The Plastic Coup: How Big Oil Poisons Our DNA
As we fight the daily battles of the "Great Disillusionment," corruption and unchecked greed are poisoning our bodies. Sian Sutherland, co-founder of A Plastic Planet, a group dedicated to helping the world transition away from plastics, joins Gaslit Nation to discuss the systemic corruption wreaking havoc on our environment, our water, and our food.
We are now breathing, eating, and drinking a credit card’s worth of plastic every single week. Big Oil, facing a transition away from fossil fuels for energy, financially depends in our dependence on plastic. They have turned our bodies into a landfill to keep their profits soaring. We also discuss the threat of deep sea mining, the minerals war between the US and China, why everyone should read Donut Economics by the “planet’s economist” Kate Raworth on how to build a sustainable economy, and why ending the “forever wars” requires a transition to renewable energies.
Join us to celebrate the power of art and defiance at the book launch of Mrs. Orwell, Andrea’s inspiring new graphic novel, illustrated by the genius Brahm Revel.
When: April 13
Where: PowerHouse Books Arena, DUMBO, Brooklyn
Details here: https://powerhousearena.com/events/book-launch-mrs-orwell-by-andrea-chalupa-in-conversation-with-nomiki-konst/
Patreon Supporters: You and your guests get in free and receive a complimentary book! Just message us through Patreon to claim yours.
Not a member yet? Join our community at Patreon.com/Gaslit. We couldn’t make this show without you–see you there!
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Show Notes:
A Plastic Planet: https://aplasticplanet.com/
Follow-up study of genotoxic effects in individuals exposed to oil from the tanker Prestige, seven years after the accident https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24370900/
Sian Sutherland: “Innovating the Business of Plastics” https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/herman-daly-toward-an-ecological-economics-5-2/
Dr. Jeremy Williams: The Truth About Rare Earth Mineral Mining https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8OMk9JapDM
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Andrea Chalupa (00:12):
Welcome to Gaslit Nation, a show about corruption in America and rising autocracy worldwide. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine -- the film that Kremlin doesn't want you to see, so be sure to watch it.
(00:31):
A project that came out of Mr. Jones all those years ago was my latest, a graphic novel called Mrs. Orwell. I had to get inside the head of Eileen and Eric Blair because Orwell was a character, a walking, talking character on the screen in Mr. Jones. And so deep diving into that soul of years of research into the Orwells, I fell in love with his wife, Eileen. She was a Jedi knight for truth, justice, and defiance in this world. Half Irish, half English. I think her Irish side is really what rebelled against a system that Orwell was struggling with growing up.
(01:18):
Going to Eaton, serving five years as an imperial police officer in Burma. This was Orwell very much being big brother himself, being the boot, stomping on the human face forever, and having to stop running from his true self and become the person, the humanitarian who always was inside. And it was Eileen O'Shaughnessy who gave him that encouragement, gave him that beautiful nest, that safe space from which to do it. And they were kindred spirits that united against the world. And it's the story of Mrs. Orwell as a reminder that it takes a team to get the truth out and that we find our voice when we unite with each other, when we put our light out there and watch the light that shines back and unite together and our light together becomes stronger. None of us are going to get through this alone. We need each other.
(02:08):
We need each other. And so I love, I love, love, love this story, Mrs. Orwell. Again, I dedicated over 10 years to making this finally happen and it's coming out in the world. And I look forward to celebrating it with you all at a special live taping of Gaslit Nation on April 13, 7:00 PM Eastern at Powerhouse Books Arena in Dumbo, Brooklyn. I'll be joined by my friend, Nomiki Konst, who was mentored early on in her career as a journalist by the great Wayne Barrett, who was one of the very first to warn the world about Trump and what a crook psychopath he was. And Wayne Barrett was a superstar of investigative journalists. And one of his favorite targets was Trump. He was a Cassandra of Trump. And amazingly, he died right when Trump came to power. And I like to imagine that Wayne Barrett is on the other side, fighting this evil cosmically.
(03:06):
All right? And we need more of that Wayne Barrett. Rate it on down. Reign that justice down on us now. I know your soul deserves rest, but we also need you in this moment. Anyway, so we're going to have a special Gaslit Nation night out at Powerhouse Books Arena in Dumbo, Brooklyn on April 13. Patreon supporters who make our journalism possible. You get in for free on my special list and I'll even give you a book. Message me through Patreon to make sure that I add you to my own personal list. And if you are a Patreon supporter with friends and family in New York who think they might want to join us that night, message me through Patreon and I'll add your friends and family who don't even have to be there. That's one of the perks of supporting our show. It is because of you, Gaslit Nation is possible, and I love you with all my heart.
(03:53):
I'm so honored that I get to continue to practice journalism and especially how dire things are in the world today. And so I'm grateful for all of you. You don't understand what power you are bringing by being my microphone and being able to say what needs to be said. In this special episode, we are having a discussion on big oil and the gaslighting of big oil. And walking us through is the extraordinary Sian Sutherland, a co-founder of A Plastic Planet, a group dedicated to helping the world transition away from plastics. And after you listen to this show and learn about the current state of plastics, where plastics are headed, why this all matters to us, our bodies, our minds, our souls. Then head on over to the show notes and listen to an extraordinary talk by Dr. Jeremy Williams, a gasolination listener hosted by the Jewish Climate Action Network.
(04:56):
Jeremy's talk is called The Truth About Rare Earth Mineral Mining, which is something we all have to be aware of as MAGA, the Pentagon, commits one smash and grab after another. When you have Ron Lauder, the air of the Estee Lauder makeup fortune doing a deal with Ukraine to get his hands on minerals there. This is where we are right now today.
(05:28):
Before the world knew George Orwell, history remembers the writer, but behind Orwell stood a brilliant mind of her own. Together, Eileen and Eric Blair faced war, censorship, and the rise of fascism and helped shape the ideas that would change the world. But the story behind those books belongs to Mrs. Orwell, a graphic novel written by me, Andrea Chalupa, and illustrated by Brahm Revel, Mrs. Orwell, available wherever books are sold.
(05:55):
So Sian, I have so many pressing questions for you. As a mother of two little girls, I feel like I'm trapped in this dystopian world where I'm forced to feed my kids plastic because it's everything. So I'm poisoning myself, poisoning my children with plastic. How bad is the plastic crisis and how did we get here?
Sian Sutherland (06:19):
What a great question. How do we get here? And somebody said to me only last night, "I didn't ask for plastic." It wasn't on my list. I didn't ask for so many of the things that are happening to the world that we know are stealing the future from your girls, from my sons. And so it is interesting to think, how do we get here and what will it take to get us out of it? Obviously, that's the only thing that we really need to focus on now is forget about the problem, what are the solutions and how can we get out of it? And you're right that it is absolutely prevalent. Plastic is everywhere. There is not an inch of our planet. The deep ice of Antarctica, six miles deep in the Mariana trench of the oceans. There is no part of our planet that we haven't infected with plastic.
(07:06):
And actually today I was looking at the whole thing about space garbage, the rubbish up in space. You think, well, there we go. We've even dumped plastic up in space now. And of course, the final frontier is the fact that it's now within the bodies of not just humans, but every other living organism on the planet. So the long answer to your very poignant question of what can I do and how bad is it is we are definitely a peak plastic. The planet can take no more. We are at war with nature through our misuse of plastic. And I don't know how we can stop industry continuing to pump out millions of tons of it every single year in the name of, well, it's lightweight and therefore it's better for carbon and all of this misinformation that we are fed every single day. It's part of our plastic diet.
(08:00):
We also have all this misinformation. So there is nothing you can do as a mom, I'm sorry to say, to prevent your children being infected with plastic themselves. And that's a horrible thing for me as a mom to say to you because all you want to do when you have those tiny little babies and as they grow, and I've got two sons who are now six foot five, but they have been born into a plastic world and everything that they touch, even if you are very, very careful and you don't have plastic toys and you buy nothing but natural fibers, the paint behind you, that lovely wall of paint that you have there, I can almost guarantee that it's got plastic in it, the furniture, it'll all have plastic in it. It'll have all of these persistent organic pollutants, which are things like fire retardants, all of that stuff.
(08:53):
I mean, the craziness of the fact that we coat the nightware of our babies and our young children with fire retardants is kind of bonkers now. We're not living in a Victorian era where everybody huddled around a fire every night where we have to worry about these things. So we've created a very, very toxic world. We need to wake up to it, we need to be aware of it. And then I think as individuals, we need to start to be more vocal about speaking about it.
Andrea Chalupa (09:22):
Oh, absolutely. And what are you seeing? What is the sort of replacement of the plastic? Like what technology is on the horizon? Is there anything that we have to replace what we're all dependent on now?
Sian Sutherland (09:35):
Well, that's another myth is that we can't live without it. And I can guarantee you a little bit like, okay, nobody's going to work today because we're in a pandemic. Somehow we all survived. If we all said plastic is not a healthy material for the planet, but also for ourselves, we're going to ban the vast majority of its uses because we really don't need it. If we did that, we would survive. We would innovate. We'd create a vacuum where humanity is extraordinary. When our back is in a corner, we are incredibly inventive. Look at how far we've come in the last 200 years. Just in my lifetime, look how far we've come. But with plastic, we've become lazy. We haven't really focused on inventing any new materials for the last 50 years. Why would we? Because there's amazing material. It's stretchy. So we could go in your yoga pants as kind of spandex or go or wrap your cheese up with.
(10:33):
It's rigid for the keyboard on your computer, for the airline seat. All of these things, it's a really amazing, incredible material. However, it's also toxic and indestructible, but it has become such a lazy root for us thinking, "Well, we've got this byproduct of fossil fuels. We'll just use plastic because it's heavily subsidized. It's the cheapest material, the most subsidized on the planet." So it's very, very difficult for other materials to compete on a price and a volume level. So there will never, in my opinion, there will never be another plastic. There will never be another material that we can use in such a myriad of ways as the default for almost everything from clothing to roads, to tires, to all of these things. Instead, there will be a plethora of other materials. And what we need is for that vacuum to be created. So if we ban things like the notional stuff that we're banning right now of straws and certain single use items, certainly in Europe, it's only when you ban things that industry have to step up, innovate.
(11:39):
They've got absolute certainty that something is going to happen, something is going to be banned, so they replace it. And that's where I think you see the best of humans. And I think that what will happen, because really, if we look at it that I don't know what your kind of epiphany around plastic was and your whole obsession with garbage and waste and all of those things that I find so interesting as well, I think you tell so much about a society, the way that they deal with their waste. But it was eight years ago, the Blue Planet II happened, that that massive global effect of the David Attenboro documentary and us realizing the impact of plastic pollution in the ocean. And that was such an extraordinary documentary. But I look now and think eight years later, what innovation has truly happened? Not a lot.
(12:31):
Plastic is still set to treble by the middle of this century by 2050, we'll have three times the amount of plastic production in use and therefore waste that we have today because we're not taking the action that we need to create the laws, to really give business certainties that they will innovate. And what are those materials of the future going to look like? I think because this time has elapsed in that eight year period since our kind of global awakening to the problem of plastic, I think that we are going to leapfrog over less bad materials.That's my hope at least. If we can leapfrog over less bad materials and get to what I think are true circular materials, then it will have been worth a wait because it's all too easy for us to think that some of the bioplastics are good enough. Surely that's better than a fossil fuel plastic.
(13:27):
Surely recycled plastic is better. Just give it one more life, we'll come back to recycling. But now I think that time has elapsed and I think we've learned so much about what nature can actually handle, that our realization of what true circularity is, is very different. And circularity is not about recycling. Circularity is about looking at the entire circle of nature where there is no waste, where everything becomes the nutrient for the next stage of growth. It's only humans. We're the only species on the planet that create waste, which really is something that I struggle to get my head around, the billions of tons of waste that we give back to nature having taken all our natural resources. But imagine if we could come to a innovation accelerated phase where we look at the circle of nature where there is no waste and we imagine that we could take nutrients, we could borrow nutrients from nature, we could bake them, mold them, shape them into something that is useful for us today, but we never break that backbone of their chemistry.
(14:36):
We keep them toxin free as well as plastic free so that when we're done, whether we recycle them a couple of times, everything, as you know, always ends up going back to nature eventually, everything, including ourselves. When we're done with them, when they go back to nature, they slip back in as nutrients. So the cycle, really, the circular economy has to be about nutrient-based materials, that that nutrient is never waste. It becomes the nutrition for the next phase of growth, and that for me is the circle that we need to get to. And I'll give you an example. Funny, I have one in my hand. So somebody gave this to me two weeks ago, and this is a company called Gaia Star. They're based in the US. And sorry, I've got water in it, so I can't really show you, but can you see how fine that is?
(15:27):
This is 3D printed clay. This is created to be a single use cup, completely plastic free, dirt cheap. It's made out of dirt. It has a silica lining, but you could use this once with your cup of coffee. It's a really nice drinking experience, so much nicer than a paper cup. And then you could, if you wanted, just throw it on the ground because it's just clay. It's a byproduct of the mining industry, so you could always use local clay. So it could be that we could 3D print our coffee cups in future. And that for me is really exciting because yes, it's going back because of course in India when they had their chai, their whole tea making rituals that they're so famous for, they made them a little clay pots and they would just throw them back to the dirt, back to the earth.
(16:19):
But what I love is that this is a marriage of old and new because it's now 3D printed so that it could be printed incredibly thin and therefore you're not using much material and it can go back to nature. So this is just one example of the kind of innovation that we need to see to replace toxic plastic.
Andrea Chalupa (16:40):
So there is not going to be ... Excuse me. There's not on the horizon one size fits all replacement for plastic. It's going to be what's suitable for the context of that. Okay. So our yoga pants, our baby onesies, whatever is the plastic pollutant in those items, for instance, there needs to be some nutrient-based solution specific to that product.
Sian Sutherland (17:10):
Absolutely right.
Andrea Chalupa (17:11):
And how is ... I mean, this is the great garbage patches in the ocean, right? I think it's now the size of a continent if you were to combine all the garbage patches all over the world. That was my big awakening many years ago. And I pitched an editor a story I wanted to do in the very early days of this discovery of the Great Garbage Patch, I pitched an editor saying, "I would love to cover this. " And the editor said, "Well, why don't we flip it on its head? What's cool about it? " We find the cool thing. I'm like, "There's nothing cool about this. This is so depressing."
(17:48):
But you wanted to find some rock and roll angle, some hipster angle to this. I'm like, "No, this needs to go." So what are you finding because all of these horror stories of plastic in our systems have been accelerating because the crisis is getting worse. Surely there must be a bunch of clever capitalists somewhere that want to be first to market with all of these solutions because of people waking up.
Sian Sutherland (18:13):
I get a call at least once a week from those kind of private equity or VC firms saying, "So what are the new materials of the future going to be?" But the finance model is still old school. The finance model is still, we want to be in and out, we want to maximize profit. There are very few, even the ones that deem themselves impact funds. There are very few that are actually there in the long haul and this is going to be a major problem because we are in the plastic space when we are trying to really try and come up with solutions for the plastic crisis, we are up against the most powerful lobbying, best funded organization the world has ever seen, who have spent billions of dollars really building the case for fossil fuels and all its byproducts that of course include plastics.
(19:04):
So when you are up against that as a fledging little innovator like these guys, then it's very, very difficult for you to compete, which is again when we come down to laws. And so for me, all the work that we do at a plastic planet, we focus on two areas. One is solutions, because I don't think it's good enough as an entrepreneur myself to push industry into a corner, blame them for using a toxic material, but then don't help them with solutions. So we focus very, very heavily on solutions, working with industry on things like the little plastic sachets, ketchup, all the way through to deodorant packaging and beyond. But then the other angle that we are very keen on is it's about law and law is really determined by risk and risk for me is probably the scariest four letter word that industry can ever hear.
(19:56):
No industry out there, no investor out there wants to consider themselves at risk, but the more we know, the more science there is out there around the impact on human health, about the ecoside laws that are going to come thick and fast, I'm really sure. The more we have a robust global plastics treaty, all of those things I think will create much more of a level playing field for new materials to start to innovate and attract the right level of funding because at the moment it just isn't there. There's notional investments, but people are really not long-term enough about it. And we need this fundamental seismic shift in capital, not just for plastic and new materials, but for everything. For green shipping, for a revolution in our fashion industry, for biofuels, obviously for renewable energy, the shifts that we need to see and the funding that is necessary for that is extraordinary.
(20:57):
The money is there, the solutions are there. Really what we have now, and I think David Attenborough coined it beautifully by saying we have all the solutions to the climate crisis and the plastic crisis, of course, is the gateway to that. What we have now is a communications problem, which is why it's great that you're doing things like this podcast, because we have to get the message out to everybody to say, never believe the solutions aren't possible. We're human beings. We're so unbelievably creative. We can innovate anything. We can set a man to the moon. We can create a vaccine in a year for a global pandemic. You think we can't fix plastic? We just need to want to.
Andrea Chalupa (21:39):
And in terms of ... So it sounds like the market needs ... They're relying on the old fashioned way of doing things, investing their money, getting in and out risk-free, which seems absolutely silly given the astronomical amount of wealth these guys are playing with in the first place. And it also exposes, once again, the mythology of trickle down theory because none of this money is getting down to us and the people and the solutions we need and the jobs we need created and the future industries.
Sian Sutherland (22:09):
So we do want that. Yes. Trickle down economics. I don't know. So I'm a big fan of Kate Rayworth and her donut economics.
Andrea Chalupa (22:18):
Donut economics, right?
Sian Sutherland (22:19):
Yes. Yes. Where everything thrives, the planet thrives, society thrives, everything that lives on the planet thrives. And we live within the ring of planetary and societal constraints. Trickle down economics. I mean, she's an economist from Oxford and her position is, why are we using 50 year old economic education and principles that have not served us well? And the reason is it has served certain people very, very, very well. The 0.01% of the uber rich, uber educated, uber privileged, and ultimately uber powerful now, they are still dictating the systems of the world. And I don't know what needs to happen for us all to rise up, rest the power away from those very, very few people, but that's really what needs to happen.
Andrea Chalupa (23:12):
Absolutely. And there has to be some legal channels, some legal pathway, because otherwise you get violence. Otherwise, you get the voice of the unheard, which is riots. And obviously no one wants that, but at a certain point when the people get pushed, the elites ask for it.
(23:29):
And it's not like a perfect solution by any means. It's a messy solution. It's a solution that backfires, but it could be where we're headed if there isn't more relief around all these many crises that are all ultimately the same crises, which is the 1% exploiting their power and their wealth and hoarding it all at the expense of all of us. And so my question to you is, for a legal pathway to bring some relief, collective action, we saw the success, some would argue a limited success, but we saw the Sacklers, the drug pedaling Sackler family creating their greed, their wealth machine driving an opioid crisis in America. And they were successfully sued and brought to justice. Some would say that they did sort of get away with ... It should have been more. The reparations should have been greater, absolutely, without question. But at least there was a case because throughout history, the Sacklers have always remained in power for so long.
(24:32):
But so is there a chance for us, especially with all these plastics, you're seeing lawsuits pop up in areas of the US here and there over this crisis. Is there a chance for us to get ... Are you aware of any efforts to get reparations from big oil to do a collective lawsuit against all the plastics? What's the legal route there?
Sian Sutherland (24:56):
It was interesting for me being at the INC, which is the negotiating sessions of the UN Global Plastics Treaty in Ottawa a couple of months ago. And the waste pickers were represented there, but for the first time, I heard them talk about reparation and reparation because of the health risk, because of the cancerous tumors that are now impacting 16 year olds who live on our waste. And I thought, wow, this is going to come very, very fast because we all know that fertility is massively impacted by plastic and the chemicals within plastic, the endocrine disrupting chemicals. How much more proof do we need than decades of research by extraordinary scientists who have dedicated their lives to this? And still was saying, "Oh, I wonder if these plastics and the chemicals that we're inhaling every day, I wonder if they're impacting us." They are impacting us.
(25:52):
Male fertility is down 53%. There's an extraordinary uplift in young people getting cancer. It won't all be about plastic, of course not, but we have created a very, very toxic world. And I can foresee that very soon, and probably it'll be in the US, there will be lawsuits that will take on big plastic, and it will probably be around couples that cannot conceive. And it's amazing to me that I will ask a room of young women, how many people do you know? Is there anybody here that knows someone who is using IVF in order to conceive? Every single hand will go up. When I had my kids, I knew one person. In my widest possible network, I knew one person who needed IVF. It was not usual, but we consider that completely normal now. So again, it's that it's something that we all need to wake up to and think we have some power here and a mass lawsuit in the US is definitely going to be something on the horizon around big plastic.
(27:01):
And that will be the wake up call because that's the risk the governments and then industry need to see and then they will change because I totally understand that it's very, very difficult for industry to change. I ran a skincare brand for 11 years, massive plastic sinner personally. How much did I pump out into the environment before I had my own epiphany and realize what we were doing? And I know now if I ran that skincare brand, it would be incredibly difficult for me to have zero plastic, not just in the packaging, but in the supply chain and obviously in the formulations itself. So I know it's really hard, but I also know we've got to do it. And when you see the big guys like Unilever pull back to all their ESG commitments, particularly their plastic commitments, it's impossible for them to do it voluntarily because as we were saying earlier, this is not just about a material shift.
(27:55):
This is about an entire systems change. This is about us looking at why is anything single use? Why do I go to a shop like a Walmart and I walk in and it's a Jurassic park of colored plastic bottles that I take my product home in, I use, and then I put in the bin and now I'm complicit in that pollution problem. Why isn't there a system where packaging is permanent and convenient and I'm rewarded and there are a thousand drop off points that I can take my packaging back to? Why isn't there a returnables bin in my kitchen? Why is everything just about waste? So I think that we need that seismic shift and we could eradicate 40% of packaging. If we just use the bulk of it, we just used returnable packaging, which would include having standardized componentry, a four ounce bottle for one brand is the same as the four ounce bottle for another brand.
(28:54):
You simply label them at the place of filling and it's filled by the brand. So for me as a consumer, I just go shopping, I pull something off the shelf, but I know it's going into a system where it's going to be rewashed and it's going to be reused. And that kind of system we can build. We built a single use system. We can build a multiple use system, but Unilever, P&G, L'Oreal, they can't do it alone. It needs all of them to share the investment, share the risk, come in, build that system. So one of the organizations we work with in the UK called Reposit, they have built that entire system, but getting those brands to all collectively say yes at the same time and share the risk because they share investment, that's the tricky part now because everyone is still squeezing every last drew up a profit out of the current model, the status quo.
(29:50):
A lot of brand directors thinking, "Well, will it really need to happen on my watch because I might not even be in this job in four years time." And that kind of short-term is thinking for the people with power That is also what we've got to get over, what we've got to defeat in some way. Because I don't think anybody goes to work and then comes home saying, "So son, feel really great, pumped out another million plastic bottles to live on the planet and contaminate it forever today. It was a great day at the office. Nobody feels that way. We all feel a little bit bad about what we've done with plastic." And then all the solutions are there.
Andrea Chalupa (30:26):
And the big profit model is the big oil industry, which has been an absolute menace, not just for the environment, but our politics, because you have the Republican Party that is completely propped up by big oil and Trump's campaign and all of it. We've covered this quite a bit on the show. There's an excellent book called The Shadow Network by Anne Nelson, where she talks about how big oil partnered with Christian nationalism to essentially bring these far right Republicans and Libertarians to power in state governments across the US and the Congress in the White House with Trump and of course George W. Bush. And the name of the game was rolling back regulation, tax breaks for the wealthy, getting government from stopping these environmental policies. And if you want to know who has been sponsoring the decline of democracy in the United States, it's big oil. It's big oil. So I would love to know if maybe your group or some other partner groups in your coalition could join with whatever we've got going on in the US because I have seen some of these headlines coming up of early signs of lawsuits and doing a whole big collective action to further the case of reparations because the money's there. We just have to take it back from them.
Sian Sutherland (31:48):
Yeah, I completely agree. And it is the only thing that is really going to make big oil and governments and the industries who are still dependent on that plastic because they cannot think that we can live in any other way. It's the only thing that is going to make a difference. It's the only thing that will wake them up.
Andrea Chalupa (32:09):
Are you aware of any technology that is on market ready, potentially market ready that could extract the plastic in our environment today, neutralize it in the water, clean it up out of our food sources? What about those technologies?
Sian Sutherland (32:29):
I think at the end of the day, mother nature is going to fix the mess that we've created. I really don't know how we're going to fix the ocean. And I'll tell you a funny story. Years ago, a journalist rang me and said, "Shaun, can I have a comment on this fantastic innovation of somebody who's got these little tiny robots and they're going to drop them into the ocean to collect the plastic." And I was like, "Whoa, how many robots are they going to need?" They said, "Don't worry, they're tiny and they can scale." I said, "Well, how are they going to get them out? " They said, "Oh, they've got these huge magnets." And we just think, "Oh my God, we're so mad. Why don't we instead just turn off the tap? Why are we so focused on cleaning up?" It is that analogy of the bath is overflowing and we're still mopping, mopping, mopping, and nobody's turning the tap off.
(33:17):
It's going to travel by 2050. It's just completely bonkers. So my belief is that I think, of course, there's a lot of innovation happening, enzyme technology. I know Professor John McGeehan at Portsmouth University here who is doing a lot of investigation into enzymes and bacterias that can eat plastic. I know that there are certain kinds of mushrooms that can eat plastic. All of this is incredible, but this is just nature. This is nature's cleanup system that we are now trying to harness. But I know also that some of those scientists will say, "Of course, we're not going to release it into the environment. We're not going to develop these new enzymes and then just put them out there to make reparations for our mess so that we can continue to live like this. " So for me, focusing on the waste is always the wrong end of the pipe.
(34:09):
And that has been for years where the fossil fuel industry, big plastic, has wanted us to look at, because that's the bit we all feel a bit bad about. That's the bit the Coca-Cola can say, "Oh, furly, we could teach the consumer to put our bottles in the right bin. We wouldn't have a problem. We don't have a packaging problem. We have a waste problem. We have a marine litter problem." So it's constantly switching our gaze to the wrong end of the pipe, which is the bit that we feel so terribly bad about. And then making us feel bad that maybe we didn't put it in the right bin as if there's a system that could possibly cope with the millions of tons of plastic. We all know the truth about recycling and you never infinitely recycle plastic, as you know, you downcycle plastic. So one bottle never becomes another bottle.
(34:56):
I was talking to somebody about flexible films in the US the other day, and they were so excited to say that they built a flexible film recycling facility, one of the first. And I said, "So what percentage of virgin plastic do you have to put in? At what percentage of recycle it? " They're using 10% of recycle it. 90% is virgin, and they're calling that a success story for recycling flexible films. So we all know that none of this is actually going to be the answer. If recycling plastic was the answer, Coca-Cola would've built a recycling facility long ago. They don't want those bothers back. It's so much easier and cheaper, and the quality control is so much easier for them to just continue using virgin plastic. So I've completely forgotten where we were going with that question, but is mother-in-law. Sorry, what is going to happen?
(35:51):
How are we going to get the plastic out of the environment that will be mother nature? Our job, stop putting it in. Of course, clean up the deep south islands that we see. It is shocking. I am sure you've been to a rubbish dump. I've been to Nairobi. I've been to Chennai. I've been some of the Pacific Islands that I've seen the horror of our rubbish, our Western brands that we are developing markets, pushing our plastic products, knowing that all they're going to do is pile up in their environment, sending them out plastic waste, even still in the recycling bags. So all of these things I think is absolutely shameful. I mean, this is the worst of waste imperialism that we could ever have. We have to go and clean that up. And what are we going to do with that? This get ready, radical thought, do not recycle it and put it back into the broken system.
(36:50):
That's absolute bullshit, in my opinion. Burn it, get rid of it, just be over it because we have to take it out of the system entirely. And if we continue to perpetuate this myth that recycle plastic is better because we've given it one more half life, then we're never going to win. We're never going to turn off the tap because we're still looking at the wrong end of the pipe. It's not like this, which is truly circular. It's not like paper. It's not like glass and metal that have viable, successful, global recycling facilities. And those infrastructures exist. There will never be one for plastic. Chemical recycling, the same. And the other reason, if we needed any other reason to not recycle plastic and think that recycled plastic is better, is the chemicals it contains. And as you know, plastic is not on the periodic table.
(37:43):
It is a mixture of chemicals. Many of them are toxic. Some plastics, the physical weight of them, 40% of that weight is chemicals that are added. Scientists like to think of it as a bit like spaghetti, really uninteresting on its own. It's all about the source. So if you imagine it's the source is the chemicals that we're adding to these interesting polymers, the polymer chains that we make plastic out of. That's what gives it its extraordinary qualities of being stretchy or being rigid, all of those things. So the chemicals are a massive problem and the chemicals are everywhere. We're breathing them in. They're in this water that I'm drinking here. There is nothing on the planet. There is no food. There isn't any living animal. There's no fruit or vegetable that now doesn't contain microplastics because it's in rain. And so it's coming up through the roots of the plant.
(38:40):
And so everything that we now grow on our fields is going to contain microplastics and the chemicals, because they're like little chemical poison pills with this jaggedy surface that holds those chemicals and transfers them from one thing to another. So the chemicals are a really massive issue. And that's another reason why we shouldn't consider recycling plastic because those chemicals do not disappear in the recycling process. Far from disappear, they compound up and we lose all transparency and all traceability and responsibility of the chemicals within plastic. So in a piece of recycled plastic that comes from many different kinds of plastic, you have no idea what chemicals are in that plastic. You barely have any idea of the thousands of chemicals that we use 16,000 chemicals we use to make plastic. A tiny percentage of them, something like 6%, have been tested for the impact on human health.
(39:41):
We know that a huge amount of them are very unhealthy for humans. So these endocrine disrupting chemicals, the phthalates, the elasticizers, all of these things that give plastic its incredible qualities, these are a problem for human health. So when we talk about cancer and cognitive disorders, autoimmune disease, and all of these things that you see on the rise and obviously the fertility issues and the libido issues, the whole thing of virility, all of these things are impacted by us disrupting our endocrine system, our hormone system that is the signaling system for our entire body.
(40:24):
That's not good news.
Andrea Chalupa (40:26):
So ban plastic recycling.
Sian Sutherland (40:29):
Ban it, don't even ... Let's stop talking about it. It doesn't work. 1% of all clothing is recycled. We keep talking about, oh, how do we recycle clothing? Just make clothing toxin-free and plastic-free to begin with, but also let's step back and look at where did the fast fashion, the sheen movement, where did all this come from? Why is it possible for us to be able to buy a polyester T-shirt for $1? We know that plastic actually, not only did it break the system in so many ways of our original culture of take from nature, make, reuse, rent, share, repair, all of those things, refill to tape, make waste, chuck it in a bin for a mythical, magical recycling ferry to deal with. It not only did that, it also enabled hyperconsumption and fast fashion is the perfect example of where fossil fuel plastic can really take us down a wrong road of this hyper capitalistic, exploitative, depletive, pollutive, terrible industry, which used to be an industry that was about craft and beauty and enhancement and longevity and durability and all of those things that actually so much of the stuff that we make used to have those qualities and fashion clothing would definitely have those qualities.
(41:58):
And now the average number of times an item of clothing is worn is seven before it hits a bin. And even if it's hitting a charity shop, we have all seen the plastic fashion waste of the Atacami desert and obviously the villages of Ghana where they're receiving 15 million items of given away clothing every single week. They're overwhelmed. They're burning it. So in the name of charity, we're simply sending them our plastic pollution.
Andrea Chalupa (42:32):
Wow. Which governments around the world are leading on the laws that we need more of to ban plastic and to phase us into a mother nature driven economy?
Sian Sutherland (42:46):
The EU, Europe are definitely leading the world.
Andrea Chalupa (42:49):
And that's why all the gas station dictatorships like Russia attack the EU and-
Sian Sutherland (42:55):
Exactly. ...
Andrea Chalupa (42:56):
And drive Brexit.
Sian Sutherland (42:58):
Yep, exactly. And also, if I look at the EU and think, is there one country that is doing above or beyond all the other member states? It's France. So France, I think there's something maybe about the French that they just, when they talk about the terroir, the soil, the connection that they have and obviously their cuisine, their culture with the new wine.
Andrea Chalupa (43:20):
They like to live well. And part of living well is not being poisoned by plastic.
Sian Sutherland (43:23):
Exactly. Yeah. And they have such an incredible connection to nature that I think many nations are ... We've removed ourself from nature. Plastic is definitely part of that. And I look at the French and just think, they're just coming out with ban after ban. It's extraordinary. No more plastic able to wrap fruit and veg. Amazing. Whereas we're still like, okay, well give people a choice. So they can have a little paper bag and they can take the time to put things in or they can grab the six apples in a plastic bag. And all of that is so mad to me. Don't give them choice. I don't want choice. Why is it legal for you to sell me the wrong thing still? Just sell me something that is the right thing. Don't make it my choice. And that's where I really rile against this whole thing of it's about consumers.
(44:15):
It's all about consumer choice. When consumers tell us that they don't want this, then we'll change. What nonsense is that? We buy what we are sold. It's industry's job to sell us something different, the right thing, and it's government's job to mandate that they do that faster.
Andrea Chalupa (44:33):
Final question with your children and all the work that you do, what makes you hopeful, if anything, for the future?
Sian Sutherland (44:44):
I'm a born optimist. So of course, I'm always, always, always on the lookout for hope. And for me, it's about innovation. I am so excited at the materials that we don't even know we can invent yet. At the moment, we're still a little bit in that land of, okay, let's look at making leather in an alternative, not a plastic leather. How can we make a plant-based leather? And we're just replacing the materials that we currently know that either come from animals or obviously come from plastic. What I'm excited about is not the vegetarian sausage, which is, okay, people like sausages, so let's make one out of vegetables. But what about the materials that we don't even know the properties of yet? Because if you combine biotechnology, obviously AI, and this new relationship with us really understanding what a circular economy is, which is simply nature's life cycle, then I'm really excited at the materials that we're going to see in the future.
(45:51):
And that for me as an entrepreneur is about opportunity and innovation. And that's really exciting because I don't think we've even imagined yet what we can do if we created that vacuum by banning a significant amount of plastic and we had to innovate, what could we come up with?
Andrea Chalupa (46:14):
Thank you so much, Sian. It has been an absolute honor speaking with you and please come back again and let us know what solutions you need us to blast out here and share with our community that is on the front lines of so much important work and their communities. Thank you so much.
Sian Sutherland (46:31):
That was wonderful. Thank you, Andrea. Thank you for all the work that you're doing because we got to spread the word. We do have people power. We do have purse power. We've got to use it wisely now.
Andrea Chalupa (46:47):
Our discussion continues, and you can get access to that by signing up at the truth teller level or higher on Patreon. Discounted annual memberships are available and you can give the gift of membership. Get bonus shows, invites to exclusive events, all our shows at free, and more at patreon.com/gaslit. That's patreon.com/gaslit. Thank you to everyone who supports the show.
(47:10):
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(47:39):
Gaslit Nation is produced by Andrea Chalupa. Our associate producer is Karlyn Daigle. And our founding production manager is a Nicholas Torres. If you like what we do, please leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners.
(47:53):
Original Music on Gaslit Nation is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Vissenberg, Nick Barr, Damien Arriaga, and Karlyn Daigle. Our logo design was generously donated by Hamish Smyth of the New York-based firm Order. Thank you so much, Hamish.
(48:09):
Gaslit Nation would like to thank our supporters at the producer level on Patreon and Hire. Jans Allstrop Rasmussen, Katie Macurus, Anne Bertino, David East, Dawn Rosener, Deborah Schiff, Diana Gallaher, D.L. Singfield. Icepare is defiant. James D. Leonard, Jared Lombardo, Joe Darcy, Kevin Gannon, Kristen Custer, Larry Gassan, Leah Campbell, Leo Chaloupa, Lily Wachauski, Marcus J. Trent, Mark Mark, Nicole Spear, Randall Brewer, Sherry Escobar, Todd, Dan, Milo and Pubi. Work for better, prep for trouble. Ruth and Harnish and Tanya Chaloupa. Thank you all so much for your support of the show. We could not make Gapslet Nation without you.
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