep.
Oh.
It's depressing. It's it'sactually not. It's depressing,
but it's more like infuriating.
So we'll see. But, but yeah,it's become such a month. It is
such a monster in all meaning ofthe word. Yeah. That we've had
(01:54):
to turn it into our first twoparter ever.
Yeah. So this is thecliffhanger. Except it's not
going to be two seasons. It'sgoing to be in the same season.
So you're not going to have tolike wait three weeks?
Oh, yeah. No, no, because one atleast. But yeah, it's a
behemoth.
Wow. I like all the monsternames we're coming up with it's
(02:17):
Godzilla.
The Gorgon that's like it? Well,yeah. But I did want to start
real quick with I meant to startthis waist season off with a
story because you know how youhave those, like, painful
moments in life that are so eyeopening? You might know more
(02:38):
what I'm talking about when Itell you the story. But if this
was a very painful moment, whereI was like, wow, I really need
to like get my shit together.
Oh, I'm intrigued. I haven't.
Okay, so I have been intodecluttering. Which is
interesting, because we're goingto talk about like decluttering
and stuff later, I think thelast episode of this season.
(03:00):
everyone's obsessed with it. Butso I went to Goodwill, which is
not my first choice to be clear.
But I kind of had like threeboxes of crap that I just needed
to get rid of. And it wasn'treally crap. But one of the
things was a this is so painful,but like a pretty nice pasta
maker. Oh, one of those littlecranky things to your table.
(03:27):
Yeah, it was pretty nice. Ihadn't used it in like, two
years. And I was like, oh, allthese Declutter. People online
are telling me if I don't use itin one year that I should just
get rid of it. Oh, no. Yeah.
clogging up my shelves. Oh,which they're not necessarily
(03:47):
wrong. But taking it to Goodwillwas a wrong choice. Because,
okay, I went through this wholeprocess of taping, there's two
parts to this thing. And it'sheavy metal. It's like a really
solid piece of equipment. Andanybody in the right mind would
have taken it on Freecycle. AndI've learned this now, but Oh,
there I know. So I taped thesetwo pieces together and like
(04:11):
made try to make sure that theywere like solidly taped
together. And then I walk overto the guy hand in my box, it's
outside, walk back to my car.
And when I come by the time Iget back, he's already going
through my box, right? See himtake my pasta maker and just rip
the two pieces apart. No, andthrow it in the box.
(04:36):
Meaning I don't blame him, butmeaning nobody's ever going to
use that again. No, you're goingto see it and be like, What the
hell is this thing? They don'tknow where's half the half of
apart unless by some miracle?
It's never it's just gone. It'sIt's It's landfilled and
useless.
(04:57):
I'm so sorry. So that's likebreaking
embarrassing and also no eyeopening.
You got to the people ofgoodwill are so over. I mean,
people just throw. I mean, it'slike wish cycling. Like we were
talking about last week, peoplejust throw trash in the
recycling and hope that it'srecyclable. It's the same with
goodwill, they just give trashaway. Yes.
(05:19):
And it's like an easy, it's justsuch an easy way. You don't
have to see it again. You justdrive up and hand it off. You
don't even have to have aconversation with the guy, you
know, like, right, so it'spainful. Yeah. I mean, this is
why I really love the BuyNothing group on Facebook.
And yes, yeah, we're gonna getinto more of that like a little
(05:39):
bit later in the season. But itwas just like hammer. Yeah. Oh,
it hurts. It still hurts me. Andyeah, so I've gotten into
freecycle. And I'm loving it. Wecan talk about that later when
we talk about the cluttering.
Yes. But yeah, anyway, I justhad to share because it's like,
I have a Salvation Army near me.
And I think they treat thingswith a lot more respect. At
(06:02):
least that's what it seems like.
But again, I don't blame theguy. It's like corporate
goodwill. Like one like, yeah,he's got 40 billion other people
coming. Yes. His day to like,drop off their trash and
Exactly.
And yeah, so anyway, there's mylesson. hard lesson learned
about waste.
It's fair. Yeah. Well, I guess Ishould say, Welcome to greening
(06:26):
up my act. Now. Yeah. Welcome.
This podcast about green living,we usually review products to
see if they're actually ecofriendly, sustainable, not full
of green hooey. And efficient,do what they're supposed to do
and are cost effective. So we dothat. But this season, we're
(06:47):
starting off with waste. Andwe're talking about recycling
specifically to start and thefour horsemen of the recycle
Apocalypse as we're callingthem. Yes. Which paper, aluminum
and glass ended up to be morelike My Little Ponies, whereas
we have reached death today,which is plastic. Yeah,
unfortunately, it truly is. It'smight feel a little bit like
(07:10):
death. So.
Okay, well, at the end of everyepisode, we give it a granola
rating from one to five granolasfive being breaker tooth off,
and one being soggy. So that's ayou want it to be crunchy. You
want it to be crunchy, becausewe've ever had soggy granola.
It's the worst. just gross. Sowe want crunchy granola. J. So
(07:31):
okay, Tiffany is going to. Ifeel like I'm going to a
funeral. I know.
I'm sorry. It's okay. No, it'sokay. This is really important.
So okay. Yeah. And you mightknow, but that's the thing. It's
like, I thought I knew and thenI was like, Oh my God.
I mean, that's how I felt aboutall the rest of the recycling
things. Yeah, we are souneducated in America. I mean,
(07:52):
it's just who has time. Exactly,which is why this podcast
exists.
So we're helping everybody out.
Hopefully get a little bit moreknowledge in that brain.
Yeah. So buckle up. This is atwo parter. This is one.
Yeah. So I'm going to start partone off with a story. Another
story. Good. Yeah. This isn'tpersonal. This time? Yeah. This
(08:16):
is from NPR and Frontline. Theydid a really had such a good
article about plastic recycling.
Good. Okay. One thing we do wellis NPR tell you what America
does. Great. NPR.
Yes. So it's 1989 I am less thanone year old.
Seven years seven.
(08:38):
Like a prayer by Madonna istopping the charts. And single
use plastic is everywhere. Andpeople are getting pissed. So
this man named Larry Thomas, whowas the president at the time of
the Society of plasticsindustry, he called a meeting of
(09:02):
executives from say Exxon,Chevron, Dow, DuPont, all the
fun, fun, industry giant. It'sa top friends of buddies and
people everywhere. Yes, or buds.
He call it Yeah. So we call thisprivate meeting at the Ritz
Carlton in Washington, DC. Hesaid, This is a quote, the image
(09:25):
of plastic is deteriorating atan alarming rate. We are
approaching a point of noreturn. And do you want to know
the brilliant plan that theydevised during the meeting? They
were going to advertise theirway out of it. Of course,
of course, favorite marketing.
That's what we do for a living.
(09:49):
So these plastics and oilindustries, proceeded to spend
$50 million per year on ads thatsaid Things like plastic makes
things possible. Oh boy. Andthey promoted the recycling of
plastic. Okay. The industry. Sothese industries also funded
(10:13):
things like sorting machines ornonprofits that were based on,
like focus on recycling orrecycling centers. So sounds
good. It's Yeah, it sounds good.
But then every single one ofthese projects that they had
started had failed by the mid1990s. Oh, like, five years
later, wow. Yep. But they, youknow, they could say, Oh, we did
all of these things even. Yeah.
(10:38):
So, these industry experts knewthat recycling plastic would not
work, that it was noteconomically viable. But they
went to Minnesota to start alocal plastics recycling program
anyway. Okay. Then. Well, Ithink they first created a
(11:01):
special group called council forSolid Waste Solutions, which is
so lovely. And they brought aman from DuPont. But this is the
same DuPont chemical that justlike last week, paid millions
and millions of dollars tosettle a case for poisoning
(11:21):
waterways with foreverchemicals. Oh, wow. They're a
great company. We love them.
Yeah. Friends of the podcast.
Big supporters. Yeah, financialbackers. That's why we're poor.
So these folks created thiscouncil for Solid Waste
Solutions. And they brought thisguy in from DuPont named Ron Lee
(11:46):
summer to run it. So this RonLisa Mark guy was the one that
they sent over to Minnesota tostart their plastics recycling
program. And when interviewedrecently, Lee summer says the
industry was focused on keepingtheir products on the shelves,
not tomorrow's solutions. Sothese people later in life are
(12:08):
sort of having Wake Up Callslike holy shit, what did I do
with my life? Oh my God, becauseNPR interviewed several of them,
and all of them are like, yeah,oh, I have some quotes from them
later. He. So also starting in1989, these sneaky bastards
begin discreetly lobbying tomandate the three arrow symbol
(12:31):
to appear on all plastic inalmost 40 states. And that was
even if the product wasn'teconomically viable my
god recycle is that the biggestGreen who we will avert our eyes
it actually getting gig that hasever happened. It actually the
mother of all green Hui?
(12:51):
Yes, they had the story in thearticle about this recycling.
The a woman, I think was a womanwho was running a recycling
center. And before all thesearrows started appearing, it was
like, she would get milk jugsand she would get like laundry
jugs. And that was it. And allthat was very recyclable. And
then all of a sudden, all thisother crap started showing up.
And she noticed all thesearrows, and they found out like,
(13:16):
oh, it's actually the industriesthat are putting these arrows on
these products.
Oh, wow. Okay, so it doesn'tmean it's recyclable. It's just
reminding you to recycle.
Yes. And that Yeah. And theywill. Their excuse was that they
wanted to make it easier forplastic like the for recycling
centers to sort out theplastics. But that's complete
(13:39):
bullshit. Because it didn't needthe arrows. If you just want the
number, just put the number.
Yeah, like the the arrows meanrecyclable? Yeah. So
what a lie. What a greatmarketing lie. Yeah.
And in 1993, there's proof thatthe society Society of plastics
industry, the same one was toldthat companies are misusing the
(14:02):
symbol as a green marketingtool. And they didn't give it
they didn't give a shit.
Wow. Yeah.
Monsters. Yeah, they really are.
So the takeaway is, one of thebig takeaways is that this is a
very new problem. This plastics,single use plastics, clogging up
our everything. And this isn'tsomething that our grandparents
(14:24):
ever dealt with, which is reallyhard to wrap our like, wrap my
mind around, because that's justbeen my life, but it's new and
one of the crazier, it's alwayspainful to say this. One of the
crazier statistics that I foundwas that the world has produced
more than 6.3 billion tons ofplastic waste since the 1950s.
(14:52):
And have a little over half acentury. Oh, well, almost as
well. Okay, we're getting, I'mlike, yeah, it's 2000. It's been
half a century. You know, it's,it's 75 years. Okay?
Whoa, 75 years that soundscrazy, but ya know, three
quarters of us. Okay, so in 75years, more than half of that
was produced in the last 16years. Oh, damn. I know, that
(15:17):
are that stat was from like 20Maybe 2018 2017, something like
that. But you know,last time the EPA was
functioning Wow.
Isn't that wild? Oh my god.
I know. So today, you know, wefind ourselves with the Great
(15:37):
Pacific Garbage Patch, which isa vortex of plastic waste and
debris that no nation wants totake responsibility for
according to NationalGeographic. Oh my god. Alright,
so my story's over. I'm gonnacite my sources real quick.
Okay,I'm gonna go cry into a corner.
So all right, yeah, like I said,I use NPR and Frontline that
(15:57):
amazing. They'd spent like soundlike months researching. Great
article, the conversation hadwebsite had an article and
pinned the pin. Well, thepandemic's effect on plastics
recycling. Financial Times hadsort of like the most famous
article about it came out in2018. But it was about plastics
(16:21):
recycling, post China's ban onrecycling. Okay, we had our ban
on taking imports. Not reallybad. Anyway, we'll get into that
later. That'll be next episodesweek, but okay. National
Geographic has mentionedplastics industry.org And I
looked up what plastic was madeof at plastic europe.org I found
(16:44):
Okay, so if you google anythingplastics, recycling, you're
gonna It's probably one of thefirst SEO things, frickin SEO.
Well, first things you're goingto see which is search engine
optimization. If anybody doesn'tknow that's a
marketeer. Non marketing. Who apeople Yeah, look it up because
itreally affects what you see on
Google anyway. You'll probablysee the Alliance to End plastic
waste, which is pure green Hui?
(17:08):
Oh, no. Pure Green Hui, youwould never know it until you
look at who pays for it. Turnsout it's a bunch of chemical
companies. Yeah. And oilcompanies. So okay,
just Yeah, washing theiractivities. Yes. No. So
other articles, one from TheGuardian, one from Washington
Post on the environmental costsof recycling plastic, which was
(17:30):
also mind blowing. Both of thesewere new articles, like within
the last couple of weeks, and Iwas like, holy moly, actually.
Yeah. Okay. I looked up Dutchnews.nl. And the plastic soup
Foundation, both of which areDutch, I'm pretty sure Dutch on
the issues with Dutch recycling,because I had mentioned that I
(17:51):
wanted to look into how they doit in the Netherlands and see if
they do it any better. Right,and we'll see. So I also looked
at the Ecology Center on theplastic bags, because I take my
plastic bags to the grocerystore. And I wanted to know if
that mattered, right. Andfinally, my plastic free
(18:11):
life.com This lady is supercool. And she started a blog,
turn it into a book about livingforming a life without plastic.
Like, it took a long time. Butshe she's doing pretty well. So
she has lots of tips. Great.
Okay, I need those. I know,don't we all? So, four basic
(18:31):
problems that I found withplastics, recycling, okay.
Number one, used plastic can beturned into new things, but
(18:55):
picking it up sorting it out andmelting it down is expensive.
New plastic is almost alwayscheaper to make than it is to
recycle. That's the problem.
Yes. And fracking for oilcontributes to the low cost and
also the pandemic plunging oilprices.
Okay, so, plastics even cheaperto make new now than it was 10
(19:16):
years ago?
Probably I'm not sure on that.
But maybe not anymore. But yeah,during the pandemic, okay. Yeah.
Yeah, the oil industry makesmore than $400 billion a year
making plastic. Okay. Andbecause of the the demand for
oil for cars is going down. Theyexpect plastic to be their
(19:36):
biggest moneymaker in thefuture.
So they're just going to doubledown on it. That and if you
thinkabout it, I'll talk about it a
little bit later. But recyclingis there competition is too
high. No. Yeah, I know all this.
None of this came from my brain.
All of it came from research andI was like, there's so much
(19:57):
Okay, so that's number two.
Number three plastic degradeseach time is reused, meaning it
can't be reused more than one tothree times.
So unlike our infinite glass andinfinite aluminum recycling,
oh, yeah, very different. Yep.
Okay. And number four, this wasthe more recent news. There's
(20:20):
evidence that recycling plasticmakes it more toxic.
Oh, boy. Okay. It really isdeath. You weren't kidding.
I'm so sorry.
I'm just looking at plasticlotion bottles. And guess
(20:43):
what I'm drinking out of aplastic cup, although it's not
single use at least but yeah.
Jesus Christ. Okay, so, on thatnote, what's plasic? Native?
Yes, please. I was like, What isthis substance?
Okay, so I didn't look a wholelot into it. But it's made of
natural materials likecellulose, coal, natural gas,
(21:06):
salt, and, of course, crude oil.
That's put through apolymerization or
polycondensation process. Okay,so I didn't look too much into
the process of like making newplastic, but I did look into the
recycling process. Okay. Becauseplastics are one of the hardest
materials to recycle. There aredozens of types that we use in
(21:27):
every day, and they cannot berecycled together. So we have to
separate each of those numbersneed to be needs to be separated
from each other. And aftersorting, the bales are sent to a
recycling facility to be furtherwashed and cleaned. Then they're
washed and they're dunked inchemicals to remove the labels.
(21:50):
Okay, then the plastic is allchopped up. So it kind of like
glass except, yeah. Terrible.
More chemicals. Yes. Less, lessphysical process more chemicals.
Okay, great. And so the flakes,there's like lid flakes and
bottle flakes. I guess they havedifferent weights. So they're
(22:11):
separated in a flotation pool.
Okay. And then the flakes aremelted into plastic pellets,
which takes energy and canproduce air pollution. And the
pellets, go figure. And thepellets are sold to
manufacturers. So what I learnedis that it is possible to do all
of this in an environmentallyfriendly way. I mean, this is, I
(22:34):
think I'm quoting here becauseenvironmentally friendly, I'm
not sure, but friendlier way. Soif you treat the wastewater
correctly, if you dispose of thechemicals properly, and you make
sure that your emissions areheld in and they don't escape,
so recycling can actually useless energy and resources than
making plastic.
(22:57):
New. Okay, you would I think wefound from every recycling
process what we've covered,yeah, it actually is true. But a
lot of times shortcuts are takenand the consequences can be
devastating. Oh, dear. Yes. Somore about recycling plastic,
not everything is recyclableeverywhere, especially after
China's ban, which we will talkabout next week.
(23:21):
Just teasing next week. Yeah,they, they put
in a policy into place thatreally, I would say open
people's eyes more thananything. Yeah. But it really
changed how we have to operateplastics, recycling, okay. So
not everything's recyclableeverywhere. And I looked at my
(23:41):
County's website and some of thethings surprised me that they
will take, they have to beclean, but they'll take pump
bottles, spray bottles, frozenfood trays, whoa. And number
five takeout containers whichare like the clear lid with the
black bottomright, which are notorious for
not being taken anywhere. Okay.
Wow.
(24:01):
I know. I was really surprised.
And then these all have to beclean though. Can't have a
dishwasher Indian food. Yep. Butthey don't take plastic bags. Of
course not that surprised aboutthat. plastic egg cartons. Okay,
which I'm really upset aboutbecause I've been putting those
in my recycling for a long time.
(24:24):
And I remember looking it up,they must have changed it
because I looked it up like twoyears ago. Yeah. So I think I
need to start buying thecardboard ones. They do not take
number one. plastic clamshellpackaging. Okay, which it's, I
don't know. That's probably oneverything.
Yeah, that's so much. Yeah, theydon't take
cereal box liners and which isnot surprising, but they don't
(24:47):
take Styrofoam either. I don'tknow if anyone should recycle
Styrofoam.
Bridwell. We'll talk about thembut they will do well
yeah, awesome. Okay, so Wow,about I mean, I just like you
ticked it off. When I was like Ihave wished cycled every one of
those items.
I know. So have I. So a littlequick bit about plastic bags. So
(25:12):
I mentioned there's no upside tothis, but it's not going to get
better, unfortunately. But so Itake my I actually wrote out I
was so frustrated. I take myeffing plastic bags to the GED
grocery store. Yep. Yep. Andguess what I found out? They
were probably not payingrecycled? Not really. Yeah. No,
(25:36):
this was from I'm trying toremember where I found this
Ecology Center. Okay. They seemlike they knew what they were
talking about. They, yeah, theywere saying, they went through
the whole process of that. Andthey said, Some stores, use
services that collect the bags,and then send them straight to
(25:59):
the landfill. So like you'regoing to the grocery store. I
don't know if everybody doesthis, but you take your bag to
the grocery store, you put themin a little white bin or the
little green arrow bin. Oh, wow,that just, I hit my thing, and
it made it dinging. So you takeit to the store, you put it in
the green arrow Recycle Bin. Youfeel really good about yourself,
(26:21):
which is what I do. Yeah, someof them just take it straight to
the landfill. And some of itsrecycled. But it's very hard to
follow. This isn't the same forlike Saran wrap. So plastic film
or plastic bags. It's it'salmost impossible to follow it
to the end product or even fineproducts made from recycled
(26:43):
plastic film. Yeah. So yeah,this website recommended, like
use paper instead of bagsinstead of plastic bags for
trash, which I never thoughtabout doing.
Yeah. Growing up. My mom did Imean, I really,
they did that in theNetherlands. My friends were
doing that. And I just didn'tthink about it. But yeah, yeah,
that makes sense.
(27:05):
Yeah. And they said, like,eliminate plastic wrap. So you
can use like beeswax cloth,which I do want to try. Do you
have any ofthat? I have. We have reusable
plastic bags that we use. Andthen of course my roommates
infinite glass jars,right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, bring
your own bags. Don't buy foodand pouches are packaged in
films, but it's hard. It's sothe kid arches are like the new.
(27:32):
Yeah, it's how you eat anything.
Yeah, I just bought yogurt in aplastic tub. Right? Like, I'm
sorry, that's not a plasticfilm, or dual layer plastic,
which is something else I'velearned about which has like,
plastic and aluminum or plasticand Oh, interesting. Two
different kinds of plastic.
Yeah, so like your, you know,granola pouch. Like any of those
(27:54):
pouches has plastic andsomething else. Yeah, kinds of
plastic. So they're impossibleto recycle. Yep. Yeah.
Yeah. It's it sucks. But yeah, Imean, even your yogurt tub. It's
like God, that's still plasticis still technically single use.
Soyeah. My sister uses she needs a
great dog toy. The dog likes tolick the yogurt out. Right? Does
it really does thesame thing. Yeah. Her like,
(28:15):
she's got like a line around herface when she comes out. Like,
oh, I've got my fix.
Yep. Wow. Okay. Yeah, I'm justI'm despondent.
Now. They know. I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry. Yeah, ruse thewhole time.
(28:37):
So back to more of the ruse. Sothat's just a little bit about
like plastic and recyclingplastic and whatever. As
mentioned from the intro story,the plastics industry sold us a
bill of goods. And the industryknew, like I said, and I have a
quote here, like knew thatplastics recycling would not be
(28:59):
viable or sustainable. But thisLarry Thomas guy who was the
former president of the Societyof plastics industry, he said,
if the public thinks thatrecycling is working, then they
are not going to be as concernedabout the environment.
And America in a nutshell,yes. And in 1974, an industry
insider wrote in a speech thereis serious doubt that recycling
(29:27):
plastic can ever be made viableon an economic basis. And that
was 1974Oh my god. Yeah. So there's no
responsible way to be involvedin in plastic manufacturing baby
basically. Or to use plastic?
I think not. Yikes.
(29:59):
I know It's really it's a hardpill to swallow. Yeah. And I
want to say the bigger problemis like, I don't know this to be
totally true. But I want to saythe biggest problem, or at least
the most solvable problem is thesingle use. Or the, you know,
two to three times you use itand throw it out. Rather than,
(30:21):
like, making car parts out ofplastic. It's still not ideal,
but it's not. Like, it's notideal, because that car part
will eventually need to gradeand you don't need to go out of
the car.
Or plastics. We still got. Yeah,there's all kinds of thing.
(30:41):
Right? And so elastic can createtoxic anyway. Yeah, yeah. And
like,yeah, and the one that feels
more controllable is like thesingle use because it's like,
you can't escape. Not everhaving, like, you can't get a
car without plastic.
Right? Well, I think plasticthere's a reason it exists. It's
convenient. Yeah, it is.
(31:03):
I mean, it's transformative forthe economy, honestly.
I mean, how would we getstrawberries delivered? You
know, you got to think about allthe little peanuts in wrapping
to deliver fragile goodsor, or like any product on
Amazon. Yeah.
Little plastic bags. Yeah. Oranything that's wrapped
(31:25):
individually wrapped to preserveit, or maintain its integrity.
You know, my headphones.
Or headphones. Yeah, actually,most of this equipment that I'm
using for podcasting today.
There's plastic.
Yeah. There's also a lot ofmetal. I'm proud of that. Yeah.
Yeah. Good Java. But yeah, likeit really has made modern living
(31:49):
possible.
Right. Right. And that's the bigpoint. That is a very good
point. I want to come back tothat for sure. Another big thing
is that consumers want it towork. Like we so badly want it
to work.
Ultimate wish cycling. Yes, isexactly product of this, this
(32:12):
packaging that makes our lifebetter and easier. And it never
breaks down. But if we canrecycle it, we're fine. It's
fine. You know, we can keepliving our easy lifestyles.
Yep. Yes. And what's sointeresting is that this is I
think it was the NPR article.
They talked about in Oregon inlike the very progressive part
(32:34):
of Oregon, where, oh, yeah, itwas that same recycling center
owner who had gone to the citycouncil meeting. And she tried
to tell the City Council like,hey, this recycling, like, all
these arrows are showing upeverywhere, and everybody's
throwing everything in. Andrecycling is not working
anymore. And it's actuallybecoming more expensive for me
(32:55):
to process recyclables than itis worth it. I'm not making any
money. And everyone at the citycouncil meeting, said, like they
said, like, she says it was asif heresy had been spoken in the
room. And everyone believed thatthis plastic was valuable. And
yeah, and that's probablybecause of the advertising. So I
(33:17):
have some examples here, whichis really wild. It makes us feel
better to believe it right? Anda probably a little bit out of
control to let go of thatbelief. But like one ad, I
watched it, we'll have tosomehow put on Instagram, from
DuPont, again,oh, our friends at DuPont, our
buddies. It's thiscartoon ad and it says the
(33:39):
bottle may look empty. It's likea recycling truck. And then a
guy who I think is supposed tobe working as a recycling
collectors and they this bottlekeeps popping out for some
reason. It's like this reallyterrible 90s from 1990. It's
really terrible commercial. Butit says the bottle may look
(34:01):
empty yet. It's anything buttrash. It's full of potential.
we've pioneered the country'slargest, most comprehensive
plastic recycling program tohelp fill valuable uses and
roles. Well, at DuPont. We makethe things that make a
difference. Huh? Like foreverchemicals in our water. Thank
(34:22):
you. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that hasmade a difference. And now Okay,
so these ads were like, Shutbeing shown all the time in the
90s. And we don't even rememberthem because they're just
ingrained in our minds. Butthat's, that had a huge impact
on how we think of recycling ingeneral, but mostly plastics
(34:44):
recycling.
Wow. Yeah. I mean, they love thenarrative. Yes.
And they owe it and they knewwhat they were doing and it's
evil. But now the interestingthing is that there are new ads
coming up about recycling andcleaning up plastic pollution. A
lot of it has to do with likethe ocean or whatever. One of
(35:06):
the ads says we have people thatcan change the world. And both
of the former industry officialsthat NPR interviewed say, it
sounds like deja vu. And itsounds exactly the same. So it
was interesting because theyinterviewed the NPR article
interviewed somebody from achemical company. And he said,
(35:28):
Oh, no, it's, we didn't do itvery well before, but it's
better. It's better now. It'sbetter. Everything's fine. We
have new technology, all thiscrap. And these two industry
insiders are like, bullshit.
Wow. Yeah. It's not better. It'sexactly what it was before. So
keep an eye out for any bad likethat.
(35:49):
Yeah, that's offsetting. I mean,yeah, let Yeah, if you've out
there see green Hui ads likethis. send them our way. Yeah,
we can dissect them,please do. So. Okay. The other
big thing that I sort ofmentioned that about the
competition, but this LarryThomas guy who used to run the
Society for whatever the hillscalled, plastic society of the
(36:12):
plastics industry. He said, Hethat he worked for an industry
that didn't want recycling towork. Because if the job is to
sell as much oil as you possiblycan, any amount of recycled
plastic is competition.
Okay, wow. Yeah. said that outloud. Yeah. Forgotten. Everyone.
(36:35):
Did.
It's like, Well, I'm glad youfigured it out. Now, after you
spent your whole career workingfor these assholes.
Good job.
Congratulate Hey, better latethan never, I guess. But yeah.
And I'm going to leave us on. Itshouldn't talk about kittens
after this. There's one thingYeah, leave us on, like a
terrible note, but were sorry,in advance. Where's plastic
(36:59):
production going? It's expectedto triple in the next 25 years.
Okay. Again, they think that itis that single use plastics or
to get is it using plastics andother places that I think that's
just plastic in general? No.
Okay. Because maybe there's somehope. Maybe it is using it in
places that it'll be usedlonger. Maybe. But you know,
(37:20):
like the earth ships in NewMexico. Have you seen those?
No. So they I think I've seenI've heard of them. Yeah.
Well, we should post this onInstagram. But it's really crazy
cool houses that people buildand they use like recycled
bottles for installation. Imean, just the plastic bottles
for installation.
(37:41):
Whoa, and that works. They justput bottles in their wall. Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah. So cool. There's thingslike that you can do with
bottles and things but yeah. Oh,God, how depressing.
Apologies. And apologies fornext week, because it's not
getting better.
We really are gonna have to dosomething really cheerful.
No, for real. I'll like sing asong or something.
(38:03):
a tub of ice cream? Ice cream.
But it's in a it's in a papercontainer. I felt like
well, that was one thing.
Somebody I think it was theplastic free life lady was like,
whatever recommendations was togo out to get ice cream and like
get in. I get it into the cone.
Yeah, that makes it. Okay, butthen you're driving. I guess it
(38:27):
offsets it enough thatI don't know. Yeah, it's all.
It's all hard. But anyway, thatwas. That's why I didn't sleep
very well. But that's totallyfair. Yeah. So that was round
one. And so in the next episode,I'm going to do the whole like,
granola rating. And, okay, we'regoing to talk let's see, what
(38:49):
are we talking about? We'regonna talk about China's ban
we're talking about, isrecycling environmentally better
than producing new plastic,which is interesting. Yeah.
Because we were just saying it'slike, oh, everything so far,
seems better. Right? And thenI'm going to talk a little bit
about like, Dutch, plastics,recycling. And then where do we
go from here? Okay, so Ineed a nap. I No need to go hug
(39:12):
my dog. No.
There anything of a funny story?
Let's see Charlie did some. Oh,yes. I have a funny story if you
want to end on that. Okay. Okay.
So Charlie is to a little bitover two. Yeah. She just started
talking. And it's just amazingbecause you get she like wakes
up every day. And I can just seeher mind. Opening up more. It's
(39:36):
like she just notices morethings and stuff. She just
didn't pay attention to it allbefore. Yeah, the funniest thing
happened the other day, becauseI was sitting next to her on her
little doll house we wereplaying and I farted and she has
never paid attention to that.
Ever. And this time she got thislike glaze. is looking. Alright.
(39:58):
And then she goes mommy pooping?
Because she thought I was likepooping in my diaper because
because we allwear diapers. Because I do
therefore she does, right. Like,I love color logic.
I love it so much. So we taughther what party was, like many
(40:22):
poops, it's just so amazingbecause it's like, you just see
her like, wake up to the worldin all these little weird ways.
Amazing. Yeah. So there's stillgood in the world. Don't worry.
Yeah, there's toddlers learning.
That is helpful. That is yes.
I'm glad. Okay, well, thank you.
Yeah. Thank you for listening.
(40:44):
Yeah, really? I've been likelooking for not looking forward
to but really interested in thistopic pressing lately? Yes.
Like, since we started thepodcast, I was like, oh, man,
that's gonna be a big and I knowyou've you've I've, you've given
these quotes to me before, but Ihaving them all in one sitting
is kind of likeI know, even for me, it's like,
(41:04):
I discovered a lot of stuff thatI did not realize before.
Yeah, this is plastic recyclingis trash.
Wow. 110%.
Okay. Well, maybe follow us onInstagram. So you can see ads
from the DuPont.
Yes, it's bad at greening up myact. I'm going to try to figure
(41:27):
out a way I think I can justrecord it. I don't think that
would be any sort of copyright.
I don't care. We're notmaking money off of it. We're
making money. Come on.
Yeah, man, people. Yeah. So I'llput that up for sure. In some
other interesting things. I'mnot sure what yet.
And shout out to everyone whodoes comment on our Instagram
posts. I Tiffany farm farms thatshe's She is the chicken that
(41:53):
hatches those eggs, and she doesa great job. So I came in today
and wrote a great tip. And Imisspelled tip. So it's a top
and I said, I mean to. Sothere's extra bad comments on
Instagram today, because Ilooked at it. But it really,
really appreciate theinteraction we have with our
followers. You guys are doingamazing things. And it's always
really great to hear what you'redoing. And I just love when
(42:16):
people comment. It's soexciting. It's my career. It's
like, oh, we're not the onlyones doing this. Yes. And if any
of our stuff has helped you thatmakes us feel better to so yeah,
totally.
One of our followers actually, Ithink it was Susan. Yeah. Who
was it? Well, I think she wastelling me that she used green
bleach did yeah. Is that the oneYeah. Oh,
I didn't read the I read herstuff about the dishwasher
(42:38):
detergent. Yes. Thanks. Shoutout, Susan. Yeah, whenever Oh,
geez. For sure. Yeah. And Don,my friend from Yes. Well, I
think Don Yeah, yeah, he's he'sgreat too. Susan and Don, we
love you. We do thing for sure.
Yeah. You're why we do this. Youare your purpose. Yeah.
Hopefully you listen to thisepisode and you haven't given up
(43:00):
after Areyou just crying so loudly that
you can't hear us? Alrighty,well take care
to dream of glass and aluminumrecycling.
Totally. Kind of paper but.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Okay.
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