Latest / Stephanomics / How ‘Swiftonomics’ May Finally Break Ticketmaster’s Spell

Transcript

How ‘Swiftonomics’ May Finally Break Ticketmaster’s Spell · Stephanomics

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hello, Stephanomics. Here the podcast that brings you the global economy,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: and this week we're shifting gear to talk about music,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: fast fashion, and catch up. We all feel a bit
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: better about our mass consumption culture when we drop our
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: empty milk cartons or last year's trousers in the recycling bin,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: usually on our way to buying more. But holding onto
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: that warm feeling, I've discovered relies on not thinking very
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: much about where all that discarded stuff goes next. If
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: you're someone who likes to refresh your wardrobe on a
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: regular basis, you definitely shouldn't go to Gharna, where parts
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: of the coastline are clogged with what locals call dead
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: white people's clothes washed up on the beach, sometimes in
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: six foot piles. Bloomberg investigative reporter Natalie Pierson went to
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Ghana and India to see for herself what happened to
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: all the second hand clothes we ship abroad. We have
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: that depressing story in a minute, and some truths about
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: plastics recycling from a teacher and former official from the
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Environmental Protection Agency Judith Ink. But first we have an
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: insight into another corner of the economy, which looks seriously
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: out of whack. Only this time the problem isn't excess supply,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: but an explosion in demand the tickets to see the
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: singer Taylor Swift. Here's Bloomberg's Augusta Serreva. Good morning America.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: It's Taylor. I wanted to tell you something that I've
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: been so excited about for a really long time. Have
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: been planning for ages, and I finally get to tell
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: you I'm going back on tour. Taylor Swift has been
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: my top streaming artist for six years now. Despite that,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I've never had a chance to see her alive. That's
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: why when the thirty two year old singer announced that
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: she was touring, they was for the first time in
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: five years next year. I signed up for the PRIs
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Cell right away, But when I got to the virtual
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: line on the Ticketmaster platform last week, I quickly found
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: out that I wasn't the only one bringing years of
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: pent up demand to the table. Not even eight hours
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: in line were enough for me to score a ticket.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: The site was supposed to be opened up for one
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: point five million verified Taylor Swift fans. We had fourteen
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: million people hit the site. We did sell over two
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: million tickets that day, we could have filled nine hundred stadiums.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: That was Gregmafae, the CEO with Ticketmaster's parent company, in
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: an interview with CNBC. Yes, Greg, I know it all
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: too well. Demand was so high in the pre sale
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: that Ticketmaster canceled the general public sale after a record
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: two point four million tickets were sold. The whole frenzy
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: triggered anti rust investigations from politicians and attorneys general like Meanwhile,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: for those like me, all that's love to do is
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: trying to buy tickets for as much as forty thou
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: dollars on the secondary market. We have the means of
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: almost unlimited production. We have an almost unlimited capacity to consume.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: We need to raise our actual consumption so that it
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: matches our capacity to produce. We know that this doesn't
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: have supply and demand, two of the oldest concepts and economics.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: But this is swift ponomics, where supplies manufactured and accusations
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: of price gouging and monopoly abound. In the early two thousand's,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: late economists Alan Krueger came up with the term ro economics.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: The labor economists who advised to US presidents suggested that
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: economic concepts could be more easily explained through the music industry,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: which most of us are familiar with. Krueger often used
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Swift as an example of someone who's successfully used loyalty
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: strategies to boost concert and music sales. First of all,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: I think Taylor Swift is an economic genius. She has
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: made more money from concerts at her age than Madonna
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: did at her age, or Beyonce or Lady Gaga. So
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: she's on its tremendous trajectory. And she has done this
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: I think by making very good economic decisions. That was
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Krueger in a eighteen interview with the Princeton Alumni magazine.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Swift has chosen to play only a high capacity football stadiums,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: She's added seventeen extra concerts since the Erastore was first announced,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: and she's even created a verified band system to guarantee
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: only the most loyal had access to the pre sale.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: None of that, though, was enough to stop years of
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: pantop demand turned nearly in elastic for the millions of
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: die hard fans. Not even the fact that Swift will
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: be touring the US at a time when many economists
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: are certain the country will be in a recession. Swift
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: aconomics is it's on economics microcosm, and for now all fans,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: including myself, can do is shake it off. Great great,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: great great again. Well, as Augusta mentioned, the saga of
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: the Swift tickets isn't just offering a window into millennial
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: spending habits. It's also triggered a renewed debate about antitrust
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: policies in the US, and particularly where the ticket master
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: has been allowed to acquire too much power in the industry.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Elena Tyler is a legal analyst for the Bloomberg Industry
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Group in Arlington, Virginia, and she wrote an excellent piece
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: on all of that for us. Elena, thank you so
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: much for joining us very late notes just before Thanksgiving.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Why has this Taylor Swift ticket debarked
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: triggered antitrust debates? What exactly is the monopoly problem? So
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: it falls neatly into a couple of debates that the
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: broader an antitrust policy uh world is having in the
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: United States right now. One of them is about whether
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: vertical mergers are something that the antitrust world should be
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: concerned about. And when you say, just to explain about
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: what a vertical merger is oh, of course, so there
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: are really we think of murders in two ways. Either
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: two companies that directly compete with each other in the
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: same market merge, and then obviously one of them stops
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: competing with the other and the market consolidates. But you
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: can also have mergers between companies that are not in
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: the same market. They are either supplier and buyer, or
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: they are a company that makes a product and maybe
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: one that retails it or distributes it. Those mergers we
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: generally call vertical because they're in different places in the
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: supply chain. It used to be that antitrust didn't consider
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: those to be much of a threat because they weren't
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: consolidating a single market, but economic theory has recently called
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: that into question. A bunch of additional research has happened,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: and we now are no longer quite so sure that
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: vertical mergers are as efficient and unproblematic as we had
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: believed in the past. This original merger in between Live Nation,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: which is a behemoth in concert promotion for major venues
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: um and Ticketmaster, which is the beheaventh in primary ticket sales,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: was very controversial, and the Department of Justice permitted the
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: merger to close with a settlement that both required some
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: structural changes to what would get merged together and also
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: some behavioral promises. Um the businesses combined promised not to
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: bully other providers and basically throw around their newly acquired
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: market weight. Right that hasn't worked the way one might
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: have hoped it would, and so that likewise speeds into
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: a current debate that's happening in anti trust policy about
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: whether behavioral agreements you know, not to be nasty once
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: you're allowed to merge, are really a good idea, and
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: whether the best solution isn't to prohibit the merger in
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: the first instance and keep the market power from console alidating,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: rather than trying to tinker on the edges with the
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: merged party and keep the worst outcomes from happening. So
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: those are two big debates that this plays into right now.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: And now there's a concern that Ticketmaster is becoming a
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: big power in the secondary market as well, in other words,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: resale of tickets. So there's a concern there that if
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: all of these markets, which play into each other, feed
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: off of each other and work together, might create a
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: situation where the whole industry is more or less dominated
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: by one big firm. Yeah, and it's interesting because there's
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: an absolute furore on Twitter. And I'm not someone despite
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: having a Taylor Swift mad fourteen year old daughter at home,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I don't spend a lot of time on the relevant
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Twitter accounts. But I was just I would recommend people
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: listening just take a look at the amount of vitriol
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: against ticket Master and Taylor Swift herself as kind of
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: come out against ticket Master. But I didn't know until
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I read your piece this point about the resale that
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: the ticket Master even just in the three months at
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: the end of September, did about did one point one
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: billion dollars worth of business ticket Master did in the
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: ticket resale business. So if you're if you're a fan
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: who spent hours trying to get tickets, you couldn't get one,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: But somehow these touts or the resale market markets could
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: you are surely looking at Ticketmaster and say, well, you've
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: got no interest in giving the ticket to me if
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: you can get paid twice giving it to somebody else,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: that's the real concern. It's a puzzle. Somebody obviously got tickets, right,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: there aren't exactly tickets left over and these complaints that
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: we see from private parties in US courts have all
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: claimed that while Ticketmaster says that it is um cracking
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: down on scalpers, cracking down on bots that sweep through
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: the system with multiple account and grab a bunch of
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: tickets and then place them for resale, that that's definitely
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: not where their incentives lie. Buying a ticket on the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: primary market generates a fee for Live Nation, and then
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: if the ticket is turned around and resold on a
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Live Nation platform and they have several um through ticket Master,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: then they will generate a second fee. You would imagine
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: that the sale that generates two or even three fees
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: is preferable to the one that's a one and done fee.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: It explains a lot why the market looks like it does, UM,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and why it's still frustrating for ordinary people trying to
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: click with their actual human speed. Uh, they're up against spots.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: I guess, going back to what you said about whether
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: you should be trusting businesses to do the right thing, UM,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: I guess if you're a ticket Master and you do
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: the wrong thing and you get on the wrong side
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: of Taylor Swift, I mean that it's going to rue
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: the day that it didn't make more of an effort. Well,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: it certainly has raised the profile of this specific problem.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: But if Taylor Swift tangles with Live Nation and Ticketmaster,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: she certainly wouldn't be the first big act to fail
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: in getting them to change their practices. Pearl jam back
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: in the Odds worked hard to try to change the
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: way ticketing happens in the primary market and failed. It's
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: a pretty tall order, but the Swifties may be up
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: to the churche. Well, we've also seen quite a lot
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: of prominent lawmakers weighing in, and I see that the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: chair of the U. S Senates Antitrust Subcommittee, Amy Kloba,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: she said she'll hold a hearing on Ticketmaster by the
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: end of the year, so I guess we'll you'll be
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: watching that space. Eleana Tyler, thank you so much. Thank you. Well. Now,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: as promised, we have some bad news for those of
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: you planning to splash out on a new winter wardrobe
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: in the days after Thanksgiving. Here's Natalie Pearson waterlog clothes
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: roll like carcasses and the waves along the coast of Ghana.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: The country is one of the world's biggest importers of
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: US clothing. The cast offs arriving by the bail are
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: known here as a browny wind or dead white people's clothes.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: What is happening is the fast fashion lifestyle of the vitaman.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: They will go for programs, they print some clothing because
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: they know they have a place to dump them. That
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: was Solomon Noi, the head of waste management in Accra,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the capital of Ghana. Some of the imported clothes don't
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: get reworn or repurposed. They simply end up as garbage.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: When it rains, waterways belch garments into the ocean, waves
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: bring them right back to form a wall of rags
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: more than six ft high in places along the shoreline
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: of the city. Sanitation crews fight a losing battle every
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: day trying to corral Acra's textile waste into landfills. But
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: there's just too much, says Noi. So at the end
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: of the day, government doesn't have the money to be
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: able to implement a fastratcher that is needed to take
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: care of the mite man's glueto exactly. It's a disaster
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: decades in the making. As clothing has become cheaper, plentiful,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: and ever more disposable each year, the fashion industry produces
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: more than one hundred billion apparel items. That's roughly fourteen
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: for every person on Earth, and more than double the
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: amount of two thousand. Every day, consumers toss out tens
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: of millions of garments, many land and so called recycling
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: bins set up in stores by fast fashion chains like
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: h and M, Zarah and pre Mark. Research shows that
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: when people believe an item will be recycled, they consume
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: more of it, but textile recycling doesn't yet exist at
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: scale globally. It's estimated that less than one percent of
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: used clothing is actually remade into new garments. Instead, discards
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: enter a global second hand supply chain, which prolongs their life,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: either by reselling them in developing markets or repurposing them
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: into items like cleaning cloths or insulation. One of the
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: world's biggest used clothing processors is in India's western Gujarat
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: state Knam International. Here, forklifts dig their way into forty
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: foot shipping containers packed tight with used garments, heating the
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: giant bales inside for sorting and grading. Some four hundred
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: women work at Cannam's facility, each sorting as many as
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: five thousand pieces a day. Sunita Suni Sa who is
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: one of them? My name is Sunita. I have been
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: working with Kanam International for sixteen years. I first started
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: with cutting, then sorting, than grading, and now finally I'm
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: on quality control. The work is tough to automate. A
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: greater needs to quickly decide the economic value of a
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: used garment. Can it be reworn or turned into rags
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: or is it simply worthless. It took around five years
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: for me to understand which garments were premium brands as
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: I started with the cutting job. Now I understand properly
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: which ones are branded and which was sell for a
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: better prize. Roughly a third of what the sility receives
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: has no value. Across the industry, that share is growing.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: The decline and clothing quality has been spurred by fast
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: fashion and consumers preference for quantity over quality. Garments fall
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: apart after a few washes. Most are blends of cheap
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: synthetic fibers that are difficult to repurpose or recycle, and
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: there's just so much of it that markets are saturated.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Clothing value the high and the prices are low. That's
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: why at Robert Hall Family Clothings march toward disposability traces
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: back to the post World War two period, when companies
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: in America began intentionally designing goods not to last so
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: that people would keep buying. The fashion instry became geared
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: toward getting consumers, particularly women, to turn through clothing ever faster.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: By the nineteen eighties, the preconditions for fast fashion were
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: in place. Then one Spanish company perfected the formula. Hey guys,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: welcome back to my channel. I'm so excited to be
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: doing this haul for you. I went to Zara and
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: picked out my favorite items. It's the beginning of October
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: five and it's time to see what's in store. I
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: found ten hidden Johns from Zara that are really worth
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: buying into texts. The parent company of Zarah pioneered a
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: retailing model that rolled out ten thousand designs a year
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: and continuously cleared out unsold items. The effect was astounding.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Shoppers began dropping by Zara stores four times more frequently
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: than those of its competitors. Neurological research has since shown
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: that shopping taps in to a region of our brain
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: linked to addictive behavior. Sara had hit on a way
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: to commercialized fomo or fear of missing out before it
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: was even a thing. And I'm going to share those
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: items with you today so that you can go out
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: and buy them too. Today. China produces clothes so cheaply
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: that new garments can be competitive with used ones. That's
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: according to Eric Steuben, president of Transamerica's Textile Recycling, Inc.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: They operate one of North America's oldest sorting facilities. We
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: have to compete. Buyers all the time would say to
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: me things like, well, we're competing against you know, uh,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: you know, cheap Chinese manufactured merchandise. So it's you know,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: in a lot of the major African markets or global markets,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Chinese manufactured clothing competes with secondhand in these markets. I've
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: seen that in first hand in my dealings. Turns out
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: that recycling clothes back into fibers for new clothes is
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: devilishly difficult. Buttons and zippers need to be removed, Blended
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: fabrics must be unblended dyes removed. The technology to do
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: so is nascent. Garment tags that boast recycled fiber content
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: today usually use polyester from plastic bottles, but a plastic
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: bottle can be recycled back into a plastic bottle. Many
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: times a plastic bottle turned into a puffer jacket. Can't
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, experts warn that we
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: can't shop our way to sustainability. Recycling will always consume
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: more energy and produce more waste than we're using something
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: or not consuming it in the first place. Here's Julia Atwood,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: head of sustainable Materials at Bloomberg an ef. I mean,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: whenever you're thinking about the circular economy of anything, the
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: best thing to do is to reduce to map. So
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: you would have to kill the fast fasht and market
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: in order to make a meaningful difference to the emissions
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: or footprint of text dollary cycling. Fort Lumberg inanever, I'm
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Natalie ob called Pierson now Judith thank is a senior
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: fellow and visiting faculty member at Bennington College. She was
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: previously a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency under
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: President Obama, and she's also the founder of Beyond Plastics. Judy,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: thank you very much for coming on. Stephanois one lesson
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: of Natalie's pieces that when it comes to clothing, the
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: supply of secondhand clothes vastly exceeds what can realistically be
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: reused at home or abroad. Is that also the case
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: for plastics, Well, there is so much plastic production happening
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: every day and once it is used, and it's typically
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: single use, um, there's nothing good to do with it
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: when when you're done. Plastics recycling has been an abysmal failure.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: There's very very little reuse refill of plastics. So our
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: world is drowning in single use plastic clothing. Uh, clothing
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: has plastic in it. And unfortunately, plastic production is on
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: track to double in the next twenty years according to
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: the World Economic Forum. So this absolutely is not sustainable.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: This is not what people think of when they think
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: of the need for a circular economy. And when I
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: look at my recycling bag and in our part of London,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: it's all mixed up together. Um. And if I at
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: any given bag in a given week, you know a
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: lot of it would be plastics that we're taking, whether
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: it's a milk plastic milk bottles and other things. Is
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: it just is that just a fiction to say that
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: that all of those plastics can be recycled. Yeah, it's
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: a fiction and it's also a lie. Perpetuated by plastic producers. UM,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: we have so little choice when we go to the supermarket. UM,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: none of us have voted for more plastic. But plastic
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: is cheap and it is flooded the market. And for decades,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Big Plastic has suggested to the public, UM, don't worry
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: about all of your single use plastics, just toss it
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: in your recycling bin. But they have known for decades
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: that plastics fundamentally are not recyclable. That's why in the
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: United States we're looking at a five to six percent
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: recycling rate, a little bit higher in Europe, but not
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: much high air And I just want to briefly explain
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: why this is why plastic is not similar to metal, glass, paper, cardboard.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: All of those materials can be made from recycled material
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: and then when you put them in your recycling bin
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: or bag, they actually do get recycled. It's the opposite
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: with plastics. And that's because there are hundreds of different
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: types of plastics. Not only do you have different resins,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: but they all have different chemical additives and different colorants.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: So think of your own home. On top of your
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: washing machine, if you have one, you might have a
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: bright orange hard plastic detergent bottle, and then in your
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: refrigerator you might have a clear, squeezable ketchup bottle. You
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: cannot recycle them together. They are two different, different chemical additives,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: different colors, and so plastic recycling is a dead end,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: and plastic recycling has given other recycling a bad name.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: I want to be clear. I am a strong supporter
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: first of waste reduction, refill, reuse, and then definitely recycle
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: all of your metal, glass, paper, cardboard. But you need
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: to know that most plastics do not get recycled. And
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: is there just on your example, given that a lot
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: of the consumer products we do seem to be kind
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: of hardwired to make things out of plastic, wouldn't make
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: it any any better to be reducing the different types
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: of plastics. So there was more possibility that maybe that
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: that detergent bottle and the ketchup bottle could be recycled
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: in the same place. Yeah, it definitely would be better
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: if we had fewer types of plastics, but that change
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: is only going to happen when legislative bodies adopt new
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: laws requiring this. The plastics industry and consumer brands like
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Unilever and um coke and PEPSI and McDonald's. They're not
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: going to change on their own. We need new laws
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: that give us a fighting chance to have a more
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: sustainable economy. So one area is known as extended Producer Responsibility,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: and that would put environmental standards on packaging. Just like
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: we have fuel efficiency standards for cars that allow us
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: to save money at the gas station. We have energy
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: efficiency standards for appliances so we save a little bit
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: of money on our monthly utility bill. We need environmental
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: standards for packaging that encourage reduction, reuse, but also some
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: standardization so you have a chance to actually recycle it.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: And equally important, we need to reduce the presence of
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: toxic chemicals in packaging, particularly food packaging. And I guess
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: I should ask where the administration is on this. I mean,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: we've had sort of landmark environmental legislation in the summer
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: which was more devoted to the sort of the big
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: picture emissions um story um is there are the people
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: in the administration, maybe former colleagues of yours in the
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: in the e p A, who are planning to act
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: on any of this. No, the Biden administration record and
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: goals on plastic pollution is m I a missing in action. Um,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: I don't think the Biden administration, which I have tremendous
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: respect for, I don't understand. I don't think they understand
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the connection between plastics and climate change. They talk a
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: lot about environmental justice, but they have not done very
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: much to reduce the risks of plastic production in low
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: income communities and communities of color in places like Louisiana, Texas, Appalachia. Also,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: there's very little difference between the position that the Biden
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: administration and the Trump administration is taking on a proposed
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: international plastics treaty. But fundamentally what needs to happen is
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: quite simple. We need to make less plastic. It's affecting health,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: particularly in low income communities where the plastic is produced
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: or disposed of. It is it definitely impacting climate change,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: It is turning our ocean into a landfill, and plastics
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: is a huge recycling failure. So given all of that,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: it only makes sense that we make less plastic. But
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: that's the opposite direction that the United States is taking.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: This is not a not a happy message that you've got, Judith.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: I'm sure, but I'm sure it's a realistic one. I
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: guess we should go back to the one bit of
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: good news that you emphasize at the start, which is
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: we shouldn't feel bad about or concerned about where are
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: cans and paper and bottles are going, Glass bottles are going.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Those are being recycled. We have managed a circularity with
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: those things. Yes, you know, it's it's hard to sugarcoat
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: the plastics message because it is pretty dire. You're you're,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: You're definitely not falling into that trap. Yes, and I'm
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: no fun at parties, but especially if anyone gives you
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: a plastic cup, I imagine. But anyway, yeah, it's it's
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: a scene. Um. But class in the United States is
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: recycled at paper and cardboard, ferris metals. So recycling can
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: work for some materials, and it also creates jobs. But
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: what I am optimistic about is the public wants to
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: see change and people are mobilizing to get important new
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: laws adopted. Bottle bills known as you know, beverage container
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: deposit laws put a dime deposit on a beverage container.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: It eliminates litter of that container. It gets a high
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: recycling rate because it's source separated and kept so clean um.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Some companies are slowly getting the message. For instance, Coke,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: one of the largest plastic polluter in the world, announced
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: recently that they will shift to reusable, refillable beverage containers
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: by the thirty Of course, that's going to require deposits
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: on all of those containers. And we're seeing many small
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: businesses emerge that use refillable, reusable containers. These are often
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: women owned businesses, UH small businesses around the globe, and
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: that is the future. The future is reduction, reuse, refill
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: and phasing out plastics. Judy think, thank you so much.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Thank You's definitely a pleasure. Well, that's it for Stephanomics.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: That's it for my Black Friday shopping. We'll be back
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: next week. In the meantime, check out the Bloomberg News
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: website for more economic news and views on the global economy,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: and follow at economics on Twitter. This episode was produced
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: by Yang Yang and Magnus Hendrickson, with special thanks to
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Mohammed Farouk, Augusta Saraiva, Natalie Pearson, Eleanor Tyler, and Judith Enck.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Mike Sasso is the executive producer of Stephanomics.