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Mind Your Plastic Pollution: A Conversation On Changing Behaviors · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  Today's episode is all about plastic pollution. Not only in
• 0:03
  the ocean, but also on land and how we deal with it as
• 0:07
  regular citizens of whatever country you're part of. We are enthralled in
• 0:10
  a plastic world. Plastic is everywhere. It's in our drinking containers.
• 0:14
  It's in our coffees. It's in our bodies. It's
• 0:17
  in our lungs. It's in our air molecules. It's everywhere. It's
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  all in our oceans. and there are although there are ways
• 0:25
  to try and get them out at scale we still don't
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  have a way to extract plastic from the
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  ocean and we don't really have a way to stop it
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  at this point we know what we need to do but to try and
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  get plastic out of our oceans and try to get plastic out of
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  our environment is very very difficult right now there's a global plastic treaty
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  that's being negotiated at this point in time there's a fifth
• 0:48
  meeting that was just happened in South Korea it didn't go very well just
• 0:52
  like the Ottawa one in the summer did not go very well why because
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  the oil and gas companies sent their lobbyists to the
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  negotiations to derail them and they were pretty
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  much successful to the point where now a lot of the countries are
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  demanding voluntary standards like voluntary benchmarks, and
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  that's just not going to work. So I wanted to have a conversation with
• 1:13
  someone who was involved in plastics. And so Natasha Tucker, who's
• 1:16
  been on the podcast before, friend of the podcast from Mind Your Plastic in
• 1:20
  Canada, decided, hey, you know what? Let's have a conversation. She wanted to
• 1:24
  give me updates about Mind Your Plastic. She wanted to talk about some of
• 1:27
  our programs. But we basically just had a general conversation on
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  plastic pollution in general and how to deal with it. We talked a lot about
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  what's happening in Canada. We talk a lot about what's happening in the world and
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  how we are all just reacting to the changes that are
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  needed to be met and how people aren't very good at changing their habits.
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  We just know that. And that's just something that we need to talk about. So
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  that's what we're going to talk about on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's
• 1:51
  start the show. Hey
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  everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I
• 1:59
  am your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how
• 2:03
  you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by
• 2:06
  taking action. And on today's episode, we're gonna be talking all about
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  plastic pollution, how it affects our bodies, how it affects our oceans, how
• 2:14
  it affects our water bodies, and how it affects our environment in general.
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  And I'm gonna tell you right now, It's not good. It's not affecting us
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  in very positive ways. Except if you own a
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  company that produces plastic, you're making a ton of money. That's
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  really what it comes down to making money. We have a lot of conversation about
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  today with Natasha Tucker, who is the executive director of
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  Mind Your Plastic. It's a Canadian charity that
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  talks about getting rid or that works with a
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  variety of different people to get rid of
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  plastic in Canada. And not necessarily just get rid of like an
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  all out ban, but work with companies and work with restaurants
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  and manufacturers and offices and people all
• 2:56
  around Canada to reduce and refuse the use
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  of plastic pollution. She's got a great story, a great sort
• 3:03
  of foundation. She's been on the podcast before, but she's got a great origin
• 3:07
  story of how she became involved in plastic. She wasn't a
• 3:10
  scientist, She's a business person, she was in retail, and
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  she basically decided to like at one point in
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  her life she realized that plastic pollution was a huge problem,
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  got more inspired by picking up plastic pollution on beaches
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  in Vancouver, and then eventually started up an
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  organization that eventually became Mind Your Plastic here in
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  Canada. We talked to her about all things plastic, how
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  it influences our bodies, how it influences the environment, and how we
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  can stop it through policies and education. And I think it's
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  really, really interesting. There's a lot of stories that she brings up, bringing
• 3:47
  a crew of about 20 people to pick up plastic pollution and
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  just pollution and do a beach cleanup in Cherry Beach in Toronto,
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  which you would think wouldn't be that bad, Yeah, it was just
• 3:57
  as bad. And we talked a little bit about where that source comes from,
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  how to clean up, how to educate, and how to stop that from happening.
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  Just a lot of just interesting conversation on plastic and where we
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  are today within our plastic world, really,
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  is what it really comes out. I feel like there's a documentary to be made about
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  plastic, and I'm sure there's been some that have been made. I
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  know there have been some that have been made and some that are on the way, but
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  we really need something to really show what
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  we're doing to our planet with this plastic revolution, and
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  we really need to revolt against the use of most plastics. But
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  with that said, I interviewed Natasha. It was a great conversation. It was a
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  little longer than normal, so buckle up. It's a lot of fun, and
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  Natasha was fantastic. Looking forward to having her back. Here's the interview with
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  Natasha Tucker, Executive Director of Mind Your Plastic here in Canada.
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  Enjoy the interview, and I will talk to you Hey, Natasha, welcome back to
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  the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about plastics and
• 4:57
  No problem. Thank you for coming back. I'm excited
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  for this interview. I'm excited for all my interviews, but I'm excited for this interview because this
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  is kind of like an update on plastics, not only in
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  our oceans, but in Canada. We've seen a lot done in
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  Canada. And you were here in 2022 when some of the stuff was
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  still being passed or still being discussed in the Canadian government.
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  And since then, the federal government has passed sort of like a
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  plastics framework, and then they put
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  in a law for specific plastics to be banned.
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  That has been challenged, that has been won in court, and now it's
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  being appealed at this point. I don't know the response
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  to that appeal. I'm not sure if that's still ongoing. Maybe we can get into it today. But
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  then there's also been the plastics treaty that, you know, I haven't discussed in
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  a little bit. The fifth meeting was done in South
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  Korea just recently. So getting an update on that, but just getting an
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  update on your organization, because things have changed. And
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  just a whole bunch of things on plastics. Plastics, people want to know. We
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  are engaged with plastics every single day of our lives. And
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  it's always good to find out more about it and how we can not only
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  reduce our uses, but refuse our uses as well. So
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  welcome again, Natasha. And for the people who haven't
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  heard the last episode you were on, can you just remind them of who you are
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  Absolutely. So my name is Natasha Tucker and I'm the executive director of
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  Mind Your Plastic and Mind Your Plastic is a registered Canadian charity.
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  We're focused on eliminating plastic pollution and how we
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  do that is really through preventative measures. So we
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  like to use the analogy of if your bathtub was overflowing with
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  water, what would you do? Would you grab a mop and
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  start cleaning it up or would you turn off that tap? We
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  like to turn off that tap. So what we tend to focus on is how
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  we can prevent plastic pollution from getting into our environment through
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  advocating for stronger policies and regulations on plastic production and
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  plastic use, finding those true alternatives for a
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  circular economy, and of course, making sure that folks are educated about
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  That's obviously a great mission. How did
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  And this is Oscar, my office assistant. Hi, Oscar. How are you, buddy? He's a
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  little shy. He actually just won our team holiday
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  party. We had a who was the best dressed. Nice. And
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  You were like, hey, I'm worried about my cat coming out. I'm like, this is a pet friendly
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  podcast. We love it. There's a video now out for this so that people
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  Yeah, anyone who's ever been on a call with me knows that Oscar always makes
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  Absolutely. He's part of Mind Your Plastic. He's
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  very concerned and so he wants to help out. Speaking of
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  which, how did your journey start,
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  you know, with plastics and sort of your knowledge
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  of plastics and understanding the impact it has on not only our
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  ocean's health and our land health, but also on our
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  Yeah. Uh, it's, it's such a long and winding road to how I got here.
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  You know, my, my background is, is in business management and
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  procurement and a lot of, a lot of time spent, uh,
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  in my early career in, in retail and management. And,
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  uh, I remember back many, many years ago, having the
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  opportunity to move from where I was on the
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  East to the West and working with a big store.
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  You might've heard of it called Target. There was that Target Canada expansion that
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  happened. I was fortunate enough to be a part of that. And
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  then thankfully I was not a part of it during the
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  end of it. However, you know, through my time, I remember
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  moving to Vancouver and, you know, having
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  been from the coast, I'm aware of the
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  ocean, but I was never really that Yeah you know i appreciated it
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  but didn't know a lot about it and wasn't that well connected to
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  it and i went to vancouver and one of the first things i did when i
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  got there was i went to the aquarium cuz i wanted to really have
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  that opportunity to get to a level with some of these really. Amazing charismatic
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  creatures that you always hear about and it was really through my
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  first visit there i walked in was like i. never
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  want to leave here cause it's just so fascinating. Um, but
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  it was really, you know, what, what got me invested in this was
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  one of the animals that was there at the time was a rescued Pacific white-sided
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  dolphin. And her name was Helen. And she was a lot different
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  than, you know, the regular dolphins that you would see. Um, because
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  she was actually there because she was rescued, um, from
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  Japan where she was caught in fixed fishing nets. And
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  as a result of that, she actually had
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  her pectoral fins. partially amputated. So as
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  a result of human activities and us,
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  she was actually deemed to live a life in human care and in
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  captivity. And that really, really struck a nerve for me. And
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  really, it was through that time there, I never really left
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  the aquarium. I started volunteering, started volunteering with the
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  Marine Mammal Rescue Center and really becoming obsessed with human
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  impacts and what we've done to the aquatic environment
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  and the environment in general. And through
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  my time volunteering with the aquarium, seeing how you know,
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  sea lions off of the west coast of Vancouver Island are getting entangled
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  in the packing straps around their necks. And to me, that was just such
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  a stark, stark moment to realize how
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  we impact the environment. And but at the same time,
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  recognizing my background of being retail, and it's very a
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  different shift to go from that world into conservation. And
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  You know, it was really that opportunity through my time working with
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  the aquarium to really take some of these very complex,
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  nuanced conversation topics and really make them accessible for
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  the general public, to make it impactful for them and
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  to make them walk out of there feeling like they're going to do something
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  differently because of what they saw, much like my experience. So
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  that was really where it all started for me. And and, you
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  know, even through my time there, becoming more aware of human impacts Again,
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  more often than not, they're completely unintentional, but
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  can be so, so impactful to the environment around
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  us. And even I found myself on my lunch breaks because
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  I wanted to do something. So outside of the education, what
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  I found myself doing was going to the beach every day on
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  my lunch break because I was so fortunate to have that as my, you
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  know, office. And cleaning up. you
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  know, debris. Every day on the same beach, I would pick
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  up styrofoam and then other consumer garbage and things that
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  were just being washed up. And that just really got me just
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  inspired by just how much work there is to do here and
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  just wanting others to join me in that. And through that long and
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  winding road, just found myself, you know, in
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  this position where, you know, we're able to influence
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  the change outside of, again, just that mopping up
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  the spill, if you will, from your overflowing bathtub into really influencing
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  the change that needs to happen outside of the cleanup.
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  So those are obviously incredibly important, but there's
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  more to it than just that. So that's how we
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  And why was it a beach cleanup that really, that was
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  your action? You know, there's a lot of problems in the ocean. You know, we have overfishing, we
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  have climate change, you know, what made
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  you in particular, like, I think I have an idea, but what made you
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  in particular choose, you know what, I'm going to clean this
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  You know what, it was something I felt I could do. You know, it
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  was accessible. And again, you hear more often than not, you
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  know, there's a lot of folks out there trying to solve these
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  issues. You know, there's so much research happening and
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  the impacts and recognizing that my background isn't
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  that super strong when it comes to the academics. It's not strong when it comes to
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  biology or animal care. But you know what? This is
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  something I can do. I can clean up. I can pick
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  stuff up on the way. And I can also inspire others because they're
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  asking me why I'm doing this. They're asking me what I'm doing. And hopefully,
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  that's inspiring them to get involved. And
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  again, it's just that That gateway, in a way, and
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  that's what I really found for me as well as for other folks who did get involved.
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  You know, we know that cleaning up isn't going to solve the problem, but
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  it is that awareness that when you get to clean up
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  and you see you're picking up a lot of here
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  in Nova Scotia, a lot of Tim Hortons cups or a lot of Starbucks cups,
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  a lot of cigarette butts, a lot of the same, so many
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  cigarette butts, and a lot of the same items that you're seeing. So
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  not only are you cleaning that up, but then after a while you
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  start to think, Well, I'm still picking up the same thing.
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  And it's not really changing. It's not changing my consumption habits. And
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  realistically, you start to realize, well, the more I use, it's
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  very likely I'm going to be picking up my own garbage in a
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  few years or a few months, few days, whatever it might be. It's all
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  going to end up here at some point if we're not smart
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  about it. How can that then turn into
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  creating bigger action that, of course, the cleanups are important, but
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  then it starts to spiral into that awareness piece
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  of, oh, you know what? Maybe I'll skip the straw today, or maybe I'll skip the Tim Hortons
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  cup, and I'll bring my own cup today. So
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  it's an accessible action that you can do. It's more
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  than just the cleaning up activity. It's really what it helps teach
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  Yeah, 100%. I completely agree. I'm glad
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  you told us that story in terms of sort of how you
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  got into cleaning up beaches. Obviously, it's
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  a thankless job at times, but it obviously inspired you
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  to change your entire direction of your career, which is huge. big
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  pivot, you know, and that takes
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  a lot of guts to do. How did you pivot? Like
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  what made you decide? And then what made you, did you go right
• 15:22
  to, obviously not Mind Your Plastics, but like
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  Yeah, well, honestly, so I mentioned, you know, I was in
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  Vancouver, working for Target. And I
• 15:34
  remember when it started to shift for me, it's very, very stark. I
• 15:38
  remember helping to open up the store. And for those who
• 15:41
  are in Vancouver, the Metrotown location, which is one of the biggest locations
• 15:45
  that was opened up. And I remember being a part of the
• 15:49
  assembly team. We got all the fixtures into the store. We had
• 15:52
  everything ready to go, and it was a well-organized plan. And
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  then I remember we had everything set up. And, you
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  know, I would have thought that from a from
• 16:03
  a planning standpoint, that we would only get the fixtures that
• 16:07
  we need. Or you might get a few extra to accommodate if
• 16:11
  there's something missing or errors or whatnot. Not the case. We
• 16:15
  had excessive amounts of fixtures left over.
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  So not only are these fixtures big pieces of
• 16:22
  metal, but they're all wrapped in plastic. They're all wrapped in styrofoam. There's all this
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  stuff. And when I asked, what are we doing with those? And this
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  is, again, not from a perspective of waste management at
• 16:31
  that point and reduction. This is just me being curious. They're
• 16:36
  just all getting thrown out. They're not going to a centralized location to be redistributed.
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  They're just getting thrown out, is what I was told. And to me,
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  I'm like, that is so wasteful, not only from a business standpoint,
• 16:47
  the money, but more importantly, just the
• 16:51
  resources that were put into that. What a concept and
• 16:55
  so that was a really really interesting moment and then through my time working in
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  big box that was my first experience in big box and
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  seeing the waste of you know you have something that is
• 17:05
  expired by a day. Maybe we
• 17:09
  could give it to people who need it, or in corporate world,
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  we just throw it out because it's a liability to give food away.
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  And I just remember seeing trucks of food just
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  being thrown out, perfectly good food, and packaging too,
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  of course, right? Perfectly good items that just
• 17:26
  weren't Valuable to hold up shelf space
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  so to me that was really a moment where. You
• 17:33
  know i started thinking about it a little bit more and then as i mentioned through
• 17:36
  my time volunteering at the aquarium it was just so apparent
• 17:40
  to me that there's more to what i need to do then
• 17:44
  to. sell stuff for a
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  big box store. There's no disrespect
• 17:51
  or discredit to whoever is doing that. It's
• 17:55
  needed, but that's not where I'm needed, and
• 17:58
  that's not where I want to continue to grow. And again, thinking of my
• 18:01
  background being in buying and logistics, and I'm like, This just
• 18:05
  seems backwards. So, so yeah,
• 18:08
  transitioning to my time at the aquarium and, and, again,
• 18:11
  that was so impactful for me because not only was
• 18:15
  it just, you know, working with the visitors and being
• 18:18
  able to engage folks from, you know, child,
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  you know, little ages, all the way up to folks who have, you
• 18:25
  know, been around this type of stuff their whole lives, but they're still learning something new. And
• 18:30
  that was so impactful. But then, you know, a
• 18:33
  few years after working at the Aquarium, being in Vancouver, Being
• 18:37
  from the East Coast, it called me back. There's
• 18:41
  no aquariums here in Halifax, so it wasn't really
• 18:44
  an easy transition back. So I found myself back in the retail
• 18:48
  world. Instead of big box, I
• 18:51
  found myself at a Starbucks where I started
• 18:54
  working as a manager. The intent with that was, you
• 18:58
  know, I was thinking, well, you know, I have the sustainability mindset. I
• 19:01
  have this reduction. I've been a part of so many great programs and
• 19:06
  initiatives at the aquarium, including banning plastic bottles at the facility. you
• 19:11
  know, what can be done here from the inside within Starbucks? And
• 19:16
  what I learned is, you know, it was a great learning opportunity to
• 19:21
  see what a big corporation like that could do, and
• 19:25
  what's possible, and what happens you
• 19:29
  know, when they could do something and they're not. You know, so
• 19:32
  through my time there, it was really interesting to see what was available
• 19:36
  to the stores in terms of what's
• 19:40
  possible. And one thing I'd started there was
• 19:44
  a A sustainability group in my district and
• 19:48
  having this perspective of how harmful plastic is not only for
• 19:51
  the environment, but like. For humans, yeah, I don't
• 19:55
  really want to be drinking hot liquids out of plastic lined cups. We'll probably
• 19:58
  get into that later, but plastic soup. No,
• 20:01
  thank you. Um, so some initiatives we started in store
• 20:05
  were just, again, you know, those little green sticks, you don't need them. Uh,
• 20:09
  and, and again, starting even not even getting rid of things, but
• 20:13
  just the simple language change of, Hey, Andrew,
• 20:16
  would you like that coffee for here? Yeah and they say yep and i'm
• 20:19
  like great instant mug yeah hey andrew do you want that sandwich for
• 20:23
  here instant plate fork and knife real no.
• 20:27
  Wouldn't stuff cuz who likes that anyways right who don't you want to eat
• 20:30
  with a regular fork and knife right so those are some of the little things that
• 20:33
  we started and it worked so well and i stopped spending my story money
• 20:37
  on. garbage that was costing me money,
• 20:40
  right? So yeah, so really that was my
• 20:44
  most recent experience before finding Mind Your Plastic and really
• 20:49
  having this opportunity to not only affect change from the inside from one store
• 20:55
  So it's been a- Sorry to interrupt, but this is interesting too, because from
• 20:58
  a Starbucks point of view, a lot of people look at Starbucks back
• 21:01
  in the 2010s and so forth, they were
• 21:05
  known to be progressive. They wanted to reduce, they had it
• 21:08
  in their mission, their overall corporate mission to reduce plastics, to
• 21:13
  get more sustainable. They came out, they're from the West Coast, they're
• 21:16
  from Seattle area. They're They just want it
• 21:19
  to be more environmentally friendly. At some point, though, they started to
• 21:23
  take all of that out, that language out of their corporate policies. So
• 21:27
  it's interesting to hear that managers can make that
• 21:30
  difference without changing up a lot, necessarily, where you're
• 21:34
  maybe ruffling some feathers for that area. But
• 21:37
  you're asking simple questions. A lot of people do stay in store
• 21:41
  to drink their coffees or to have their their bagels or
• 21:44
  their sandwiches or what have you, and they will tend
• 21:48
  to use plates or mugs. Like you said, it's nicer to
• 21:51
  have, it's nicer to drink out of, it's nicer to use
• 21:54
  rather than a paper plate or plastic or anything like that. I
• 21:58
  like that idea of just changing the language without even
• 22:02
  making it such a big deal. It's just more of like, hey, let's foster
• 22:06
  a community here. Do you want to stay? Exactly. Oh, great. Here you
• 22:09
  go. That's really great. And I can imagine people up
• 22:12
  top, the offices are probably like, they don't
• 22:16
  even know about it. They're just like, oh, OK, this is great. I
• 22:19
  really like that idea because I have a very negative
• 22:23
  sort of thought process when it comes to Starbucks because of so much plastics and
• 22:27
  because of the changes that they've made to almost double down on
• 22:31
  plastic containers. But I like the fact that managers can make
• 22:34
  that difference. All it needs is a little bit of that
• 22:38
  education to get there. And you mentioned in their district, so
• 22:42
  was it just the one store or did you get together with other stores, like
• 22:47
  Yeah, so what I was empowered by my district, which
• 22:50
  was really, really fantastic. I don't know that that's going to be the same story
• 22:54
  for others. However, for me, I was empowered to
• 22:58
  take this on because the managers or the district leaders
• 23:01
  knew that this was very important to me. And it was ultimately what was
• 23:05
  keeping me there was that opportunity because for me, I
• 23:08
  can be a manager somewhere, but what's important is really affecting change.
• 23:13
  So I was fortunate to be able to rally everyone in
• 23:16
  our district to have a sustainability lead at each store. And
• 23:19
  so each store had an appointed person who was similar
• 23:23
  to myself. It didn't have to be a store manager. It could be a really engaged barista
• 23:27
  who just wanted to be a part of making a difference. So it
• 23:30
  was really lovely to have that opportunity to get together. and then COVID
• 23:34
  happened. So we had about two or three, we had
• 23:37
  about two or three meetings with everyone where we talked about ways to make our
• 23:40
  stores more sustainable and again, to promote
• 23:44
  that reusability, or at least for here, where that better
• 23:48
  experience, frankly, to what you mentioned. And
• 23:52
  yeah, and then COVID happened and obviously then the world
• 23:58
  Yeah. Sustainability. You know, it was interesting with COVID because
• 24:02
  we got a better environment just because less people.
• 24:05
  Yeah. But we also got
• 24:09
  worse in the fact that we started using less reusable items. It
• 24:12
  was more one-off, single-use, like let's pollute
• 24:17
  Yeah, it was so damaging for the reuse movement.
• 24:20
  Because again, I even think of those times you couldn't even
• 24:23
  bring your own reusable bag to the grocery store.
• 24:28
  So we went back a couple of years. But
• 24:37
  There is a bit of a movement to encourage
• 24:41
  people to get back to where we were before because people
• 24:45
  are still in that COVID mindset. A lot of people have
• 24:48
  gone to, if I just think of daily things that
• 24:52
  we did or that I know people have done and continue to do, we
• 24:55
  don't do this anymore, but people still get their groceries delivered. And when you get your groceries
• 24:58
  delivered, a lot of the times they come in plastic bags. So all
• 25:02
  that work to get rid of the single-use plastic bag for groceries has
• 25:05
  kind of gone reversal in that. And I'm sure, I don't know what the
• 25:08
  statistics are, but I'm sure that has increased compared to
• 25:12
  before COVID. People realize it's more convenient. It's
• 25:15
  a little bit more expensive, but it's more convenient and they get what they want and
• 25:18
  they can still do other things without growing. going to the grocery store.
• 25:23
  So yeah, so there's that. So that's one sort of example that
• 25:26
  has come up that where it's like, oh yeah, well, we still need
• 25:29
  to get out of that mindset that we can use reusable things. I
• 25:32
  think that's really interesting. Okay, so
• 25:36
  Mind Your Plastic comes into play. You start
• 25:40
  Mind Your Plastic, but it wasn't always Mind Your Plastic. That's been
• 25:44
  a recent thing. So can you just kind of tell us a little bit the changes that
• 25:49
  Sure, yeah. So I mean, the last time you and I spoke back in 2022, which
• 25:53
  is crazy. So
• 25:56
  when we spoke last, we were actually, we had a different name as an organization. And
• 26:00
  at that time, we were very focused on the impact
• 26:04
  of plastic in our oceans. And the organization's focus
• 26:07
  there was aligned very much with an international organization that had
• 26:11
  a few different locations that were promoting similar
• 26:15
  work. And the work was incredibly important, but
• 26:19
  again, more on the mopping
• 26:22
  up, if you will. So again, a lot of the cleanups, which is really important,
• 26:26
  as well as the in-school education, So again,
• 26:30
  not to say that that stuff isn't important, but what we feel
• 26:33
  like in Canada that is missing at the time was really
• 26:37
  that who is focused just on plastic in
• 26:40
  the environment. There's a ton of work happening in this space with
• 26:44
  amazing NGOs, but no
• 26:47
  one's focused just on plastic. And no one's focused on just
• 26:50
  on plastic from a policy perspective on working with businesses
• 26:54
  and helping them find true alternatives and not just you know
• 26:58
  the thing that everyone else does which is like switch to compostables which is.
• 27:01
  Yeah. Absolute garbage. I'm sure we'll get to that later. But
• 27:05
  who is actually helping municipalities affect
• 27:09
  change? Who is helping businesses make these transitions? And
• 27:12
  while we, of course, still have an education mandate, what
• 27:16
  we've realized is we can affect the masses through providing education
• 27:20
  programs for schools across Canada. We don't need to be
• 27:23
  the ones delivering that program in person. we can affect
• 27:27
  change on a massive scale by being able to deliver the materials and
• 27:30
  the resources, which is what we've now done. So what we did
• 27:33
  ultimately in 2022 in July is we took
• 27:37
  a step back from the international organization and truly became an
• 27:40
  independent Canadian organization called Mind Your Plastic with
• 27:43
  the goal of eliminating plastic pollution in Canada. So again,
• 27:47
  the oceans are still obviously very much a part of that. But
• 27:50
  what we learned in that transition is there were
• 27:54
  so many Canadians that They don't feel
• 27:57
  connected to the issue of plastic pollution if we're only talking about
• 28:01
  plastic in the oceans. Again, in Ontario, do
• 28:04
  we care that much about plastic in the oceans when there's no ocean around? And
• 28:09
  again, our friends in Alberta and Saskatchewan and
• 28:12
  all these areas that are essentially landlocked for the most part, do
• 28:17
  they have that same level of care if it's
• 28:20
  about oceans? And what we've learned since the transition is
• 28:23
  we still absolutely have our Vancouver and our Halifax base,
• 28:28
  but the buy-in and support from places
• 28:32
  like Alberta and Saskatchewan have been
• 28:36
  huge. We've seen such a huge uptick, especially in
• 28:39
  our education programs in those communities, which has been so
• 28:42
  great to see and really reaffirms you know, the transition
• 28:48
  Yeah, speaking of that connection, it's
• 28:52
  really interesting. As an organization, how do
• 28:55
  you, you know, have people understand, like
• 28:59
  your constituents understand that connection and
• 29:02
  the effect of that connection? Because I'll tell you from what I've
• 29:06
  experienced online and just from people even
• 29:10
  in my own family, My kids don't necessarily
• 29:13
  think about plastic pollution when they
• 29:17
  are going to Starbucks or when they're having a coffee. Or
• 29:21
  yes, my kids are that old now that they have coffee. They think they need coffee. Just
• 29:26
  wait. Yeah, exactly. Not just the kids. I
• 29:30
  see everybody like they're just they're having plastic bags and even
• 29:33
  they're complaining about you know reusable
• 29:38
  straws or the paper straws now because you're starting to see more and more
• 29:41
  paper straws. They're starting to complain like people I've
• 29:44
  seen like and sometimes they're really ridiculous comments on on posts
• 29:48
  but I start to see like why do we care about a sea turtle that
• 29:51
  one sea turtle that gets you know, swallows a plastic
• 29:55
  straw and like, why should we care? We never see this in Canada, which we know
• 29:59
  sea turtles do come to Canada. But regardless, like there are people
• 30:02
  who are just out there almost going against what
• 30:06
  seems to be a rational thought and like a common sense
• 30:10
  thought. So you talk about not only the disconnect, but almost the rebellion
• 30:14
  against a movement, which is like, it's not only protecting
• 30:18
  the environment, but it's protecting your health. Yet
• 30:21
  you just think that this is a normal thing. How
• 30:25
  do you talk to your constituents in
• 30:28
  a way where it's like, hey, we have a huge problem
• 30:33
  Yeah, and that's something that I've been seeing too. And
• 30:36
  sometimes I find myself reading the comments on things just to
• 30:40
  see what are people saying who do not align with my
• 30:44
  values. And even what I saw the other day, Andrew, on TikTok,
• 30:48
  someone who was saying how she went
• 30:51
  to the US and she's coming back across the Canadian border and she
• 30:55
  has something super illegal and she has to hide it. It's a bunch of
• 30:58
  straws, like plastic straws from McDonald's. I was like, you
• 31:01
  know, you can get those in Canada, right? You're
• 31:04
  not gonna be able to get them maybe at your Tim Hortons, but you can still go buy plastic
• 31:08
  straws and keep them in your car if you really want to. But
• 31:11
  you know what we found is is we have to adjust the messaging.
• 31:15
  You know, if people don't care about the environment, because some people feel like
• 31:19
  it's a lost cause at this point, that it's just, you know, I mean,
• 31:23
  we have climate deniers, who people who think that it's
• 31:27
  just fake, and it's just not true, still a hoax, absolutely
• 31:30
  bananas. And, you know, so we have folks who
• 31:34
  just straight up aren't subscribing to that. You
• 31:37
  know that concept at all but then you also just have people who maybe
• 31:41
  see the environment or like well what is what is one straw
• 31:44
  doing or what is one starbucks cup doing it's really not
• 31:48
  in the grand scheme of things contributing or adding that much more
• 31:51
  and then you know i think everyone's seen that meme
• 31:55
  on on facebook or instagram that's basically like oh it's One
• 31:59
  cup said 8 billion people, right? So it
• 32:04
  all adds up. But what we really look at is how do we target our
• 32:08
  messaging to our audience? So what is our audience going
• 32:12
  to care about? So now I know when I go talk to businesses, sure,
• 32:16
  I'll talk about the environment. I'm gonna talk about the ROI on
• 32:19
  the bottom line first and foremost again i use that example of
• 32:22
  my time at starbucks where. You know we we did
• 32:25
  transition to reusable i stopped buying sleeves and sleeves of
• 32:30
  disposable cups that were also wrapped in plastic that also came
• 32:33
  wrapped in more like you know so. And
• 32:36
  what that can do for your business. And again, what are the cost savings? And
• 32:39
  I think of an example that there's this amazing meal
• 32:43
  delivery service out in Vancouver called Fresh Prep.
• 32:47
  And I remember using their service when I first lived there. And at
• 32:50
  the time, they had this really cool reverse logistics process
• 32:54
  where it's not like Chef's Plate or HelloFresh
• 32:58
  or whoever that you order online and it gets delivered to your door. It's
• 33:03
  instead you get you
• 33:06
  would have a pickup. So they would deliver it to you in a bag with
• 33:10
  all the packaging. It was single use and disposable at the time, but
• 33:13
  then they would come and pick it up from you. And
• 33:17
  they said, keep your garbage in there, because they were going to recycle it for you. Because at
• 33:20
  the time in Vancouver, they still do. You have soft plastics and
• 33:23
  things like that. What they've now added are reusables.
• 33:27
  So all of their stuff, to the best of their ability, or most of it, is packaged
• 33:31
  in reusable containers. So then when they pick it up, there's
• 33:34
  no waste to it. And what they discovered is they did a
• 33:37
  cost analysis. And they said, they will pay
• 33:41
  for these containers. Yes, it will be a little bit more expensive for them as
• 33:44
  a business upfront. for eight uses. and
• 33:48
  they're getting 40 uses out of those
• 33:52
  containers. So they're essentially getting 32 free uses
• 33:55
  out of these versus again, having to buy the single use cheap plastic, not
• 33:59
  to mention you pay disposal fees on that after a certain period of time
• 34:03
  when you have so much of it. So again, we like to focus on
• 34:07
  cost recovery and savings, or depending on who we're speaking to,
• 34:10
  if we're speaking to health-minded folks, we talk about the plastic impacts
• 34:14
  on your body. So that again, there's plastic, there
• 34:18
  are negative implications in every area that
• 34:22
  you could possibly care about. So it's really just figuring out what
• 34:30
  For sure. I love that. I love that idea. It comes
• 34:34
  down to, it's really interesting, actually, when you
• 34:38
  look at the benefits of being environmentally friendly
• 34:42
  overall, not just plastics, but environmentally friendly, you end
• 34:46
  up coming out better on the financial side. Totally.
• 34:50
  From an overall perspective, maybe not right in the short term, but you end
• 34:54
  up being better in the longer
• 34:57
  term. And we fail to realize this as
• 35:01
  a consumer. And I think it has to do
• 35:04
  with the habit change. I think we are just so resistant to
• 35:07
  changing our habits that once something new
• 35:11
  comes in, people will complain about it. You love
• 35:14
  the plastic straws because we're so used to it. But a paper straw
• 35:18
  comes into place or or you know, you can get permanent straws or
• 35:21
  reusable straws Metal and things like that and you're just kind of
• 35:24
  like well, why do I have to have this? Why can't I just go back to what we just but
• 35:27
  it saves you money? Because what like for a metal straw cost
• 35:31
  you like a dollar thirty or something like that Maybe it's a little bit more now, but
• 35:34
  it's a dollar thirty compared to buying like
• 35:38
  stuff where it's a straw after straw after straw after straw it's gonna be more expensive
• 35:42
  and what are you gonna do you're just gonna throw it out it's gonna be bigger like it
• 35:45
  just doesn't make any sense and but i just feel like people are
• 35:48
  so resistant that they'll be stubborn enough to do it i'm a
• 35:52
  little bit cynical about it right because it's like i
• 35:59
  Yeah, don't take my, and I've heard people say this,
• 36:02
  it's like, I'm so sick of talking about the straw because it
• 36:05
  became such an icon for
• 36:10
  the plastic movement, for moving away from plastics, that
• 36:13
  people are just, that's what they rally against, I'm rallying against
• 36:17
  the straw. Right? Like aside from people who need it because
• 36:21
  of disabilities and things like that. We've, you know, that's implied,
• 36:24
  but the people who rally against it's like, why do we need to worry about the straw as
• 36:28
  they sip out of their Starbucks cup or their Tim Hortons cup and
• 36:31
  things like that here in Canada and Tim Hortons. And you're just sitting there and you're like, do
• 36:35
  you see the hypocrisy here? Like, like, it's just, I found
• 36:38
  that the plastic straw was a symbol of
• 36:42
  our problem with plastic. It's not just a plastic straw,
• 36:45
  because I'll tell you, and I've said this a number of times in my podcast, my listeners are
• 36:49
  probably sick of me saying this, but four months later, after Nathan
• 36:52
  Robinson and Christine Figner pulled that straw out
• 36:56
  of a sea turtle, four months later, 70 kilometers south of
• 36:59
  that beach, Nathan Robinson pulled a plastic fork out
• 37:03
  of an Olive Ridley sea turtle. So it's not just a
• 37:06
  plastic straw, it's plastic everything. And it becomes, like it goes into
• 37:10
  our system and it comes back along the shoreline and that's how we know
• 37:13
  about it. And a lot of the places I would imagine
• 37:17
  in Canada, we don't get the buildup of plastic, but places in India,
• 37:20
  places in Malaysia, places in Indonesia, in
• 37:24
  the South Pacific, where their waste management may not be as
• 37:27
  strong as ours. they're getting piles and piles of
• 37:33
  I'll tell you, I had the opportunity
• 37:37
  to go and work, because our team, we work all
• 37:40
  remotely. So as long as you have a Wi-Fi connection, we can work from anywhere. So
• 37:44
  I just, because I'm not much of a cold gal,
• 37:47
  so I was working for a few weeks in Guatemala, because I
• 37:51
  love the country. And I spent a
• 37:55
  lot of my time on the Pacific coast of Guatemala in a place called El Peridón,
• 37:59
  It's a surf community and they also have a lot
• 38:02
  of amazing sea turtle conservation projects happening there
• 38:06
  because still in the Guatemalan communities, it's still quite common to
• 38:11
  poach sea turtle eggs, both for either like local cuisine or just
• 38:14
  for sustenance, for financial
• 38:18
  support. So there's a lot of local NGOs there who are trying to
• 38:22
  still help the locals survive while helping the sea turtles survive.
• 38:27
  And I've been to Guatemala a few times. It's
• 38:31
  no secret to me that there's a poor waste management
• 38:35
  there, a heavy reliance on just single use and disposable plastics.
• 38:40
  But what was really, really stark for me, and I actually have videos of
• 38:43
  this and I'll happily share it with you if it's something you'd like to see. I
• 38:47
  was that crazy tourist who's at a sea turtle release at
• 38:50
  six in the morning taking pictures of the
• 38:54
  beach itself because it was the most heartbreaking scene I'd ever seen
• 38:57
  because you have 200 baby Olive Ridley sea turtles off
• 39:02
  going out into the ocean, but what you've seen across
• 39:06
  the shoreline is just it's decimated with plastic
• 39:10
  and garbage. And it's not just your tiny styrofoam pieces,
• 39:14
  it's everything. It's
• 39:19
  When I was in Costa Rica, I remember we had a big torrential downpour the
• 39:22
  night before and the beach was just littered with plastics that
• 39:26
  wasn't there the day before. And it just came back up and it was like, sandals and
• 39:30
  alcohol bottles, plastic bottles, as well as just
• 39:33
  like these pieces of shards of plastic, broken plastic. You
• 39:37
  can see, like when people say, yeah, microplastic is a problem, like I see
• 39:41
  Yeah, it's literally right there. You could grab a strainer and
• 39:44
  just have, it could be full, right? So, and again, it
• 39:48
  was just so stark seeing all these beautiful, you know, young
• 39:51
  creatures going out amidst the very thing that will likely
• 39:55
  be the result of their demise, right? So it
• 39:59
  was quite stark. But yeah, again, it just goes to show
• 40:02
  that it may not be as prevalent here.
• 40:07
  However, it is if you look. And I think
• 40:10
  of a cleanup that I did in a
• 40:14
  few years ago in Toronto, and we had picked a, we wanted
• 40:18
  to pick a spot that was relatively accessible for people. Because
• 40:21
  of course, if it's a corporate cleanup, you know, you want to make sure folks can get there quite easily.
• 40:25
  We don't want it to be in the middle of nowhere. So we picked a spot called Cherry Beach.
• 40:29
  Yeah. And it was funny because we got there and I was
• 40:32
  there with the folks I was organizing it with. And they were like, Oh
• 40:35
  my gosh, we, we picked the cleanest beach in Toronto. And
• 40:39
  I was like, just wait. And sure enough, we had
• 40:43
  our group it wasn't a huge group it was probably about 20 people, and
• 40:46
  we had an hour to clean up. when
• 40:50
  I tell you I had to force these people to come back because
• 40:53
  they were so invested in what they were finding and they didn't even make it
• 40:57
  that far. And they came back and they were like, we
• 41:00
  are shocked at what we found. And again, you know, I'm
• 41:04
  always aware of, you know, you know, they get the big pictures of people and
• 41:07
  I just collected 3000 pounds of garbage. I
• 41:10
  don't usually like to focus too much on the weight because you
• 41:15
  might pick up a bunch of big stuff or you're going to pick up thousands
• 41:19
  of pieces of small things. And the picture that I have from
• 41:23
  just the cigarette butts alone, I can't remember the
• 41:26
  exact amount, but again, I have the picture and it was just
• 41:29
  a mound of cigarette butts from an hour of cleaning up
• 41:33
  that beach and amongst many of the other things.
• 41:36
  So it is happening. It's in our backyard.
• 41:40
  It may not be as obvious as if you were to go to
• 41:43
  some of the places you had listed before. But
• 41:46
  again, this isn't a place where we do have proper waste management and people
• 41:50
  are either just choosing to not participate in it for
• 41:53
  a variety of reasons. Or they just
• 41:57
  are just disposing of it on their own, which is its own
• 42:01
  level of frustration, as you can imagine. But it is in
• 42:04
  our environment and it is affecting our animals. It's affecting our wildlife and
• 42:09
  The litter that you picked up for that
• 42:12
  cleanup, was it mostly coming from the water or
• 42:16
  is it mostly people that littered while they
• 42:19
  were at the beach? Because the Cherry Beach is a very popular beach. It's very crowded.
• 42:23
  It's a large beach too. There's a volleyball. There's all these different activities there.
• 42:27
  So was it from like Ontario or is it from just
• 42:35
  My guess is that a lot of it was found along the
• 42:39
  tide line, I guess, along the brush and the tree
• 42:42
  lines and things like that there. But based on what we're finding and
• 42:47
  the level of degradation, it seemed to be mostly consumer
• 42:51
  garbage from folks using the park. stuff. It's
• 42:55
  not like we were finding stuff that was really, really, again, like heavily degraded. I
• 42:59
  know we had some folks spending their time along the shoreline, and what
• 43:02
  they were finding, again, was it wasn't as much, but what
• 43:05
  they were finding was a lot of stuff in and amongst the bushes along Cherry Beach and
• 43:08
  the trees and stuff like that. So our guess is it
• 43:11
  was mostly like park goers versus stuff
• 43:15
  getting into the environment through like wind transfer or just environmental transfer.
• 43:18
  Interesting. That's really interesting. And you know, I
• 43:22
  feel almost more hopeful for that
• 43:26
  when it's people that are on the beach because education can be done. Yeah.
• 43:30
  Even like putting up signage, you know, having people
• 43:33
  go around, you know, maybe volunteers or something that they can go
• 43:36
  around and talk to the people. It's like, hey, don't forget, you know, I
• 43:40
  see you have a lot of stuff. There's bins over here. Can you please put them in
• 43:43
  the bins? Just remind them nicely, you know, just having like just having that
• 43:46
  education. I feel like more hopeful about that. I feel when
• 43:49
  it gets When it gets less hopeful is when it starts to come in from
• 43:53
  the water where a lot of the ocean stuff is going. We know the Great Lakes are polluted with
• 43:56
  plastic. We know that's a fact that's been published in primary journals.
• 44:00
  But that's what gets me. You're just sitting there like, how do you clean up
• 44:04
  this? And it's really from, like you mentioned before, it's
• 44:07
  from the tap, right? It's back to the analogy of
• 44:12
  the bathtub and it overflowing with plastic. You just shut the
• 44:15
  tap off. How do we shut the tap off in
• 44:19
  Canada? That's the biggest thing. Now I'm saying this knowing,
• 44:23
  and I mentioned it before, we do have laws in Canada where
• 44:27
  we're stepping towards the right direction in
• 44:31
  reducing our production, our usage
• 44:35
  of plastic, although it is getting challenged as
• 44:39
  we knew that was gonna happen. But how do we stop the plastic usage
• 44:46
  Loaded question, Andrew. Do we have enough time for that? No, I'm just kidding.
• 44:51
  Let's go. Masterclass in plastic pollution.
• 44:56
  Yeah, I mean, it's a really Nuance dancer there's
• 45:01
  so much that we could be doing and you know i think what's really interesting is.
• 45:05
  You know i grew up in the area of just recycle
• 45:09
  if you recycle you're doing a great thing and you are basically an
• 45:12
  environmentalist so. And what we've learned is
• 45:15
  that's just that's simply not true. It
• 45:20
  really is, and I would invite any listeners. There
• 45:24
  was a report that came out, I believe it was earlier this
• 45:27
  year, and it was quite lengthy about basically the fraud
• 45:31
  of plastic recycling and how it was all a
• 45:35
  scam from the oil and gas industry.
• 45:39
  So what Mind Your Plastic has done, because we
• 45:42
  try to make things a little more easily digestible for the folks who maybe don't
• 45:46
  have the time to read a 40 to 70 page
• 45:49
  report and make it maybe a little bit more digestible so we do have something on
• 45:53
  our website, written by our amazing programs
• 45:56
  and policy manager Michelle, that just breaks it down a little bit
• 46:00
  and I can share the link if you have any. But
• 46:04
  it's a really great, fascinating read
• 46:07
  to show how the oil
• 46:11
  and gas industry really manipulated the facts and
• 46:14
  spun recycling as a true alternative. And
• 46:18
  it's just truly not. So recycling does play
• 46:21
  a part in solving the plastic pollution crisis. Like
• 46:25
  there are some plastics that are truly highly recyclable,
• 46:29
  like you think of your clear PET water
• 46:33
  bottles, those have very high recyclability rates
• 46:38
  versus say your like bright orange tied laundry
• 46:42
  detergent container. Very little end market for
• 46:45
  something like that or again your plastics that don't have that chasing arrow
• 46:50
  just because it has that chasing arrow does not therein mean it's recyclable. If
• 46:55
  you've not heard that before, let me burst that bubble for you real quick. But
• 46:59
  again, so it's looking at recyclability as a piece of that puzzle.
• 47:03
  But the way we like to look at it at Mind Your Plastic is
• 47:06
  really it's a combination of policy change that
• 47:09
  needs to happen. We need to regulate this substance. We
• 47:13
  know it's toxic, despite what is being challenged currently
• 47:17
  in the federal courts. We know it's toxic. We know it's
• 47:20
  not good for people. So we need it
• 47:23
  to be regulated. We need our corporations, our
• 47:27
  producers, our manufacturers, we need them to also be on board with
• 47:30
  change. Because again, there is a space
• 47:34
  for plastic in our economy, but there should not be a space for
• 47:37
  plastic pollution in our environment. So we need to
• 47:40
  figure out what that looks like because it's not reasonable to
• 47:44
  suggest that all plastic needs to go. It's not pragmatic. That's
• 47:47
  not our stance as mind your plastic. We know that it
• 47:52
  is harmful to the environment in a sense, but anything and everything at scale.
• 47:56
  will have some level of harm. But what we really want to
• 47:59
  see is how do we keep it from being in our bodies and
• 48:03
  affecting our animals and in our environment. So again,
• 48:06
  we really feel that the policy, it really needs to be driven through
• 48:10
  policy because corporations we're
• 48:14
  not going to rely on the good-heartedness of corporations
• 48:18
  to solve this crisis. They're very
• 48:22
  likely going to need to be mandated to do it. And as we've seen from
• 48:25
  the Global Plastics Treaty, if anyone's been following that, we
• 48:29
  have a lot of countries and industry pushing back on
• 48:34
  on targets requesting voluntary targets instead. Yeah.
• 48:38
  Which voluntary targets... Means nothing. I mean, you can...
• 48:42
  Yeah, exactly. You volunteer just like Coke's reusable
• 48:49
  Yeah. My favorite environmental corporate slang
• 48:54
  is best practices. Right? I find like, Oh,
• 48:57
  we'll use best practices. Well, why don't you just, if you're
• 49:00
  going to use the best practices, that means you're going to do what we
• 49:03
  regulate you to do. They just don't want to be told what to do.
• 49:07
  And, you know, I had a conversation on, on, on
• 49:10
  this podcast with, with Oceana and
• 49:13
  they mentioned, you know, one of the things that, you
• 49:16
  know, that, that they talked about when they challenged the ban
• 49:20
  on the six plastic, six plastics that they want
• 49:23
  to ban. They said that it
• 49:27
  wasn't the fact that they were in disagreement of those plastics. What
• 49:31
  they wanted to do was ban the fact that the government said
• 49:35
  in the Canadian Environmental Protection
• 49:39
  Act that all plastics were toxic. Because
• 49:43
  what they don't want to do is later on down the road, they don't want the government
• 49:46
  to say that you can't use the plastics that you make. And so
• 49:50
  that's what they're worried about. They're worried about the future. They're not worried, they
• 49:53
  agree with the six plastics, you know, six types and
• 49:56
  categories of plastics that they want to ban, but they'd rather get rid of
• 49:59
  that. than to eventually be mandated
• 50:03
  to do something else. And I think the next thing that the government wants
• 50:07
  to do, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Natasha, but is to put in
• 50:10
  the registry and sort of trace where
• 50:13
  the plastics go on a day-to-day basis, where they
• 50:17
  are made and where they end up. And that's basically a
• 50:20
  traceability and a transparency study. to find out where
• 50:23
  that goes. balk
• 50:41
  at spending $100,000 on a project
• 50:45
  where they're going to earn billions. And they don't want to spend $100,000 to
• 50:50
  spend on an environmental assessment just so that
• 50:53
  they can make sure that this project goes through because they know they're going to
• 50:56
  make billions on it. You know, and that study could impede
• 51:00
  them from doing it. And so they don't want to spend any money that they don't have
• 51:03
  to do. So I think you summed it up perfectly. These
• 51:07
  companies do not want to do all this stuff. They have to
• 51:10
  be mandated to do this because they have too much to lose if
• 51:14
  they do it. And that kind of tells you something. If you are a
• 51:17
  business that is that if you're a business that's going to
• 51:21
  misinform the public, pay to misinform the public on things like climate change,
• 51:25
  pay to misinform the public and create programs like recycling, which
• 51:29
  is just basically big misinformation. I mean, Natasha, when you and
• 51:32
  I were in school, everybody went to school, you told recycling is the best
• 51:35
  way to go through things. We know that was fraud. So
• 51:39
  they're willing to do this to the public. And somehow,
• 51:44
  they're still getting away with it. And it's effective. They
• 51:48
  know it's effective, just so that they can make more money. And they don't care about
• 51:51
  the planet. So these regulations and these global
• 51:55
  plastic treaties need to be perfect. And maybe not
• 51:58
  perfect, but they need to be strict enough to stop these companies from getting
• 52:02
  away with murder, essentially. and that is literally yeah
• 52:05
  and that is that is the crux of it all and
• 52:09
  they are going to balk at it i mean just even at the
• 52:12
  the global plastic treaty meetings they've been sending in lobbyists to
• 52:16
  confuse the messaging to let people know like
• 52:20
  there's there was rumors that they hired uh minorities to
• 52:23
  talk about sort of the like why they they want plastics and
• 52:26
  they're not being heard properly and all this kind of stuff it's it's just
• 52:34
  I had the chance to go to, when
• 52:37
  there were the negotiations in Ottawa, I was able
• 52:40
  to go and I remember walking through the
• 52:44
  Ottawa airport with signs everywhere because clearly
• 52:47
  they knew that it was going to be full of delegates that were there for the plastics treaty. There
• 52:51
  were signs basically showing the
• 52:55
  comparison of with plastic and without. So they were their example, the
• 52:58
  favourite example for the plastics industry for food Is
• 53:02
  the cucumber what happens to a cucumber if it's not wrapped in plastic it's
• 53:05
  going to become much so that it's just essentially promoting
• 53:09
  plastic and you know why it's good and why we need
• 53:12
  it and they were just all these varied advertisements throughout the
• 53:16
  airport. I was like, you guys are really trying hard on
• 53:20
  this. And again, similarly, throughout
• 53:24
  the discussions, I mean, I wasn't myself in the room
• 53:27
  for the treaty negotiations, but there were a whole bunch
• 53:30
  of side events that were happening. And it was so interesting,
• 53:34
  again, to see who wasn't in the room and why not.
• 53:38
  And of course, you have a lot of small NGOs like ourselves or a lot of
• 53:41
  folks who came across who were the the waste pickers from,
• 53:45
  you know, Southeast Asia who again weren't able
• 53:48
  to be in the room, but they're the ones who are dealing with this problem head
• 53:52
  on in their communities. But of course, sure, let's have the
• 53:56
  lobbyists for Shell or whoever, in the room at
• 53:59
  the treaty negotiations, who again are sharing facts
• 54:03
  and even seeing receptions sponsored by
• 54:07
  the PET industry at the Plastics Treaty. So
• 54:10
  it was very interesting. I
• 54:14
  did not have the chance to go to Busan, but I would have loved to have gone just
• 54:22
  Well, I mean, that's the thing, right? I
• 54:25
  think people don't realize when we start to
• 54:28
  put treaties like these together, even like the Paris Accord,
• 54:32
  the Convention of Biological Diversity, the Global
• 54:36
  Plastic Treaty, when there are when
• 54:41
  there are players in there that stand to make a ton of money, they
• 54:44
  are going to do whatever possible to make sure that those treaties
• 54:49
  are bogus and to make sure that nothing happens with those treaties.
• 54:52
  And then what ends up eventually happening is
• 54:56
  people are like, well, nobody's following these treaties anyway, so why are we bothering?
• 54:59
  And that's the messaging that gets perpetuated on social media. And
• 55:03
  a lot of the times when you go back to the original source, It's
• 55:07
  like from a PR firm that's hired by an oil and gas company or
• 55:11
  by the Fraser Institute or by all this kind of stuff. It's
• 55:15
  ridiculous. It's frustrating as hell for you, for me, for a lot of people
• 55:18
  who are trying to do better and make sure. I'm not trying
• 55:21
  to stop people from making money. I think what we're all trying
• 55:25
  to do is to make sure that we are all safe, that the environment is
• 55:28
  safe, and that we are not disturbing the environment further than what
• 55:31
  we are doing right now. We are trying to reduce that impact. And
• 55:34
  I think something that's been really interesting too is realizing that
• 55:38
  the fossil fuel industry has a heavy, a heavy
• 55:42
  stake in making plastics because it's a petroleum product. That's
• 55:46
  kind of interesting. Do you have any comment on that? Were you surprised when you heard that?
• 55:49
  I think it was like 30% or 33% of the financial
• 55:53
  gains from oil and gas were from plastics,
• 55:57
  them making plastics. Were you surprised at that? Yeah, let's start with that.
• 56:04
  Not really, no I wasn't surprised because again you have to think
• 56:08
  it comes from the ground, it comes from oil. Of course they're
• 56:11
  going to be making a ton of money on it and again of course they're
• 56:15
  going to be incredibly resistant and it makes a lot of sense when
• 56:18
  you look at again what's being subsidized by our government. So
• 56:23
  it's interesting to see that Again,
• 56:26
  the challenges we're having as a federal government regulating plastics
• 56:30
  when we've seen it, I'm sure it wasn't easily done, but
• 56:34
  it seems to be at least better received in
• 56:37
  places like the UK, where there's already really
• 56:40
  progressive policy in terms of we're
• 56:44
  seeing produce being put out without packaging and
• 56:47
  they have very strict targets that they're looking to move towards. And
• 56:51
  here in Canada, Again, even banning those
• 56:54
  items, I mean, I'm happy to see it, but I'm still critical of it because at the same
• 56:57
  time, it's again, you see these
• 57:01
  plastics being banned, but then compostables or
• 57:05
  non-conventional plastics are a part of it, but not for everything.
• 57:09
  we can still have non-conventional plastics for food containers, even
• 57:13
  though there is no viable end of life for those
• 57:17
  compostable or non-conventional plastics. But in
• 57:20
  certain applications, it's okay. So, I mean, I think,
• 57:24
  again, you know, it's very interesting to see that there
• 57:28
  are quite obviously subsidies to the fossil fuels industry
• 57:32
  from our federal government, yet we're still trying to
• 57:35
  regulate the materials here as a country. I
• 57:38
  think there's more work to be done. I don't know that bans are
• 57:41
  really and truly going to do it. Because again, as you've mentioned, you
• 57:45
  have people just being frustrated by
• 57:49
  the lack of convenience in their day-to-day life. And really, that puts
• 57:53
  a lot of onus on the consumer to change their behaviors. Which,
• 57:58
  sure, I think consumers do need to change their behaviors to an extent so
• 58:02
  that this is just the norm. When
• 58:05
  you go out, it's just the norm. Why do we need to
• 58:09
  have a plastic bag for three items and get another plastic bag? That's
• 58:13
  the bare minimum. But really, that ban,
• 58:17
  again, happy to see some movement, but why aren't we putting
• 58:20
  more focus on the corporations? Because that's
• 58:24
  where I think a lot of people are starting to get frustrated by all
• 58:27
  of this is, you know, again, I've seen the memes on social media where
• 58:30
  it's like me stepping out of a soggy paper straw, while
• 58:34
  Taylor Swift takes a jet across the country to watch the
• 58:38
  Chiefs play a game, you know what I mean? So, again, no shade,
• 58:41
  Swifties, don't come for me. But it's, again, just
• 58:44
  that criticism. It's fair criticism. It is, and it's like, why am
• 58:48
  I so inconvenienced from my regular day-to-day routine when I
• 58:51
  just want to enjoy my Starbucks in a paper plastic soup
• 58:55
  cup? Why am I being held accountable and why is my
• 58:58
  life changing when, again, these
• 59:01
  corporations where, again, we have Coke who can just eliminate their
• 59:04
  reusables targets, no problem, no one bats an eye. And again,
• 59:08
  they're going to continue to be the world's top polluter and no
• 59:12
  one cares. McDonald's will fund studies that have no real
• 59:17
  scientific data or sources in it at all saying that reuse
• 59:20
  isn't a solution, right? So it's, again,
• 59:24
  I think people just want to see the corporations held accountable
• 59:29
  Yeah. And even lead, you know, lead in these types of
• 59:32
  things and these types of movements. I think that would be great
• 59:35
  to see, you know, and that comes with leaders that come from
• 59:39
  the top. And I think it should be less about only
• 59:42
  making money and more about making money, but also
• 59:46
  having an impact. That's why I love the B Corps, you know, that comes out
• 59:49
  with that type in the for in the sort of the social enterprises where
• 59:53
  it's like impact and money like hey Nobody's stopping you from making money,
• 59:58
  You know, I think exactly they can coexist Exactly
• 1:00:04
  I want to just talk. I know I know we've been talking for a while We've been kind of all
• 1:00:07
  over the place, but and I love these conversations but what I wanted to
• 1:00:10
  talk about are some of your programs, you know, you have
• 1:00:14
  a huge task ahead of you in Mind Your Plastic. Obviously,
• 1:00:18
  you can't do it on your own and you have a
• 1:00:22
  small staff for the amount of work that you're able to accomplish. So,
• 1:00:29
  Sure, yeah. And you're right, we are a very small team. It's really
• 1:00:33
  myself and we have two other full-time staff. And otherwise,
• 1:00:37
  our staff is really just dependent on when we have staffing grants. As
• 1:00:41
  many grassroots organizations, I'm sure that's no secret to them. And then, obviously,
• 1:00:45
  an incredible team of volunteers who are helping us
• 1:00:49
  get a lot of this work accomplished. anyone from volunteers
• 1:00:53
  who help us with SEO, to posting on social media,
• 1:00:57
  to helping us tackle how
• 1:01:00
  to implement reuse in stadiums. So there's a really, really
• 1:01:04
  broad amount of work that's covered by our team.
• 1:01:08
  In terms of our programming, as I mentioned earlier, our
• 1:01:11
  main focus is our municipal policy change, how we can help
• 1:01:15
  businesses transition away from, again,
• 1:01:18
  these single use or disposable items towards stronger, you
• 1:01:22
  know, circular solutions such as, you know, reuse and
• 1:01:26
  introduction first and foremost, as well as doing our
• 1:01:30
  direct action and education programming. So that generally looks
• 1:01:33
  like our, you know, being out in the community, you
• 1:01:36
  know, as you mentioned, doing cleanups and engaging and
• 1:01:39
  educating. but also our education program that's
• 1:01:43
  in schools across Canada called the Circular Economy Ambassador Program. I
• 1:01:47
  think when you and I would have talked the last time, it might have been right after
• 1:01:50
  the first year or something, when we had 450 participants
• 1:01:55
  in four provinces. And in the second and
• 1:01:58
  third year, seeing those numbers grow into the two
• 1:02:02
  and three thousands. And then this year we're sitting at almost 4,000 participants,
• 1:02:06
  which has been so amazing to see and you know our
• 1:02:09
  goal as well as always to have it not only you know
• 1:02:14
  in certain spots in Canada we want to have it in all true areas of
• 1:02:18
  all provinces because not only is this program teaching
• 1:02:22
  students about plastic pollution Um, but part of their curriculum
• 1:02:25
  is to go out and do a cleanup. Um, and
• 1:02:29
  you know, again, kind of like my story is, you know, you're
• 1:02:33
  going to clean stuff up. You're not going to pick up thousands and thousands of pounds of
• 1:02:36
  stuff, but what you are going to learn is what is prevalent in
• 1:02:39
  your community. And most of the time, these students are picking up their own
• 1:02:43
  garbage. So again, they have that connection to
• 1:02:46
  it and be like, Oh, you know, and maybe, maybe I
• 1:02:50
  should try something different at home or. advocate for maybe a
• 1:02:53
  different snack or whatever it might be. But then they're also,
• 1:02:56
  you know, we give them those tools and materials to
• 1:03:00
  look at what they're finding. And, you know, say
• 1:03:03
  that, you know, they're in Halifax, we give them the waste management rules
• 1:03:08
  here by the city of what they should do with what they find and where it should
• 1:03:11
  be diverted to. most of the time, 9 chances
• 1:03:15
  out of 10, they're going to learn that what they're finding is actually, there is
• 1:03:19
  no end of life for it. It's just garbage. But
• 1:03:23
  that therein emphasizes the importance of, well, looking
• 1:03:27
  at what you found and what are the alternatives? Are there alternatives? And
• 1:03:32
  if there aren't, well, how do we make sure that there are alternatives? So this
• 1:03:36
  program is really a caveat for
• 1:03:39
  it, or sorry, not a caveat, but a conduit for them to really
• 1:03:44
  have that critical thinking about what they're using. And to your point, you
• 1:03:47
  know, when you have, you know, your kids who
• 1:03:51
  are like thinking, oh my, what does this one Starbucks cup mean? I don't even think
• 1:03:54
  about it being pollution. But when you start to pick up those items
• 1:03:58
  and you're seeing it, you start to think about it as pollution at that point when
• 1:04:01
  you make that connection. So that program's been
• 1:04:05
  really amazing to see grow. And what we started doing since you
• 1:04:08
  and I started, or since you and I spoke last was, a
• 1:04:11
  pre and post survey for the students. So essentially,
• 1:04:15
  what do they know going into the program? What do they know
• 1:04:19
  about plastic pollution, about the impacts? What is a circular economy? What
• 1:04:23
  are their behavioral instincts when it comes to if
• 1:04:26
  they do care about reducing and what does that look like for them? And
• 1:04:30
  then we survey them at the end of the program basically the
• 1:04:33
  same questions to really see, have they learned anything?
• 1:04:37
  And what's been really interesting to see, we're still compiling the
• 1:04:40
  results from this past year, but in the
• 1:04:43
  third year of the program, or sorry, the second year,
• 1:04:48
  what we saw was that at the beginning, so many students put
• 1:04:51
  recycling as their main way
• 1:04:55
  to solve the plastic pollution crisis. At the end of the
• 1:04:58
  program, we actually saw that significantly decrease
• 1:05:02
  and see varied increases in
• 1:05:06
  other areas. So for example, we saw more students say reuse
• 1:05:09
  is important or we need to reduce, we need to find alternatives. So
• 1:05:14
  that was exactly what we want to see because again, we
• 1:05:17
  know that recycling isn't the only way to solve the problem. So
• 1:05:22
  seeing that program grow has been really, really fulfilling and rewarding. especially
• 1:05:26
  again, seeing the distribution across Canada and
• 1:05:30
  seeing, you know, really pick up in places like the prairies where previously
• 1:05:34
  we hadn't had a footprint there. So seeing the support from
• 1:05:37
  those communities has been really, really great. And again,
• 1:05:41
  hopefully what we do with that data that we're collecting from all these students
• 1:05:45
  and all these schools, is we're then able to go
• 1:05:48
  to the communities themselves and identify what's
• 1:05:52
  happening in their communities. Even I've gone to my counselors here in Halifax saying
• 1:05:56
  40% of what my students picked up here is takeaway
• 1:06:00
  food packaging. What are we gonna do about that? And
• 1:06:04
  again, that's where Mind Your Plastic can also come in with our, again,
• 1:06:08
  municipal policy support, as well as helping
• 1:06:11
  businesses find those true alternatives so that they're not just Again,
• 1:06:15
  it's doing that one for one swap of plastic straws for paper or
• 1:06:19
  plastic packaging to compostable packaging that it seems to be so
• 1:06:25
  Yeah, and it seems here like you have, I guess, a business part where
• 1:06:30
  it's like a plastic kit or a reduction plastic kit. Yeah. Can
• 1:06:36
  Yeah. So for our business side of things,
• 1:06:39
  we have a program called the Plastic Awareness and
• 1:06:42
  Reduction Toolkits. So those are on our website and they are absolutely
• 1:06:46
  free to download. What we've created are
• 1:06:50
  four different toolkits that help walk various
• 1:06:54
  industries like manufacturing, retail, food
• 1:06:58
  services, office and admin. It just, it
• 1:07:01
  serves as like a basic guide to how
• 1:07:04
  to eliminate plastic in your business. And it goes through
• 1:07:08
  the like, you know, what are the best things that you could be doing
• 1:07:11
  if you really want to, you know, if you have the resources and you're keen to
• 1:07:15
  go through and get rid of all these plastics in your
• 1:07:18
  workplace. If you don't have those resources or if you're not quite there yet,
• 1:07:21
  what are some of the great things that you could be doing? And then
• 1:07:25
  if you're still not able to do that, where can you start and
• 1:07:28
  start to build up? So these are, again,
• 1:07:32
  they're meant to be quite general in nature, but at least as a starting point.
• 1:07:36
  And this was really born out of, you know, again, recognizing
• 1:07:40
  that a lot of the businesses that I spoke to around my community There
• 1:07:45
  was some great work happening to, this was before
• 1:07:48
  the ban, to eliminate single-use plastics, more
• 1:07:52
  so from food services and small cafes and whatnot. And
• 1:07:56
  speaking with them, what a lot of them did,
• 1:07:59
  they didn't implement reuse. They didn't allow people to
• 1:08:03
  bring their own cups or anything like that. What they did do is they
• 1:08:07
  swapped for compostables, they swapped for different materials,
• 1:08:11
  but it was still disposable. And the unfortunate part with
• 1:08:14
  that is we know small businesses are not, they
• 1:08:17
  don't have great margins usually. Usually they tend to be more passion
• 1:08:21
  projects, they're not getting rich for the most part. So what is equally disappointing
• 1:08:29
  is when there's folks who want to do the right thing, And
• 1:08:34
  they're trying, but the unfortunate thing is a lot of these alternatives are
• 1:08:38
  expensive. They're 30% more. So
• 1:08:42
  when you switch to compostables, it's more money. And it's
• 1:08:47
  actually worse for the environment because there is no true end of life for these compostable
• 1:08:51
  materials. There does not exist a municipality in
• 1:08:54
  Canada that can break down these compostable items.
• 1:08:58
  It doesn't exist. So these toolkits are
• 1:09:02
  really just designed to give that
• 1:09:05
  basic knowledge to folks who are interested. And
• 1:09:08
  then what we're able to do then is if there needs to be more customization.
• 1:09:13
  So for example, we're working with a, it's
• 1:09:16
  an international transportation and logistics company, and we're working with
• 1:09:20
  their Canadian division, cause they've been mandated get
• 1:09:23
  rid of single-use plastics in our operations. Take an assessment, look
• 1:09:27
  at it all, and get rid of it." And they're looking at
• 1:09:32
  It's not easy. What do we do? Yeah. It's not easy. So that's where we
• 1:09:35
  come in to help them do those assessments, look at what's, again,
• 1:09:39
  what's reasonable. What are those low-hanging fruit that you can
• 1:09:42
  at least pull back and eliminate off the hop with very
• 1:09:46
  minimal you know, barriers to success. And
• 1:09:49
  then what are those maybe a little bit more complicated ones that might involve, you
• 1:09:52
  know, getting your suppliers on board? You know, I
• 1:09:55
  think of an example of a business that I've spoken to, that
• 1:09:59
  all their items were coming individually, they were clothing, they were individually wrapped,
• 1:10:03
  each article of clothing was wrapped, even like every
• 1:10:07
  and This is very common. Every piece of
• 1:10:10
  underwear, every pair of socks, it's all individually
• 1:10:14
  wrapped. So again, looking at your supplier and saying, does
• 1:10:18
  it all need to be individually wrapped? Maybe if we need to bulk
• 1:10:22
  wrap some of it, if it's not completely reasonable to get rid of every single
• 1:10:25
  plastic bag, or even you think of stuffed animals, usually they're
• 1:10:29
  they have plastic beads inside of them, nurdles is what they're called.
• 1:10:33
  So instead of those, is there something else we can be using? So looking at what
• 1:10:37
  are the you
• 1:10:40
  know, not only the better things for the environment, but also that
• 1:10:43
  are still sustainable from a financial standpoint,
• 1:10:47
  and that can also recognize cost recovery options.
• 1:10:50
  So that's a bit about our toolkits. And again, there's
• 1:10:54
  those four industries that we chose to focus on
• 1:10:57
  because, you know, given our alignment with the Canada Plastics Pact
• 1:11:01
  and the Circular Economy Leadership Council of
• 1:11:04
  Canada. Those were the four that we had folks
• 1:11:08
  in those industries look through, vet, and we
• 1:11:12
  felt we had the best alignment there. But of
• 1:11:15
  course, there's opportunities to reduce plastic in literally
• 1:11:19
  any industry. So we're always happy to chat reduction measures.
• 1:11:23
  You can always reach out if that's ever something that folks listening want some
• 1:11:27
  Well, and I think it's so interesting because you gain so
• 1:11:31
  much experience working with these companies to find it. Because a lot
• 1:11:34
  of the times, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, of course, you're
• 1:11:38
  probably looking for first-time things. If an entire
• 1:11:41
  transportation company is trying to get rid of single use, That's
• 1:11:46
  a challenge in every aspect of the way because it's not as
• 1:11:50
  if that is like those differences or those
• 1:11:53
  changes are abundant in every company because we've just
• 1:11:57
  been doing probably the cheapest way, which is
• 1:12:00
  just disposing of everything. And so I think that the experience that
• 1:12:03
  you're gaining from these four, the retail, food service, manufacturing
• 1:12:07
  and office administration, you're probably gaining so much more experience each
• 1:12:11
  and every time you work with an organization or a company to say, let's
• 1:12:16
  help you out here. And I love how the fact that you're able to do that.
• 1:12:20
  I think that's great. That's a great partner program. I
• 1:12:23
  think that's wonderful. You have one more program on your website that
• 1:12:27
  talks about the plastic free events when you work with municipalities.
• 1:12:31
  So a little bit of a larger scale. So you've got like the classroom scale,
• 1:12:34
  you've got the business scale. Now you're working with
• 1:12:38
  municipalities to do plastic free events. How difficult is
• 1:12:46
  to get the municipalities to be on board with it, it is
• 1:12:49
  a bit challenging. And it becomes a little more challenging depending on
• 1:12:52
  where you are. So for example, here in Halifax, it
• 1:12:56
  is a bit more challenging because we don't have reused serviceware providers that
• 1:13:00
  would support at events. Because if you think of when you go to an event, whether
• 1:13:05
  it's your community backyard barbecue all the
• 1:13:08
  way up to a Taylor Swift concert taking over a
• 1:13:11
  city for a week, You know, you look
• 1:13:15
  at those venues and what they all have in common is they use disposables. There
• 1:13:20
  is a way around it, but it's not the easiest way around it.
• 1:13:24
  So our Plastic Free Events Policy Program was really born out
• 1:13:28
  of recognizing that, you know, as a small organization, as
• 1:13:31
  I mentioned, we're three full-time staff. You
• 1:13:35
  know, so to advocate and to, you know, look at federal
• 1:13:38
  level policy changes is outside of scope in
• 1:13:42
  terms of the capacity that we have as an organization. But also, you
• 1:13:45
  know, we feel really strongly that a lot of this change that is happening in
• 1:13:49
  Canada, it starts at a municipal level first. And again, I
• 1:13:52
  can think of Halifax. We banned plastic bags like
• 1:13:56
  15 years ago, if not more. So a lot
• 1:14:00
  of this change happens from a municipal level, moves
• 1:14:03
  up to provincial, and then eventually might get
• 1:14:06
  adopted by the feds. And again, the federal plastic ban, a
• 1:14:09
  lot of those items that are included in that ban have already been banned
• 1:14:13
  by many municipalities already, and even some provinces. You
• 1:14:17
  know, we really feel that advocating on a municipal level is accessible for us
• 1:14:21
  as an organization and is really where we see the change starting to
• 1:14:24
  happen anyways, because, again, you have
• 1:14:27
  passionate people who are empowered to
• 1:14:30
  create change in their communities. What we did notice is,
• 1:14:34
  again, I've talked about how bans can
• 1:14:37
  work, but they can also be very alienating. Again, think
• 1:14:41
  of the plastic straws that people are smuggling across the border, even
• 1:14:44
  though they can totally still buy them here, but whatever. People
• 1:14:48
  get upset when you try and change the behaviors. So what
• 1:14:52
  we look at is, you know, We see plastic free
• 1:14:55
  events happening in certain places in the US, we see
• 1:14:58
  them happening in the UK, and we feel it's a
• 1:15:02
  really low-hanging fruit way to introduce
• 1:15:05
  people to what's possible in terms of reuse and
• 1:15:09
  reduction. So again, I even think of one
• 1:15:12
  of our partners, ShareWares, which is a reusable cup or
• 1:15:17
  food serviceware provider. that's working with places like
• 1:15:20
  Tim Hortons in Vancouver as well as your other local coffee
• 1:15:23
  shop so that when you go and you don't remember to bring your own reusable
• 1:15:27
  mug or maybe you're a tourist and you're on the go, you don't want
• 1:15:30
  to carry around a reusable mug with you. Fair enough, I get
• 1:15:33
  it. But what you can do is you can get a reusable cup,
• 1:15:37
  pay a deposit, return it somewhere else in the city
• 1:15:41
  and get your deposit back or donate it to a charity like
• 1:15:44
  Mind Your Plastic. So what's been really cool to
• 1:15:47
  see is organizations like ShareWares have
• 1:15:50
  even been able to go into places like BC Place for
• 1:15:54
  the Taylor Swift concert so that instead of cracking a beer and pouring
• 1:15:57
  it into a single-use plastic cup, it's being put into
• 1:16:01
  a reusable cup that is now then going to get sanitized and reused and
• 1:16:04
  put back into circulation. So when you look at plastic free
• 1:16:07
  events, that's kind of what we're looking at is how do you
• 1:16:10
  influence that on large scale events, or even again, when we're
• 1:16:15
  working with the city of Nanaimo, for example, on
• 1:16:19
  how when they have just a community event, you have a rib fest or
• 1:16:23
  whatever it might be, something as simple as Having
• 1:16:27
  water refill stations instead of $6 bottles
• 1:16:31
  of water that no one wants to buy. Let's be honest. But
• 1:16:34
  then even how do you identify cost recovery savings
• 1:16:38
  for your vendors? So again, maybe they have to
• 1:16:41
  pay to use this service or to have their event
• 1:16:45
  permit. But there's a cost recovery because
• 1:16:48
  they're not having to pay to use all of their disposable forks,
• 1:16:53
  knives, ketchup sachets, things like that, because
• 1:16:57
  as part of the event, they're having reuse services there.
• 1:17:00
  So there's so many different applications for how this
• 1:17:04
  could work. And depending on the size of the municipality and what
• 1:17:07
  they have available to them, But really,
• 1:17:11
  it just comes down to, you know, what are the changes that work
• 1:17:14
  best for your community? And where Mind Your Plastic really comes into
• 1:17:17
  this is, we know municipalities, you know,
• 1:17:21
  they don't tend to have tons of money that they can just throw around and
• 1:17:25
  everything. And the way we look at it is we have all this information, we
• 1:17:28
  have all the policies. why recreate the wheel with municipal
• 1:17:33
  staff when we already have everything and we can help
• 1:17:36
  Cost saving and time saving is beautiful for
• 1:17:43
  That's a huge thing. Well, this has been amazing, Natasha. You
• 1:17:47
  guys have done such a great job at moving this
• 1:17:51
  movement forward, really, of getting rid
• 1:17:54
  of plastic and really working with the people
• 1:17:58
  who need to get rid of plastic, you know, at all the different levels. And we really
• 1:18:01
  appreciate the work that Mind Your Plastic is doing and that your staff and
• 1:18:04
  you are continuing to do and relentlessly working
• 1:18:08
  at You know, really changing behaviors is really what it
• 1:18:11
  comes down to and working with that resistance that
• 1:18:15
  you get with all of that. But I think it's
• 1:18:18
  great that you do it. I love the work that you're doing and I'm looking forward to
• 1:18:21
  having you back on to talk about more of the programs and the successes that you've
• 1:18:26
  Amazing. Happy to come back anytime. I'm sure there's going to be lots to
• 1:18:31
  Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. This is not going away. We definitely know that.
• 1:18:36
  That's for sure. I'm looking forward to being able to talk to you about it.
• 1:18:39
  Thank you so much. Well, we won't wait two years for the next interview, that's
• 1:18:47
  Thank you, Natasha, for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean
• 1:18:50
  podcast. I told you it was a great conversation about plastic. It
• 1:18:53
  was a lot of fun to be able to go back and forth on what's happening
• 1:18:57
  with the way we're dealing with plastic, not only around the world, but
• 1:19:00
  here in Canada, in my home country, to say, hey, you know what? We have
• 1:19:03
  some interesting policies that are banning single-use plastics,
• 1:19:07
  are saying that plastics are toxic to people. and that we need
• 1:19:11
  to build on that, putting a registry together of plastics and
• 1:19:14
  tracing where plastics go throughout its supply chain
• 1:19:18
  and its life. And I think there's a lot of good things that are happening, but
• 1:19:21
  it's meeting a lot of resistance that could really derail the
• 1:19:25
  movement in trying to reduce the amount of plastics that we use
• 1:19:29
  as a country. It just goes to show you that this is not an easy
• 1:19:33
  fix. This is something that's going to take some time. There's a lot of complexities to
• 1:19:36
  this. People are making a lot of money off of plastics, and they do not want to
• 1:19:39
  give that up. So we're going to hear all about that in
• 1:19:43
  the future. And a great example of that is the challenges that
• 1:19:47
  the global treaty negotiators have faced in trying to
• 1:19:50
  get, and advocates have faced in trying to get a global treaty
• 1:19:54
  agreed upon that actually has teeth to it. Now, there's
• 1:19:58
  an extra meeting, a sixth meeting that's going to be planned, because the
• 1:20:01
  fifth meeting, what was supposed to be the final meeting in South Korea, just
• 1:20:04
  really, the major news that's coming out of there is basically, a
• 1:20:08
  lot of countries want voluntary targets, and voluntary targets do
• 1:20:12
  not work. That's not the teeth that we're talking about here.
• 1:20:15
  So very difficult to get not only negotiated treaty
• 1:20:19
  that has teeth, but also to get something that people
• 1:20:23
  will ratify. It's not an easy thing. So we're
• 1:20:26
  gonna talk about that in the future, but I'm glad Natasha was here to talk a lot about
• 1:20:30
  plastics in general here in Canada. I hope you enjoyed the
• 1:20:33
  conversation. I'll link to all of her social media so you can get
• 1:20:37
  access to Mind Your Plastic. and get to know them a little bit more. I highly recommend that
• 1:20:40
  you do as well as Natasha. And then if you want to get a hold of
• 1:20:44
  me and you have any questions or comments on this episode or any other episode here
• 1:20:47
  on the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, you can do so by going to Instagram, DMing
• 1:20:51
  me at howtoprotecttheocean. That's all one word. I know it's
• 1:20:54
  long, but at howtoprotecttheocean spelled out right in front of you. And
• 1:20:57
  you can also just come in and say hello or
• 1:21:01
  leave a comment on our YouTube channel, Spotify channel, as
• 1:21:04
  well as all our other podcasts that we're on, on audio, on
• 1:21:07
  Apple, on Overcast, whatever your favorite podcast app is,
• 1:21:11
  you can follow, subscribe there. I want to thank you for joining me on today's
• 1:21:14
  episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have