Latest / Nonsense with cj little and Jeff Parker / Plastics: The Alchemy of Our Own Undoing

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Plastics: The Alchemy of Our Own Undoing · Nonsense with cj little and Jeff Parker

• 0:00
  Welcome to Nonsense Season 4, Episode 15, our big story on our
• 0:02
  second show of the week, I'm Jeff Parker.
• 0:04
  I'm CJ Little. This time we're looking at
• 0:05
  plastic purgatory. Past, present, and future.
• 0:08
  Up next. Ed Begley, Junior, we all owe
• 0:10
  you an apology. You were right all along.
• 0:12
  Ed Begley junior does not think he was right about everything.
• 0:15
  I don't know his whole thing about personal responsibility.
• 0:17
  You ask him now he goes, yes, personal responsibility is a
• 0:20
  drop in the bucket compared to corporate responsibility.
• 0:23
  He had a bicycle that you would pedal to power his toaster.
• 0:25
  What's wrong with that? Nothing's wrong with that.
• 0:27
  It's great. But again, if you asked him
• 0:29
  today, he would and say the extreme Ed Begley was not as
• 0:32
  effective as Ed Begley could have been.
• 0:34
  I don't plan on disagreeing with you on anything.
• 0:36
  I think you and I are perfectly aligned on this entire show.
• 0:39
  OK, that's going to go. Great.
• 0:40
  Magic pills and silver bullets. The solutions to all our plastic
• 0:43
  problems. Let's go.
• 0:44
  Oh. Wait, this is the magic pills
• 0:45
  episode, could it be interesting?
• 1:05
  Plastic is the alchemy of the modern age.
• 1:07
  By rearranging simple carbon chains, we created a material
• 1:10
  that is virtually indestructible, incredibly
• 1:12
  light, and infinitely versatile. It's the silent engine of the
• 1:15
  21st century. Before synthetic polymers, we
• 1:17
  were stripping the earth of ivory and silk.
• 1:19
  Plastics democratize the quality of life, turning once scarce
• 1:22
  luxuries into everyday essentials.
• 1:24
  In medicine, the miracle is literal.
• 1:26
  Sterile syringes, blood bags, and heart valves of extended
• 1:29
  human life expectancy by decades.
• 1:31
  The genius of plastic lies in its efficiency.
• 1:33
  Its featherweight profile slashes fuel emissions and
• 1:36
  global transport. It defies corrosion, protecting
• 1:38
  everything from underground fiber optic cables to your food
• 1:41
  in the pantry, from the 3D printed prosthetic to the
• 1:43
  insulation keeping your home warm.
• 1:45
  Plastic is the scaffolding of human progress.
• 1:47
  It. Was the AI of the 1800s?
• 1:49
  Yes, it was. Everyone was worried about
• 1:50
  plastic disrupting their jobs. It's a material designed to last
• 1:53
  forever, and while that poses a waste challenge, it also
• 1:55
  represents the ultimate triumph of engineering over nature's
• 1:58
  limitations forever. Plastics do, however, have a
• 2:01
  drawback. They're slowly killing much of
• 2:03
  life on Earth. Did all the.
• 2:05
  Plastics get together and be like all right I got a plan OK
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  you know how Voltron would assemble from like 5 other
• 2:09
  pieces? We're going to the opposite.
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  We're going to break down into billions of pieces and then just
• 2:13
  slowly contaminate everything. This will.
• 2:14
  Blow your mind. If every human on the face of
• 2:16
  the earth, every adult, has roughly 7 grams of nanoplastics
• 2:19
  in our brains, that is about the size of a plastic spoon just in
• 2:22
  your brain. Oh, that's where I put that.
• 2:25
  I've been looking for that spoon.
• 2:27
  This, by the way, is terrible plastics.
• 2:29
  I'm not gonna pretend that I this all, all of this,
• 2:33
  everything we're about to talk about is terrible.
• 2:35
  Yeah, I'm not a guy who is running around using a bunch of
• 2:37
  plastic, but I'll tell you now, if we're reading this, I just
• 2:39
  wanna make everything in my house out of iron now.
• 2:41
  Or glass. That's what I want to do.
• 2:42
  That'll solve all your problems. First of all, let's back up two
• 2:45
  seconds. Yeah.
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  How do we get plastics? We got them because everybody
• 2:47
  started playing a new game called billiards.
• 2:50
  And billiard balls were carved out of ivory.
• 2:53
  Yeah. And it took one elephant to make
• 2:54
  a set of billiard balls. So that's a lot of elephants
• 2:57
  that we were killing to make billiard balls.
• 3:00
  And then somebody figured out, oh, we can make this out of
• 3:02
  plant material, cellulose and create a celluloid plastic,
• 3:07
  which is actually how we got the the film, too.
• 3:09
  Feature film were shot on celluloid.
• 3:11
  Yeah, even. Yeah, In those days, you were
• 3:13
  shot on Cellulite. And a small problem with the
• 3:15
  Cellulite is it occasionally does explode.
• 3:17
  And if it doesn't explode, it does.
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  Like, you open the film cans now some of those Cellulite films,
• 3:21
  and you'll just see dust. It does disintegrate fairly.
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  Quickly, we just sort of glossed over the billiard balls being
• 3:26
  made out of elephant tusks. Yes, yes.
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  I mean, could you imagine a more elite sport?
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  Oh, like you're using dead elephants?
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  That's horrific. To do basic geometry.
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  Like, I didn't want to really camp out on that because it's so
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  heartbreaking that you were killing elephants so you can
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  play billiards. And then by the way, and this is
• 3:42
  just me being, you know, me was a as a physics, math, geometry
• 3:45
  dork. Yes, you're not using that
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  ivory. Well, like you've already killed
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  the elephant to get the Tusk and now you're making balls out of
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  the Tusk. You're not gonna get a very
• 3:53
  effective use of the Tusk. You're a lot of that materials
• 3:56
  gonna get thrown away of. Course, you could also make
• 3:58
  piano keys out of the Tusk. I guess that's a.
• 3:59
  Good. Then we made all kinds of things
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  and. And in doing that, we were
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  killing elephants left, and we made.
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  All sorts of things for the elite, yeah.
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  Yeah, This is why plastics were when they were first created,
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  the plot? Synthetic plastics made from
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  oil. It was considered a an
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  environmentally friendly thing to do because we were not
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  destroying creatures like elephants.
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  Well, yeah, I mean, I guess on some scale then it yeah, it was.
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  Can I give you a simpler solution?
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  Make all my Tupperware out of tusks.
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  That's what I was thinking. About first of all, don't use
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  Tupperware. Get rid of all your Tupperware
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  immediately and go to glass and we can explain why in a second
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  if you're actually interested yes and by the way, they make
• 4:31
  wonderful bamboo lids for those glass things so you're not even
• 4:34
  using plastic lids. You don't want to touch the
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  plastic you. Literally sound like Ed Begley
• 4:38
  Junior. You're Jeff Parker, Junior is
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  what you are. You do not want to eat anything
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  that's been cooked in plastic. Do not cook in plastic, it's a
• 4:44
  terrible idea. You do not want to store water
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  in plastic. The fact that I drink out of a
• 4:48
  bottle that I buy at the Mamba Center for my water and it's how
• 4:51
  long has that water been in that plastic bottle?
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  Don't they have the aluminum ones there now?
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  Like the beer, although. No, they don't.
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  They actually, I'm gonna give this one to the Intuit Center.
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  That's exactly what they sell at the Intuit Center, and it's a
• 5:03
  much better choice. Yeah, but enough of this.
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  The solution to the whole plastic problem.
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  I'm gonna give it to you very quickly.
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  Use less methane. First of all, natural gas.
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  By the way, methane is cleaner than coal and oil.
• 5:12
  Yeah, a much better fuel for burning than coal and oil.
• 5:15
  You got to get off of all. Of it, I've been alerted by
• 5:17
  three separate NASA probes that I am the largest contributor of
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  methane in the San Fernando Valley, so it's going to be
• 5:23
  hard. Well, we actually mine for this
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  stuff. That's what all this fracking is
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  about. All methane plastic.
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  Is inexpensive. It's extremely useful.
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  Which gives you a huge. Demand there's so many things we
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  can use it for I just it's created so many great things in
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  the world so it's this is a double edged sword well.
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  This is the. Problem the plastics were not
• 5:36
  wild about are mostly the single use plastics.
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  The plastics and things that we're reusing and reusing and
• 5:41
  reusing, those things make a lot.
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  I think that's the biggest problem.
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  As you were saying earlier, we have this amazing material that
• 5:47
  can literally last 1000 years. Yeah, I'm not gonna say it's
• 5:49
  gonna last forever or longer, but a longer.
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  Exactly. But let's just say roundly
• 5:53
  speaking, you could last 1000 years.
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  And then we use it in products that we don't use for more than
• 5:57
  10 minutes. And that seems like a really bad
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  idea. You have this thing that can
• 6:01
  last forever. Yeah, let's use it in the things
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  that we want to last forever, or at least for a much longer
• 6:06
  period of time. Sure.
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  And definitely not use it in the things that we're gonna just.
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  Throw away and largely use less of it.
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  Human digestion, reproductive respiratory health, dementia,
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  colon cancer, lung cancer, so much of it all tracks back to
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  use of plastic. There's a landmark 2026 Lancet
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  study that estimated humanity is on track to lose 83,000,000
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  years of healthy life by 2040 due to the toxic life cycle of
• 6:28
  plastic. I wonder how they get that
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  number. I'm assuming that is off a If
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  you didn't have plastics you would live this much longer.
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  Just this month, research discovered microplastics in 90%
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  of prostate tumors at concentrations 2.5 times higher
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  than in healthy tissue. Issue.
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  We're not just exposed, we're becoming biological hosts for
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  these materials. I don't know.
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  We know that it's causing them. We just know that there's higher
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  concentrations in there. That's true.
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  We don't know causality. I'm just saying it could be a
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  filter. I'm an optimist, Jeff.
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  I'm an optimist. Yeah.
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  I mean, if you're going to go through prostate cancer, you
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  might as well clear some of the plastics out of your body while
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  you're there. I don't think that's how it
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  works, by the way. I'm just to be clear.
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  I'm being facetious. In the last year, we found
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  microplastics in such unlikely places as arterial plaque
• 7:05
  testicles and Antarctica of OK. Of those three things, at least
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  one doesn't belong. Arterial plaque testicles and
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  then you throw in Antarctica. Where you shouldn't be finding
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  plastics, you should not be finding microplastics in
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  Antarctica. And we are.
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  Yeah, methane is the problem. Let me see this.
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  Explain why the problem is meth. Talking about plastics.
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  Yeah, you know why the problem is methane though.
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  The plastics are made out of the methane.
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  No, Oh no. When you mine for methane, yes,
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  what you get at the same time, there's no avoiding it is ethane
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  OK? Which are two methane stuck
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  together OK, There's not much you can do about it.
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  You get ethane, OK, Ethane we sell for less than $2.00 a
• 7:40
  barrel in most cases because we just just want to get rid of it.
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  Ethane becomes ethylene. Ethylene.
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  Ethylene becomes polyethylene, OK, which becomes plastic, PET
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  plastic. That's how we get it.
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  That's old soda bottles. That's what they're made of.
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  This is the. Problem.
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  You have a very cheap source. It's a byproduct of this other
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  you. Can't possibly recycle plastic
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  as. Cheaply as you can, as you.
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  Can buy it virgin plastic 'cause?
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  You're buying a byproduct, right?
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  Right. You're already mining for the
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  methane. Yeah, already trying to get the
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  methane out of the Earth. And here's the problem.
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  You can do many things with ethylene.
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  You can flare it, which is what most refineries are doing.
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  You'll see those giant flares. Yeah, there's burning it off and
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  it just turns into carbon dioxide.
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  We need more of that the federal.
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  Government limits how much flaring you could do.
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  They put tight limits on how much flaring you can do.
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  So if you exceed those limits and you've got to find some way
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  to get rid of your ethane. And the way to do that is to
• 8:26
  make plastic. So your plastic price for virgin
• 8:29
  plastic is something like $0.30 a pound and recycled plastics or
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  60 to $0.90 a pound. Oh wow.
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  You've got to clean off paper and all the rest of the stuff
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  and separate the different kinds of plastics and most plastics
• 8:40
  that they're made with. Multiple types of plastics can't
• 8:42
  even B recycles. So this is super interesting.
• 8:45
  This is one of those few things where it seems like plastics are
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  supply driven as opposed to pulled by demand. 100% correct.
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  In many jurisdictions you also have subsidized fossil fuel
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  production. So now the byproduct of the
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  thing that's also not being paid for at market because it's being
• 9:00
  subsidized negative something that byproduct.
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  So you sell it, making the plastic, which means now you
• 9:04
  just have to push. You push plastic price down.
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  You have. To find someone who will take it
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  by practically paying them to take it because you you need it
• 9:11
  gone because you need. To go yeah, 'cause you didn't
• 9:12
  have another choice. I didn't really.
• 9:13
  I didn't appreciate the whole you can't just flare it all off
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  you. Cannot.
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  You're never going to shut down your mind.
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  No, you're very profitable mind because you're making too much
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  ethic. Yes, never going to do.
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  That in the neighborhood of $180 billion have been plowed into
• 9:27
  plastic plants in the US alone since 2010.
• 9:30
  Yeah. So that's the past 15 years.
• 9:32
  We've seen $180 billion sort of plowed into those since.
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  Benjamin Braddock and The Graduate was told that the
• 9:38
  future was plastics, one of the great lines in film.
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  I should think about it. Am I, am I going to think about
• 9:43
  it? Yes, I'm going to think about
• 9:45
  it. And the plastic we have now is
• 9:46
  certainly unlike the plastics that we first sort of came up
• 9:49
  with, right, the early plastics. Were.
• 9:50
  Plant based, as you said earlier, trying to like save the
• 9:52
  elephants and save the turtles because we were killing turtles
• 9:55
  for tortoise shells and using those.
• 9:57
  But they were plant based, right?
• 9:58
  They were mainly plant based. It's when we started going after
• 10:00
  the oil that we figured out oh, wait, there's a byproduct here
• 10:03
  that we can use. So I don't want to compare
• 10:04
  today's plastics of the the origin plastics because they're
• 10:07
  two very different things which you pointed out earlier.
• 10:09
  Yeah, but man, the amount of stuff that we make and then
• 10:12
  don't continue to use. And so much of it is good and
• 10:15
  important. But the myth is in recycling,
• 10:18
  Yeah. We expect that the
• 10:19
  petrochemicals used in these plastics are going to be the
• 10:22
  largest single driver of oil demand for decades to come.
• 10:25
  I think in 2019, the UN estimated that plastics
• 10:28
  generated about 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions,
• 10:32
  which is like almost 3 1/2 percent of total global
• 10:35
  emissions. That's just making plastic of
• 10:37
  where we're at right now, at least worldwide.
• 10:39
  But there's very little regulation around this right?
• 10:41
  We've got in the USI don't suspect we're going to see any
• 10:45
  regulation of plastics under the the Trump administration.
• 10:48
  That's just not going to happen. No, because they're so pro oil
• 10:50
  and gas. Wider aperture, most of those
• 10:52
  environmental regulations are are going backwards, right?
• 10:54
  They're certainly not moving forward.
• 10:55
  If you're lucky, they're not moving backwards, but most of
• 10:57
  them are sort of moving backwards.
• 10:58
  Well, I don't expect the US to do much on this.
• 11:00
  California has still been somewhat progressive on these
• 11:03
  things. Not all have been the best steps
• 11:05
  in the forward direction, but like we had this when did we put
• 11:07
  that plastic bag ban into effect?
• 11:08
  That was 2016, 2015, 2016. Something like sure, sure, sure,
• 11:13
  you know, even against much opposition from the plastic
• 11:16
  producers. Be clear, the plastic bag thing
• 11:18
  is you, when you go to a grocery store, you used to get a free
• 11:21
  plastic bag, yeah, that they would put your groceries in or
• 11:24
  two plastic. Bags you still do outside of
• 11:25
  California in many states because the intent of that law
• 11:28
  was we want to go to single use bags.
• 11:29
  So if you want to shop you either bring your own bag or you
• 11:32
  pay $0.10 for a bag and the bag that you buy cannot be a single
• 11:35
  use bag. The effect of that was not what
• 11:37
  we intended. The effect of that was we ended
• 11:39
  up selling more plastic bags of heavier for weight and you ended
• 11:43
  up generating more plastic in those bags, while more durable
• 11:46
  and a much, much, much better bag than the paper thin single
• 11:49
  use ones here. Many of them were treated as one
• 11:51
  time bags. That loophole ended up reversing
• 11:54
  the intended target of that law. We've revised that and that went
• 11:57
  into effect, I think it was voted on in 24, went into effect
• 12:00
  this calendar year, January 1st of 2026 here in California.
• 12:03
  Now you cannot use those sort of multi use plastic bags.
• 12:06
  You can't sell them. You have to sell a paper bag for
• 12:08
  $0.10. Oh, that's wonderful.
• 12:10
  Paper bags are. Great.
• 12:10
  Which is, which is interesting, right?
• 12:11
  So then you go back and go, wait a minute, I thought we were
• 12:14
  saving the trees. Oh, no, no.
• 12:15
  No, no, no, no. If you've ever toured Georgia
• 12:17
  Pacific in the great Northwest, you will see trees are harvested
• 12:21
  and grown. They are a crop like any other.
• 12:23
  That's a remarkable what how they manage what they sell.
• 12:26
  This is. Where you start to get into the
• 12:27
  real nastiness of this particular piece, which is the
• 12:30
  recycling before we dive head first into recycling that whole
• 12:33
  save the trees, right? The environmental like like use
• 12:36
  this plastic set of paper bags. It's better for the environment
• 12:39
  that was stood up by the plastics, comes by the
• 12:41
  petrochemical company, sure, they're the ones that were
• 12:43
  behind that sort of marketing. Course, of course.
• 12:45
  And you know doesn't stop there go back even further to the the
• 12:48
  early 70s right, I think 1971 the quote crying Indian campaign
• 12:52
  right. Remember the keep America
• 12:53
  beautiful advertisement Yeah, sure, sure.
• 12:55
  Like who do you think stood that up?
• 12:56
  And that was an outcome of now having this cheap disposable, a
• 13:00
  product, plastic bags, plastic wrapper, things like that.
• 13:03
  But you didn't have 20 years before.
• 13:04
  Sure. And now all that crap was was
• 13:06
  floating around as litter. You just had far less litter
• 13:09
  before and any of stuff that's gonna last forever.
• 13:11
  So the strategy there was was sort of two pronged.
• 13:13
  One was let's push it on to the people as opposed to the
• 13:16
  manufacturers. Let's push it on to the
• 13:17
  individual. Be like, you're not doing a good
• 13:19
  job. Of course you have to recycle
• 13:20
  this. You're the one that's not
• 13:21
  throwing this out. You're the one who's littering.
• 13:23
  That's the problem, right? So we went from manufacturers
• 13:25
  taking ownership on that to pushing it to the consumer.
• 13:27
  But they knew then the folks that that ran these sort of,
• 13:31
  I'll call them arms and petrochemical companies, the
• 13:33
  recycling companies, they knew then that it wasn't going to be
• 13:35
  viable to recycle, of course, these these products.
• 13:38
  And they knew many of them didn't have a path to recycling
• 13:40
  at at any price. You just couldn't do it.
• 13:42
  Of course, you really don't want to believe that, right?
• 13:44
  As a guy who is proud of himself when he fills up his blue
• 13:47
  recycling bin and my trash bin has almost nothing in it.
• 13:50
  And then I'm like, yeah, but I think all this crap just goes
• 13:52
  into the same place at the end of the day anyway.
• 13:54
  Depends what it is. PET and HDPE, yeah, are
• 13:57
  different types of plastics and they're both recyclable.
• 13:59
  So you are doing a good, good thing when you are recycling
• 14:01
  those things. Now, when they mix together,
• 14:03
  yeah, those types of plastics, the product is completely not
• 14:06
  recycled. Yeah.
• 14:07
  And the industry has known this for 50 years.
• 14:08
  It's even worse than that. Like you talk about PET.
• 14:10
  So PET is like the common plastic you'll see like in in
• 14:13
  bottles, water bottles, soda bottles, things like that.
• 14:15
  If it's clear, you can likely get a market to recycle it.
• 14:19
  It's relatively. I'm not gonna say simple, but
• 14:21
  it's possible. Cycle when you tint it as soon
• 14:23
  as you. Tint it now it's basically
• 14:24
  trash. You can't get the tint out.
• 14:27
  Yeah. So every Mountain Dew bottle or
• 14:29
  I don't know what, what color they like those or green
• 14:31
  whatever. If it's dyed, there's almost
• 14:32
  guaranteed no recyclable market for it because the extra cost to
• 14:36
  get that tint out is does not make it worth it.
• 14:37
  But you also don't get many. You can't recycle these things
• 14:40
  very many times because the plastic degrades not just from
• 14:43
  use normally UV. From impurity in the.
• 14:46
  Plastic, but also just when you break it down, the long polymer
• 14:49
  chains are shortened by thermal oxidative degradation.
• 14:52
  So you're getting a material that is weaker and more brittle
• 14:54
  than the original. So it might have a second or
• 14:56
  third life, but you're ending up at a point where it's got to go
• 14:59
  away. It's not as good as virgin
• 15:00
  plastic, but plus if you add know what you pointed out
• 15:02
  earlier, the virgin plastic is just.
• 15:04
  Cheaper so much because. The byproduct, yeah, that's
• 15:05
  problematic. Now contrast this by the way,
• 15:07
  and something I didn't know to aluminum.
• 15:09
  Aluminum. You can basically recycle it
• 15:11
  forever. Aluminum is just stored energy.
• 15:13
  So aluminum you can keep recycling and there's something
• 15:15
  else about aluminum I didn't know.
• 15:16
  Recycling aluminum is something like 95% more efficient than
• 15:20
  making raw aluminum. Yes, because it.
• 15:23
  Takes so much energy to make. Aluminum.
• 15:24
  I had no idea. Oh, I see what you're saying
• 15:26
  now. Look, I figured that out all on
• 15:28
  my own as opposed to making aluminum from the raw was a
• 15:31
  bauxite or right, you can recycle it with much less
• 15:33
  energy. So aluminum is this lovely
• 15:35
  product you can just sort of keep going.
• 15:37
  Yeah, glass also is kind of fascinating because glass
• 15:40
  effectively is the exact same after you reuse, after you
• 15:43
  recycle it for sure than it was before.
• 15:45
  So you can effectively recycle it forever.
• 15:47
  And if you don't recycle it, it will turn back into the sand
• 15:49
  that you got it from. Exactly.
• 15:51
  It's chemically inert. Glass is kind of the the wonder
• 15:53
  product. The glass is fabulous.
• 15:55
  Just turns out it's a little brittle and that's part of the
• 15:57
  problem. Although having dropped some of
• 15:58
  the, the tempered, the Tupperware equivalent, the
• 16:01
  Rubbermaid equivalent glass things.
• 16:02
  Yeah. And I watched them bounce 3 or 4
• 16:04
  times and like, wow, that's pretty impressive.
• 16:05
  Typically on the 5th bounce it does break, but I got two or
• 16:08
  three bounces before it broke. That's pretty cool.
• 16:10
  Like I don't know how they're doing that.
• 16:11
  I did not appreciate that one that so much of this stuff can't
• 16:14
  be recycled. 2, you have virgin product that is much, much
• 16:18
  cheaper to use because it's a byproduct of some other process
• 16:22
  that they need to get rid of. So like that doesn't help you on
• 16:24
  the recycling. Side Nobody is drilling for
• 16:26
  ethylene. Yeah, exactly.
• 16:27
  People only drill for methane. And they just happened to get
• 16:29
  that. But so that part didn't really,
• 16:30
  I mean, it kind of surprised me, but it didn't like, it didn't
• 16:33
  really push me as far back as I thought.
• 16:36
  What did push me back is realize, oh, the industry has
• 16:38
  known about this since the 70s, that there was much smoking,
• 16:42
  kind of like. Smoking that smoking was causing
• 16:44
  cancer and they kept their. Mouths just now.
• 16:45
  I don't think they knew in the 70s that nanoplastics and giant
• 16:48
  floating garbage patches were going to be things, but they
• 16:50
  knew that their plan for this was not feasible and was not
• 16:54
  going to. Work They knew that mixing
• 16:56
  plastics made them unrecyclable. But even many of these plastics
• 16:58
  aren't recyclable to begin with. Like for what about mixing, Even
• 17:01
  before you get into mixing, so many of them have no way to
• 17:04
  recycle. And even the best case ones, you
• 17:05
  can recycle. You don't recycle a couple
• 17:07
  times. Yeah.
• 17:08
  You're putting stuff into the universe now.
• 17:10
  Yeah. That is going to live for very
• 17:11
  long. You want its utilitarian life to
• 17:13
  be long, to be long. I think that's really where I've
• 17:15
  started to reframe this in my own mind.
• 17:17
  Like having plastic on your car I think is generally OK.
• 17:19
  You're going to keep that car for eight years.
• 17:21
  Someone else is going to buy it from you for eight years.
• 17:22
  You get a lot of value out of that.
• 17:24
  Yeah. But then when I look at like
• 17:25
  plastic containers. And this is part of why
• 17:27
  personally myself and my family I really dislike getting takeout
• 17:30
  from any especially like any fast food place.
• 17:32
  The amount of garbage you generate blows my mind.
• 17:34
  Also, you don't want to eat the hot food that came out of the
• 17:37
  plastic container. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:39
  Plastic containers and anything hot, especially if you're if
• 17:41
  you're throwing the thing in your microwave, that's a bad
• 17:43
  idea. But even just the fact that it
• 17:44
  was hot food that they put into a plastic container, yeah, now
• 17:47
  you're getting all kinds of leaching of things into the
• 17:50
  food. Is it as bad as as when we were
• 17:51
  ingesting lead? No, it does not appear to be.
• 17:54
  Yeah. But long term, it's going to
• 17:56
  cause all sorts of health problems.
• 17:57
  And I think they also did a wonderful job, they being the
• 17:59
  industry that makes this stuff of getting folks like myself and
• 18:02
  I think most others to conflate plastic with all the other stuff
• 18:06
  that you actually can recycle. Well, cardboard, paper, glass,
• 18:09
  wood. We talked about aluminum cans
• 18:10
  earlier, wood things you have a nice viable home for you might
• 18:13
  not be getting 100%, but you're getting a significant chunk out
• 18:15
  of. And plastic is just nowhere near
• 18:17
  that. The vast majority of the stuff
• 18:18
  ends up in a landfill or maybe incinerated.
• 18:20
  People think a lot of it ends up in the great Pacific garbage.
• 18:23
  Patch. That's interesting.
• 18:24
  And and it doesn't. The vast majority of it ends up
• 18:26
  in a hole somewhere. Yeah, that's really what
• 18:28
  happens. It ends up in a landfill
• 18:29
  somewhere. But that's coastal garbage.
• 18:31
  That's the, if you're talking about it, plastic that's ending
• 18:33
  up in the ocean. Most of it is coming from
• 18:35
  mismanaged waste sites. Yeah.
• 18:37
  But the Great Garbage Patch, which is in the Pacific Ocean
• 18:39
  off of way off of California. Yeah, 75 to 86% of the plastic
• 18:43
  in the great garbage patches from the fishing industry.
• 18:45
  Oh wow, they're like, it's like they're Nets and the byproducts
• 18:48
  of there. Exactly.
• 18:49
  Wow, that's stuff. Oh, that's gross.
• 18:50
  So when you order a fish at a restaurant, you think you're
• 18:53
  being healthy, you're also causing some plastic to end up
• 18:56
  in the ocean? Sure.
• 18:57
  Less than 1/5 of the ocean plastic even has the
• 18:59
  possibility. Yeah, to be cycle.
• 19:01
  Wow, that's crazy. In the 1950s we believe we made
• 19:04
  sort of single digit millions of tons of plastic round numbers.
• 19:09
  So by like the late 50s we think we had some on the order of 10s
• 19:12
  of millions of tons of plastic that was waste effectively.
• 19:16
  And this was the throwaway living that was sort of
• 19:18
  introduced. Sure.
• 19:19
  That just ramped up to the right just to sort of line in the sand
• 19:22
  the year 2000. So the end of the the last
• 19:24
  century and and Millennium, we believe we were making around
• 19:27
  250 million tons of plastic per year and that we had somewhere
• 19:32
  around 3 1/2 billion tons of plastic waste.
• 19:36
  Those numbers are just massive. And then you get to today.
• 19:38
  Yeah. So from 2000 to today, you're up
• 19:41
  a little over 2X annual production.
• 19:43
  We believe we're making around 500 million tons tons, mind you,
• 19:47
  of plastic a year. And that were somewhere in the
• 19:49
  neighborhood of 10 billion tons of plastic floating in the in
• 19:52
  the ocean or stored in the ground or whatever massive.
• 19:54
  And then you look forward to go in the next 25 years, by 2050,
• 19:58
  we expect we're making over a billion tons of.
• 20:00
  Of plastic a year and something like 30 billion tons stored, so
• 20:03
  the numbers are massive. Our plastic use is set to triple
• 20:06
  by 2060. But listen to these, these
• 20:08
  numbers are nuts because we think that plastic particles are
• 20:11
  somewhere between 7 to 30 times more concentrated in our brain
• 20:15
  tissue than in like our liver, our kidneys.
• 20:17
  Yeah, sure. And the numbers are not small
• 20:19
  like you're talking about, like the the brain in general.
• 20:22
  We think there's somewhere around 5000 micrograms of
• 20:26
  plastic per gram of, of brain matter.
• 20:29
  That's a lot. Yeah, sure, that's concerning.
• 20:31
  It's a. Spoon.
• 20:31
  You got a spoon in your brain but.
• 20:32
  Listen to this brains with dementia, Those brains, yeah,
• 20:35
  5X. At least 5X.
• 20:37
  We've seen in some cases 10X. Higher again, we have not proven
• 20:40
  causality. Yes, not.
• 20:42
  Proven causality, but have noticed this observation.
• 20:45
  This could be like you mentioned prostate tumors earlier, human
• 20:47
  blood, we see up to like 12 micrograms per milliliter in
• 20:50
  human blood and that was an 80% of the tested subjects.
• 20:52
  Now you don't know that's a full representation of the planet or
• 20:55
  of the country or whatnot. But like that's still a lot of
• 20:57
  people that have plastics in their blood.
• 20:59
  Sure. We have a lot more that we can
• 21:00
  do and a lot more to think about.
• 21:02
  Personally, I try to just not use as much plastic.
• 21:04
  What you need, really, are recycling incentives.
• 21:06
  You need to tax the use of plastics at the corporate level.
• 21:09
  If you're making plastics, you're selling plastics.
• 21:11
  You should pay a large tax. Yeah, you should give big tax
• 21:14
  breaks to people who are recycling or using other
• 21:17
  materials. Or using other materials, Yeah.
• 21:19
  You should incentivize these changes or you won't get any
• 21:21
  changes. You should write a huge tax on
• 21:24
  garment makers who are using mixed plastics in making
• 21:27
  garments because they're making the garments completely
• 21:29
  unrecyclable. Unrecyclable and and you know,
• 21:31
  those garments don't last very long because of looks or size or
• 21:33
  wear or whatever one. Of the biggest contributors to
• 21:35
  microplastics in the environment?
• 21:36
  Tires, tires, tires. Really.
• 21:38
  Roughly 9% of all pollution going into the ocean is from
• 21:41
  tires. But it's not plastic though,
• 21:43
  right? I guess not the synthetic.
• 21:44
  Tires, It's plastic. It's plastic.
• 21:46
  Absolutely interesting. If you've ever washed a car
• 21:48
  yourself, and I know you never have, you are constantly
• 21:51
  shedding parts of your tires. Yeah.
• 21:53
  Every time you drive anywhere. Yeah.
• 21:54
  We thought tires would be the biggest.
• 21:56
  We originally thought textiles would be the biggest.
• 21:58
  No. Wow.
• 21:58
  Tires we thought would be the biggest.
• 22:00
  Oh my gosh, they're huge. No even bigger paint.
• 22:03
  Paint 'cause you got a polymer in there to keep it to make it
• 22:05
  like a shell. Paint is likely this largest
• 22:08
  source of microplastics leakage to into our oceans. 40% of paint
• 22:12
  ends up in our environment. 37% of our paint is plastic
• 22:16
  polymers. The paint one seems like at
• 22:18
  least going forward, that should.
• 22:19
  Be solvable, you could certainly ban the use of plastic polymers
• 22:23
  in paint. By the way, you know what it
• 22:24
  replaced. Lead paint Lead.
• 22:26
  Yeah, let's go back to lead. At least it was a more local
• 22:29
  problem. I'll probably not because all
• 22:30
  that lead probably gets each back into the water table.
• 22:32
  We just continue to prioritize these short term.
• 22:36
  Profits, the deal we give the oil companies, you can sell this
• 22:39
  product that is so environmentally unfriendly and
• 22:41
  not pay any of the costs of the cleanups or the problems yeah or
• 22:45
  the health yeah bills for what your the problems you are going
• 22:48
  to. 'Cause I'm a a member of a
• 22:50
  subreddit called Buy It for Life, which is awesome because
• 22:53
  they just talk about products they buy that are intended to
• 22:55
  last a lifetime. And I love that because I really
• 22:58
  dislike the throwaway culture, especially when it comes like
• 23:00
  tools and products and things. I want to buy something that's
• 23:03
  durable and made well it. Can be a lot easier to get off
• 23:05
  of plastics when you look into all the medical problems that
• 23:08
  they're causing. You.
• 23:08
  I feel that's another whole show just on that.
• 23:10
  Not as obvious as lead. Again, you're not going to get
• 23:12
  rid of as quick as lead because it's just not as obvious.
• 23:14
  But but wow. And that's the.
• 23:15
  Problem. It doesn't happen as fast,
• 23:16
  right? It doesn't happen as fast.
• 23:17
  So you're just like, well, I'm fine.
• 23:18
  You will very quickly start putting your food into glass
• 23:20
  containers with bamboo lids. We've been buying glass
• 23:23
  containers, that's for sure all. Right, we have to get out here,
• 23:25
  but quickly before we do, have you seen or read anything good
• 23:27
  this last week? I have.
• 23:29
  This is awesome. Yeah, Kelly Bosch and her AI
• 23:32
  art. It is one of, if not the coolest
• 23:35
  thing I have seen in the last several months.
• 23:38
  That's a high bar. She's.
• 23:39
  Described as standing at the vanguard of AI driven visual
• 23:42
  storytelling, Kelly Bosch is an AI visual innovator blending 2
• 23:46
  decades of design expertise from IMAX and abstract painting with
• 23:49
  cutting edge technology. A pioneer in developing a new
• 23:52
  visual language, her visually arresting content has captivated
• 23:56
  over one and a half million followers.
• 23:58
  She generates over 60 million views per month across all of
• 24:01
  her platforms. OK, cool.
• 24:02
  Kind of massive. And she sees AI as a a powerful
• 24:05
  collaborator pushing creative boundaries at the intersection
• 24:08
  of human artistry and machine learning.
• 24:10
  Sure, And she gets it. Like she understands sure what
• 24:13
  our potential is, especially the generative AI.
• 24:15
  Get in front of it. Get in front of it.
• 24:17
  Don't be afraid of the AI. Get in front of it.
• 24:19
  Be the person who knows how to use it.
• 24:20
  Check this content out. Yes, because this is not Will
• 24:23
  Smith eating spaghetti. I mean, it's really good.
• 24:25
  You can go to her site. I'll put a link in the show
• 24:26
  notes. You can go to her site at Kelly
• 24:28
  bosch.com or you can find her video in and music on pretty
• 24:31
  much any platform that that I think that you might be on.
• 24:33
  It's cool. It's really good.
• 24:34
  I mean, the stuff is excellent. If you think about it as art, it
• 24:37
  to me is squarely in the category.
• 24:38
  Of art, that's really. Cool.
• 24:39
  It's also fascinating for me to see this and go compare it to
• 24:41
  the other sort of AI generated stuff that you see right now.
• 24:43
  I'm like, how can you say a human didn't make this?
• 24:46
  I know that she was using an AI tool, but to me, all of these
• 24:48
  things should be protectable because she's done such an
• 24:50
  amazing job for sure. And it's not 'cause she's using
• 24:52
  a different tool set, it's because she's her.
• 24:53
  Like she is the artist. Here AI is her paintbrush.
• 24:56
  AI is your paintbrush, Yeah, which which is fascinating.
• 24:58
  But anyway, it's it's very cool. I do just folks go check it out
• 25:01
  because it's pretty amazing. I will absolutely check that
• 25:03
  out. How about you?
• 25:03
  What have you seen the? Plastic Detox is a provocative
• 25:06
  documentary that shifts the plastic conversation from
• 25:08
  environmental waste to human biology. 6 couples struggle with
• 25:12
  unexplained infertility as they embark on a radical experiment,
• 25:15
  removing all plastic from their daily lives.
• 25:17
  The documentary investigates how ubiquitous chemicals like
• 25:20
  phthalates and misphenols, found in everything from food
• 25:22
  packaging to tap water, act as endocrine disruptors.
• 25:25
  Beyond fertility, the film explores links to heart disease,
• 25:27
  stroke and developmental issues, highlighting the start gap
• 25:30
  between corporate claims and scientific reality.
• 25:33
  By blending intimate personal journeys with hard hitting
• 25:35
  investigative journalism, The Plastic Detox serves as an
• 25:38
  urgent wake up call questioning whether a healthy life is even
• 25:41
  possible within a system designed around disposable
• 25:44
  convenience. The Plastic Detox arriving on
• 25:46
  Netflix March 16th. Don't miss it.
• 25:48
  All right, so I gotta wait two weeks to see this, but this is
• 25:50
  probably a better version of what we talked about here it
• 25:52
  sounds. Like worth your time?
• 25:53
  That is the episode. Thank you for joining us for all
• 25:55
  this nonsense. It's really terrible podcast
• 25:57
  from our awful company. Visit us on the web at Nonsense
• 26:00
  dot Production. I'm CJ Little.
• 26:01
  I'm Jeff. Parker.
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  For more nonsense, please join us.
• 26:36
  I. Mean wood's an amazing product.
• 26:42
  If you invented wood today in a lab, you would be a.
• 26:45
  God, people would be blown. Away this this semi lightweight
• 26:48
  stuff that's really strong. You mean like in a world where
• 26:50
  wood didn't exist, right? I feel like if you could with a
• 26:52
  wood in a lab right now, nobody would be impressed.
• 26:54
  They'd just be like, oh, good job.
• 26:56
  How'd you do it? I take the seed and I put it in
• 26:58
  this dirt and then I water it. And then I invented wood.
• 27:00
  It's like, well, sort. Of no, If we didn't have wood
• 27:03
  and you invented wood, you would be the king of it of all
• 27:06
  inventors. It's so useful.
• 27:08
  So many things we can do. It we're all just sitting at the
• 27:10
  the club at the beach. Hey, what did Jeff over there
• 27:12
  do? Oh, he invented wood.
• 27:13
  Oh, really? He's the guy.
• 27:15
  He's the guy. Mr. Parker, pleasure to meet
• 27:17
  you. Love your work.
• 27:18
  The oak. Oh, I love the oak oaks.
• 27:20
  One of my favorite. I really do as you're just like
• 27:23
  smiling and nodding and like Cher, like all your clothes are
• 27:26
  made out of wood. Like you're wearing like wood
• 27:27
  shoes. You've got like wood, like wood
• 27:29
  shorts on clogs, like wow, he really dog foods that he really
• 27:32
  he walks the walk.