True Patriot Love - Wood vs Plastic… But Salt Is Worse

00:00:00.000 okay paul this one's got you uh in a tizzy and now i think i understand why uh first today we're

00:00:11.240 going to talk about uh plastic forks uh and then we're actually going to transition a little bit

00:00:16.780 later on into another topic that uh could be even more serious and we're just kind of ignoring it

00:00:22.560 but i did want to address this because the new laws come into place and we are moving from

00:00:27.160 plastic forks to wooden forks well so it's interesting so uh there was a the government

00:00:33.020 came out the liberal government came out and said single-use plastics restricted you can't use them

00:00:39.020 anymore and we went to wood then the uh coalition for uh plastics the responsible plastics use

00:00:48.740 coalition came out and sued the government right and they won so you remember you remember that period

00:00:55.220 where we all were like converting i know i was as converting tall wooden utensils for takeout

00:01:00.400 yeah so and people hated it they hated that please tell me this also included the banning of

00:01:06.180 paper straws which i detest well so paper straws came plastic stars went paper straws came then all

00:01:12.700 of a sudden they won their lawsuit the liberal government appealed and now they've won on

00:01:18.760 appeal last few days they've won their appeal yeah so now we're back to being restricted so we're all

00:01:25.660 going back to wood again and paper straws and quite frankly in the worst time ever in the middle of the

00:01:33.180 winter so if you're a restaurant you're a takeout place you're actually converting back now you're going

00:01:39.320 to be required to you're going to convert back you're going to get out of that people don't like to use

00:01:43.860 so they're not going to come to your place as much and also on the news that 4 000 the restaurant

00:01:49.300 association of canada came out and said 4 000 restaurants takeout places are going to close

00:01:54.440 this upcoming year in 2026 so all those things coming out and so you know what i saw it and i'm

00:02:00.040 thinking okay right is this kind of virtue signaling or is this real i might you know my investigative

00:02:07.240 mind can turn on and so i i started taking a look so i took a look at the responsible plastics

00:02:13.320 use coalition which is mostly plastic guys right everyone knows we're not gonna there's some big

00:02:19.000 players in that group and of course they're trying to protect their livelihood they're trying to protect

00:02:23.660 their businesses so they come out and they make a bunch of statements and the statements are

00:02:27.800 uh you know they're not toxic so and there's no scientific proof that these single-use plastics are toxic

00:02:38.920 yeah and so you know i'm thinking myself i i just moved into a new neighborhood you know and that

00:02:44.300 new neighborhood has a ton of dog walkers and the nice old little old ladies you know i'm building a

00:02:49.120 skating rink so i'd see these little ladies all day long as i'm moving around my neighborhood and

00:02:54.200 they're walking along with their little fluffy and everything else and i'm thinking is this just a

00:02:58.380 bunch of little ladies who don't want a fork to get in their dog's paw and or is this real or is what

00:03:03.740 you know what is well they need to think it through because the wooden forks not only do they have the

00:03:07.920 same possibility to stab your dog but they could leave a splinter behind well yeah well and i think

00:03:13.540 there'll be less of them because people won't eat with wooden forks so takeout will go down

00:03:17.080 they probably won't drop them as much but i think they think that those will mysteriously disappear

00:03:22.020 so so then i got on and i talked to you about it and i said well is it true because and and it's funny

00:03:28.240 because right away the guys in the back are like paul you know they're finding plastic in people's

00:03:33.800 brains and they're finding plastic in people's bones and they're finding plastic everywhere and i'm

00:03:37.840 like they are okay i guess i don't i hear about it i don't know you know i'm not a scientist i'm not a

00:03:45.140 a researcher a medical researcher so if you say so well you know our government did a a series of

00:03:51.320 papers on this and okay uh you know i'll take you through it uh to some degree but in essence

00:03:58.300 they actually didn't make health risk to humans uh a for sure thing there was no guarantee that any

00:04:09.140 research so in other words there is no quantifiable research that the canadian government has done

00:04:14.500 uh that says there's a health risk to it uh associations seen in animal or high exposure

00:04:20.240 human studies don't prove uh causation in everyday life for humans it's just oh we don't have that same

00:04:26.960 interaction and i want to back you up just a little bit because as i started reading about this

00:04:31.120 it kind of bothered me that we are um we're following this from a virtual signaling standpoint

00:04:38.300 now i'll just say this statement we're not switching to wooden forks because of proven direct

00:04:43.820 dangers to human health we're switching because of environmental damage waste management failures

00:04:49.880 and precaution not because science has shown plastic forks are poisoning people okay so

00:04:56.360 we're taking the we're making the assumption that it is possible because it can happen to animals

00:05:01.320 that it will happen to humans okay okay so here's here's some points in favor what you're saying

00:05:07.780 uh they're massive massive pollution problem right yeah but they're not a human health crisis

00:05:14.460 so nice or it's a nice and and a processing and i'll and i'll get to that uh you know trying to

00:05:20.820 reduce plastic waste in nature okay that i respect if that's what we're doing we want to keep the place

00:05:26.100 nice that's great uh they're expensive to manage as waste that's the number one problem here

00:05:32.660 municipalities spend huge amounts of money on landfills uh stormwater filtration all these things

00:05:39.100 where a fork might be part of the danger utensil um most recycling by the way of plastic cutlery just

00:05:48.400 basically doesn't happen and here's why plastic forks are too small they're contaminated with food

00:05:53.300 and they're made of mixed resins that sorting facilities don't want oh so okay they almost end

00:05:59.920 up in the landfill anyway uh fourth so there's no recyclability there's no recyclability to the to

00:06:05.700 the forks and i think that's one so if you think about it it's that they can't be recycled okay so

00:06:12.440 now now we do understand all of that stuff having said that there's some ways around it uh this is a

00:06:18.780 precautionary policy really it's not evidence based on on human harm but that's what we keep hearing and

00:06:25.260 so i'll say this to you symbolism and politics are what's going on here a wooden fork is visible proof

00:06:30.620 that our government's doing something for the environment and for human health even though we haven't

00:06:34.640 necessarily determined that it does have an effect on human health but here's a trade-off that nobody

00:06:40.060 really says paul wooden forks are not automatically better for the planet they record we got a log we

00:06:45.760 gotta we've got to take down trees to do it we've got to process them transport them the energy used to

00:06:50.720 make them the water used to to make them and the industrial treatment uh in some cases with the

00:06:56.300 chemicals will make those forks as useless as a plastic fork by the time we're done with it so their total

00:07:03.520 environmental footprint can be similar to plastic basically so in my mind this is less about human

00:07:08.660 health human health right and more about saying we're doing something for the environment we're

00:07:15.060 not doing plastics anymore and but the reality is the reasons that they're giving us are a little

00:07:21.040 more fear-mongering i think than reality that's my own opinion i look forward to hearing you're

00:07:25.940 screaming and yelling about that wood versus plastic are we being misled i'm curious okay so a couple

00:07:31.500 things right and for those of you this is a first-hand experience so at one point in my life as a

00:07:40.060 young man i was a sanitation engineer okay all right garbage man right it's a very fancy name great job

00:07:46.460 for a couple summers and i did sure yeah so while driving the truck i had multiple routes and quite

00:07:52.780 frankly wednesdays i used to use the recycle i used to be on the recycle crew those days recycle was only on

00:08:00.640 wednesdays my learning from that was that after one in the afternoon recycling was done and the rest of

00:08:10.100 our recycling pickup till five or six o'clock at night went to the dump that still exists so for those of

00:08:16.980 you who think all your recycling for all your blue bins and everything you're putting in it are actually

00:08:21.540 going somewhere and being sorted and recycled i have bad news for you that's not happening

00:08:26.820 right i think a very uh more than half of it goes into a landfill regardless of whether we do it or

00:08:34.060 not we don't have the recycling capabilities to get that into play and we haven't we had never caught

00:08:39.460 up to that unfortunately we we do a lot of recycling we do a lot of sorting it's all good stuff we just

00:08:45.860 haven't caught up to it yeah i and i think that that's not widely known by the way among the average

00:08:51.460 canadian that a certain amount of your your recycling does end up in landfill regardless

00:08:56.200 so if you're looking for something to champion so this is where kind of couple things if you're

00:09:02.560 looking for something to champion champion that we actually increase our recycling facilities and do

00:09:07.800 more and get it all recycled right right so that's something we don't put the cart before the horse on

00:09:12.620 this one exactly yeah the next thing is having lived in the u.s lived in canada right it's a very

00:09:17.880 interesting thing americans and cities do these cleanup days so what they do is they go along and

00:09:24.500 when the spring comes they actually get together they give everyone uh uh uh an x you know one of

00:09:31.000 the orange x vests they give them gloves they give them bags we used to do this in canada to our parks

00:09:36.120 and stuff i don't know where it went we did used to do that that was a big part of our uh of our

00:09:40.460 communities yeah yeah and guess what we did we went around and we picked up all the garbage in our

00:09:44.700 parks and on our off ramps and everything else and we cleaned them up as citizens and politicians

00:09:50.440 used to champion it counselors used to have cleanup day in their parks and stuff do you see that anymore

00:09:56.120 not often no not no it doesn't it barely no we leave it to our municipalities to do it as best they

00:10:01.940 can we figure we're paying for it let them do it yeah and we found out last year and this is just

00:10:07.040 this is i'm using this sorry city of toronto i'll use an example we found out that most of our parks

00:10:12.900 and rec workers who were supposed to clean those parks up and everything else were spending 77 percent

00:10:19.040 of their time at the tim hortons yeah when they looked at their trackers on their on their vehicles

00:10:23.760 now hopefully that's all changed but we can't depend on just those people to clean our parks and

00:10:30.360 everything so if you have a pet peeve with the plastics and everything else happening in the

00:10:34.460 community quite frankly you should organize a cleanup day i gotta be honest with you i i think that um

00:10:42.280 when we talk about using plastic cutlery i mean first of all will they stop selling plastic cutlery

00:10:49.060 for people's personal use at costco uh will all of that be eliminated is this only at the restaurant

00:10:55.500 level are we outlawing this overall because if you're still able to buy cutlery at costco that's

00:11:01.980 plastic for your picnic at home what is the point of doing this so i'd be curious to see how far this

00:11:07.360 extends it's supposed to extend that far or even to the dollar stores yeah and it had started remember

00:11:13.440 when they started this back before the law it actually just started and all the shelves were

00:11:18.460 kind of being whittled down and sold out as far as all this material is that what's going to happen

00:11:23.060 again this law still maintains that now here's the craziness of this without any canadian studies

00:11:29.040 without the government thing is there and without sort of more research into this from a canadian

00:11:36.000 perspective we are going to do that unless this responsible uh plastics use coalition

00:11:45.140 now takes this to the supreme court

00:11:48.500 so and and that's a lot of time effort money that has to take place i get it and uh by the way nobody

00:11:56.520 want neither of us want non-recyclable garbage i mean nobody wants that either but i think what

00:12:02.120 struck both of us was cutlery is a very small beginning to this and they're having a hard time

00:12:08.140 processing it already um you know how is this how is this suddenly a problem you know what i mean like

00:12:15.760 it just seemed a little bit like i think both of you and i felt this sounds like virtue signaling this

00:12:21.100 is virtue signaling so you want a bigger issue to talk about so let's chat about this for a minute

00:12:25.560 with you know the second part of this which i wanted to to talk with you about today let's talk

00:12:30.400 about salt oh my road salt road salt now okay let's so now for those of you i'm sorry you're not going

00:12:38.460 to be able to see it well you'll see it but you'll be usually too cold you're not outside or you've

00:12:43.020 decided not to walk your dog that day because it's too cold floppy yeah but salt we are at the point

00:12:50.540 where we're dropping about 137 pounds per person of salt on our roads you've got to be kidding me

00:12:56.660 no we're dropping equivalent to an average weighted person oh my god that's how crazy that's shocking

00:13:02.860 it is shocking and you know those of you understand growing up in canada the amount of salt we drop

00:13:07.680 your shoes your boots everything gets deteriorated eaten up and it's road salt so it's highly corrosive

00:13:13.960 right and and road salt uh goes into the the water and the runoff and becomes chloride ions right that's

00:13:22.480 the the beginning of it or the end of it and quite the beginning of it it's used to actually uh get

00:13:28.000 into the water molecules and allow water to uh go to a lower temperature it actually acts as a guard

00:13:34.960 before it freezes so it delays freezing of water to a lower temperature that's what they use road salt for

00:13:40.300 but road salt is heinous well so yeah and we have been using it for decades we have yeah you know

00:13:48.900 there's books written about how salt was the actually we use salt as our currency you know when

00:13:55.060 canada first was you know discovered and now we're still using salt it's it's low in cost i know we use it

00:14:03.660 for our winters but quite frankly the damage and the things that are starting to happen well we're seeing

00:14:09.420 like major infrastructures in uh in our major cities i mean calgary just had uh an incredible water main

00:14:19.260 uh implosion twice and that's right it's happened twice this winter already and they're saying now

00:14:25.660 that's because of the corrosion you raised another point yeah you take a look at the gardner uh depressway

00:14:30.120 in uh toronto well so let's talk you know we we on this show talk a lot about productivity of our

00:14:37.980 cities right so this and this is where you know i guess where we're going with you know single use

00:14:44.520 for salt is quite frankly we're the second last uh in productivity per capita in the developed world

00:14:51.640 we use salt that decays our roads that now allowed our gardner expressway to disintegrate to the point

00:15:00.200 where big slabs were dropping on people's heads and cars where we've spent years and years and years in

00:15:07.160 resurfacing this damn thing it's eroded from the underbelly up we keep doing it we cut half of it down and

00:15:14.520 forgot about it because the one half the eastern half yeah was so badly eroded that it was dangerous

00:15:21.640 right they actually just well those stopped it those those chemicals coming the combination of those

00:15:28.360 chemicals that were seeping on the spit at the end of the the gardener yeah and the salt was actually

00:15:34.120 eroding the whole structure so badly we had to chop it right and we never put it back because we couldn't

00:15:39.960 put it back it wasn't it wasn't salvageable we don't tell i'm sure no one talks about it much but

00:15:46.280 and by the way that was a major infrastructure uh infrastructure problem in toronto for traffic

00:15:51.480 i don't know if you remember how smooth that drive to the east off the gardener was but now it's if you

00:15:58.040 need to go beyond that you're off on lakeshore or you've got to take another route yeah the other thing

00:16:03.000 that uh i'm reading when it comes to road salt is the environmental damage now if you if you

00:16:09.880 think that a fork is going to do some damage to your body and to your surroundings not only is it

00:16:15.640 eating away at our roads and our septic and and sewage systems but it's actually destroying nature

00:16:24.360 oh yeah so the eco the ecosystem changes that's all it happens now i'm going to back up from it

00:16:29.480 before i go there but so you know i want people to just pay attention though because you we're talking

00:16:34.360 about the gardener we're talking about uh uh major infrastructure i want them to remember the basic

00:16:42.120 overpass in lavelle right uh the concord basically collapsing and killing five people that's right

00:16:49.160 right there's there's a structure that eroded uh uh elgo center mall in elliott lake okay two people

00:16:56.600 as as it eroded and collapsed like you go back to the states and you look at you know when biden you

00:17:03.000 know he might have had some challenges you know memory wise and everything else but he was super

00:17:08.520 challenged with the number of bridges that had wrote in the united states when he took over yeah

00:17:13.320 he had huge infrastructure issues due to salt and erosion and then you know you fast forward in a

00:17:19.560 terrible that condo in surfside florida where basically the pad was put on inappropriately by the

00:17:25.800 pool and the water eroded the whole underbelly and that was also that was all salt erosion under there

00:17:31.400 as well exactly so that is how bad this is like and i and people so then you go to the ecosystem so

00:17:38.200 fast forward and it's not just the ecosystem it's not fish it's not birds it's not just uh trees and

00:17:44.280 shrubs and everything else because is that salt is on the we're dropping 137 pounds per person on the

00:17:50.360 roads and everything else we're dropping it on it's it's melting it's running off into our grass and

00:17:57.000 uh in the rural communities it's going down into the septic systems it's going down into the rivers

00:18:02.920 and the water and race water and then you know our as it goes into our treatment plants and it goes into

00:18:08.840 our wells and everything else it has to be collected out we have to desalinate it we have to desalinate it

00:18:15.640 now and how successful we're desalinating is another thing but you figure that amount of salt is creating a

00:18:22.200 huge ecosystem structure so whether it goes into your fish and you're eating it whether it goes into

00:18:28.840 you know your birds and wildlife and and you know all your uh vegetables and shrubs it's making its

00:18:36.920 way into everything yeah right and that chloride level is so high now what does chloride do for the human

00:18:43.320 body oh it starts to break down organs exactly when we looked that up that was a frightening little

00:18:48.120 bit of business and it looks like it correlates a little bit and we don't know we can't neither of

00:18:52.760 us are doctors or scientists but we it's kind of interesting that there is this um increase in

00:19:02.280 maladies that are caused by this chemical yeah kidneys right kidney disease kidney disease you know

00:19:08.360 it's one of those ones that you look at it and you think to yourself kidney disease is up by a third

00:19:12.440 over a decade yeah yeah one in ten people have some form of kidney disease now it's it's it's very it's

00:19:19.720 sort of an interesting comparison if you will right because we're talking about plastics that we don't

00:19:24.920 have necessarily i listen i'm hoping that plastics are not killing us all but we don't really have human

00:19:32.680 as it even says in the government document and i actually can pull it up there is no proof that this

00:19:38.280 has an effect on humans as it does on some animals that we've tested meanwhile we know the effect of

00:19:46.120 the toxic uh uh you know byproduct of salt that we put on our roads and we refuse to make a correlation

00:19:55.480 and change it and it's at the same time disintegrating our country to the tune of over a billion dollars

00:20:01.560 a year in repairs yeah by the way we spend 250 million dollars a year on municipal salt

00:20:08.600 really yeah and that's the city of toronto uh no this is uh across canada wow so we have about 500

00:20:14.120 million tons of road salt across the country each year and that's about 50 per ton wow yeah so

00:20:20.040 relatively cheap but quite frankly a lot of it well hold on there's more because that doesn't cover

00:20:26.440 storage handling application uh environment environmental mitigation because where you put this salt

00:20:32.920 everywhere around it is dead there afterward so you have to account for that property

00:20:38.280 and long-term damage and corrosion costs that's right yeah so uh anyway it's it's interesting

00:20:44.360 we're about a billion dollars a year into keeping our roads safe it seems like a portion of that

00:20:50.840 um so about 300 400 million of that uh per year goes directly to the um to the to the application of salt

00:21:00.120 right so so you think to yourself okay so salt came way before plastics yeah right so at this point can

00:21:07.960 we not figure out a replacement for salt so you know if we're looking for an environmentally friendly

00:21:13.640 thing to tackle which i i'm all for you know i'm you know want to be healthy want to live as long as i

00:21:20.680 can healthy right what do we go tackle to me my priority list i would go tackle salt like i would find

00:21:28.840 a way to reduce the amount of salt from dropping on the roads now there's there's you know there's some

00:21:35.160 sand is the obvious one quite frankly there's another one that they're using i think is like a beat

00:21:39.960 uh beet juice yeah yeah brine brine is another yeah brine they even use actually the uh overflow

00:21:48.280 remnants of vodka works the same way i've seen so there's a and quite frankly i get mike with all the

00:21:54.760 chemical chemical engineers all the chemists all the brilliant engineers that are in the world today

00:22:00.600 you can't tell me there's not a replacement for this well let's do this tell me we can't figure this

00:22:05.240 out because this is not uh why don't we do this why don't we spend okay so we spend 51 almost 52

00:22:11.960 billion dollars a year fixing the corrosion issues from salt okay yeah what if we took a billion dollars

00:22:17.880 and just made uh a a plastic utensil processing plant yeah okay problem solved meanwhile can we focus

00:22:27.000 on what's happening with the environmental and human effects of salt we should probably really focus on

00:22:33.240 that right now and save ourselves maybe half of 51 billion dollars a year there has to be some fix for

00:22:40.040 this and and you know paul i don't know if you've seen any articles about it this year i've seen

00:22:44.760 all of the articles about the corrosion issues like we saw in calgary uh downtown saskatoon had the same

00:22:50.600 problem toronto's got all kinds of uh issues with our infrastructure as we've been told that we're

00:22:55.640 re-sewering so much of the city yeah so this is down east it must be worse so we gotta have some

00:23:03.000 kind of solution to this well what is the long term you know and this is uh for the bigger cities with

00:23:07.880 with the condos and the infrastructure and all the things we put in you know the today's problems for

00:23:13.080 this infrastructure that was 50 years ago right or 60 years ago so we're seeing the impacts of this the

00:23:18.840 salt erosion on all these things whether it be our homes whether it be our buildings whatever yeah now

00:23:24.680 we're start what's going to happen when it gets further down the road and we see the erosion on the major

00:23:30.360 condos business uh major buildings all these things we're going to see our subways well in

00:23:37.400 in toronto i don't know if it's related there's a major piping and plumbing issue in some in a huge

00:23:43.720 amount of the building a huge percentage of the buildings in canada actually yeah are having an issue

00:23:48.440 where plumbing needs to be replaced because of corrosion not just you know the the salt in the water

00:23:54.360 obviously the kind of piping that was put in at the time it's all being replaced but you have to know

00:24:00.040 now that this amount of salt and desalinization whatever we have to do to it the damage is almost

00:24:07.080 52 billion dollars a year we have to find a solution that's going to save money on that that will be

00:24:15.400 environmentally friendly and what the hell throw the forks problem at it too yeah you know i agree i don't

00:24:22.520 want to come off paul like i don't want environmental change because i do think we need to pollute less

00:24:27.640 and we need to use plastics less but i do think some of our priorities are a little bit mixed yeah

00:24:33.560 let's tackle the things we can fix and the things that have high priority and let's put those other

00:24:37.960 things on the back burner a little longer again if we need to get them and it does turn out they are

00:24:42.920 toxic and if we can prove it we do our own studies and we know they do then let's go tackle it but yeah you

00:24:48.520 know but right now we know the toxicity the the uh problem that we have with salt we're just kind

00:24:54.200 of ignoring it we don't even have to we touch it we can go look at it we we drive on it we see the

00:24:59.560 gardener yeah we know these things so you know those poor people in calgary how long did they go last

00:25:05.560 summer without a shower weeks almost a month and a half right there were people i knew that were actually

00:25:11.880 leaving for the summer to come back because the restriction on water right yeah now coming to see their

00:25:17.880 family so do we sound like two grumpy old men today yeah all right we did a good job then all right

00:25:22.360 thanks for joining us subscribe tell a friend and for goodness sake throw throw some sand or

00:25:27.400 some beet juice on your driveway and uh keep the environment uh right where it is uh and listen

00:25:33.320 if you'd like to reach out to us don't hesitate you might have an opinion about our opinions and our

00:25:37.240 discussion we'd love to hear it we've got thick skin and you probably have some ideas we hadn't

00:25:42.760 thought of so we look forward to hearing from you thanks see you next time

True Patriot Love - February 08, 2026

Wood vs Plastic… But Salt Is Worse

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