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We Need More Sustainable Packaging, Like, Yesterday · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Jos
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chock and we're just a couple of dudes
0:16
Speaker 1: yacking it up about packaging waste because this is stuff
0:19
Speaker 1: you should know. Let's go. Yeah. Uh, it's always fun,
0:25
Speaker 1: even after all these years, to just sort of not
0:27
Speaker 1: know what's going to come out of your mouth at
0:29
Speaker 1: the beginning of an episode. Same here, Um, oh like
0:32
Speaker 1: as yourself. Yeah, I think this is a nice little
0:36
Speaker 1: addendum or not addendum, but just in the same bucket
0:39
Speaker 1: as our recent bottled water episode, and um, we did
0:44
Speaker 1: when I'm Littering and the Ultra Processed Foods episode all
0:47
Speaker 1: touched on this too. Yeah, and also of course recycling
0:50
Speaker 1: in landfills. And I just I love at the end
0:53
Speaker 1: of our whole career, we're gonna have these lovely buckets
0:57
Speaker 1: of content, and this is one I'm most proud of,
0:59
Speaker 1: our sort of environmental bucket. Yeah, it's good stuff. What
1:02
Speaker 1: about our civics lessons bucket? Sure those are great, like
1:07
Speaker 1: how to do a will and stuff like that. No, no,
1:09
Speaker 1: like why jerrymandering is horrible? Oh sure, yeah those are
1:13
Speaker 1: great too. Um, yeah, but these are recycling ones are
1:16
Speaker 1: great and true crime forget about it, because you know
1:20
Speaker 1: we're basically a true crime podcast. That So we're talking
1:25
Speaker 1: today about packaging waste. And if you are alive today
1:29
Speaker 1: in or the future, if you're listening to this in
1:32
Speaker 1: the future, hello future, um, you are probably pretty well
1:37
Speaker 1: aware that we have a lot of packaging. We use
1:41
Speaker 1: a lot of packaging to put stuff in. Like I
1:45
Speaker 1: remember buying a bottle of Crown Royal years and years
1:49
Speaker 1: ago at the liquor store and they put it in
1:52
Speaker 1: a paper bag when he thought it was the fanciest
1:55
Speaker 1: liquor totally and you and you would leave with paper
2:00
Speaker 1: bag and take it home and you would pull the
2:02
Speaker 1: box of Crown Royal out of the paper bag, you'd
2:04
Speaker 1: pull the velvet bag that the Crown Royal was an
2:08
Speaker 1: out of the box, and then you'd pull the bottle
2:11
Speaker 1: out of the velvet bag. And then finally, after you
2:14
Speaker 1: unscrewed the cap, you could get to what you were
2:16
Speaker 1: after all along, which was the delicious Crown Royal. Right,
2:20
Speaker 1: and you would put your bag of weed and the
2:21
Speaker 1: velvet bag and you would go to the Motley Crew concert.
2:25
Speaker 1: That's right with your little nineties bowl, the little brass bowl,
2:29
Speaker 1: that's right. And hey, this is not to disparage Crown
2:31
Speaker 1: Royal because they have been friendly enough to send us
2:35
Speaker 1: their delicious ryeh over and over again. They really took
2:38
Speaker 1: care of Remember they gave us those bags that were monogrammed.
2:42
Speaker 1: So yeah, no, not not anything to disparage on Crown Royal.
2:45
Speaker 1: But it's it always struck me even back then, like
2:49
Speaker 1: this is a lot of packaging, and how necessary is this?
2:52
Speaker 1: And we finally reached the point where the rest of
2:55
Speaker 1: society is caught up to me and are asking these
2:58
Speaker 1: questions now. And the answer that we seem to be
3:01
Speaker 1: coming up with is a lot of this stuff is
3:03
Speaker 1: totally unnecessary, and the stuff that is necessary we have
3:06
Speaker 1: to learn to make better and reuse better because we
3:10
Speaker 1: are awash in garbage. And here in America it's kind
3:13
Speaker 1: of tough to see unless you drive past the landfill
3:16
Speaker 1: because we don't literally we used to. But what we
3:19
Speaker 1: do is we dump our stuff either in landfills or
3:21
Speaker 1: else we exported to other less developed countries to use
3:26
Speaker 1: them as our landfills, which is really morally uncool, you know, oh,
3:30
Speaker 1: absolutely uh, And it's funny I just noticed the other day. Uh,
3:35
Speaker 1: the very popular by knacks now COVID at home COVID tests. Uh,
3:41
Speaker 1: COVID came through our house again. We all got out everybody,
3:43
Speaker 1: We're all great, We're all fine, but p s A
3:47
Speaker 1: still out there. Be careful. But long and long and
3:50
Speaker 1: short of it is, we're taking a lot of these
3:51
Speaker 1: tests over the course of the two weeks, and they
3:54
Speaker 1: are smaller now. I had to order some more, and
3:57
Speaker 1: they are now. I don't know if you've used these.
3:59
Speaker 1: They're not in the giant long box. And I thought, oh,
4:02
Speaker 1: is there only one in there now? And no, they
4:04
Speaker 1: just didn't need that big box. It's like the old
4:07
Speaker 1: CED long box, the same. Yeah. And they came in
4:10
Speaker 1: the mail. I was like, oh, well good, this thing
4:12
Speaker 1: is probably not half the size, but probably close to it,
4:15
Speaker 1: because there was no reason for those two COVID tests
4:18
Speaker 1: just to be flopping around with all that real estate. Yeah,
4:21
Speaker 1: so good for them, Yeah, good for you. By an X.
4:24
Speaker 1: Did you get him in the mail because Joe Biden
4:25
Speaker 1: sent him to you? Joe Biden, I did, uh send
4:30
Speaker 1: off for the free one from the government. But I
4:34
Speaker 1: also had to you know, we we just keep a
4:35
Speaker 1: stock in the house because we like to just make
4:38
Speaker 1: sure we're keeping everyone safe. Definitely. And you have a
4:41
Speaker 1: bowl full of condoms by your front door too, exactly
4:47
Speaker 1: except ours is like, uh, give a penny, take a penny,
4:50
Speaker 1: You take a condom, you gotta leave it, the condom
4:53
Speaker 1: of equal or lesser size? What they? What am I
4:56
Speaker 1: doing to call them? Like Coney Island whitefishes? That's right,
5:00
Speaker 1: he's in New York. Oh God, and you need to
5:04
Speaker 1: clean that bowl out, chuck. Oh. Can we talk about
5:07
Speaker 1: packaging waste? Yes, let's talk about this because give this.
5:10
Speaker 1: In the United States, of municipal solid waste, that's everything
5:15
Speaker 1: that includes old washing machines for Pete's sake. Of municipal
5:19
Speaker 1: solid waste is packaging containers, stuff that the stuff we're
5:24
Speaker 1: actually buying comes in, or is shipped in, or is
5:27
Speaker 1: transported to the story in right, So if we can
5:32
Speaker 1: do something about that, if we can reduce the amount
5:34
Speaker 1: of packaging or make the packaging we use more recyclable,
5:37
Speaker 1: that would have an enormous impact on our landfill footprint
5:41
Speaker 1: just out of the gate. Uh, and we do a
5:45
Speaker 1: decent you know, I don't even know. Decent is such
5:48
Speaker 1: a term that it's all over the place according to
5:52
Speaker 1: who you are. So I don't even want to use it.
5:54
Speaker 1: But we have put a dent in this packaging waste
5:57
Speaker 1: with our recycling, at least compared to the past. Maybe
6:00
Speaker 1: that's the safest way to say it. Yeah, we've definitely
6:02
Speaker 1: gotten better because in nineteen sixty about a tenth of
6:06
Speaker 1: packaging waste was recycled. Uhen was the most recent year
6:11
Speaker 1: we have. We're up to packaging waste being recycled, but
6:16
Speaker 1: that still means that they're uh, let me see here.
6:20
Speaker 1: Plastic ten million what is this tons? Yes, ten million
6:25
Speaker 1: tons of plastic still end up in the landfills out
6:28
Speaker 1: of million total. Yeah, seven million out of twelve million
6:32
Speaker 1: of wood aluminium. You would think that's the easiest thing
6:36
Speaker 1: to recycle. Everyone throws their aluminum cans recycling, right, Not true?
6:41
Speaker 1: About half one million aluminum cans end up in landfills
6:46
Speaker 1: with two million total. Yeah, that's unconscionable. Yeah, aluminum is
6:51
Speaker 1: I've seen it described as infinitely recyclable. You can just
6:54
Speaker 1: keep making the same aluminum can over and over again,
6:57
Speaker 1: if you'll just recycle it rather than diverted to land
7:00
Speaker 1: all that's pretty bad. Two million or one million landfilled
7:04
Speaker 1: out of two million. On the other end, cardboard, we're
7:07
Speaker 1: really really good that recycling cardboard. People recycle it. It's
7:11
Speaker 1: also easy to recycle, so it gets recycled. Out of
7:15
Speaker 1: forty two million tons of paper and cardboard that was
7:18
Speaker 1: generated for packaging alone, just packaging everybody, I'm not including
7:22
Speaker 1: like you know, um uh, construction paper from elementary schools,
7:26
Speaker 1: none of that. This is all just packaging. In two
7:28
Speaker 1: thousand and eighteen in the U S alone, out of
7:30
Speaker 1: forty two million, only five million of that five million
7:34
Speaker 1: tons ended up in the landfill. So that's really really good.
7:37
Speaker 1: So cardboards not the problem as far as like packaging
7:40
Speaker 1: and shipping and all of that stuff goes because a
7:42
Speaker 1: lot of it, most of it gets recycled. The big
7:45
Speaker 1: problem isn't even aluminum cans. The problem, chuck is polastic. Yeah,
7:51
Speaker 1: plastics a big problem, and a lot of this again
7:54
Speaker 1: overlaps with our bottled water up. But and we'll talk
7:58
Speaker 1: about plastic all throughout this episode. Yeah, and when when
8:01
Speaker 1: you think plastic, that's usually especially when you're talking about
8:04
Speaker 1: plastic packaging waste, you think bottled waters or something like that,
8:08
Speaker 1: or water bottles. Um but it can be any kind
8:11
Speaker 1: of single use plastic where it can be like a
8:14
Speaker 1: derrito wrapper that's made of plastic, styrofoam packing peanuts, that's
8:18
Speaker 1: a kind of plastic too, it's a polystyrene um. Plastic
8:22
Speaker 1: shows up in all sorts of other ways in other places,
8:25
Speaker 1: especially with plaques or packaging. And the other thing that
8:29
Speaker 1: you have to remember is this, think about how light
8:32
Speaker 1: plastic is. Okay, ten ten million tons of plastic. That
8:39
Speaker 1: is so much plastic in real terms, in real life
8:43
Speaker 1: terms out there in landfills are in the environment even
8:46
Speaker 1: worse that we're throwing away every year, every single year. Yeah,
8:51
Speaker 1: it's really unnerving when you get a product that is
8:54
Speaker 1: shrink wrapped in plastic that doesn't need to be. It's
8:59
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I blame the Thailand All Poisoner for that. Yeah,
9:05
Speaker 1: but really remember they were the ones who triggered tamper
9:09
Speaker 1: proof packaging and like putting everything in like shrink wrap
9:12
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, but as a tape measure, it's going
9:15
Speaker 1: to be tampered with. But I think that that's an
9:18
Speaker 1: extension of that impulse that was originally created by the
9:23
Speaker 1: Thailand All Poisoner that tamper proof packaging got extended to everything. Yeah,
9:27
Speaker 1: I guess so, And I know some of it is
9:29
Speaker 1: to protect the thing. But like, let's say you go
9:32
Speaker 1: out and get like a screwdriver set. They're not gonna
9:35
Speaker 1: sell you eight screwdrivers in a little like vinyl bag.
9:39
Speaker 1: Like they sell you eight screwdrivers and one of those
9:42
Speaker 1: huge square, you know, molded plastic things that are a
9:47
Speaker 1: impossible to open. So they're annoying. But it's just it
9:51
Speaker 1: just drives me crazy, drives me crazy. Have you tried
9:55
Speaker 1: practicing opening them screw driver? Sure, you gotta get a
10:01
Speaker 1: like a carpet knife? What what brand do you use?
10:06
Speaker 1: Carpet knife? No? But I mean you're you're screwdriver. When
10:09
Speaker 1: you're buying that big box of screwdrivers? What brand are
10:11
Speaker 1: you buying? I feel like in being set up for
10:13
Speaker 1: something that I don't understand. So I'm just gonna go
10:15
Speaker 1: and say Craftsman. Okay, that's why it was. It was
10:20
Speaker 1: a rhetorical question. There's no wrong answer. But I I
10:23
Speaker 1: don't have a problem opening and closing the plastic box
10:26
Speaker 1: with de Walt brand tools. Well, I got a lot
10:30
Speaker 1: of d Walt stuff. I love the Walt. In fact,
10:33
Speaker 1: most of my major power tools are de Walt. But
10:35
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm just remembering. I shouldn't have said screwdrivers.
10:38
Speaker 1: I should have said like wrenches, because the wrenches I
10:41
Speaker 1: bought the wrench set came like that. I actually found
10:44
Speaker 1: a screwdriver set where it had twelve screwdrivers in and
10:49
Speaker 1: it was plastic, but it was in one little plastic
10:53
Speaker 1: screw lid container, and it seemed a lot better than
10:57
Speaker 1: the other alternative at least. Yeah. The next best step
11:02
Speaker 1: after that is there's just some dude who hangs out
11:04
Speaker 1: at the store that carries him home in his arms
11:08
Speaker 1: and dumps him onto your floor and then leaves like
11:10
Speaker 1: that kind of packaging. Yeah, he opens his overcoat and
11:12
Speaker 1: they're all all the screw drives are hanging there. Right.
11:15
Speaker 1: You just take your pick. Uh, let's talk a little
11:18
Speaker 1: bit about the history before we break. I think because
11:22
Speaker 1: I always think of Emily's grandparents, Charlie who has left us,
11:25
Speaker 1: and then Mary, who was still chugging along at a
11:28
Speaker 1: hundred and one years old. Believe it or not. Uh,
11:30
Speaker 1: they didn't have garbage collection for almost their entire lives
11:34
Speaker 1: in rural Ohio. Uh. They didn't want to pay for it,
11:38
Speaker 1: and they didn't need it because they reused, recycled, and
11:43
Speaker 1: when I say reused, they really reused. They composted. Um.
11:47
Speaker 1: They did all the old things because they're that old
11:49
Speaker 1: school Depression era generation to where you appreciate things like
11:55
Speaker 1: that and you don't want to waste. And that's the
11:57
Speaker 1: way that used to just be the norm. Pele would
12:00
Speaker 1: buy and ship things and barrels and wooden boxes and
12:04
Speaker 1: they would reuse those, and glass bottles that they would reuse.
12:08
Speaker 1: They would wrap up cheese and meats and things and
12:10
Speaker 1: cloth forever that you would reuse and then eventually like
12:14
Speaker 1: butcher paper. Uh. And that was just they didn't even
12:17
Speaker 1: have regular garbage pickup until about the mid eighteen hundreds here, right,
12:22
Speaker 1: because because again they didn't need it. I mean, yeah,
12:24
Speaker 1: somebody sent you something and it wouldn't crate. You'd build
12:26
Speaker 1: an addition on your house exactly. It was like that,
12:31
Speaker 1: Like they would use glass bottles and then if the
12:33
Speaker 1: glass bottle broke, they would fix it. And I was like,
12:36
Speaker 1: how would they fix it? And apparently there's something called
12:39
Speaker 1: um water water glass. It's sodium silicate and it's a
12:44
Speaker 1: spread herble kind of glass where if you heat it up.
12:46
Speaker 1: It basically fills in all the cracks and it's good
12:49
Speaker 1: as new. I wonder if that's how they do. Should
12:51
Speaker 1: ask Emily's dad the window chips, Oh, I wonder too.
12:55
Speaker 1: Emily used to do that for a little while because
12:57
Speaker 1: her dad has a Syneco glass. If you're in near Akron, Ohio,
13:02
Speaker 1: that's the place to get your windows replaced. But Emily
13:05
Speaker 1: did that for a summer, she fixed glass chips. Yeah,
13:07
Speaker 1: you should definitely ask her that. So. Um, so, we
13:11
Speaker 1: didn't have garbage pickup because we didn't need it because
13:13
Speaker 1: everybody was reusing stuff food waste, like you said, they
13:17
Speaker 1: were composting it, or they would just throw it out
13:20
Speaker 1: to for the livestock, the hogs, the chickens, whatever they
13:23
Speaker 1: would eat the whatever food wasting. I would guess that
13:26
Speaker 1: they had much less food waste than we have today.
13:29
Speaker 1: But again, there wasn't much need for garbage collection. That's
13:32
Speaker 1: not to say there wasn't garbage. I saw in the
13:34
Speaker 1: eighteenth century in New York they built appear in the
13:37
Speaker 1: East River, purpose built to dump garbage into the East River.
13:41
Speaker 1: The downside, not like they weren't doing it, but it
13:44
Speaker 1: was just so minuscule compared to the amount of waste
13:47
Speaker 1: that we generate today that it is essentially negligible. Yeah. Absolutely,
13:53
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty six is kind of a fun little fact
13:55
Speaker 1: to keep in your pocket. Uh. Corrugated paper, what would
13:58
Speaker 1: become corrugated cardboard, was invented in eighteen fifty six in
14:01
Speaker 1: England because of those big tall hats to keep those
14:04
Speaker 1: things stiff. Pretty cool, I think so too. But then
14:08
Speaker 1: it became a thing. Well, yeah, the slowly started replacing
14:11
Speaker 1: the wooden crates right for shipping, so you couldn't build
14:14
Speaker 1: an addition on your house anymore, that's right. But it
14:17
Speaker 1: was a lot lighter, it was a lot easier, It
14:19
Speaker 1: used up a lot less coal on the ship to
14:21
Speaker 1: move across the sea. Um. It was kind of a
14:24
Speaker 1: step up for sure. Um. And then Nabisco was the
14:27
Speaker 1: first one to start selling single serve individual packaged foods
14:33
Speaker 1: all the way back in uh. And it it makes sense,
14:38
Speaker 1: you know, in in in one way, but if you
14:40
Speaker 1: you know, start caring about the environment, it makes like
14:42
Speaker 1: zero sense whatsoever. Um. But they were the ones who
14:45
Speaker 1: kicked all that off. Yeah. I found that kids, and
14:48
Speaker 1: I remember this about myself, are very into those things.
14:52
Speaker 1: I think just because they're small. Like I remember being
14:54
Speaker 1: obsessed with the kids who could afford the little individual Pringles,
15:00
Speaker 1: not the ones they sell in the store now, but
15:01
Speaker 1: they used to sell these little plastic peel away top
15:05
Speaker 1: Pringles servings, and the kids in school that had those.
15:09
Speaker 1: I was so jealous of the they're rich kids. I
15:12
Speaker 1: had my Charles Chips tin can basket out of your
15:17
Speaker 1: shirt and carried around school till lunch. But Kellogg's you mentioned,
15:22
Speaker 1: or maybe you didn't, but they were the first cereal box,
15:26
Speaker 1: obviously in nineteen o six, and then beer cans. We're
15:30
Speaker 1: steel originally they started in ninety six, Thank you Cores.
15:35
Speaker 1: Then they switched to aluminum in fifty nine. But uh,
15:39
Speaker 1: and this is very cool when you go look at
15:41
Speaker 1: an old like I think smoking the Bandit even had
15:43
Speaker 1: these where you had to use a can opener to
15:45
Speaker 1: open a beer back in the day. Very cool. Yeah,
15:49
Speaker 1: they should bring that back. The poll tabs better because
15:51
Speaker 1: you have to keep a can opener on you, you
15:53
Speaker 1: know well. And the poll tabs, even though they were
15:55
Speaker 1: bad for the environment. You could make an emergency phone
15:58
Speaker 1: call at a telephone booth if you really you could
16:01
Speaker 1: use that as a fake coin of slug now and
16:05
Speaker 1: in war Games, Matthew Broderick can dow this trick where
16:07
Speaker 1: he unscrewed the receiver where you're talking to it, and
16:12
Speaker 1: then like, I don't think it's true at all. I
16:14
Speaker 1: think they literally just made this up for the movie
16:17
Speaker 1: and used a poll tab to make it like an
16:18
Speaker 1: electric connection and like kind of hot wired the phone.
16:21
Speaker 1: Just give it a dial town. I'm sure it was
16:24
Speaker 1: not true. I got you. But used to see those
16:27
Speaker 1: all over the place, the poll tabs all over the
16:30
Speaker 1: place on the ground. Yeah, I was up in my
16:31
Speaker 1: attic the other day, um, and there was an old
16:35
Speaker 1: poll tab old Milwaukee Can. It's funny, how old is Yeah,
16:37
Speaker 1: it's funny when you find those these days. Now. I
16:40
Speaker 1: know it doesn't go back any any earlier than nineteen
16:43
Speaker 1: that's right. So, Um, like we said they were using
16:47
Speaker 1: dumps and horrible places like the they would use wetlands
16:50
Speaker 1: back in the day to dump trash, and apparently Boston's
16:54
Speaker 1: Back Bay was a wetland that was originally a garbage dump.
16:58
Speaker 1: And if you've ever been into back Bay, that's fairly
17:00
Speaker 1: ironic because it's one of the more well healed parts
17:02
Speaker 1: of Boston today, they built up real she she um
17:07
Speaker 1: area that has like an anthropology and everything on it. Yeah,
17:11
Speaker 1: and we should do an entire episode, I think on
17:14
Speaker 1: Fresh Kills. That is basically what Staten Island used to be,
17:18
Speaker 1: almost entirely. Well that's not true, but it was a
17:21
Speaker 1: twenty two hundred acre landfill on Staten Island after I
17:27
Speaker 1: believe after World War Two. Yeah, and I just it's
17:31
Speaker 1: such a rabbit hole. I started looking into Fresh Kills
17:34
Speaker 1: and I had to stop and I was like, we
17:35
Speaker 1: just need to make this an episode because it was
17:38
Speaker 1: a remarkably large It was the largest one in the world,
17:41
Speaker 1: largest landfill, and they're reclaiming it and it's by thirty
17:46
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, by uh, it's gonna be finished as as
17:51
Speaker 1: a park, fresh Kill Park. I've seen some of the
17:54
Speaker 1: artists rendering of it. It's gonna look really neat, very peaceful. Yeah,
17:57
Speaker 1: it would be a good episode, though. I think it's
17:59
Speaker 1: interesting history. Okay, deal, So those those dumps that we
18:04
Speaker 1: started to generate, like every city starting in the twentieth
18:07
Speaker 1: century really started to need more and more dumps and
18:11
Speaker 1: more and more space for landfills um and it grew
18:14
Speaker 1: because our single use packaging grew, we just started throwing
18:19
Speaker 1: stuff away, And in our Littering episode, I think we
18:22
Speaker 1: specifically said that the plastic garbage bag people basically got
18:28
Speaker 1: together and said, we need to teach everybody to start
18:31
Speaker 1: throwing things away. They keep reusing this plastic stuff. So
18:34
Speaker 1: they basically created a public information campaign to teach everybody
18:39
Speaker 1: to throw stuff in the trash and to take their
18:41
Speaker 1: trash out to the garbage can every night, and to
18:42
Speaker 1: do this every single day. They taught America to throw
18:45
Speaker 1: stuff away, which is just so villainous, But that really
18:49
Speaker 1: kind of was the beginning around the middle of the
18:52
Speaker 1: last century of our obsession with single use um packaging. Basically, yeah,
18:59
Speaker 1: I think that glad bag first came around the late sixties,
19:03
Speaker 1: and then in the mid just before that, in the
19:06
Speaker 1: mid sixties, the grocery bag, the little light groceries bag
19:10
Speaker 1: that has been such a problem in the world, that
19:14
Speaker 1: came around in sixty five. But if you don't remember
19:17
Speaker 1: those when you were like like our age and you
19:19
Speaker 1: were a kid in the seventies and eighties, it's because
19:21
Speaker 1: they people still generally used paper sacks. They were really
19:25
Speaker 1: slow to catch on those plastic bags. But eventually, in
19:28
Speaker 1: night five there was a conference of the Society of
19:32
Speaker 1: Plastic Engineers, and then someone stood up on a stage
19:35
Speaker 1: and said, hey, these things are twenty four dollars per thousand.
19:40
Speaker 1: Paper bags are thirty dollars per thousand, And that changed everything.
19:44
Speaker 1: Six or six dollars. Yeah, yeah, they were really working
19:47
Speaker 1: at the Plastic Grocery sec Set Council. That was a
19:51
Speaker 1: thing in nineteen eighty six. They got their hands on
19:54
Speaker 1: the l A Times and said, hey, you make sure
19:56
Speaker 1: you tell everybody that we've concluded plastic bags can be
19:59
Speaker 1: reused in more than seventeen different ways. They said, it
20:03
Speaker 1: can be used as a rap for frozen foods, a
20:05
Speaker 1: jogger's windbreaker, or a beach bag. And then I'm gonna
20:10
Speaker 1: go on, I'll bet the other what fourteen are like.
20:13
Speaker 1: And a library bag and a school bag, and a
20:16
Speaker 1: school lunch bag and a work lunch bag. Right, you
20:20
Speaker 1: can then sacrifice a child with them, right. Well, actually, yeah,
20:24
Speaker 1: that was a thing they had to teach Americans. These
20:26
Speaker 1: things are really dangerous. Right. There's a famous photo of
20:30
Speaker 1: plastics researcher with a i think a dry cleaning bag
20:33
Speaker 1: over his head trying to take a breath, and they
20:35
Speaker 1: really got the got the point across for sure also
20:39
Speaker 1: though from the very not from the very beginning, but
20:42
Speaker 1: once they caught on uh, in the mid eighties, people
20:46
Speaker 1: did start kind of rallying against them. In a lot
20:48
Speaker 1: of cases. Uh. There was a five hundred thousand member
20:52
Speaker 1: group called the General Federation of Women's Clubs who in
20:55
Speaker 1: eight six said, uh, no, these things are clearly not
20:59
Speaker 1: going to be good for the environment, so let's let's
21:02
Speaker 1: not use them. And that was six long time ago,
21:05
Speaker 1: it was. And they got absolutely nowhere because I saw
21:08
Speaker 1: UM about a decade ago they estimated that between five
21:11
Speaker 1: hundred billion and one point five trillion plastic bags are
21:15
Speaker 1: consumed globally each year, at a rate of more than
21:18
Speaker 1: a million a minute. So they got nowhere. But there
21:22
Speaker 1: have been some successes. UM McDonald's was the first actually
21:26
Speaker 1: to pioneer single use packaging for food, and that meant
21:31
Speaker 1: that they didn't have to have dishwashers at their restaurants,
21:33
Speaker 1: they didn't have to have waiters to clear away plates,
21:35
Speaker 1: and within I think forty years they finally were like, okay,
21:40
Speaker 1: we'll give up our phone packaging, which I mean, there
21:42
Speaker 1: are a few things more nostalgic for me. Then looking
21:45
Speaker 1: at pictures of the old colored like phone packaging that mcdonald'
21:50
Speaker 1: received that it's McDonald's phone packaging blue. There's no describe it, definitely,
21:56
Speaker 1: but the mc d lt was the breaking point for everybody.
21:58
Speaker 1: They're like, just too much got side hot, cool, side cool.
22:02
Speaker 1: That's right. So that was the end of that, But
22:05
Speaker 1: we still have a plastic problem, all right, So let's
22:08
Speaker 1: take a break. Uh, we'll come back and we'll talk
22:11
Speaker 1: about Amazon right after this this episode sponsored by Amazon. Well, uh,
22:41
Speaker 1: we got to talk about it because especially, I mean
22:43
Speaker 1: Amazon has been shipping things for a long time, but
22:45
Speaker 1: especially I think when COVID took over, people really really
22:48
Speaker 1: really started getting a lot of things delivered that they
22:51
Speaker 1: used to routinely go to stores for. And um, they
22:57
Speaker 1: have changed the way packaging works and the world and
23:02
Speaker 1: especially the United States. Uh. There was a report by
23:05
Speaker 1: a group called Oceanica uh that found that worldwide, Amazon
23:08
Speaker 1: generated almost six million pounds of plastic packaging waste and
23:14
Speaker 1: that um almost twenty four million pounds of that ended
23:18
Speaker 1: up in waterways and oceans. And Amazon said that's a calculation.
23:24
Speaker 1: They didn't show their math, but they so that's just
23:27
Speaker 1: waterways and oceans, that's not landfill stuff. Um. And there's
23:31
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a significant amount of what's called plastic
23:33
Speaker 1: film used to make those puffy air pillows that they
23:37
Speaker 1: use instead of styrofoam peanuts, which a lot of ways
23:39
Speaker 1: are are much preferable to styrofoam peanuts. But there's way
23:43
Speaker 1: better alternatives to even those um shipping pillows too, um
23:47
Speaker 1: because it's made of plastic film, which is the same
23:50
Speaker 1: type of plastic that those plastic grocery bags are made from,
23:54
Speaker 1: and they're really hard to recycle. It takes a special facility.
23:58
Speaker 1: So if you ever get the plastic pillow like shippers
24:02
Speaker 1: and the mail from Amazon, and you have your plastic
24:05
Speaker 1: grocery bags from publics or whatever grocery store you go to,
24:08
Speaker 1: and you save those and you take them to your
24:10
Speaker 1: grocery store and put them in the plastic bag recycling thing,
24:14
Speaker 1: they will actually go take them and recycle them and
24:16
Speaker 1: turn them into useful things like um, composite decking for
24:20
Speaker 1: your house or something. That's a good tip. So it is,
24:23
Speaker 1: but but just don't don't just throw it away, and
24:26
Speaker 1: also don't use them to hold your recyclables and put
24:29
Speaker 1: them in your recycling container because that that whole bag
24:32
Speaker 1: of recyclables will get thrown out because those things will
24:35
Speaker 1: screw up the normal recycling process so badly. Another good tip.
24:40
Speaker 1: I got another good tip for you. Here in Atlanta,
24:43
Speaker 1: we have a place called Charm uh the center for
24:46
Speaker 1: hard to recycle materials. And Charm is one of our
24:49
Speaker 1: favorite places to go to because you pull into Charm
24:52
Speaker 1: and there are all these people in this huge parking
24:54
Speaker 1: lot and all these various stations to help you recycle
24:58
Speaker 1: anything you can think of. It can be your shredded documents,
25:02
Speaker 1: it can be car batteries, it can be paint cans,
25:06
Speaker 1: it can be your old uh computer desktop. Uh. They
25:12
Speaker 1: they recycle almost anything you can think of. And I
25:15
Speaker 1: guarantee you there are places in every major city and
25:19
Speaker 1: probably even a lot of smaller towns that have a
25:22
Speaker 1: Charm like place. Uh. And all you gotta do is
25:24
Speaker 1: just save that stuff though in your car, take it
25:27
Speaker 1: over there and they'll take care of it for you. Yes,
25:30
Speaker 1: it's great. So um like Amazon is easy to pick
25:35
Speaker 1: on because they're they're shipping so much stuff. They use
25:39
Speaker 1: up so much material for shipping and packaging and um
25:43
Speaker 1: cushioning and all of that. UM. But they're also easy
25:46
Speaker 1: to pick on because if you look at what they're
25:48
Speaker 1: doing in other countries, it shows like they could totally
25:52
Speaker 1: revise stuff whenever they're forced to. They find innovative ways
25:56
Speaker 1: to replace that stuff with more sustainable packaging. They don't
26:00
Speaker 1: just say, like India says, hey, you can't use uh
26:04
Speaker 1: this kind of tape anymore and these kinds of uh
26:07
Speaker 1: packing peanuts. They don't say, oh, well, I guess we're
26:10
Speaker 1: not gonna ship to Indian anymore. They figure it out
26:12
Speaker 1: and they just don't implement those policies across the entire company,
26:16
Speaker 1: which is maddening. Yeah, which we'll see. India has really
26:20
Speaker 1: taken maybe the world's leadership stance on single use plastics
26:24
Speaker 1: and dealing with it as a country. Germany's following suits.
26:28
Speaker 1: So Amazon saying okay, well we'll start doing the same
26:30
Speaker 1: thing in Germany. But it rather than just being like, okay,
26:34
Speaker 1: it makes sense for us to just do it for
26:36
Speaker 1: every country. If if they're not making money doing that
26:40
Speaker 1: in other countries, they're going to hold out until they're
26:42
Speaker 1: legally forced to or until enough countries require them to
26:47
Speaker 1: that that's just what they use across the board, because
26:50
Speaker 1: then it is cheaper than making two different kinds depending
26:53
Speaker 1: on where they're shipping to. Uh. Those meal kit services
26:56
Speaker 1: that everyone loves so much. Uh, this is a bit
27:00
Speaker 1: of a mixed bag because on the surface, you look
27:03
Speaker 1: at their packaging and the fact that some of these
27:06
Speaker 1: boxes have up to two dozen individual packages of things. Uh.
27:11
Speaker 1: And then you're talking about the packaging, you know, the
27:14
Speaker 1: big box that it comes in and the smaller phone
27:17
Speaker 1: box to insulate it. And then these ice packs that
27:20
Speaker 1: a lot of times have chemicals that are very hard
27:23
Speaker 1: to recycle. UM. But I did some digging in and
27:26
Speaker 1: there are a lot of companies doing a lot better job. Um.
27:29
Speaker 1: One thing that they do tout, which I think is true,
27:31
Speaker 1: is that they really reduce a lot of food waste.
27:35
Speaker 1: And so what you want to do is look at
27:36
Speaker 1: the entire environmental footprint of an operation versus just buying
27:41
Speaker 1: groceries at a grocery store. UH. And you know, it
27:46
Speaker 1: kind of comes out even in some cases some companies
27:48
Speaker 1: are better than others. I did see that Blue Apron
27:51
Speaker 1: has about recyclable packaging and drain safe ice packs. Um
27:58
Speaker 1: that you can just you know, drain yourself and then
28:00
Speaker 1: recycled that package. So some are better than others. But
28:03
Speaker 1: you know, if if you care about that kind of
28:05
Speaker 1: thing and you like meal kits, I would encourage you
28:07
Speaker 1: to investigate the services that speak to you environmentally. Yeah.
28:11
Speaker 1: One two thou nineteen study found that Blue Apron specifically
28:15
Speaker 1: had thirty three percent less emissions for from the same
28:20
Speaker 1: meal that you would buy at a grocery store. Yeah,
28:22
Speaker 1: and they haven't sponsored us in a long time, so no, no,
28:25
Speaker 1: this is not bail. Right, So there's actually a pretty
28:29
Speaker 1: big widespread push to innovate new packaging materials that are
28:34
Speaker 1: easier to recycle, that are made from more recycled materials,
28:38
Speaker 1: that are made from sustainable materials that are easily composted.
28:43
Speaker 1: And there's you know, some competitors are better than others.
28:45
Speaker 1: Some are already proving themselves is probably not the way
28:48
Speaker 1: we want to go, but some other ones are like,
28:50
Speaker 1: how it's a really good idea and we should figure
28:52
Speaker 1: it out. Yeah. We talked about corn and quite a
28:55
Speaker 1: bit in the bottled water up. Because they can take corn,
29:00
Speaker 1: they can make it into a plastic. It's called p
29:04
Speaker 1: L a polylactic acid, right, sure, and it's a plastic
29:10
Speaker 1: resin it is uh not petroleum based. It can be composted,
29:15
Speaker 1: but and I think we said this in the water
29:16
Speaker 1: bottle water one too, Um, it's not compostable as in like, great,
29:20
Speaker 1: I'll just buy corn bottles and throw them in my
29:22
Speaker 1: compost bin. You can't do that in your backyard. It's
29:25
Speaker 1: got to be like industrial composting, which is still good,
29:29
Speaker 1: but you have to take to a industrial composting facility
29:34
Speaker 1: or be involved in a program that will do that
29:36
Speaker 1: for you, because there are those out there too. Yeah.
29:38
Speaker 1: And then anything made with corn, they also have corn
29:42
Speaker 1: based packing peanuts, um, which really they should figure out
29:46
Speaker 1: how to make them from peanuts, don't you think just
29:48
Speaker 1: to make it fully appropriate, or just put in popcorn
29:52
Speaker 1: so the spongey and then everyone could just have a
29:55
Speaker 1: snack eat it. Be like this popcorn is not very good,
29:58
Speaker 1: but it's sustainable. I'll reuse it. The problem is is
30:01
Speaker 1: anything you're making from corn, whether it's plastic or those
30:03
Speaker 1: packing peanuts, is you're growing corn and you're diverting it
30:07
Speaker 1: from the food system, um to other purposes. And I
30:10
Speaker 1: remember we were all about ethanol back in the day. UM,
30:14
Speaker 1: Corn based ethanol and and it's just for the same
30:17
Speaker 1: reason it didn't pan out, because we should be using
30:21
Speaker 1: food um crop land for growing food, not for growing plastic. Right.
30:26
Speaker 1: Mushrooms is a really interesting alternative mycelium based packaging. It's
30:32
Speaker 1: been around for a little bit since about the mid
30:33
Speaker 1: two thousand's and uh, it seems like there's almost nothing
30:37
Speaker 1: mushrooms can't do and fun Guy except get me to
30:42
Speaker 1: eat them. But there's a really cool documentary about mushrooms
30:45
Speaker 1: that Emily and I are going to watch them that
30:47
Speaker 1: a couple of friends have told us about. It's sort
30:50
Speaker 1: of a wonder uh not product but species um yeah,
30:57
Speaker 1: food no thing. I think it's a kingdom. Okay, a
31:00
Speaker 1: wonder kingdom. That's even better. Yeah, totally is like that
31:04
Speaker 1: a lot. I could see that on a cape. But
31:07
Speaker 1: they they have found that they can use it as
31:09
Speaker 1: an alternative to styrofoam and even even other plastics. Is
31:13
Speaker 1: for like cushioning things. Yeah, and what's cool is you
31:17
Speaker 1: can grow fun Guy sustainably on like agricultural refuse right
31:22
Speaker 1: that that's being composted. You could grow your your fun
31:25
Speaker 1: Guy into exactly the shape that you want. Yeah, like
31:29
Speaker 1: um our friend Addison Rex who runs wine Spies. When
31:33
Speaker 1: you get a box from him, have you ever noticed, like,
31:35
Speaker 1: how is this this cushioning exactly the right size for
31:39
Speaker 1: this large bottle and the next to it is the
31:41
Speaker 1: small bottle? And I'm not quite sure, but it's possible.
31:44
Speaker 1: It's my celium packaging material and you can grow it
31:47
Speaker 1: like that. The only thing that I saw that would
31:50
Speaker 1: be problematic, it seems like at this point is a scalability. Uh,
31:55
Speaker 1: and then lead time to produce, because I saw it
31:57
Speaker 1: can take like seven days to grow a container. O. Interesting. Yeah,
32:01
Speaker 1: I'll have to ask Addison. I owe him a phone call.
32:04
Speaker 1: I tried to ask him, and he hasn't texted me
32:06
Speaker 1: back yet. Forget that phone call. That's right, Thank you
32:12
Speaker 1: for sticking up for him. Each Algae is another interesting alternative.
32:16
Speaker 1: There was a contest just this year that offered over
32:19
Speaker 1: a million bucks for developing plastic alternatives, and five of
32:23
Speaker 1: the eight finalists were algae or seaweed based. Yeah. By
32:27
Speaker 1: the way, that contest was um created by Tom Ford,
32:32
Speaker 1: the fashion designer. Yeah really I love that guy. Man.
32:36
Speaker 1: Does he make algae clothes? I guess he's going to
32:39
Speaker 1: from now on. But he yeah, it was. It was
32:42
Speaker 1: straight up for you know, to find an alternative plastic.
32:44
Speaker 1: But it was a tom Ford Prize. Um, and what
32:48
Speaker 1: did you say? Five of the eight finalists seeweed, seaweed
32:51
Speaker 1: or algae, and I was looking at one of them.
32:54
Speaker 1: There's a company from Berkeley I think called Sway, and
32:58
Speaker 1: they basically grow seaweed like so automatically you're not using
33:04
Speaker 1: terrestrial crop land. Um. It's also supposedly really restorative to
33:09
Speaker 1: grow seaweed like off the coast for ecosystems and things
33:13
Speaker 1: like that. And then also when you grow and make
33:15
Speaker 1: plastic how to, algae is really easy to bio to graden.
33:19
Speaker 1: In some cases you can actually eat it after you're done,
33:22
Speaker 1: like that my popcorn peanut idea exactly. And this is remarkable. Um.
33:28
Speaker 1: It depends on how far the algae is broken down
33:32
Speaker 1: into the chemicals that make it up, but uh, some
33:36
Speaker 1: of them, if they want to engineer this could even
33:39
Speaker 1: retain some uh like anti microbial properties in the packaging itself.
33:47
Speaker 1: The future is in fungi and algae. I feel like
33:50
Speaker 1: it wouldn't algae or seaweed like a fuel source to like, yes, yeah,
33:54
Speaker 1: they have not figured it out yet. But yes, it's
33:56
Speaker 1: some some sort of by product you can raise algae
33:59
Speaker 1: that will create some sort of fuel, biofuel. I don't
34:01
Speaker 1: remember much about it. Very interesting. So there's another way
34:05
Speaker 1: to make all this work. And it seems to be
34:09
Speaker 1: figuring out how to make stuff more recyclable, how to
34:12
Speaker 1: make packages more sustainable on a big scale. And a
34:16
Speaker 1: lot of people have concluded that that is not going
34:19
Speaker 1: to happen until countries and states and cities start requiring
34:24
Speaker 1: that be the case from from manufacturers. And I say
34:27
Speaker 1: we take a break and then come back and talk
34:29
Speaker 1: about that. How about that, let's do it all right?
34:54
Speaker 1: So you said that there is a better way forward,
34:57
Speaker 1: but as we can tell from their practice is of
35:00
Speaker 1: some large scale shipping companies, unless they are forced to,
35:04
Speaker 1: then they're not gonna make those changes because it costs
35:06
Speaker 1: them a little bit of money. Um. Obviously, the you know,
35:11
Speaker 1: we could talk all day about going back in time
35:14
Speaker 1: and doing things like we used to as far as
35:17
Speaker 1: reusing things, and there are some companies that are doing
35:20
Speaker 1: some cool stuff. I know that there are a couple
35:22
Speaker 1: of like cleaning product home cleaning product companies where you
35:25
Speaker 1: buy the glass bottle with the spray tops, and you
35:28
Speaker 1: you mix your own like countertop spray and stuff like
35:31
Speaker 1: in toilet spray, and you get these little packets and
35:35
Speaker 1: you keep your glass bottles. And there are companies out
35:37
Speaker 1: there doing things like this, but that is not likely
35:40
Speaker 1: to catch on countrywide because people love just grabbing the
35:44
Speaker 1: thing off the grocery shelf and buying their plastic bottle spray. Uh.
35:49
Speaker 1: So that what it takes, and what you tease before
35:52
Speaker 1: we broke was it's gonna take either people demanding it
35:57
Speaker 1: or more probably the law saying you have to do it. Yeah,
36:01
Speaker 1: you you you want to say that just consumers demanding it,
36:04
Speaker 1: like you're saying would would make a change, But there's
36:06
Speaker 1: not enough people doing that, right, So you want to
36:09
Speaker 1: instead turn that ire to your elected officials and say, hey,
36:13
Speaker 1: you need to do something about this. And it's happened
36:15
Speaker 1: in some places, and it's all based on something called
36:18
Speaker 1: the polluter pays principle, which dates all the way back
36:21
Speaker 1: to nine two and basically says, if you're the one
36:24
Speaker 1: who's manufacturing this plastic bag that gets thrown away in
36:28
Speaker 1: a river, it should be up to you to deal
36:31
Speaker 1: with that, like you should have to factor that into
36:33
Speaker 1: your production costs. And uh, it's not to punish anybody,
36:38
Speaker 1: but it's to do what's called internalizing the negative externalities.
36:42
Speaker 1: So negative externality is you know that plastic bag, we
36:46
Speaker 1: all pay because of that pollution that breaks down the
36:49
Speaker 1: environment and effects the food chain. That's a negative externality
36:52
Speaker 1: that's not included in the production cost of that that
36:56
Speaker 1: plastic bag. And what the this this kind of polluter
36:59
Speaker 1: pays principle says this, we need to figure out how
37:01
Speaker 1: to include that in the cost so that the people
37:03
Speaker 1: who are creating this this waste are the ones who
37:06
Speaker 1: are actually paying for it in the end rather than
37:08
Speaker 1: the rest of society, right. Uh. And that became the
37:11
Speaker 1: basis for what's called extended producer responsibility e p R,
37:15
Speaker 1: which means you ship something to a person and you
37:18
Speaker 1: don't just go, well then uh no, that thing that
37:22
Speaker 1: you package is still your responsibility as a company across
37:25
Speaker 1: the entire life cycle of that product and when it
37:27
Speaker 1: came in is the manufacturer should be responsible for for
37:32
Speaker 1: whatever it is that they're putting out into the world. Uh.
37:35
Speaker 1: There's something called the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
37:41
Speaker 1: the o e c D that was established, I think
37:44
Speaker 1: in seventy two, and they put out a report that
37:49
Speaker 1: said that ten O E C D governments have some
37:53
Speaker 1: kind of legislation in place for extended producer responsibility and uh,
37:59
Speaker 1: the u S is not one of those. Correct, No,
38:02
Speaker 1: it wasn't, and that was back in nineties six that
38:04
Speaker 1: they released that report. So that's pretty impressive. But we
38:07
Speaker 1: actually are familiar with them to some extent. If you've
38:09
Speaker 1: ever taken your paint to a special center um or
38:13
Speaker 1: your oil, your used car oil you took it back
38:16
Speaker 1: to like the auto parts store or something like that,
38:18
Speaker 1: you were probably engaging in some sort of extended producer
38:22
Speaker 1: responsibility where the company that made that oil um is
38:27
Speaker 1: responsible for making sure that it gets recycled and paying
38:30
Speaker 1: for it to be recycled. That's just because some state
38:33
Speaker 1: or city said that that's the law, and they have
38:35
Speaker 1: to do that if they want to do business there.
38:37
Speaker 1: But what they're trying to figure out with extended producer
38:40
Speaker 1: responsibility laws today is to include all packaging, all shipping material,
38:46
Speaker 1: all of that waste figuring out how to make that
38:49
Speaker 1: fall into an extended producer responsibility model. And that's proving challenging,
38:55
Speaker 1: Like you said, especially in the United States. Yeah, I
38:57
Speaker 1: think India has a pretty good idea in creating a
39:00
Speaker 1: kind of competition among companies. Um, they require that a
39:04
Speaker 1: percentage of plastic produced by any manufacturer uh ends up
39:09
Speaker 1: getting recycled, like it's a requirement. And if you do
39:12
Speaker 1: better and if you overperform, you get credits basically, and
39:15
Speaker 1: you can sell those credits to other companies who are underperforming.
39:19
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden you have this competition going
39:21
Speaker 1: on where a company is manufacturing something and they're really
39:25
Speaker 1: incentivized too because not only are they are they getting
39:31
Speaker 1: these credits, but like their competition um potentially is having
39:36
Speaker 1: to pay them money because they're underperforming. So that's a
39:39
Speaker 1: really good way to say, like, well get it in
39:41
Speaker 1: gear then, because you're paying your competition to take care
39:44
Speaker 1: of your waste for you. Yeah. Do you remember those
39:47
Speaker 1: carbon trading schemes from you know, back in the two
39:50
Speaker 1: thousand oughts that were kind of like buying carbon offsets. Yeah,
39:54
Speaker 1: the same thing. It was, they put a cap on
39:56
Speaker 1: carbon emissions and companies that didn't admit as much could
39:59
Speaker 1: sell their cred it's or there whatever to the other
40:01
Speaker 1: companies that did. And yeah, it's a great idea, so
40:04
Speaker 1: it would makes sense to make an extended producer responsibility
40:07
Speaker 1: scheme out of that. But that's that's that's how wide
40:10
Speaker 1: open it is. Like people are like, however, you could
40:13
Speaker 1: figure it out. That's the stage that we're out at
40:15
Speaker 1: right now. However, you could figure out how to hold
40:17
Speaker 1: people accountable, and we're just we're just not quite there yet. No, Uh,
40:22
Speaker 1: it depends, you know, it's come down to the state level,
40:24
Speaker 1: of course. Uh. One that was a coalition of states.
40:29
Speaker 1: The lawmakers got together. They were known as the EPR
40:31
Speaker 1: for Packaging Network and they I believe California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland,
40:37
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington all got
40:40
Speaker 1: together to introduce bills uh that you know, basically to
40:45
Speaker 1: give some teeth and legislation to this kind of thing.
40:49
Speaker 1: And I think that main past one a really big
40:52
Speaker 1: one that saw that Basically, it was a fund that
40:56
Speaker 1: manufacturers had to pay into. So based on how much
40:59
Speaker 1: they were, uh like, what kind of packaging they produced,
41:02
Speaker 1: they would pay into this fund, depending on how recyclable
41:06
Speaker 1: it was, and it was like a sliding scale, and
41:08
Speaker 1: that would that fund was then used to help municipalities,
41:12
Speaker 1: um manage that packaging material, right, And then California saw
41:17
Speaker 1: this and said, hold my kombucha, and they passed definitely
41:21
Speaker 1: the strictest EPR packaging law in the country back in
41:25
Speaker 1: I think two thousand, also known as I don't know
41:31
Speaker 1: I said it like that. But under this law, by
41:34
Speaker 1: two and ten years, all packaging in the state has
41:37
Speaker 1: to be either recyclable or compostable. That's a huge leap forward.
41:42
Speaker 1: Packaging has to be reduced in total by great of
41:47
Speaker 1: all packaging has to be recycled aft for use. And
41:50
Speaker 1: you might say, well, wait a minute, I mean, like,
41:52
Speaker 1: how how would the companies make that happen. California said,
41:56
Speaker 1: figure it out, make it happen. And you packaging industry,
42:01
Speaker 1: you have to create uh an organization that basically oversees
42:05
Speaker 1: this and make sure that industry is doing business in
42:08
Speaker 1: California are recycling of their stuff. Um, even after they
42:13
Speaker 1: sell it to somebody. You have to figure out a
42:15
Speaker 1: way to make sure that the consumer out there who
42:18
Speaker 1: has your Derrito bag in their hand is going to
42:21
Speaker 1: recycle it. Yeah. Here's the problem though in America is
42:26
Speaker 1: half of the country will say well yeah, but every
42:29
Speaker 1: single penny of that is going to be passed down
42:32
Speaker 1: to the consumer because the company isn't gonna take the hit,
42:35
Speaker 1: so they'll just raise prices on products, and then that'll
42:38
Speaker 1: lead to inflation and it comes out of our pocket.
42:41
Speaker 1: So we'd rather just throw everything in the trash because
42:43
Speaker 1: I don't even see what happens to it after at
42:45
Speaker 1: least my house anyway. So I mean, that's a really
42:49
Speaker 1: good point. I don't know if it's actually how it
42:52
Speaker 1: would pan out. You'd think that that, of course the
42:55
Speaker 1: company would pass along that cost, but I think there's
42:57
Speaker 1: plenty of people out there who are like, you know,
43:00
Speaker 1: I pay a little more for something that I knew
43:02
Speaker 1: was going to be recycled, but I don't, I don't know.
43:09
Speaker 1: I don't know. And the thing is, when more and
43:10
Speaker 1: more of these laws come about, companies are going to
43:14
Speaker 1: start creating subdivisions in their research and development divisions that
43:18
Speaker 1: are figuring out new packaging that are going to like
43:21
Speaker 1: follow these laws. And then I mean, if we sick
43:25
Speaker 1: industry on a problem like sustainable packaging, and we make
43:29
Speaker 1: it worth their while because they're required to figure this
43:31
Speaker 1: out by law, it's going to get solved pretty quick.
43:34
Speaker 1: I would guess. And then yes, at first, products probably
43:37
Speaker 1: will be more expensive than they are pre you know,
43:40
Speaker 1: the pre passing or inaction of these laws. But after
43:43
Speaker 1: a while, those prices are going to come down because
43:45
Speaker 1: those technologies will have been developed and will have been
43:48
Speaker 1: deployed widely, and they'll be ubiquitous. And now all of
43:51
Speaker 1: a sudden, all of our shipping and packaging material will
43:55
Speaker 1: be able to be composted at home or recyclable, or
43:58
Speaker 1: we'll just turn into pixie dust in your hands the
44:01
Speaker 1: moment you finish that last. Well, we're in a situation though,
44:04
Speaker 1: where we're so divided politically in this country, we are
44:07
Speaker 1: having a hard time even getting together on something is
44:10
Speaker 1: easily uh and obviously bad as plastic grocery bags. You know,
44:16
Speaker 1: a lot of states have stepped up and said, you
44:18
Speaker 1: know what, you can't use these anymore. You just can't
44:20
Speaker 1: use plastic grocery bags. Or you know what, if you
44:22
Speaker 1: want to use one, if you insist, then pay a
44:25
Speaker 1: nickel for it, so we can at least take care
44:27
Speaker 1: of the recycling. Uh. And then there are a lot
44:30
Speaker 1: of states in this country that pass preemptive bands on
44:33
Speaker 1: the bands and I looked it up and there. It's
44:36
Speaker 1: on ballot pedia dot com if you want to look
44:38
Speaker 1: at a list of them all. But there are a
44:40
Speaker 1: lot of states that are like, you know what, We're
44:42
Speaker 1: gonna pass a law that says there will never be
44:44
Speaker 1: a law that bands plastic bags, that the citizens of
44:47
Speaker 1: the state of North Dakota have a right to use
44:50
Speaker 1: those plastic bags forever. I wrote an expletive on my line.
44:57
Speaker 1: It's so maddening, I mean, and these are the same
45:00
Speaker 1: people who are screaming about states rights. You know, it's
45:02
Speaker 1: just disgusting, dude. A band on a band, a preemptive
45:06
Speaker 1: band on a band for a municipality is just gross, unless,
45:11
Speaker 1: of course it's you know, they're preventing discrimination or whatever.
45:15
Speaker 1: I guess there's places for it or not. But yeah,
45:17
Speaker 1: I guess when it's something that I agree with and
45:20
Speaker 1: they're banning it, then I had a problem with it,
45:22
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Um, with the plastic bags, though,
45:25
Speaker 1: there there always is another side of the coin. Like
45:27
Speaker 1: obviously plastic grocery bags are are are pretty bad for
45:30
Speaker 1: the environment, but um, they did do some studies in
45:34
Speaker 1: California when they did ban these plastic bags, and it
45:38
Speaker 1: did reduce use of those plastic bags. But they did
45:40
Speaker 1: find that people started buying like a lot of people
45:42
Speaker 1: reuse those things for like dog poop or uh b
45:47
Speaker 1: lining trash bins or whatever. Like there's all like little
45:49
Speaker 1: carb trash bends or or bathroom trash bends. Uh, they
45:53
Speaker 1: all of a sudden had to start buying the thicker
45:55
Speaker 1: plastic bags to do that stuff, which are or worse
45:59
Speaker 1: for the environment. So uh, and then you know, of
46:02
Speaker 1: course people would switch to like a cotton tote bag,
46:06
Speaker 1: which is far and away like the worst kind of
46:09
Speaker 1: thing that you can get as a cotton toat apparently,
46:12
Speaker 1: so I saw that compared to plastic bags, just because
46:15
Speaker 1: of the sheer number of plastic bags out there and
46:18
Speaker 1: just the fact that they're petroleum based and all the
46:20
Speaker 1: emissions that takes in creating them, that a cotton toat
46:23
Speaker 1: is still better than plastic bags in Jenica. But if
46:27
Speaker 1: you compare one cotton tote to one plastic bag, yeah,
46:29
Speaker 1: the cotton toe is way worse because there's all sorts
46:32
Speaker 1: of um pesticides and industrial fertilizer inputs required there. You know,
46:38
Speaker 1: they they use fourth labor in China, which which supplies
46:42
Speaker 1: the world with its cotton. There's some problems with cotton,
46:46
Speaker 1: for sure. And I saw that one study found that
46:49
Speaker 1: a cotton tote would have to be used every day
46:51
Speaker 1: for fifty four years to outlive its environmental footprint. So yeah,
46:56
Speaker 1: there's problems with cotton totes. The idea is there. It's
46:59
Speaker 1: a good idea, but we've also seen like, okay, we
47:02
Speaker 1: need to figure out something else. And there's this, um,
47:05
Speaker 1: this designer name on your hind March who's just an
47:08
Speaker 1: awesome designer. She uses like rainbow colors and everything, so
47:11
Speaker 1: I like her stuff. She created a cotton tote back
47:15
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven or eight and kind of kicked
47:18
Speaker 1: off the trend of using you know, reusable shopping bags.
47:22
Speaker 1: Um and it said like, I'm not a plastic bag. Well,
47:25
Speaker 1: since then, since it's become clear that cotton toats are problematic,
47:28
Speaker 1: she's created the same thing, but it's made out of
47:32
Speaker 1: recycled plastics and it says, I am a plastic bag.
47:35
Speaker 1: That's what you that's what you need to seek out. Yeah,
47:37
Speaker 1: for sure, So do you got anything else? I got
47:41
Speaker 1: nothing else. I don't either. Since we talked about on
47:45
Speaker 1: your hind March, everybody, I think that means it's time
47:47
Speaker 1: for listener mail. I'm gonna call this Shall we take
47:53
Speaker 1: a break? Hey, guys, thanks for all the equality and lightning, information, humor,
47:59
Speaker 1: and all the joy of the pot as brings me
48:00
Speaker 1: and so many others. Is it time for a break? No?
48:03
Speaker 1: Not yet. That's not that hard, right. I'm not sure
48:08
Speaker 1: what it takes to convince one another to actually defer
48:10
Speaker 1: taking a break, but it's been a fun anticipation game
48:13
Speaker 1: for me for the better part of a year. I
48:16
Speaker 1: almost did that today, just to sort of give Tony
48:19
Speaker 1: here a little a little thrill, but I didn't. I've
48:23
Speaker 1: listened since. But sometime late last year a dawned to me.
48:25
Speaker 1: I couldn't actually recall either of you turning down taking
48:29
Speaker 1: a break when you offer it up to each other.
48:32
Speaker 1: I think we've done that before, at least once. Yeah,
48:35
Speaker 1: it's almost always posted as a question, which seems like
48:37
Speaker 1: it's giving your counterpart an option, yet the response is
48:40
Speaker 1: always the same. I'm not sure if you guys have
48:42
Speaker 1: a pack to never defer, but if you read this
48:44
Speaker 1: out loud, then the beginning part of this email gives
48:46
Speaker 1: me the joy of at least hearing a break question
48:50
Speaker 1: atypical response, So thank you for that. Take care, keep
48:55
Speaker 1: up the good work. And that is from Tony uh
48:57
Speaker 1: coasters and um, the closest his middle name is an
49:05
Speaker 1: I saw that cod. The closest you guys have come
49:08
Speaker 1: recently to deferring a break was in the Infant Formula
49:10
Speaker 1: episode and you have me on edge. Uh So, Tony,
49:13
Speaker 1: just to let you know, we don't have a formula
49:16
Speaker 1: for that per se, but we uh, we generally shoot
49:20
Speaker 1: for about forty five minutes an episode ish and that
49:24
Speaker 1: would mean the breaks fall around fifteen and thirty minutes. Yeah,
49:28
Speaker 1: so we keep an eye on the clock and there
49:30
Speaker 1: always just seems to be a natural sort of organic
49:33
Speaker 1: spot within that rough time frame. Yeah, usda organic spot
49:38
Speaker 1: to break in for sure. We don't have a pact
49:40
Speaker 1: or anything like that either to differ. But also can
49:44
Speaker 1: you imagine if one of us was like, and we're
49:46
Speaker 1: about to take a break, so we'll be right back,
49:48
Speaker 1: you know, like that the other one I think would
49:51
Speaker 1: feel a little bit stepped on, I think, so I
49:53
Speaker 1: know I wouldn't. I wouldn't want you to feel stepped
49:56
Speaker 1: on either. So of course we're going to ask one another,
49:57
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, we don't step on each other. No,
50:01
Speaker 1: and when we do, we edit it out. That's right. Uh, well,
50:04
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Tony and the Coasters. We appreciate that email.
50:07
Speaker 1: It was a good one, a little mind boggling too,
50:10
Speaker 1: And if you want to boggle our minds like Tony did,
50:13
Speaker 1: you can send us an email. It's a stuff podcast
50:15
Speaker 1: at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
50:21
Speaker 1: a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my
50:24
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
50:27
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.