March 10, 2025 • 26 mins
(March 10, 2025)
The diseases are coming. Perks of a burner number: Fewer spam texts, stronger security and privacy. How poorer countries became the world’s dumping ground.
The diseases are coming. Perks of a burner number: Fewer spam texts, stronger security and privacy. How poorer countries became the world’s dumping ground.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty KFI AM six forty Bill Handle and the
Morning Crew. It is a Monday morning, March twentieth. You've
got some news that we are looking at. For example,
House Speaker Mike Johnson has unveiled plans I did over
(00:22):
the weekend for the government funding stopgap because the government
was going to end I think in a couple of
weeks or at least the money that the government can spend,
and so we said, how about through September thirtieth, We'll
figure it out because of a presidential government or a
potential government shut down. Oh, the deadline is coming up
(00:45):
on Friday, and the point is is to get the
Trump budget through and that Mike Johnson has said, this
is what the most important thing that we can do
as a Congress is to make sure that the president
wishes are met. Now Here is a story I want
to share with you, and this is an Elon Musk story.
(01:08):
Musk story, and this one is devastating. This has to
do with Doge where Musk is coming in and with
a blowtorch stopping, eliminating, devastating, reducing programs out there at
the first cabinet meeting that Donald Trump had, and there
(01:28):
was musk almost. I think it's fair to say he
was leading the meeting. He was the first person called
on and he started lecturing the people in the room,
the cabinet members, the cabinet secretaries, and he admitted at
that first meeting that DOGE had accidentally canceled ebola prevention programs. Oops,
(01:54):
and he said, Okay, that was oversight. Someone's got to
mute over there. That is oversight. But we've swiftly corrected it.
The problem is it wasn't swiftly corrected. It has dismantled
the infrastructure of this ebullet prevention program and others. Now
we rely on these programs to detect and confront pathodogens.
(02:23):
I'm still hearing an echo. By the way, guys, doja's
slash and burn campaign has hit everything, the NIH, the
National Weather Service, the cuts to global health. Those are
particularly alarming. And I'll tell you why. And the big
one is that they immediately went through was the Agency
(02:46):
for International Development, the US AIDS program. And why because well,
the allegations made against this program this organization is that
on its face it seems ridiculous and it's easy to attack.
For example, the handing out of condoms in Africa. BOYK,
(03:11):
isn't that crazy. I mean, we're spending tens of millions
of dollars handing out condoms so people can stoop over
there and do it with impunity. Oh yeah, the fact
that the reason it's there is to stop the spread
of AIDS. Why don't you add that line to it?
You think that's a little important. Another one that was
(03:36):
kind of interesting, musk actually describe USAID as a criminal organization,
and here is the accusation. Another one at the White
House maid about alleged wasteful spending. There was funding for
a d Ei musical in Ireland paid for by the
(03:59):
US government. Guess what, that didn't happen. It just didn't happen.
It's just not true. So what hey, one in doubt
makes stuff up because that is what makes the argument
so much stronger. They're eating the cats and dogs? Okay,
(04:23):
how many of them are there? Do people eat cats
and dogs? Are their Koreans, some tiny little group of
them who actually do eat dogs? Or Chinese? The tiniest group. Yeah?
Does that mean everybody? Of course not. Although I've gotten
in a lot of trouble for intimidating that or intimating
(04:44):
that everybody does. And so what mus said is we
are going to put the USAID Agency us AIDS into
the wood chipper. And we're talking about the National Weather
Service because that's not important enough. And you've got the
(05:09):
NIH National Institute of Health, that's not important enough. And
then the poster child, the US Agency for International Development
usage as must said, that's going into the woodchipper. And
he declared it a criminal organization, pointed to alleged wasteful spending, which,
(05:29):
by the way, I want to point something out, there
is tons of wasteful spending. The government is bloated. There's
no issue. It's easy to bloat a government, truly. It's
you know, you go to Congress and Congress likes hiring people,
congressman senators in his or her own district. You look
cold that way. Look how many jobs I brought to
(05:50):
the district. You know, welcome to the world of elected officials.
And I have no problem with the concept of a
government an administration going in and saying, you know what,
this is too much. You know, we have to reinvent
the wheel here, which I think is fine. The point
is do you destroy everything? That's the problem and the
(06:17):
discussion here here it is is you've got these programs.
You've got the Democrats wanting to play chess. You've got
an administration that wants to burn down the chessboard. Where
do you go with that? You know, where's the discussion?
And the chessboard is governmental programs that are controlled by
(06:42):
the administration. All right, So here is usaight, Okay, this
is the one that has the Dei musical in Ireland,
which never happened, condoms in Africa which have happened. Okay.
Much of USAID's budget is devoted to addressing humanitarian and
(07:05):
health crisis aboard, with the goal of preventing those emergencies
from reaching our shores. If you look at the charter,
the goal is to advance American security and prosperity and
those programs that help people overseas. The tagline, the stamp
(07:29):
that's on a lot of the boxes of medicine, for example,
the trucks that deliver medicine and food and testing equipment,
says right there, this is from the American people. That's
what it says. It's from the American people. And so
(07:53):
the world relies on it for sure. USA was the
primary funder of the President's Emergency Plan for Age Relief
all over the world by the way, that was established
in two thousand and three under George W. Bush. And
this emergency age relief program has been credited with saving
(08:15):
twenty five million lives and actually helped smother the HIV pandemic,
although didn't do enough. Were their missteps, You bet there
were so these people that were receiving age treatment still
around the world through the program. Trump signed the executive
(08:36):
order in first day pausing all foreign aid for ninety
days while they're trying to figure out and you know, again,
investigate your brains out. I don't care. You know, root
out the problem. But do you root it out after
you shut it down, or do you root it out
while you're investigating it. So USAID's staff or placed on
(09:01):
administrative leave. There's no distribution of medicine, there is no
there's no covering of costs for transport personnel. USA's efforts
to stop ebola at its source gone and its role
in containment has long been considered essential. During the twenty
(09:22):
fourteen West Africa outbreak, more than eleven thousand people died.
So what did USA do? It oversaw training of local
healthcare workers, the building of a bowl of treatment centers,
passenger screening at the borders and airports. Now we're into
Trump's second term. Days into it, Uganda reports another abola outbreak.
(09:45):
By the way, that's not to say that's the fault
of the United States, and of course it's not. But
there's nothing there that the United States is doing to
stop it or treat the people. USA it is unable
to supply resources for transporting lab specimens or implementing airport screening.
(10:08):
I mean, this is important stuff, it really is. Trump
signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from
who Great Band World Health organization why demanding owner's payments
from the United States. So in twenty twenty three, the
US contributed four hundred and eighty one million dollars. That's
(10:28):
half a billion dollars. That is a big chunk of money.
But here is the fun one, and that is less
than what we pay for dog training in the United States.
But that's voluntary because dog training United States, frankly is
pretty important stuff. I'm training my dogs, you know, I
(10:50):
got relatively new dogs and one was eaten by a coyote,
and so we brought another don ye and has to
be trained. So what are the choices? People die of
a bola train the dogs, people die of a bola
train the dogs. Which way do we go dogs? No question?
(11:12):
And there's really crazy stuff going on. You know. Every
year a group of scientists, volunteer scientists advise the government
on the flu vaccine. Guess which way the flu vaccine
is going to go? Which way is it going to
mutate from last year? I just got my flu shot.
And sometimes they're right on where it's eighty eighty five
(11:36):
correct if they just went ahead and predicted the right one,
or they miss and it's fifty percent, which is still helpful,
but it doesn't do what it could be doing. But
symptoms are less than the flu lasts a small a
smaller length of time. For the first time, that was canceled.
(12:02):
The government canceled that meeting. There is not going to
be this group of scientists that are going to help
the government determine which way the flu vaccine is going
to go. It's pretty scary stuff. And the bottom line
is the US AIDS position in terms of global health
(12:29):
was considered the premier organization in the world where countries
all over the world looked at it, and now not
so much anymore. You know, we're not considered allies, and
not only in terms of foreign affairs, but just in
terms of helping people, because the US, being the wealthiest
(12:50):
country in the world, or the wealthiest big country in
the world, has been known for helping people, and it
just won't. We are now becoming isolationists. You can agree
or disagree with that. I have to disagree. I think
US money to help people from getting ebola is a
good thing. But I understand the other side of it.
(13:12):
I get it. You know, we're going to be isolationists.
We're going to be America firsters, and that's what we
voted for. And I'm a big fan of democracy, A
big fan of democracy. So people that bitch and moan,
you know, I have friends that say he's not my president,
and you know what he is. He is your president.
(13:34):
The US electorate voted him into office. Now, don't give
me he is not my president. You know, I don't
want to hear it. Okay. I want to talk a
little bit about dumping. And this is a terrific story
that came out of the Atlantic. We get a lot
of information from the Atlantic because they're it's a good magazine.
(13:58):
Now I want to get this was based in England
because it talks about what's going on in England. But
this happens all over the world. So it starts with
a plastic shopping bag that is used at a supermarket
where groceries go in Okay, The shopper puts the groceries
in a bag, takes it home and then quote recycles it. Right,
(14:20):
It puts in the recycling bin. And here's what happens.
From a recycling bin in London. It's truck to Harwich,
which is port town, eighty miles northeast, and then it
shipped to Rotterdam, which is in Holland. Then it's driven
across Germany into Poland, and then it's put into this
(14:42):
jumbled pile of trash outside an unmarked warehouse in southern Turkey.
Now it might eventually get recycled, but more likely it's
just going to sit there and it'll be put out
in the sun, slowly descendigrating over decad aids and for
most plastic bags, this is completely invisible. We don't know
(15:08):
how that's done. There's a book that was just written
by a journalist, by a na Alexandria Clap and it's
called Waste Wars, The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash. And
the book goes through a whole lot of these journeys,
tracking the garbage of rich countries like ours, along these
(15:30):
arteries towards some of the planet's poorest places. As I
told you, it's tough to be poor, whether you're an individual,
whether you're a farmer, whether you are a country, poor people, countries,
places just not good. And so one of the dark
(15:52):
sides of consumerism what we do, what we turn out
is all the discarded wrappers, old ips that are piling
up and literally being burned on the other side of
the world. Burning an iPhone, you think that releases a
toxic or two. And what happens, according to this book,
(16:12):
and no one's going to refute it. There's a devastating
environmental toll, leeches toxic contaminants into water, air, food, Whole regions,
not just countries, whole regions are becoming fields of trash.
It is so big, this issue that it's actually reshaping
(16:33):
entire economies. The disposal industry employees now millions and millions
of people. Whole towns in India and Indonesia are buried
in millions of pounds of single use plastics. Whole communities
(16:53):
across Indian Bangladesh are populated by armies of migrant workers
who I don't know if you've ever seen this story
or videos or documentaries. They dismantle old cruise liners, ships, tankers.
They bring them up on shore and we're talking about
(17:15):
these massive ships and they're dismantled by hand. You see
them come in with the welding torches and take out
huge chunk of these ships and then bring them to
recycling centers. Because steel is the most recycled material in
(17:37):
the world. No one throws away steel, and so, as
I said, rich countries pass the problems onto poorer countries.
And this has been going on for a long long time,
even before the use of plastics really came into being.
You know, there was a time before World War Two
(17:59):
were plastics didn't even exist. Can you imagine a world
without plastics? I mean I remember a world. Oh, I'm
so dated, where you couldn't no one mark at the
market said paper or plastic, No one because there was
no plastic. So it was paper bags and they came
(18:19):
for free, they didn't charge you ten cents. And you
know what people did, like I did, you say, plastic
in paper? So they put the food in a plastic
bag and then put the bag into a paper bag
because you wouldn't have stuff that leaked out. And so
(18:42):
there was a time when it was only paper. We're
moving back to paper. Ah, what's old is new, what's
new is old. So going back into history, before the
use of plastics came up in any way whatsoever, the
US dumped radio appive materials where on Pacific island nations,
(19:07):
and decades later we're still looking at a potential radioactive
disaster in those places. I mean, this is a tough story.
So I want to come back give you a little
bit of history of what's going on. And this is
one of the reasons that I am happy that I'm
(19:29):
not going to be around thirty years from now. I
used to be really depressed that I'm not going to
be around thirty forty fifty years. Where I can last
in the twenty sixties twenty seventies, only because where technology
is going, what's it going to be like flying cars
and the Jetsons and just all of it. I was
(19:51):
going to miss out. Well, I'm fine with missing out.
I don't envy my kids. I don't envy my grandkids
because I between climate change and stuff like this, I
don't think it's going to be so hot? Am I
depressing anybody? Amy? Is this sort of up? Isn't this good? Will?
(20:15):
You're fairly new to the show, you haven't been around
very long. But have I depressed you during the course
of this show? Because I really want to. I'm a
little sad. Yeah, oh goody good. We have to move
a little bit more in that direction. Man. I love it,
I know, And this is why on Saturday. I love
it when you have no case. Hey, you don't have
(20:36):
a case. Do you understand? There's nothing there, There's nada.
Welcome to the philosophy of this show. Oh there's more,
Oh there's plenty more. I'm going to talk to you
about waste and what's going on throughout the world. And
I'm discussing a book that was written by a journalist
(20:56):
Alexandra Klapp called Waste Wars The Wild after Life of
Your Trash. And I'm simply going through the story of
what happens to our trash and how we recycle plastics,
for example, which we don't, and primarily plastic bags, which
are ubiquitous. And if you look at the oceans and
(21:19):
the amount of trash that's out there, and the biggest
amount of trash is plastic bags. What is it the
great trash area in the Pacific where you've got the
tides that are circling and there's one chunk of floating
trash that's the size of Texas. I mean, just insanity.
(21:43):
So here's what we do is develop countries, is we
take our trash and we move it to developing non
developed countries, developing countries, poor countries. And what we do
is not only do we remove wealth from poorer developing
(22:04):
countries by sending them trash, we take away their wealth.
It's called anti wealth. And we're talking about the very
places that supplied raw material rubber, cotton, metal are now
dumping grounds. We're accused of taking out their natural resources
(22:25):
replacing them with the trash that we in fact manufacture.
And you know, we go back to the seventies, there
were statutes like the Federal Environmental Pesticized Control Act of
nineteen seventy two. Scores of toxic substances were banned in
(22:47):
seventy six the Research Conservation and Recovery Act. Buying hazardous
waste in the US soil became a lot more expensive,
and boy, whatn't end around The industry did because this
commitment to environmentalists did. Environmentalism didn't extend to other countries,
(23:07):
I mean only the wealthy countries. So these laws were
passed across Europe North America. So a semi legal international
waste trade soon sprang up, and so wealthy nations like
US exported asbestos DDT to countries like Benin and Haiti
or Benin and Haiti desperate to develop their economies and
(23:30):
desperate to put their people to work, and by the
end of the eighties, more aid more waste than development
aid dollar for dollar was going from the wealthy nations
to the poor nations. And by the late nineteen eighties
a lot of these developing agents had enough, and so
most of the world went into something called entered into
(23:54):
the Basel Convention, a nineteen eighty nine international agreement out
lying the export of hazardous waste to other countries. One
hundred and ninety one nations have ratified the Basil Convention.
The United States is not one of them. You know,
we're good at being one of the few nations in
(24:15):
several instances where we just don't sign up with the
rest of the world. So here is the end around
because this is still going on, but it's against the law.
You can't transport waste. So you know what these countries
and these industry did. Boy, I'm talking about us, the
wealthy guys. What happened in the nineteen nineties. They looked
(24:40):
at a provision of the Basil Convention that an object
sent from one country to another for reuse rather than disposal,
was not waste. It was a thing of value. So
wastebrokers and this is done by brokers. I mean this
is on an international scale of magnitude. What wastebrokers did
(25:03):
was refer to these wastes as recovered by products that
can be recycled, which of course they can't. I mean,
technically you can recycle plastic plastic bags. The problem is
it's very expensive, it's not easy to do at all,
(25:28):
and it just doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make
any financial sense, so no one's gonna do it. But
the messaging was very effective, and plastic production is still accelerating,
going through the roof and it's a mess. Just wanting
to make you feel better. We're done, guys, Okay. Coming up,
it's Gary and Shannon at eleven twenty. They're talking about
(25:50):
the high pressure tactics Gloria already there's a famous attorney
Gloria already uses on her clients. Tomorrow we start all
over again. Wake up call at five am, Amy and
Will and then coming up at six o'clock it's Neil
and Me and is always taking care of our show mediocrely. Yeah,
(26:16):
Cono is bowing right now, Cono and and this is
KFI am six. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty KFI AM six forty Bill Handle and the
Morning Crew. It is a Monday morning, March twentieth. You've
got some news that we are looking at. For example,
House Speaker Mike Johnson has unveiled plans I did over
(00:22):
the weekend for the government funding stopgap because the government
was going to end I think in a couple of
weeks or at least the money that the government can spend,
and so we said, how about through September thirtieth, We'll
figure it out because of a presidential government or a
potential government shut down. Oh, the deadline is coming up
(00:45):
on Friday, and the point is is to get the
Trump budget through and that Mike Johnson has said, this
is what the most important thing that we can do
as a Congress is to make sure that the president
wishes are met. Now Here is a story I want
to share with you, and this is an Elon Musk story.
(01:08):
Musk story, and this one is devastating. This has to
do with Doge where Musk is coming in and with
a blowtorch stopping, eliminating, devastating, reducing programs out there at
the first cabinet meeting that Donald Trump had, and there
(01:28):
was musk almost. I think it's fair to say he
was leading the meeting. He was the first person called
on and he started lecturing the people in the room,
the cabinet members, the cabinet secretaries, and he admitted at
that first meeting that DOGE had accidentally canceled ebola prevention programs. Oops,
(01:54):
and he said, Okay, that was oversight. Someone's got to
mute over there. That is oversight. But we've swiftly corrected it.
The problem is it wasn't swiftly corrected. It has dismantled
the infrastructure of this ebullet prevention program and others. Now
we rely on these programs to detect and confront pathodogens.
(02:23):
I'm still hearing an echo. By the way, guys, doja's
slash and burn campaign has hit everything, the NIH, the
National Weather Service, the cuts to global health. Those are
particularly alarming. And I'll tell you why. And the big
one is that they immediately went through was the Agency
(02:46):
for International Development, the US AIDS program. And why because well,
the allegations made against this program this organization is that
on its face it seems ridiculous and it's easy to attack.
For example, the handing out of condoms in Africa. BOYK,
(03:11):
isn't that crazy. I mean, we're spending tens of millions
of dollars handing out condoms so people can stoop over
there and do it with impunity. Oh yeah, the fact
that the reason it's there is to stop the spread
of AIDS. Why don't you add that line to it?
You think that's a little important. Another one that was
(03:36):
kind of interesting, musk actually describe USAID as a criminal organization,
and here is the accusation. Another one at the White
House maid about alleged wasteful spending. There was funding for
a d Ei musical in Ireland paid for by the
(03:59):
US government. Guess what, that didn't happen. It just didn't happen.
It's just not true. So what hey, one in doubt
makes stuff up because that is what makes the argument
so much stronger. They're eating the cats and dogs? Okay,
(04:23):
how many of them are there? Do people eat cats
and dogs? Are their Koreans, some tiny little group of
them who actually do eat dogs? Or Chinese? The tiniest group. Yeah?
Does that mean everybody? Of course not. Although I've gotten
in a lot of trouble for intimidating that or intimating
(04:44):
that everybody does. And so what mus said is we
are going to put the USAID Agency us AIDS into
the wood chipper. And we're talking about the National Weather
Service because that's not important enough. And you've got the
(05:09):
NIH National Institute of Health, that's not important enough. And
then the poster child, the US Agency for International Development
usage as must said, that's going into the woodchipper. And
he declared it a criminal organization, pointed to alleged wasteful spending, which,
(05:29):
by the way, I want to point something out, there
is tons of wasteful spending. The government is bloated. There's
no issue. It's easy to bloat a government, truly. It's
you know, you go to Congress and Congress likes hiring people,
congressman senators in his or her own district. You look
cold that way. Look how many jobs I brought to
(05:50):
the district. You know, welcome to the world of elected officials.
And I have no problem with the concept of a
government an administration going in and saying, you know what,
this is too much. You know, we have to reinvent
the wheel here, which I think is fine. The point
is do you destroy everything? That's the problem and the
(06:17):
discussion here here it is is you've got these programs.
You've got the Democrats wanting to play chess. You've got
an administration that wants to burn down the chessboard. Where
do you go with that? You know, where's the discussion?
And the chessboard is governmental programs that are controlled by
(06:42):
the administration. All right, So here is usaight, Okay, this
is the one that has the Dei musical in Ireland,
which never happened, condoms in Africa which have happened. Okay.
Much of USAID's budget is devoted to addressing humanitarian and
(07:05):
health crisis aboard, with the goal of preventing those emergencies
from reaching our shores. If you look at the charter,
the goal is to advance American security and prosperity and
those programs that help people overseas. The tagline, the stamp
(07:29):
that's on a lot of the boxes of medicine, for example,
the trucks that deliver medicine and food and testing equipment,
says right there, this is from the American people. That's
what it says. It's from the American people. And so
(07:53):
the world relies on it for sure. USA was the
primary funder of the President's Emergency Plan for Age Relief
all over the world by the way, that was established
in two thousand and three under George W. Bush. And
this emergency age relief program has been credited with saving
(08:15):
twenty five million lives and actually helped smother the HIV pandemic,
although didn't do enough. Were their missteps, You bet there
were so these people that were receiving age treatment still
around the world through the program. Trump signed the executive
(08:36):
order in first day pausing all foreign aid for ninety
days while they're trying to figure out and you know, again,
investigate your brains out. I don't care. You know, root
out the problem. But do you root it out after
you shut it down, or do you root it out
while you're investigating it. So USAID's staff or placed on
(09:01):
administrative leave. There's no distribution of medicine, there is no
there's no covering of costs for transport personnel. USA's efforts
to stop ebola at its source gone and its role
in containment has long been considered essential. During the twenty
(09:22):
fourteen West Africa outbreak, more than eleven thousand people died.
So what did USA do? It oversaw training of local
healthcare workers, the building of a bowl of treatment centers,
passenger screening at the borders and airports. Now we're into
Trump's second term. Days into it, Uganda reports another abola outbreak.
(09:45):
By the way, that's not to say that's the fault
of the United States, and of course it's not. But
there's nothing there that the United States is doing to
stop it or treat the people. USA it is unable
to supply resources for transporting lab specimens or implementing airport screening.
(10:08):
I mean, this is important stuff, it really is. Trump
signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from
who Great Band World Health organization why demanding owner's payments
from the United States. So in twenty twenty three, the
US contributed four hundred and eighty one million dollars. That's
(10:28):
half a billion dollars. That is a big chunk of money.
But here is the fun one, and that is less
than what we pay for dog training in the United States.
But that's voluntary because dog training United States, frankly is
pretty important stuff. I'm training my dogs, you know, I
(10:50):
got relatively new dogs and one was eaten by a coyote,
and so we brought another don ye and has to
be trained. So what are the choices? People die of
a bola train the dogs, people die of a bola
train the dogs. Which way do we go dogs? No question?
(11:12):
And there's really crazy stuff going on. You know. Every
year a group of scientists, volunteer scientists advise the government
on the flu vaccine. Guess which way the flu vaccine
is going to go? Which way is it going to
mutate from last year? I just got my flu shot.
And sometimes they're right on where it's eighty eighty five
(11:36):
correct if they just went ahead and predicted the right one,
or they miss and it's fifty percent, which is still helpful,
but it doesn't do what it could be doing. But
symptoms are less than the flu lasts a small a
smaller length of time. For the first time, that was canceled.
(12:02):
The government canceled that meeting. There is not going to
be this group of scientists that are going to help
the government determine which way the flu vaccine is going
to go. It's pretty scary stuff. And the bottom line
is the US AIDS position in terms of global health
(12:29):
was considered the premier organization in the world where countries
all over the world looked at it, and now not
so much anymore. You know, we're not considered allies, and
not only in terms of foreign affairs, but just in
terms of helping people, because the US, being the wealthiest
(12:50):
country in the world, or the wealthiest big country in
the world, has been known for helping people, and it
just won't. We are now becoming isolationists. You can agree
or disagree with that. I have to disagree. I think
US money to help people from getting ebola is a
good thing. But I understand the other side of it.
(13:12):
I get it. You know, we're going to be isolationists.
We're going to be America firsters, and that's what we
voted for. And I'm a big fan of democracy, A
big fan of democracy. So people that bitch and moan,
you know, I have friends that say he's not my president,
and you know what he is. He is your president.
(13:34):
The US electorate voted him into office. Now, don't give
me he is not my president. You know, I don't
want to hear it. Okay. I want to talk a
little bit about dumping. And this is a terrific story
that came out of the Atlantic. We get a lot
of information from the Atlantic because they're it's a good magazine.
(13:58):
Now I want to get this was based in England
because it talks about what's going on in England. But
this happens all over the world. So it starts with
a plastic shopping bag that is used at a supermarket
where groceries go in Okay, The shopper puts the groceries
in a bag, takes it home and then quote recycles it. Right,
(14:20):
It puts in the recycling bin. And here's what happens.
From a recycling bin in London. It's truck to Harwich,
which is port town, eighty miles northeast, and then it
shipped to Rotterdam, which is in Holland. Then it's driven
across Germany into Poland, and then it's put into this
(14:42):
jumbled pile of trash outside an unmarked warehouse in southern Turkey.
Now it might eventually get recycled, but more likely it's
just going to sit there and it'll be put out
in the sun, slowly descendigrating over decad aids and for
most plastic bags, this is completely invisible. We don't know
(15:08):
how that's done. There's a book that was just written
by a journalist, by a na Alexandria Clap and it's
called Waste Wars, The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash. And
the book goes through a whole lot of these journeys,
tracking the garbage of rich countries like ours, along these
(15:30):
arteries towards some of the planet's poorest places. As I
told you, it's tough to be poor, whether you're an individual,
whether you're a farmer, whether you are a country, poor people, countries,
places just not good. And so one of the dark
(15:52):
sides of consumerism what we do, what we turn out
is all the discarded wrappers, old ips that are piling
up and literally being burned on the other side of
the world. Burning an iPhone, you think that releases a
toxic or two. And what happens, according to this book,
(16:12):
and no one's going to refute it. There's a devastating
environmental toll, leeches toxic contaminants into water, air, food, Whole regions,
not just countries, whole regions are becoming fields of trash.
It is so big, this issue that it's actually reshaping
(16:33):
entire economies. The disposal industry employees now millions and millions
of people. Whole towns in India and Indonesia are buried
in millions of pounds of single use plastics. Whole communities
(16:53):
across Indian Bangladesh are populated by armies of migrant workers
who I don't know if you've ever seen this story
or videos or documentaries. They dismantle old cruise liners, ships, tankers.
They bring them up on shore and we're talking about
(17:15):
these massive ships and they're dismantled by hand. You see
them come in with the welding torches and take out
huge chunk of these ships and then bring them to
recycling centers. Because steel is the most recycled material in
(17:37):
the world. No one throws away steel, and so, as
I said, rich countries pass the problems onto poorer countries.
And this has been going on for a long long time,
even before the use of plastics really came into being.
You know, there was a time before World War Two
(17:59):
were plastics didn't even exist. Can you imagine a world
without plastics? I mean I remember a world. Oh, I'm
so dated, where you couldn't no one mark at the
market said paper or plastic, No one because there was
no plastic. So it was paper bags and they came
(18:19):
for free, they didn't charge you ten cents. And you
know what people did, like I did, you say, plastic
in paper? So they put the food in a plastic
bag and then put the bag into a paper bag
because you wouldn't have stuff that leaked out. And so
(18:42):
there was a time when it was only paper. We're
moving back to paper. Ah, what's old is new, what's
new is old. So going back into history, before the
use of plastics came up in any way whatsoever, the
US dumped radio appive materials where on Pacific island nations,
(19:07):
and decades later we're still looking at a potential radioactive
disaster in those places. I mean, this is a tough story.
So I want to come back give you a little
bit of history of what's going on. And this is
one of the reasons that I am happy that I'm
(19:29):
not going to be around thirty years from now. I
used to be really depressed that I'm not going to
be around thirty forty fifty years. Where I can last
in the twenty sixties twenty seventies, only because where technology
is going, what's it going to be like flying cars
and the Jetsons and just all of it. I was
(19:51):
going to miss out. Well, I'm fine with missing out.
I don't envy my kids. I don't envy my grandkids
because I between climate change and stuff like this, I
don't think it's going to be so hot? Am I
depressing anybody? Amy? Is this sort of up? Isn't this good? Will?
(20:15):
You're fairly new to the show, you haven't been around
very long. But have I depressed you during the course
of this show? Because I really want to. I'm a
little sad. Yeah, oh goody good. We have to move
a little bit more in that direction. Man. I love it,
I know, And this is why on Saturday. I love
it when you have no case. Hey, you don't have
(20:36):
a case. Do you understand? There's nothing there, There's nada.
Welcome to the philosophy of this show. Oh there's more,
Oh there's plenty more. I'm going to talk to you
about waste and what's going on throughout the world. And
I'm discussing a book that was written by a journalist
(20:56):
Alexandra Klapp called Waste Wars The Wild after Life of
Your Trash. And I'm simply going through the story of
what happens to our trash and how we recycle plastics,
for example, which we don't, and primarily plastic bags, which
are ubiquitous. And if you look at the oceans and
(21:19):
the amount of trash that's out there, and the biggest
amount of trash is plastic bags. What is it the
great trash area in the Pacific where you've got the
tides that are circling and there's one chunk of floating
trash that's the size of Texas. I mean, just insanity.
(21:43):
So here's what we do is develop countries, is we
take our trash and we move it to developing non
developed countries, developing countries, poor countries. And what we do
is not only do we remove wealth from poorer developing
(22:04):
countries by sending them trash, we take away their wealth.
It's called anti wealth. And we're talking about the very
places that supplied raw material rubber, cotton, metal are now
dumping grounds. We're accused of taking out their natural resources
(22:25):
replacing them with the trash that we in fact manufacture.
And you know, we go back to the seventies, there
were statutes like the Federal Environmental Pesticized Control Act of
nineteen seventy two. Scores of toxic substances were banned in
(22:47):
seventy six the Research Conservation and Recovery Act. Buying hazardous
waste in the US soil became a lot more expensive,
and boy, whatn't end around The industry did because this
commitment to environmentalists did. Environmentalism didn't extend to other countries,
(23:07):
I mean only the wealthy countries. So these laws were
passed across Europe North America. So a semi legal international
waste trade soon sprang up, and so wealthy nations like
US exported asbestos DDT to countries like Benin and Haiti
or Benin and Haiti desperate to develop their economies and
(23:30):
desperate to put their people to work, and by the
end of the eighties, more aid more waste than development
aid dollar for dollar was going from the wealthy nations
to the poor nations. And by the late nineteen eighties
a lot of these developing agents had enough, and so
most of the world went into something called entered into
(23:54):
the Basel Convention, a nineteen eighty nine international agreement out
lying the export of hazardous waste to other countries. One
hundred and ninety one nations have ratified the Basil Convention.
The United States is not one of them. You know,
we're good at being one of the few nations in
(24:15):
several instances where we just don't sign up with the
rest of the world. So here is the end around
because this is still going on, but it's against the law.
You can't transport waste. So you know what these countries
and these industry did. Boy, I'm talking about us, the
wealthy guys. What happened in the nineteen nineties. They looked
(24:40):
at a provision of the Basil Convention that an object
sent from one country to another for reuse rather than disposal,
was not waste. It was a thing of value. So
wastebrokers and this is done by brokers. I mean this
is on an international scale of magnitude. What wastebrokers did
(25:03):
was refer to these wastes as recovered by products that
can be recycled, which of course they can't. I mean,
technically you can recycle plastic plastic bags. The problem is
it's very expensive, it's not easy to do at all,
(25:28):
and it just doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make
any financial sense, so no one's gonna do it. But
the messaging was very effective, and plastic production is still accelerating,
going through the roof and it's a mess. Just wanting
to make you feel better. We're done, guys, Okay. Coming up,
it's Gary and Shannon at eleven twenty. They're talking about
(25:50):
the high pressure tactics Gloria already there's a famous attorney
Gloria already uses on her clients. Tomorrow we start all
over again. Wake up call at five am, Amy and
Will and then coming up at six o'clock it's Neil
and Me and is always taking care of our show mediocrely. Yeah,
(26:16):
Cono is bowing right now, Cono and and this is
KFI am six. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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