Valuetainment - March 18, 2024


The Disturbing Truth About Recycling


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

209.408

Word count

1,613

Sentence count

115

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Today we re going to go down the rabbit hole of plastic recycling, and it s absolutely crazy. Did you know paper, you and I, we recycle 66% of all the paper we use every year. But do you know what percentage of plastic we recycle every year?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 We're going to go down the rabbit hole of plastic recycling today, and it's absolutely crazy.
00:00:03.600 Did you know paper, you and I, we recycle 66% of all the paper we use every year.
00:00:08.860 But do you know what percentage of plastic we recycle every year?
00:00:11.120 5 to 6%.
00:00:13.040 Did you know, roughly, worldwide, we generate 400 million tons of plastic every year,
00:00:18.340 of which 42 million of it is in U.S.?
00:00:20.520 And we, you and I, back in 1980, we used to waste plastic 60 pounds per year.
00:00:25.940 You know what we're doing today? Over $220 billion per year.
00:00:30.440 And we've known about this problem, that nobody is recycling.
00:00:34.380 Because of a study that was done by Vinyl Institute, they came up with a conclusion in 1986
00:00:39.300 that recycling merely postpones disposal without offering a permanent solution.
00:00:44.740 A bunch of other numbers I want to share with you, which is kind of wild.
00:00:47.320 We're going to talk about that today.
00:00:49.080 Okay, so if you get value out of this video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel.
00:00:52.080 Let's get right into it.
00:00:52.820 Did you know plastic became available, the first product, in 1907?
00:00:56.620 But mass production didn't start until 1952.
00:00:59.380 As a matter of fact, if you look at this chart here,
00:01:01.180 this is how much plastic production was taking place annually, worldwide.
00:01:05.760 Look at 1950. Nothing.
00:01:07.580 Look at 1976. Bingo.
00:01:09.840 89. Double again.
00:01:11.180 2002. Double again.
00:01:13.120 And then looking from 2002 till today, to where we are today, it's absolutely wild.
00:01:18.020 400 million tons of plastic every year.
00:01:20.140 By the way, just 70 years ago, it was nothing.
00:01:23.580 Meaning, this is not yet a problem that we all know a lot about.
00:01:27.980 The right people know it's a big problem, but they're not talking about it.
00:01:31.860 Very similar to the oil and the tobacco industry.
00:01:34.380 For example, the tobacco industry, many, many years ago, they knew this was a problem.
00:01:39.020 They knew tobacco was a problem.
00:01:40.260 They knew about this early on in the 50s when documents revealed that tobacco companies had internal research
00:01:46.040 showing the link between smoking and lung cancer, but didn't tell you about us.
00:01:50.220 They marketed kids, they marketed women, and minorities, despite knowing the health risks. 0.65
00:01:55.800 Which eventually led to, in 1998, major tobacco companies reached a historic settlement
00:02:00.020 with 46 U.S. states agreeing to pay billions of dollars in compensation and fund anti-smoking campaigns.
00:02:06.880 It was so bad that in 2005, they made a movie called Thank You for Smoking, and Aaron Eckhart was in it.
00:02:11.500 The whole thing was about how lobbyists played a big role in making sure you and I thought it was cool
00:02:15.700 to be smoking doctors, smoke cigarettes, and they're so cool, we gotta go do this.
00:02:20.200 Well, by the way, oil companies went through the same thing as well.
00:02:22.560 Let me give you some stuff on what happened with oil companies.
00:02:24.820 Companies like ExxonMobil revealed in the 70s that there's a link between what fossil fuel emissions do with the climate,
00:02:31.360 but they didn't want you and I to know about it, right?
00:02:32.940 And by the way, many of these guys paid big money in fines.
00:02:35.620 BP paid $29 billion in fines.
00:02:37.720 I think Exxon paid $1.5 billion in fines, 388 different settlements.
00:02:41.740 There's a list of things I can talk to you about, and according to the International Energy Agency,
00:02:45.880 the burning of fossil fuel accounted for around 73% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2020.
00:02:51.780 But guess who they also hired?
00:02:53.140 A lot of lobbyists.
00:02:54.300 Why?
00:02:54.620 Because there's a lot of money in oil, which is fine.
00:02:56.520 They're being capitalists, but not when it comes down to our risk, our health, right?
00:03:01.200 And by the way, this is oil and tobacco, right?
00:03:02.700 Let's go back to the plastic recycling watches.
00:03:04.380 Remember when I said to you 400 million tons of plastic waste is every year?
00:03:08.580 Do you know what percent of it ends up in landfills in our natural environment?
00:03:11.980 Ready?
00:03:12.440 60% of it.
00:03:13.460 That's $240 billion.
00:03:15.180 But let me continue.
00:03:16.120 Let me continue.
00:03:16.840 In comparison, U.S.
00:03:18.520 Remember how we said 42 million metric tons of plastic every year?
00:03:22.220 Highest in the world?
00:03:23.220 In comparison, the U.S. produces almost twice as much as China,
00:03:26.500 and more than all of the countries in EU combined.
00:03:29.840 This next one's pretty crazy.
00:03:31.900 More than 8 million tons of plastic enters the ocean every year.
00:03:35.680 It is estimated that roughly 40% of ocean surface is covered in plastic debris.
00:03:41.220 And if our plastic consumption behavior continues,
00:03:43.440 scientists warn that there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean as soon as 2030.
00:03:47.520 This may be a little bit of fear porn by the scientists,
00:03:49.680 but do you believe the fact that there's a lot of plastic and trash in the ocean?
00:03:53.140 How often do you go to the beach?
00:03:54.120 You're like, what the hell is this all about?
00:03:55.400 Or you're going with the boat.
00:03:56.120 You're like, why is it so dirty over here?
00:03:57.280 I believe that.
00:03:58.000 100,000 animals die from plastic entangling every year.
00:04:00.720 Let me give you a couple more here.
00:04:01.880 Humans ingest five grams of plastic every week.
00:04:04.640 You know what that is?
00:04:05.360 That's one credit card every week.
00:04:06.520 Every week, you and I eat one credit card,
00:04:08.220 which, by the way, in 10 years' time,
00:04:10.200 we would have eaten five pounds of plastic
00:04:12.800 and 44 pounds worth of plastic over the course of our lifetime.
00:04:16.820 We eat a lot of plastic, folks.
00:04:18.500 COVID-19 added another 26,000 tons of plastic pollution in the ocean,
00:04:23.740 the whole mask and everything that we have going on.
00:04:25.860 That's a whole different story that we're talking about.
00:04:27.840 And by the way, the list is long,
00:04:28.740 so a lot of companies want to be able to say,
00:04:30.040 well, we do recycling.
00:04:31.120 We do all this stuff.
00:04:31.660 Even Starbucks.
00:04:32.220 Check this out.
00:04:32.720 Not one of these plastic food service items,
00:04:34.940 including the polypropylene cup lids
00:04:37.520 that Starbucks touts as recyclable,
00:04:39.960 has ever met the FTC Green Guide Legal Definition of Recyclability.
00:04:46.600 As if you're not already overload on all this data,
00:04:48.720 I'll give you another one.
00:04:49.380 Do you know how long it takes for plastic to decompose?
00:04:52.340 Ready?
00:04:52.540 So I'm reaching 20 to 500 years.
00:04:55.200 That's a long time.
00:04:56.200 This is kind of complicated because there's an element of,
00:04:58.660 you know, where you're going to need the private
00:04:59.880 and the public sector to solve the problem.
00:05:02.020 And on the public side, the government,
00:05:03.620 you and I are going to be paying for it.
00:05:04.660 Private sector, because a lot of these companies
00:05:06.440 have to figure out a way to come up with better stories
00:05:08.640 for you to say, I want to buy from this company
00:05:10.400 because it's doing X, Y, Z.
00:05:11.580 So let me kind of unpack how I'm viewing this.
00:05:13.220 EU comes out and says,
00:05:14.160 by 2025, all beverage bottle made of PET plastic
00:05:17.320 must contain at least 25% of recycled content.
00:05:20.500 Okay, fine, we're going that direction.
00:05:22.380 That's a good progress that they're making.
00:05:23.960 However, in a consumer economy like America,
00:05:26.840 fast fashion, why are we buying so many more clothes
00:05:28.880 than we did before?
00:05:29.760 We're throwing away 81 and a half pounds of clothes
00:05:31.720 every year, not buying, throwing away 81 and a half pounds.
00:05:34.740 What are we doing with all this stuff?
00:05:35.740 Why is our closet so full of stuff
00:05:37.140 that we're never going to be using?
00:05:38.300 It is an element where this has to be education
00:05:40.620 from top down because remember,
00:05:42.280 this is just the 70-year problem, not even 70.
00:05:45.020 Even when plastic came out in 50s,
00:05:46.540 we were not making that many of them.
00:05:48.000 Even in 70s, we were making a lot of them.
00:05:49.960 It's in the 80s than 2000 when this just took off.
00:05:52.540 So even if we look at this chart,
00:05:54.540 2002 till today is when it skyrocketed,
00:05:58.740 which is what?
00:05:59.500 Only 22 years.
00:06:01.040 What does it tell you?
00:06:01.980 It doesn't take 22 years to be a crisis,
00:06:04.380 but go 40 years, 60 years, 80 years.
00:06:06.500 You and I may not even see the price of this, okay?
00:06:09.100 I don't know how old you are.
00:06:09.940 I'm 45, but our kids will and our grandkids will.
00:06:12.920 So should we kind of like delay the problem, let it go?
00:06:15.640 I don't think so.
00:06:16.300 I think we need to kind of partner a private and public sector to work together,
00:06:20.200 maybe create certain incentives for companies who choose to do it in the proper way,
00:06:24.640 and let's recognize them.
00:06:25.900 And others, you don't recognize them.
00:06:27.820 And also incentivize some entrepreneurs to choose ways that they can help clear these landfills
00:06:32.960 and work with the public sector to say,
00:06:35.140 hey, here's my offer.
00:06:36.200 This is what I can do and help you clean it up.
00:06:37.880 Hey, government, what are you willing to do for it?
00:06:39.440 And maybe those two team up together to make something happen here,
00:06:42.180 because I don't think this is a small problem, 400 million tons a year.
00:06:46.800 We're not talking about a decade, what we've done the last 20 years.
00:06:50.400 That's per year, and U.S. is 42 of it.
00:06:53.160 So lots of thoughts here on how to fix them.
00:06:55.180 We got a bunch of ideas here.
00:06:56.620 I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
00:06:58.160 If you have any ideas or thoughts, comment below.
00:07:00.300 Okay, so if you got value out of this video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel.
00:07:03.400 And if you enjoyed this video, there's another video I did on fast fashion.
00:07:06.320 If you've never seen it, click here to watch it.
00:07:08.380 Take care, everybody.
00:07:09.120 Bye-bye, bye-bye.
00:07:12.180 Bye-bye, bye-bye.