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Recycling and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: piece of the Internet at go daddy dot com. Hey,
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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. It's called Stuff you Should
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Speaker 1: Know appropriately enough, I'm Josh Clark with me as always
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Speaker 1: is who it's Chuck. That's right, Chuck. It's good to
0:37
Speaker 1: be back. I know it feels like it's been a
0:39
Speaker 1: well Christmas holidays, right. I know that listeners think, through
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Speaker 1: the magic of iTunes, that we never leave the studio
0:46
Speaker 1: at all, but in fact we've been off for a
0:48
Speaker 1: couple of weeks and now we're back. Yeah. Do you
0:50
Speaker 1: know we've actually gotten um offers to be rescued from
0:54
Speaker 1: a couple of our listeners because from Studio one A yeah.
0:58
Speaker 1: On our Facebook page, I think I said that we're
1:01
Speaker 1: not allowed to leave. I got a pretty good response. Nice. Yeah, okay,
1:05
Speaker 1: so you asked for pizza or cash, Oh it's coming, Yeah,
1:08
Speaker 1: I'm buttering them up. Or shrimp cocktail, your favorite cocktail? Exactly.
1:12
Speaker 1: I can finally get the shrimp cocktail. Um, Chuck. Yes,
1:16
Speaker 1: do you remember back in the nineties? Maybe a haze
1:19
Speaker 1: for you. No, you don't remember the nineties. No, it's
1:23
Speaker 1: not a haze. I do, right, Oh, that was a
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Speaker 1: weird response college I was studying and such. Okay, so
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Speaker 1: so you do remember the nineties. Okay, So, Chuck, you
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Speaker 1: are a child of the recycling generation. Do you remember
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Speaker 1: when that thing just blew up? It came out of nowhere?
1:41
Speaker 1: I do. My brother and I were talking about this
1:43
Speaker 1: the other day with the initial Yeah, we were with
1:46
Speaker 1: the Crying Indian in the seventies, which was just about littering,
1:50
Speaker 1: right when the good old days when you would just
1:52
Speaker 1: start trashing like an anchorman. They're walking through the parking
1:56
Speaker 1: but just so nuts. Do you ever see anybody in
2:00
Speaker 1: their car just throwing something out occasionally and it's just
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Speaker 1: boil your blood and it's like, what are you doing?
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Speaker 1: How can I be that unaware? You know? I hit
2:08
Speaker 1: them with my car. Okay, so you're talking about the
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Speaker 1: the Amerindian who is crying because of the trash, right.
2:14
Speaker 1: And then later on recycling became like newspapers kind of
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Speaker 1: where I remember it starting. It did. As a matter
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Speaker 1: of fact, the first curb side newspaper recycling program started
2:23
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three in University City, Missouri, I believe,
2:28
Speaker 1: or Missouri as my mom would say. But it took
2:31
Speaker 1: a little while for it to take off, from nineteen
2:34
Speaker 1: seventy three to the nineties. But in the nineties it
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Speaker 1: really gained traction and gain ground. And if you remember correctly,
2:41
Speaker 1: you used to have to have like all these different
2:44
Speaker 1: bins for you know, this colored glass, right, this kind
2:47
Speaker 1: of plastic or paper, you know, and then then all
2:50
Speaker 1: of a sudden it just went away. They're like, just
2:54
Speaker 1: throw it all in one bin. And because recycling seems
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Speaker 1: so important, I know, I always wondered, like, is this
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Speaker 1: stuff really getting recycled. And then when when they went
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Speaker 1: to this whole you know, just single bin hodgepodge of everything,
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Speaker 1: I was like, well, that's it. I mean, they're not
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Speaker 1: even trying to keep it that they're that they're not
3:15
Speaker 1: dumping this stuff, right, so UM, it turns out that
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Speaker 1: they actually are that you can pretty much guarantee that
3:23
Speaker 1: almost all of what you are putting in your recycling
3:26
Speaker 1: bin is getting recycled. And the thing that threw us
3:30
Speaker 1: off where all of a sudden, we're just throwing everything
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Speaker 1: in one bin. It's called single stream recycling. That's a
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Speaker 1: result of UM recycling technology, which is awesome because it
3:41
Speaker 1: made it a lot easier for people that maybe wouldn't
3:43
Speaker 1: be prone to recycle because they didn't want to separate everything. Yeah,
3:47
Speaker 1: so yeah, it was awesome. It was a pain, it
3:49
Speaker 1: was definite pain. And now you just throw it all
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Speaker 1: in one bin. They come and get it. And back
3:53
Speaker 1: in the day there there used to be a lot
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Speaker 1: of human contact with your garbage that was being recycled.
4:00
Speaker 1: But these technological advances, so imagine that's okay. There's like
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Speaker 1: a uh, this conveyor belt that your recyclables are dumped
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Speaker 1: onto and they go through this weird gauntlet where there's
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Speaker 1: like magnets that attract like tin cans and then drop
4:15
Speaker 1: them into into bins. Lasers lasers always you know, a
4:19
Speaker 1: personal favorite of mine. They they're they're infrared lasers that
4:23
Speaker 1: are used to scan the wavelength that's emitted by um
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Speaker 1: different types of plastic, and then they're appropriately taken off
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Speaker 1: the conveyor belt. And then there's there's others that have
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Speaker 1: puffs of air that can only get like, um, like cardboard,
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Speaker 1: like a toilet, paper, paper towel roll, just puffs it off.
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Speaker 1: All your stuff going through this is being assaulted. And
4:44
Speaker 1: you know the way it reacts to these assaults, they're
4:46
Speaker 1: gonna end up in the right kind of bin. So
4:49
Speaker 1: you need very little human contact, or much less than
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Speaker 1: you did before. So um that that should put the
4:56
Speaker 1: single stream fear to rest, right. Sure, I I've heard
5:01
Speaker 1: well I never really doubted it too much, but I
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Speaker 1: do know people that think it's a liberal conspiracy and
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Speaker 1: that nothing is being recycled. So well, actually, there's a
5:10
Speaker 1: there's an economist I can't remember his name, but he
5:13
Speaker 1: went to the trouble of proving that recycling is actually
5:16
Speaker 1: more harmful than good. Yeah, um, as far as like
5:21
Speaker 1: an environmental cost benefit, it's actually more harmful because I
5:24
Speaker 1: think he took into account like all the gas that
5:28
Speaker 1: the trucks burn, that kind of thing, uh, and in
5:32
Speaker 1: the electricity used in the recycling plants, and he came
5:35
Speaker 1: to the conclusion that's actually more harmful than good. I
5:38
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily subscribe to that, right was I'm sure
5:41
Speaker 1: he was contradicted by more than one person. Yeah, but
5:43
Speaker 1: he was a respected economist. He wasn't just you know,
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Speaker 1: some crack potter Joe Schmoy economists. No, right, exactly. But
5:52
Speaker 1: he he may have very well been a conservative economist because,
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Speaker 1: as you said, recycling is a big liberal conspiracy in
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Speaker 1: some people's eyes. Exactly. Few, I would say, probably a
6:04
Speaker 1: lot of people on board now and in the two
6:06
Speaker 1: thousand's exactly. But I was having a conversation with my
6:09
Speaker 1: father the other day, and he is the herbal Elvis exactly.
6:14
Speaker 1: He was down, actually was he was kind of you know,
6:17
Speaker 1: at the at the equilibrium point, which is good. So
6:20
Speaker 1: he's very lucid. Um. And he uh, he and I
6:23
Speaker 1: were talking. He said that the people at his recycling center, uh,
6:27
Speaker 1: they don't have curbside pickup where he lives out in
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Speaker 1: the sticks. Um, they take their their stuff to the center,
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Speaker 1: and that they were told by one of the employees
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Speaker 1: that works there, um that there they don't recycling or
6:40
Speaker 1: they just take all the stuff to the dump. Yes,
6:44
Speaker 1: and I told him that the man at the recycling
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Speaker 1: center was a total idiot, and uh, basically Dad wanted
6:51
Speaker 1: to know why, as is his one um, and I
6:55
Speaker 1: told him that that's just an awful business model. So
6:58
Speaker 1: think about this. There's this thing called it tipping fee.
7:01
Speaker 1: And in two thousand eight, the tipping fee is what
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Speaker 1: you pay to dump your stuff at a landfill, and
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Speaker 1: it's usually per ton. In the US, in two thousand eight,
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Speaker 1: it was about forty two bucks on average for per
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Speaker 1: ton of everything anything you wanted to come dump. They
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Speaker 1: weigh it by ton and then you pay forty two
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Speaker 1: bucks to Have you ever been to a landfill? Yeah?
7:24
Speaker 1: I know they actually have been to some that are
7:27
Speaker 1: kind of tranquil, quite nice. Yeah, they have like ponds
7:30
Speaker 1: and stuff, so you would never ever want to swim in.
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Speaker 1: But there's like rolling hills filled with garbage, but it's
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Speaker 1: grass over it. I've been to somewhere they're actually going
7:39
Speaker 1: to the effort to make it look decent. But yeah,
7:42
Speaker 1: and then you turn around there's like some rest of
7:44
Speaker 1: refrigerator with like a corpse in it or something. So
7:47
Speaker 1: they can be depressing places. Okay, but there's there's that
7:51
Speaker 1: tipping fee. Right, So you drive up and there's a
7:53
Speaker 1: scale that's embedded into the ground. It weighs you, and
7:56
Speaker 1: you pay appropriately. Some states are are more than others.
7:59
Speaker 1: I think ver Months tipping fee. The average tipping fee
8:02
Speaker 1: in the state's nineties six bucks a ton, and then
8:04
Speaker 1: I think Oklahoma is on the low end, it's like
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Speaker 1: fourteen or seventeen bucks a ton. So clearly, the more
8:10
Speaker 1: you charge and tipping fees, the more people are going
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Speaker 1: to recycle exactly. But the point is is that there
8:16
Speaker 1: because you have to pay too dump this stuff. Sure,
8:21
Speaker 1: and you're not charging anybody money to come drop off
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Speaker 1: their recyclables. All you're doing is throwing your money out
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Speaker 1: the window. You might as well empty out your bank
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Speaker 1: account into a dump truck and back it into a landfill.
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Speaker 1: Did you explain this to your father? I did. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: this is actually you don't know this, but you are
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Speaker 1: trapped right in the middle of a recreation of this
8:38
Speaker 1: conversation we had, um. So that's number one. The other
8:43
Speaker 1: thing is that you you can actually get money from
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Speaker 1: recyclables their commodity. So what I mean, what happens when
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Speaker 1: you take your recyclables to uh to a recycling center
8:54
Speaker 1: and they're they're diverted from the dump, thank god, to
8:57
Speaker 1: you know, a recycling plant. What happened? I mean, what
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Speaker 1: do they get turned into? Well, they get turned eventually
9:03
Speaker 1: back into the original raw material, which is a commodity.
9:07
Speaker 1: It's worth money, like you said, so they have every
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Speaker 1: incentive to recycle. So like that mixed office paper is
9:13
Speaker 1: being turned into um cardboard maybe you're old newspapers Actually
9:18
Speaker 1: are really very commonly used for cardboards, stuff like that. UM.
9:23
Speaker 1: Or you know, plastic bottles are being turned into um
9:27
Speaker 1: like a fleece jacket. And actually there's a plastic bottle
9:31
Speaker 1: you want to avoid if you ever tip it upside
9:34
Speaker 1: down and you look, that's where you're gonna find your
9:36
Speaker 1: recycling symbol, right and the number correct. Yes, So if
9:39
Speaker 1: you see a triangular recycling symbol with a three inside,
9:44
Speaker 1: you should actually do this while you're at the store.
9:47
Speaker 1: Look at the bottle and if you see a three,
9:50
Speaker 1: put it back and keep looking until you find, you know,
9:53
Speaker 1: the laundry to churchen or whatever you're you're looking for
9:56
Speaker 1: that doesn't have a three, and it has a one
9:58
Speaker 1: or a two or something like that. UM. And then
10:00
Speaker 1: all of a sudden that one with the three will
10:02
Speaker 1: go away eventually like PC. And that's because it's is
10:07
Speaker 1: it impossible to recycle or it's not hard. It's very
10:11
Speaker 1: very The the ways you can recycle or the things
10:14
Speaker 1: you can recycle into a very very limited, like maybe
10:17
Speaker 1: a plastic park bench or something like that, because there's
10:20
Speaker 1: so many additives and plus it there. It's actually um.
10:24
Speaker 1: There's there's whole websites and organizations dedicated to getting rid
10:27
Speaker 1: of PVC. Wh There's number one, it's it's impossible recycle.
10:31
Speaker 1: So just that does generally end up in the dump
10:34
Speaker 1: unless you take it to a specialty recycling plant. UM.
10:37
Speaker 1: And number two it contains thalamites, and thalamites are UM.
10:42
Speaker 1: It depends on the plastic. Thalamites are like a softener
10:45
Speaker 1: to to soften plastic. So like your vinyl shower curtain
10:49
Speaker 1: that has thalamites in it, when you put it in
10:50
Speaker 1: and it starts smelling weird, that's the thalamites. And they're
10:54
Speaker 1: actually really harmful that children's toys, like the kind of
10:59
Speaker 1: mouthble ones that they chew on. Bad news. PVC thallamites
11:04
Speaker 1: not good stuff. So if you start doing this at
11:06
Speaker 1: the store, if you start, if you stop buying things
11:09
Speaker 1: that are made in or delivered in PBC containers. PVC
11:14
Speaker 1: is gonna go the way of the dinosaur pretty quick. Um.
11:17
Speaker 1: But okay, so you want to look what you want
11:19
Speaker 1: to look out for PVC? Right, Oh, I know what
11:21
Speaker 1: we're talking about, raw materials. Back to raw materials, back
11:24
Speaker 1: to raw materials. So recyclables are commodity because they're broken
11:28
Speaker 1: back down into their original composition basically, right, okay, and
11:34
Speaker 1: then they're sold for for big dough. It can be
11:37
Speaker 1: big dough. Actually, I was reading an MPR article and um,
11:43
Speaker 1: the price per ton that wholesale purchasers of of recycled
11:48
Speaker 1: mixed office paper we're paying in this this past summer,
11:52
Speaker 1: it was like ninety bucks a ton, big money. And
11:55
Speaker 1: these are these are companies that are buying hundreds of
11:57
Speaker 1: thousands of tons a month um. So it was big
12:00
Speaker 1: business to recycle. And by the fall it had dropped
12:04
Speaker 1: to nothing because even you know, recycling is subject to
12:09
Speaker 1: inflation and gas fuel prices. Well, not just that, but
12:12
Speaker 1: the economy. People stop buying goods, so less goods were manufactured. Um.
12:18
Speaker 1: But it's also because it's it's it's subject to economic whims.
12:23
Speaker 1: It's also subject to consumers. Right, So like if you
12:27
Speaker 1: if you only buy um products that are sold in
12:32
Speaker 1: recyclable or recycled materials, that are made from recycled materials. Um,
12:38
Speaker 1: you the people who make these things are going to
12:42
Speaker 1: start buying more and more recycled stuff, okay, because that's
12:46
Speaker 1: what the consumers want. And if you stop buying stuff
12:49
Speaker 1: that's made with you know, virgin raw materials, all of
12:52
Speaker 1: a sudden, these trees are being saved or more plastic
12:57
Speaker 1: isn't being made. And it's so it's kind of cool
13:00
Speaker 1: to know that you can have this each person. Yeah,
13:03
Speaker 1: you can also have an effect by making sure or
13:07
Speaker 1: doing your best to make sure that everything that you
13:09
Speaker 1: putting your recycling ben gets recycled. And one of the
13:11
Speaker 1: ways you can do that is by cleaning the stuff.
13:14
Speaker 1: I know that I know you referenced Minnesota in the article,
13:18
Speaker 1: and I believe it's the same here in Georgia. About
13:20
Speaker 1: pizza boxes, I've heard that pizza boxes they won't recycled
13:23
Speaker 1: because they have you know, cheese and grease and stuff
13:25
Speaker 1: on it. Actually just throw mine away, now, do you. Yeah, Yeah,
13:28
Speaker 1: it's probably good idea, And um, I I do a
13:32
Speaker 1: real good job about cleaning out all my glass products
13:35
Speaker 1: just because it stinks and you don't want, you know,
13:38
Speaker 1: the barbecue sauce smelling after a few days. So that's
13:41
Speaker 1: the reason I do it. But it turns out it
13:42
Speaker 1: has a better chance of getting recycled. It does and
13:44
Speaker 1: if you kind of look at it, like your your
13:47
Speaker 1: bottle of barbecue sauce. If you look at it, you
13:49
Speaker 1: will see that it's not just a bottle of barbecue sauce.
13:51
Speaker 1: There's several components to it, the lid, maybe that little
13:56
Speaker 1: ring that held the lid in place, to the safety
13:59
Speaker 1: seal um that's not just kind of dangling around the
14:01
Speaker 1: neck of the bottle of the label. If you break
14:04
Speaker 1: this thing down into its parts, you're increasing its chances
14:07
Speaker 1: of being recycled as well, because if you think about
14:10
Speaker 1: the labels paper, but the bottles glass and the cap
14:13
Speaker 1: is plastic. So you separate it, you're making it easier
14:16
Speaker 1: for the people at the recycling plant, or I should
14:18
Speaker 1: say the magnets and lasers at the recycling plant. And
14:22
Speaker 1: it's it's going to be likelier to be recycled, right,
14:25
Speaker 1: it won't become a residual, which I believe that is
14:27
Speaker 1: what the refuse is called it. They cannot recycle correct, right,
14:31
Speaker 1: and they want to any any recycling company would want
14:34
Speaker 1: to cut down on residual, right because that's just lost money.
14:38
Speaker 1: So they're gonna do a lot to kind of make it,
14:41
Speaker 1: UM get as much money as possible by recycling as
14:44
Speaker 1: much ASTU as possible. But you can definitely help, right, Yeah,
14:48
Speaker 1: that's great. I agree. So does that take us too?
14:51
Speaker 1: Plastic and where that might end up? Yeah, you know,
14:54
Speaker 1: plastic is kind of a big problem, right, and not
14:57
Speaker 1: just PBC, but you know there's some play stick that's
15:00
Speaker 1: a lot easier to recycle than others, UM, but it
15:06
Speaker 1: doesn't always get recycled, and when it doesn't get recycled,
15:09
Speaker 1: it can end up in some really screwed up places, right,
15:12
Speaker 1: most specifically the ocean. Yes, a lot, a lot of
15:16
Speaker 1: this stuff ends up in the ocean. And I have
15:19
Speaker 1: a stat for you if you if you're into that,
15:21
Speaker 1: you know, I'm into your stats. Uh. The the u
15:24
Speaker 1: N did a little study their environmental program and they said,
15:27
Speaker 1: in two thousand six, every square mild ocean has forty
15:31
Speaker 1: six thousand pieces of floating plastic in it. Not awful,
15:36
Speaker 1: forty six thousand pieces per square mile, And of the
15:40
Speaker 1: more than two hundred billion pounds of plastic that we
15:43
Speaker 1: produce each year all over the world is not United States,
15:46
Speaker 1: about ten percent of that ends up in the ocean,
15:48
Speaker 1: and a lot of that ends up on the floor
15:50
Speaker 1: of the ocean. Well, not just a lot of it's
15:52
Speaker 1: seventy of it ends up on the floor of the ocean.
15:54
Speaker 1: So if every square mile has forty six thousand pieces floating,
15:59
Speaker 1: that's thirty of what's actually in the ocean. The rest
16:02
Speaker 1: is on the ocean floor, right, all right, So plastic
16:05
Speaker 1: is it's well, it's plastic, right, It's super wonderful material.
16:10
Speaker 1: It's so useful. But yes, it doesn't biodegrade. It does
16:14
Speaker 1: break down, it photo degrades, but it doesn't break down
16:17
Speaker 1: molecularly into simpler compounds that can be absorbed by nature.
16:21
Speaker 1: It just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces of
16:23
Speaker 1: the same thing, conveniently bite sized pieces, which is one
16:26
Speaker 1: of the big problems. What they're called mermaids tears or nerdles. Yeah,
16:32
Speaker 1: that's probably the saddest thing I've ever heard in my life.
16:35
Speaker 1: It is. It's almost as bad as the American Indian crying. Yeah,
16:39
Speaker 1: some mermaids here. Uh so yeah, what happens is the
16:42
Speaker 1: stuff ends up in the ocean and filter feeders like
16:45
Speaker 1: our friend the whale, shark and catfish they take the
16:49
Speaker 1: stuff in because they think it's food. Uh, seagulls, albatross
16:53
Speaker 1: they eat the stuff and uh it ends up you know,
16:56
Speaker 1: killing a large chair. Yeah yeah, but wait, there's more
16:58
Speaker 1: aside from the choking hazard or you know, any problems
17:02
Speaker 1: digestive problems that can occur. Um. These little mermaids tears
17:08
Speaker 1: actually have this added property of attracting toxins like a sponge.
17:14
Speaker 1: So like the anything, any toxin it comes in contact
17:17
Speaker 1: within the ocean, it can actually draw stuff to it.
17:19
Speaker 1: It soaks it up, absorbs it, hangs onto it, and
17:22
Speaker 1: then when it's eaten, little poison pills. Basically pretty much
17:26
Speaker 1: shooting and sinking any ocean. And this is all over
17:28
Speaker 1: the place, but there's actually there's this. There's a place
17:32
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Ocean. This is startling to me. There's
17:36
Speaker 1: a place in the Pacific in between Japan and California, right,
17:41
Speaker 1: and it is called the North Pacific subtropic gyre okay um.
17:47
Speaker 1: And basically a gyre is just it's a circulating area
17:51
Speaker 1: of water. But this is this isn't like a funnel,
17:54
Speaker 1: it's it's much more wide than that. Actually, one of
17:58
Speaker 1: these gyres is twice the size of Texas. This this
18:02
Speaker 1: subtropic gyre, the one in the North Pacific is actually
18:05
Speaker 1: there's two, and they're connected by a six thousand long
18:09
Speaker 1: subtropical convergent zone miles of basically trash and other things
18:15
Speaker 1: making its way from one to the other. This is
18:17
Speaker 1: where the garbage goes. This the the garbage that if
18:20
Speaker 1: you have a cigarette lighter and it goes out or
18:24
Speaker 1: it comes out of your pocket because you had it
18:26
Speaker 1: in your bathing suit when you jumped in it, it
18:30
Speaker 1: will likely end up in this huge garbage patch. There
18:33
Speaker 1: is a garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean that's twice
18:37
Speaker 1: the size of Texas, and it's just kind of slowly
18:40
Speaker 1: sitting there turning. There's actually there's there's two versions. There's
18:45
Speaker 1: a western in the eastern right, and just one of
18:47
Speaker 1: them is twice the exactly and that's they're connected by
18:50
Speaker 1: the little trash trail on the six thousand mile trash trail.
18:54
Speaker 1: And this is having you could say, something of an
18:57
Speaker 1: impact on some of the Island, the island chains in
19:00
Speaker 1: the area right Hawaiian Islands, some of the wine islands,
19:03
Speaker 1: some of them are Some of them have beaches that
19:06
Speaker 1: feature um five to ten feet of trash ten ft
19:10
Speaker 1: deep and the plastic sand is what they call it. Yeah,
19:14
Speaker 1: bads tears that that turned into these really tiny tiny
19:17
Speaker 1: bits that you just can't do anything about. It comes
19:21
Speaker 1: and mixed in with the beach. So it's bad news.
19:23
Speaker 1: The the there is one heartening thing to all this,
19:27
Speaker 1: to the great Pacific garbage pat It can be it
19:31
Speaker 1: can be reduced. And the reason it can be reduced
19:34
Speaker 1: is because I think eight percent of the trash and
19:37
Speaker 1: the ocean it starts on land. This isn't like ocean
19:40
Speaker 1: going vessels going out and dumping you know in this
19:44
Speaker 1: jy or anything like. It's it's pulled there and it's
19:47
Speaker 1: usually from land. That was good to hear. I mean,
19:49
Speaker 1: it's sad in a way because it's coming from us,
19:52
Speaker 1: but it's good to know that, you know, something can
19:55
Speaker 1: change about that, right because it's everyday people who are
19:57
Speaker 1: doing this. It's not you know, some faceless corporation. It's
20:00
Speaker 1: not the people who are duping us into thinking that
20:02
Speaker 1: where our stuff is being recycled and they're actually taking
20:05
Speaker 1: it and dumping it in the Pacific. There's something you
20:08
Speaker 1: can do, Like you can not UM use plastic grocery
20:11
Speaker 1: bags anymore. It's a great ice very popular. UM. You
20:15
Speaker 1: can recycle absolutely everything. UM. You can. You can if
20:19
Speaker 1: you have eco anxiety, which we've talked about, you can follow.
20:22
Speaker 1: You can walk up and down the street and pull
20:23
Speaker 1: the aquafina water bottles out of the trash and you
20:26
Speaker 1: can do theirself sure, or you could charter a helicopter
20:29
Speaker 1: and have them fly you out to the gyre and
20:30
Speaker 1: get to work. That's so that's just the tip of
20:34
Speaker 1: the iceberg. On the on the on you know, recycling
20:38
Speaker 1: in the World's Biggest landfill, which is the Great Pacific
20:42
Speaker 1: garbage paths and it is UM and we've got a
20:45
Speaker 1: couple of articles on them. Coincidentally, this is a dual podcast.
20:48
Speaker 1: This is a bonus street It was Yeah, it's our
20:51
Speaker 1: first time ever. We hope you liked it. UM. You
20:53
Speaker 1: can read both of these articles by going to our
20:57
Speaker 1: handy search bar and typing in world Biggest Landfill or
21:01
Speaker 1: recycling reality and you can do that at how stuff
21:04
Speaker 1: works dot com and Chuck we have a little listener
21:09
Speaker 1: mail we do my favorite part of the show, mail time.
21:17
Speaker 1: So today Josh, we have I'm gonna start off with
21:19
Speaker 1: some corrections. Actually I'm gonna start off end end with corrections.
21:23
Speaker 1: I have a few. We had a recent podcast on
21:26
Speaker 1: body armor which was a special request from a soldier,
21:30
Speaker 1: Donald Anderson and Iraq. And um. First correction is Donald
21:36
Speaker 1: actually wrote us back because we didn't have his We
21:38
Speaker 1: found out his rank as a sergeant and it's a
21:40
Speaker 1: sergeant part of the fourth Squadron, third Armored Calvary Regiment,
21:44
Speaker 1: and he works on the Age sixty f D turbine engine,
21:47
Speaker 1: which I did a little googling, and that's in the
21:49
Speaker 1: Apache helicopter. He's got a very cool job. And he
21:54
Speaker 1: thanked us for the for the podcast. And um, some
21:57
Speaker 1: people wrote in because we were talking about the spider
22:00
Speaker 1: silk being made from the goat and we couldn't conceive
22:04
Speaker 1: of how that would happen exactly. We thought of it
22:06
Speaker 1: coming out of its dairy air or right right, what
22:09
Speaker 1: was it? We said, let's listen, yealysis. Yeah, they've actually
22:14
Speaker 1: genetically engineered goats to produce spider silk. That is, and
22:18
Speaker 1: I take it maybe their hair grows like that. I
22:21
Speaker 1: have no idea because I don't know where the silk
22:23
Speaker 1: would come out of the poor goat, so we did
22:27
Speaker 1: not know. We put the call out to our our listeners,
22:29
Speaker 1: and because they're really smart and awesome, we had a
22:33
Speaker 1: bunch of people right in. And it turns out that
22:35
Speaker 1: the spider silk is actually created in their milk, the
22:40
Speaker 1: goats milk, and uh, it's very strong and apparently it's
22:45
Speaker 1: compatible with the human body, so it can also be
22:46
Speaker 1: used for artificial limbs and stuff. Now, so I just
22:49
Speaker 1: have a few names just to give people their due. Uh.
22:52
Speaker 1: Nick McCracken of Waynesville, North Carolina. Kimberly Fletcher of Campbell, California.
22:57
Speaker 1: Jeff Buell of the Earth Wow, not see where he
23:01
Speaker 1: was from. II leaned forward whole stage from California. Michael
23:05
Speaker 1: Barressitch h Matt Jensen of New York. Sean cash In
23:10
Speaker 1: who just wrote in like literally ten minutes before we
23:13
Speaker 1: went on the year, and one final person was unnamed
23:16
Speaker 1: and he's my favorite because or she because the email
23:19
Speaker 1: simply said the one so it may have been from
23:23
Speaker 1: God himself. Wow. Well, thank you God and all the
23:26
Speaker 1: rest of you for that. Correct and you've got some more. Well,
23:29
Speaker 1: just one more small quick correction. We did have a viewer,
23:32
Speaker 1: I'm sorry listener mail on a recent podcast, and we
23:35
Speaker 1: butchered the name and ginger this person Costs cos said
23:40
Speaker 1: something like Bitch Tall of Wisconsin. And it's actually a female.
23:44
Speaker 1: I think we said Costs. Yeah, we're really sorry about that, Costs.
23:47
Speaker 1: I don't know why we just automatically assumed you were mad.
23:50
Speaker 1: And so it's actually, uh Coss Bates Stall and she's
23:55
Speaker 1: a girl and we're very happy for him, and where
23:58
Speaker 1: we apologize. Yeah, thanks in a snow pop and uh.
24:01
Speaker 1: If you want to let us know how to pronounce
24:03
Speaker 1: your name and tell us your gender, talk about goat's milk, whatever,
24:08
Speaker 1: you can send us an email at stuff podcast at
24:11
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
24:17
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com.
24:21
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