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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast again. I'm

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Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chaz Bryant, there's Jerry Jerome

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Speaker 1: Roland over there, and this is Stuff you Should Know again.

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Speaker 1: Why are you say it again? Well, so, before we recorded,

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Speaker 1: I want to tell all of you, Chuck confided in

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Speaker 1: me a tabit of concerned. Right, can we reveal all

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Speaker 1: this or is this going to get edited out? We'll reveal.

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Speaker 1: So we we have done an episode on recycling again

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Speaker 1: or before this is again? Um? Before it was from

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Speaker 1: my understanding, it was the premise was is what you're

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Speaker 1: recycling actually getting recycled? Right? That was the basis of it.

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Speaker 1: That's kind of everything, and then we just kind of

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Speaker 1: went over recycling here there. Yeah, I mean it was

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Speaker 1: it was year two of the show. It's about a

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Speaker 1: half an hour in linked that was long for back then,

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Speaker 1: and probably eight minutes of that covered the garbage patch,

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Speaker 1: which we went on to do in an episode just

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Speaker 1: on that did. Yeah, for sure, we talked about the

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Speaker 1: eight minutes of the garbage patch something. Yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: the name of the episode was recycling in the Great

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Speaker 1: Pacific garbage Patch. Did we combine those two into one?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I think I'm having some sort of

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Speaker 1: weird like flashback or yeah. So here's the deal, though, folks.

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Speaker 1: We're redoing recycling. Updating is what it's called. We're updating

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Speaker 1: with new information. And there may be some of the

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Speaker 1: same stuff. But I listened to that episode, and we

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Speaker 1: weren't very good at what we did back then. I thought,

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Speaker 1: I thought we. I'm almost positive we did a separate

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Speaker 1: episode on the Great Pacific Garbage We may have. But

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Speaker 1: all of this to say is don't freak out and

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Speaker 1: say you as are repeating yourselves. Are we Are we

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Speaker 1: already there? Because no, we're not. No, No, this is

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Speaker 1: an update. This is so important, and things have changed

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Speaker 1: enough since what two it may have even been nine. Yes,

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Speaker 1: quite a bit has changed since back then. As a

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Speaker 1: matter of fact, Um, we've gotten better recycling, we've gotten

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Speaker 1: worse at recycling. Simultaneously, recycling has turned into a huge business.

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Speaker 1: We understand it more. And then there's been major colossal

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Speaker 1: changes just this year to the global recyclable material commodities

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Speaker 1: market that is going to change everyone's life one way

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Speaker 1: or another. If you care at all about recycling because

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Speaker 1: of China. Yeah, and you know what, we'll we'll get

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Speaker 1: to that, but I'm just gonna come out and say

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Speaker 1: it good for China, all right, but depending that one. Right,

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Speaker 1: we've been putting pins all over the place. I'm afraid

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Speaker 1: that we have just bins everywhere. No, we've been going back.

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Speaker 1: I don't think we've left a single pin in place,

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Speaker 1: which is unusual for us because we do that a lot.

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Speaker 1: And I also want to say that it's nice that

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Speaker 1: we're all three together again. Yeah, Jerry is back again.

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Speaker 1: She keeps leaving, but she's back, and she has a

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Speaker 1: summer cold. Yeah, that's just the worst that that to

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Speaker 1: me is like that is a clear indication that you

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Speaker 1: have been working too hard. If you go on vacation

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Speaker 1: and get sick because you're like work, work, work, and

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Speaker 1: then you relax on vacation and your your immune system

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Speaker 1: goes down. You interesting, you gotta take it easy, You

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Speaker 1: gotta you need like a step down vacation like a

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Speaker 1: work and then staycation and then vacation. Jerry. Jerry gave

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Speaker 1: a thumbs up, sickly thumb it's a little pale green.

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Speaker 1: Uh so chuck, Yes, I think I think also, Uh,

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Speaker 1: we agreed that you're going to participate even more and

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Speaker 1: I'm going to participate less. Well, the last one it

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Speaker 1: was pretty funny to listen to. You should give it

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Speaker 1: a listen. Oh, we'll see if you notice. Oh I've

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Speaker 1: noticed before, like sometimes I'm just like cringing and pinching

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Speaker 1: the bridge of my nose, like shut up, josh. Uh.

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Speaker 1: So that is the last we will speak of that episode.

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Speaker 1: And let's just pretend like we're starting a new or

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Speaker 1: updating recycling. What is it? So let's talk about recycling. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: one of the three the third best of the three rs.

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Speaker 1: That's your favorite one, or it's the your least favorite

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Speaker 1: of Well, it's not the least favorite, it's it should

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Speaker 1: be the third option. As a green human, you should

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Speaker 1: try and reduce and reuse first. Yes, And that's why

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Speaker 1: they put them in that order, because recycling is the

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Speaker 1: the last line of defense. Yeah. I thought it just

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Speaker 1: kind of float off the tongue a little more. I

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Speaker 1: didn't realize that they had them in order. It's in

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Speaker 1: order of preference. Well that's cool, okay, So you it

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Speaker 1: is best to reduce reuse and then when all else

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Speaker 1: fails recycle. That's an ideal world, right, yeah, because if

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Speaker 1: you go to a website and you look up like

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Speaker 1: can I recycle my toilet paper tubes and the recycling

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Speaker 1: ben Sure. Yeah. But if you go to like you know,

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Speaker 1: tree Hugger and all these other sites are like, well

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Speaker 1: you can, but what you should really do is this,

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Speaker 1: And then it's they first, find a way to not

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Speaker 1: use toilet paper at all, and so you don't have

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Speaker 1: those that would be the reduce. Turn it into the

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Speaker 1: stand for like a pipe cleaner tree. Well, that's everything else,

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Speaker 1: that's the reuses. They're they're like, there are so many

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Speaker 1: crafty things you can do with toilet paper too. You

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Speaker 1: can use it as a telescope, which will eventually end

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Speaker 1: up in the trash. You can use it as a harmonica.

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Speaker 1: Maybe I can do this all day. We should so,

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Speaker 1: actually I don't think we should. So when you recycle

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Speaker 1: that toilet paper too, when you drop it into a

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Speaker 1: bin out front, you may notice that you're also dropping

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Speaker 1: in like glass like you're your old like Captain Morgan's

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Speaker 1: bottle or um it took you eight years to drink? Sure, uh,

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Speaker 1: you're drinking them run these days? Oh, I love rom

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Speaker 1: I'm not big on Captain Morgan, but I love rom alright,

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Speaker 1: It's one of my highest favorite I'm like, wow, I

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Speaker 1: really like Rum. I say that every time I take

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Speaker 1: a sip of rum. Just look at my glass and go, wow,

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Speaker 1: I really love romdd everyone in the house Momo rolls,

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Speaker 1: rolls her little eyes, um, big eyes, so um. You

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Speaker 1: dump all this stuff together in a single bin, and

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Speaker 1: you may stop and be like, wait, wait, this is crazy.

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Speaker 1: How am I dumping all this stuff in a single bin?

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Speaker 1: Didn't we used to have to separate? Yes, we did.

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Speaker 1: But thanks to the event of single stream recycling, people

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Speaker 1: recycle a lot more stuff than they ever did before.

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Speaker 1: Recycling participation is up. You may have noticed, like back

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Speaker 1: in the nineties, early two thousands, they gave you like

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Speaker 1: a little tiny bin. Now you get like a big

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Speaker 1: old garbage can with wheels on it so you can

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Speaker 1: put even more stuff in it. That's how much recycling

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Speaker 1: participation is up. Programs all over the country, everybody's recycling.

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Speaker 1: So on the one hand, it's really good that we

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Speaker 1: have single streamer cycling because it makes people more likely

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Speaker 1: to recycle. On the other hand, it also makes us

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Speaker 1: more likely to recycle stuff that we really shouldn't be

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Speaker 1: recycling or or using as much up to begin with. Right,

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Speaker 1: But even if it's stuff that, like, um that, even

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Speaker 1: if you're you're reducing and reusing, you people still have

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Speaker 1: a tendency to throw stuff in that recycling ben even

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Speaker 1: though it can't be recycled. Yeah, with that one article

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Speaker 1: you sent called it aspirational recycling. Yes, like, I don't

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Speaker 1: really know if this can go in there, but I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna do it because it makes me feel good, right,

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Speaker 1: I hope, So I hope it can be recycled. So

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Speaker 1: that doesn't sound like that bad of a deal, you know,

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Speaker 1: if like you're like, okay, well it can't be recycled,

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Speaker 1: so it doesn't get recycled, it cares you know, it

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Speaker 1: just disintegrates into nothingness magically. Right, it's actually not what

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Speaker 1: happens that stuff ends up at the landfill. Right, So

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Speaker 1: you're basically saying, here, recycling company, throw this away for me,

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Speaker 1: will you. Yeah, And if you listen to our show

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Speaker 1: on landfills, which was a good one, yeah, um, we

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Speaker 1: we sort of had glowing praise for landfills and that

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Speaker 1: was I think in terms of in the context of hey,

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Speaker 1: if you're going to have a landfill. They're really have

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Speaker 1: made leaps and bounds from the old days. Yeah, for sure,

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Speaker 1: but obviously we want to do this instead of the landfill. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The ideal situation would be for us to UM to

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Speaker 1: basically close the loop on our all of our materials,

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Speaker 1: on our metals, on our plastics, on our paper and that,

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Speaker 1: and figure out a way to reuse them. And now

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Speaker 1: there's enough of everything, and we never have to cut

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Speaker 1: down another tree, we never have to dig up another

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Speaker 1: piece of box site, we never have to do anything.

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Speaker 1: We've got enough, and then we just have these perfect

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Speaker 1: like reusing UM reprocessing techniques and we've just got to

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Speaker 1: close the loop of these materials. That would be ideal.

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Speaker 1: We're pretty far from that, right, um, But it is

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Speaker 1: a good step in the right direction that we are recycling. Right.

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Speaker 1: So when you recycle, when you put that stuff in

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Speaker 1: that bind, we're gonna get to all this really great stuff.

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Speaker 1: I just tease something that you don't even know what

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Speaker 1: I'm talking about yet, dear listener, what box eye. That

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Speaker 1: was one thing, um, But the the aspirational recycling turns

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Speaker 1: into play later on. So when you recycle, you put

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Speaker 1: it out on the bin, and then some people come

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Speaker 1: up and what looks like an old garbage truck or

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Speaker 1: a modified garbage truck, except it's usually much cleaner, maybe

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Speaker 1: a pleasant blue or pleasant green color. Uh. And there's

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Speaker 1: no juice usually dripping out of the back garbage juice. Um.

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Speaker 1: And they pick it up and they cart it off,

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Speaker 1: and that begins the the plastic bottle or the toilet

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Speaker 1: paper tubes journey. Yeah. And um, this is a grabstar article.

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Speaker 1: It's nice to work from one of those. Again. Head

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Speaker 1: points out though, that when things are recycled, it's pretty

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Speaker 1: rare that, um, you get the same thing as the

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Speaker 1: original material. So like that soda can, that beer can

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Speaker 1: may not end up a beer can. Right. Does that

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Speaker 1: make you sad that person out there listening. Um, well,

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Speaker 1: that's that's what I was saying. Like in an ideal world,

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Speaker 1: it would it would become another beer can, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But we're not there yet because when we recycle stuff,

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Speaker 1: it degrades. Yeah. And that's why you can't recycle paper

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Speaker 1: and think that it's going to be the next thing

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Speaker 1: that you print something on. Uh, it's not gonna come

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Speaker 1: back like clean Lily White does printer paper No, and

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Speaker 1: that's called downstream recycling, where that that office paper you

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Speaker 1: printed on that you recycle ends up becoming like, um,

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Speaker 1: a coffee clutch for your coffee. And then you recycle

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Speaker 1: that and it becomes low grade like napkin, and then

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Speaker 1: after that it just basically ends up in landfill because

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Speaker 1: it can't be recycled, an then it becomes airport toilet paper.

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Speaker 1: It's just the lowest form of paper. Yeah, it's pretty bad.

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Speaker 1: Like it's just you can see right through it. Yes,

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Speaker 1: doesn't do anything anything, It just provides a false sense

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Speaker 1: of security and then your fingers go right there. Uh uh.

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Speaker 1: Up cycling is a little different, and that's pretty rare,

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Speaker 1: but that's when something is made more valuable than the

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Speaker 1: original product. Yeah, and I like the example that egg games.

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Speaker 1: You could take a hub cap and turn it into

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Speaker 1: a decorative bird bath. Yeah, that counts. Good job, ed. Hey,

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Speaker 1: I'm all about that. Uh, found Art, like those people

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Speaker 1: do a valuable service. We should redo that episode, remember

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Speaker 1: that one found Art that we didn't do that? Now

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Speaker 1: I think you're joshing. No really, I'm promised. All right,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to look that one up. Uh, let's

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Speaker 1: talk about the history a bit though, because Ed makes

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Speaker 1: great pains to point out that it's interesting that, um,

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Speaker 1: most people probably think like man in the seventies, in

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Speaker 1: the sixties, that's when it all started, But recycling actually

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Speaker 1: kind of started because of the Industrial Revolution. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: it wasn't like necessarily it didn't have green and d well. No,

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Speaker 1: it was more like do you remember when we did

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Speaker 1: the extinct job titles when and we talked about armors

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Speaker 1: and you can't find a suit of armor from the

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Speaker 1: fourteenth or fifteen centuries because they reused that stuff that

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Speaker 1: was just par for the course back then. Yeah, Like

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Speaker 1: things were just too valuable to throw away. You just

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Speaker 1: found a way to reuse it. And that was pretty

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Speaker 1: much the way people lived for many many years until

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Speaker 1: basically the post war economic boom led to this consumer

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Speaker 1: society that we live in today where it's just very

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Speaker 1: very cheap to produce stuff, including like packaging and materials,

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Speaker 1: and we use it out the yen yang and we

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Speaker 1: just throw it away typically. And it wasn't until the

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Speaker 1: I think the first Earth Day that recycling came back again. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and that's when it definitely had a more of a

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Speaker 1: green tent on it. For sure, which is good. Um

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Speaker 1: add points out to that that you know, there were

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Speaker 1: some leneers here and there. I think recycling the United

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Speaker 1: States really had its heyday in the nineties. That's when

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Speaker 1: I first remember it becoming like this thing is a

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Speaker 1: thing now. Yeah, And I've got a couple of stats here. Um,

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Speaker 1: it peaked in actually it peaked in recent years. And

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Speaker 1: this is you know, I believe how many tons are

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Speaker 1: diverted from the landfill. So if you're going by that stat,

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Speaker 1: it peaked in two thousand eleven at thirty four point

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Speaker 1: seven Um, what is that million tons? Yeah, there are

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Speaker 1: thirty or four point seven percent. I would think, oh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: thirty four point seven percent of the hundred and whatever.

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Speaker 1: What have we send today? About a hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: million tons? I saw, so I saw different things, like

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Speaker 1: I think that that's from the e p A. Right, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: Actually in the eighties it was about a hundred and fifty.

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Speaker 1: Now we're down to about a hundred. I think that's

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Speaker 1: going to the hundred million tons that's going to the

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Speaker 1: and fill. Yes, yeah, yeah, but but our recycling is up,

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Speaker 1: But are I think our actual waste production overall is

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Speaker 1: up to Yeah, and more people of course, Stu, Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: But that's that's actually a thing that we'll talk about

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Speaker 1: that recycling masks. Um Like, we're throwing away way more

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Speaker 1: stuff and luckily we're recycling more than ever, so we're

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Speaker 1: actually putting less than ever in the landfill. But if

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Speaker 1: we would do that first thing, reduce, and then the

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Speaker 1: second thing we use, we could really have a significant

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Speaker 1: impact on it without recycling. Yeah, for sure, recycling is

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Speaker 1: much What would be your guests as to the the

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Speaker 1: number one thing recycled in the United States? My guests

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Speaker 1: would be aluminum cans, that is all the way down

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Speaker 1: to number eight. What, um, I'm gonna say, rubber chickens then, well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you nailed it, um, acid batteries. Batteries are the number

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Speaker 1: one thing. Like people, what multiverse did you come from? Today?

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Speaker 1: I think people understand, they seem to have an understanding

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Speaker 1: that you just don't throw batteries away anymore. What do

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Speaker 1: you do with them? You recycle them? Where do you

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Speaker 1: recycle them? Seriously, you throw batteries away, I just like

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Speaker 1: throw them in the closest body of water I can find. Well,

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Speaker 1: they were known to float. Where do you recycle these?

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Speaker 1: Like in your recycling bid. Well no, I mean you

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Speaker 1: have to take them somewhere. Where do you take them?

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Speaker 1: Like a recycling place? Yeah, like like there are places

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Speaker 1: that accept batteries. Are you talking about little batteries? Are

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Speaker 1: you talking about car batteries? Lead acid batteries? Is that

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Speaker 1: a car battery? Actually, I don't know. I think that's

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Speaker 1: a car battery. Okay, yeah, yeah, I know you recycle cars.

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Speaker 1: That makes sense because you get a little juice when

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Speaker 1: you buy your new battery if you plunk down your

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Speaker 1: old one. Yeah, that would make sense. But still you

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Speaker 1: would think aluminum Kansas number eight, Yeah, number two was

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Speaker 1: corrugated at boxes number three, steel number four or his newspaper,

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Speaker 1: and then all the way down to number numbers eight

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Speaker 1: and nine or soda and beer cans and bottles. That

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Speaker 1: is really bizarre. Yeah, but that you know, how did

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Speaker 1: they say Brenstein? I don't know. I'm not sure. But

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Speaker 1: at any rate, we've we've been bouncing around over the

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Speaker 1: last decade, somewhere in the thirty two to thirty five

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Speaker 1: percent range. So peaked is a percentage of waste diverted,

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Speaker 1: Like you can't say peaked then, like it's been inching downward.

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Speaker 1: I predict it's going to continue to inch downward, and

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Speaker 1: then it's going to start going up again more than

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Speaker 1: the peak, the recent peak. Yeah, in the next ten

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Speaker 1: to fifteen years. That's my prediction. Would be great. In America,

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Speaker 1: if you wanted to know, is number five in the world,

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Speaker 1: behind Austria, Germany, Belgium, in Switzerland as far as um

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Speaker 1: most recycling participation or something. Yeah, diverting the most tonnage

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Speaker 1: away from landfills. Number what number five? That's not good,

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Speaker 1: it's okay, And and numbers three through six are virtually tied.

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Speaker 1: It's really Austria and Germany or like ten percent twelve

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Speaker 1: percent more those guys will recycle anything. Uh. And then

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Speaker 1: America's only city on the list. Take a guess there,

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Speaker 1: I bet you know that one. I M say Portland's

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Speaker 1: good guests, Seattle closer, uh, further away somewhere in Wyoming.

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Speaker 1: San Francisco is the number one city or recycling. It's

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Speaker 1: the only American city to make like the All Star

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Speaker 1: Recycling list. So I think that means we're done, right.

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Speaker 1: I'll bet we didn't mention that before in the last episode. No,

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Speaker 1: oh yeah, we're not mentioning that should we take a break.

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Speaker 1: Then let's take a break, man, all right, we'll talk

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Speaker 1: a little bit more about landfills and all kinds of

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Speaker 1: recycling stuff. All right, Chuck, I think this is going

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Speaker 1: very well. So far. Great, So let's get back to

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Speaker 1: that process we kicked off and then abandoned, and now

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Speaker 1: we're getting back to it. When you drop something in

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Speaker 1: your recycling bind and the people come and pick it up,

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Speaker 1: and it begins this beautiful journey of discovery, coming of

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Speaker 1: age maybe of um, really coming to understand oneself. For

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Speaker 1: the say, plastic water bottle that you set off, and

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Speaker 1: when it's collected, depending on where you are, it may

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Speaker 1: be either collected by a city worker or a worker

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Speaker 1: for like a private company, um, and it will be

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Speaker 1: taken somewhere along this chain. What this is a big picture,

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Speaker 1: and this is something I didn't quite understand fully but

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Speaker 1: for until this time around researching this article, Like that

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Speaker 1: water bottle or that beer can, or that toilet paper

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Speaker 1: roll you just threw out that you just recycled, You

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Speaker 1: just threw it away as trash. It's just it's being

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Speaker 1: put into a different trash stream, the recycled stream. Right,

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Speaker 1: So When you do that, it becomes you were saying, here,

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Speaker 1: this actually has value. I don't want anything in return

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Speaker 1: for it. I just want the peace of mind that

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Speaker 1: it's going to have another life. It's going to stay

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Speaker 1: away from the landfill. You do whatever you want with it,

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Speaker 1: and it enters with that exchange into a global commodities market,

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Speaker 1: where it goes from a sorting facility to a place

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00:19:48,640 --> 00:19:52,359
Speaker 1: where it's put together with other stuff similar to its kind,

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Speaker 1: sent into put into bails, and then sold on the

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00:19:56,160 --> 00:20:00,919
Speaker 1: commodities market to be reprocessed back in of raw materials

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Speaker 1: and then sold the manufacturers who use those raw materials

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00:20:04,400 --> 00:20:07,800
Speaker 1: to make new stuff that you then buy that then

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Speaker 1: you hopefully ideally recycle and the whole process continues again.

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Speaker 1: That's what happens when you drop it in a bin

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Speaker 1: and it goes off. That's ideally. Yeah. And China, like

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Speaker 1: we mentioned, is a big I think, like the number

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Speaker 1: one buyer of US garbage. They were until like late

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Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen ish when they said no on certain things.

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Speaker 1: So here's why I said, UM, good for China. UM.

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Speaker 1: China said that they did not want to be the

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Speaker 1: world's garbage dump any longer. And um. One of the

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Speaker 1: reasons why why recycling rates kind of started to climb

350
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Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties is because there was a

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Speaker 1: market for this stuff. Right. If there had never been

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Speaker 1: a market for it, it just would not have been viable.

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Speaker 1: It would have cost too much to pay somebody to

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Speaker 1: reprocess it. But the fact that you could sell it

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Speaker 1: to somebody who could then reprocess it and then sell

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Speaker 1: it as raw materials to manufacturers that men have value

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Speaker 1: to it. So okay, now we've got like something going here.

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Speaker 1: And the way that this was able to go, the

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Speaker 1: reason why there was value to it is because China said,

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Speaker 1: you know what, We're gonna become manufacturers to the world.

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Speaker 1: Give us all materials you can you can send us.

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Speaker 1: And one of the things they got into was reprocessing

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Speaker 1: things like paper and plastic, and so countries around the world,

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Speaker 1: especially in the West and the developed West, started sending

365
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Speaker 1: all of their trash, but they're recyclable trash to China,

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Speaker 1: and China would reprocess it, make it into like little

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Speaker 1: plastic toys or paper goods or whatever, and then sell

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Speaker 1: it to the world. And because of that, recycling was

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Speaker 1: able to take off well. China finally said, you know what,

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Speaker 1: this is not working any longer. We're actually on our

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Speaker 1: feet economically more than we were before. And you guys

372
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Speaker 1: have been sliding in a lot of your trash with

373
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Speaker 1: these recyclable materials, and we don't want it anymore. Well,

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Speaker 1: and China had has not historically done a great job

375
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Speaker 1: with their own trash, like they hadn't even sorted that

376
00:22:12,480 --> 00:22:14,800
Speaker 1: out much less to be able to take on all

377
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Speaker 1: this trash from all over the world. And we're talking

378
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Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of tons of recyclable materials and I

379
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Speaker 1: saw something like ten percent of that weight was just

380
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Speaker 1: straight up trash that was slipped in with this stuff. Yeah,

381
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Speaker 1: it says here and estimated one point three to three

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Speaker 1: point five million metric tons enters the oceans from China's coastline,

383
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Speaker 1: right because it just was falling out of this out

384
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Speaker 1: of the recycling stream, right, unbelievable, and into the into

385
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Speaker 1: the oceans. That was how many tons, one point three

386
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Speaker 1: to three point five million metric tons, So that's out

387
00:22:49,720 --> 00:22:52,920
Speaker 1: of like twelve million metric tons worldwide, So about a

388
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Speaker 1: quarter of the plastic entering the ocean was going into

389
00:22:55,840 --> 00:22:59,119
Speaker 1: it from China. Yeah, that's a huge amount, Right, So

390
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Speaker 1: China finally said this is not okay, this is not sustainable.

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Speaker 1: We're just we're stopping, like we're not going to accept

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Speaker 1: this any longer. We're not going to accept that any longer.

393
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Speaker 1: And the stuff we do accept can't be any less

394
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Speaker 1: than one percent to half of a percent impure, meaning

395
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Speaker 1: like if we're buying a bail, a giant biale of

396
00:23:17,600 --> 00:23:21,320
Speaker 1: plastic bottles, no more than half of a percent of

397
00:23:21,400 --> 00:23:26,280
Speaker 1: that bail bail's total weight can be anything but the

398
00:23:26,359 --> 00:23:29,520
Speaker 1: plastic bottles that we're buying. So this this is a

399
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Speaker 1: big deal because the world's market since the nineties and

400
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Speaker 1: as far as like recyclable materials has been sent to China,

401
00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:40,600
Speaker 1: like a third of the world's recyclable materials goes to China,

402
00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:43,680
Speaker 1: and China was buying it, and they said we're done,

403
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Speaker 1: We're not doing that anymore. And so the market just

404
00:23:46,240 --> 00:23:49,880
Speaker 1: went came to a screeching halt. And so what happened.

405
00:23:50,400 --> 00:23:53,760
Speaker 1: All that stuff that you were recycling, um that was

406
00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:56,080
Speaker 1: originally going to China is now just being diverted to

407
00:23:56,160 --> 00:24:02,439
Speaker 1: landfills because America's recycling recyclers, the UK's recyclers, Europes recyclers

408
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:05,440
Speaker 1: don't know what to do with it. The market just stopped,

409
00:24:05,920 --> 00:24:08,640
Speaker 1: and so they they're just sending it to landfills. Now,

410
00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:11,200
Speaker 1: So the stuff you're recycling a lot of people, not

411
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Speaker 1: all of it, and not not everything that everybody's recycling,

412
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Speaker 1: but a significant amount has been going to landfills so

413
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Speaker 1: far in two thousand. Yeah, and this is not the

414
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Speaker 1: old school argument where people, you know, ten years ago,

415
00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:28,920
Speaker 1: we're like, oh, they don't even take it to recycling anyway,

416
00:24:29,240 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 1: they just throw it in the trash. I know, if

417
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Speaker 1: you believe that, then now you're saying, see there, I

418
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Speaker 1: told you this is something new because of a new

419
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Speaker 1: policy within the last year, right, So this is not

420
00:24:40,920 --> 00:24:42,880
Speaker 1: like that old line. I just want to make that clear.

421
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Speaker 1: And again, the reason why that that argument didn't hold

422
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Speaker 1: before is because China was there to buy the stuff,

423
00:24:50,440 --> 00:24:52,639
Speaker 1: So why would you throw it would be like throwing

424
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:56,120
Speaker 1: away money. So that was a stupid argument. Now it's

425
00:24:56,160 --> 00:24:59,240
Speaker 1: not even argument, it's just a fact, like they're having

426
00:24:59,240 --> 00:25:02,000
Speaker 1: to divert some of this and their stockpiling. These people

427
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:07,879
Speaker 1: who are basically recyclable material distributors are actually stockpiling the

428
00:25:07,960 --> 00:25:11,399
Speaker 1: stuff in warehouses hoping that the market will come back,

429
00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:14,160
Speaker 1: and there are countries taking up the slack. I think

430
00:25:14,200 --> 00:25:18,880
Speaker 1: like Malaysia, India, UM, Indonesia. They're starting to buy more

431
00:25:18,920 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 1: of this than they were before. But China accepted so

432
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:25,080
Speaker 1: much of it, bought so much of it that you

433
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:27,640
Speaker 1: just can't fill that void. It's gonna take a little while,

434
00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:30,720
Speaker 1: and then hopefully one of the ways that we will

435
00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:35,000
Speaker 1: handle this is countries like America or like the UK

436
00:25:35,720 --> 00:25:39,800
Speaker 1: will say maybe we should start getting into the reprocessing

437
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 1: business more than we were before and start handling our

438
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:50,040
Speaker 1: own recyclables. Yeah, I'm all for it. Yeah, So let's

439
00:25:50,080 --> 00:25:52,399
Speaker 1: talk about that loop. Let's let's say, let's talk about

440
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:55,960
Speaker 1: let's give an idea of what happens to your recyclables

441
00:25:55,960 --> 00:25:58,920
Speaker 1: when they're carted away, and let's say it just stays

442
00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 1: in country. Okay, okay, alright, so let's uh. I guess

443
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:06,560
Speaker 1: we can start with paper because that's one that is

444
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:10,720
Speaker 1: widely recycled. And there's a bit of a um not

445
00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:14,960
Speaker 1: a misnomer, but you know, trees are are grown to

446
00:26:15,119 --> 00:26:18,720
Speaker 1: be used for paper. Um. It's there's a couple of misnomers.

447
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:21,640
Speaker 1: It's not like people go out and cut down these great,

448
00:26:21,640 --> 00:26:24,280
Speaker 1: old old forests to make the paper that you print

449
00:26:24,359 --> 00:26:27,640
Speaker 1: on they have, you know, they do this from pulp

450
00:26:27,720 --> 00:26:31,280
Speaker 1: with trees. However, a lot of times old growth forests

451
00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:34,480
Speaker 1: are chopped down to create room to plant these pulp

452
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:37,800
Speaker 1: with trees. Ter. Yeah, so it is a bit of

453
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:39,840
Speaker 1: a thing like while they may not be making paper

454
00:26:39,880 --> 00:26:42,159
Speaker 1: out of it, they are clearing area to plant the

455
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:44,120
Speaker 1: pulp would trees to make the paper, right, it would

456
00:26:44,119 --> 00:26:46,879
Speaker 1: be a pretty pretty big waste of those old growth

457
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:49,840
Speaker 1: trees to just turn them into paper when you can

458
00:26:49,880 --> 00:26:52,800
Speaker 1: make like furniture and stuff out of them. But they

459
00:26:52,800 --> 00:26:56,040
Speaker 1: are cutting them down for this paper stuff. But once

460
00:26:56,119 --> 00:26:59,560
Speaker 1: that happens, it's not like they're growing the old old

461
00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:02,920
Speaker 1: growth or us back again. Right, No, right, okay, uh

462
00:27:03,040 --> 00:27:05,199
Speaker 1: so then that paper is sorted and you're gonna hear

463
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:07,440
Speaker 1: a lot of the word sort a lot, because that's

464
00:27:07,480 --> 00:27:11,080
Speaker 1: what happens at a sorting facility, depending on how heavy

465
00:27:11,080 --> 00:27:14,720
Speaker 1: it is. What color apparently, like really brightly colored paper

466
00:27:15,119 --> 00:27:18,199
Speaker 1: isn't good to recycle, um at all? Or good to

467
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:22,159
Speaker 1: look at? Yeah, like construction papor sure like um you

468
00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:26,200
Speaker 1: know neon green flyers, Oh good lord, they'll get your attention,

469
00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:30,760
Speaker 1: but they're bad for the environment. They're bad for the environment. Uh,

470
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:33,720
Speaker 1: A hot chemical and water bath can reduce the stuff.

471
00:27:33,760 --> 00:27:35,439
Speaker 1: And that's really what you want to do, is to

472
00:27:35,520 --> 00:27:40,639
Speaker 1: make this slurry, the soupy mix of fibrous you know

473
00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 1: what was once paper. Uh. Then they have like if

474
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:46,159
Speaker 1: you always wonder should I take my my paper clips

475
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:49,199
Speaker 1: and staples off? If you got a minute, it's probably

476
00:27:49,280 --> 00:27:51,760
Speaker 1: not a bad idea. But they do have magnets and

477
00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:54,639
Speaker 1: things and filters to get out the glues and the

478
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:58,679
Speaker 1: staples and all that stuff. Yeah, they basically have a

479
00:27:58,800 --> 00:28:02,520
Speaker 1: lot of different rings along this line that um or

480
00:28:02,560 --> 00:28:07,000
Speaker 1: the stream that that can handle your laziness. Yeah, I

481
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:10,560
Speaker 1: mean from paper clips to a little bit of mayonnaise

482
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:13,440
Speaker 1: left in the jar a little bit, a little bit,

483
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 1: they can handle that. But well, I was gonna say,

484
00:28:16,880 --> 00:28:19,600
Speaker 1: like I said in the previous episode, I'll just say

485
00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:22,280
Speaker 1: it again, that's stuff stinks in your kitchen anyway, So

486
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:25,359
Speaker 1: that's why you should clean it out right or stinks

487
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:28,320
Speaker 1: next to your house, Like who want? Who wants a

488
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:32,159
Speaker 1: gross dirty mannai'se jar? Nobody beside their house, certainly not

489
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:35,720
Speaker 1: your local recycler. No. Uh, so they're gonna get the

490
00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 1: staples and all that stuff out generally with the magnets,

491
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:39,840
Speaker 1: but if you want to do it yourself, that's great too.

492
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:43,320
Speaker 1: They remove the ink a lot of times chemically, or

493
00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:46,080
Speaker 1: sometimes this is really interesting, they'll blow it to the

494
00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:50,560
Speaker 1: surface and skim it off, bleach that pulp, and you've

495
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:54,720
Speaker 1: got this pulpy slurry where they can then uh spray

496
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:56,640
Speaker 1: it and roll it into a sheet, press it and

497
00:28:56,720 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 1: dry it and it becomes paper. Again. Remember we talked

498
00:28:58,960 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 1: about making paper in our toilet paper episode. That one.

499
00:29:02,120 --> 00:29:06,239
Speaker 1: How it's made, that hypnotic how it's made episode, it's

500
00:29:06,280 --> 00:29:11,240
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Um, So that what you just described probably

501
00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:14,080
Speaker 1: doesn't take place in like your local town or something

502
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:17,920
Speaker 1: like that. That's gone from your your curb to your

503
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 1: town's sorting facility to like a material um material recovery

504
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:29,480
Speaker 1: facility or MURF is what that's called. And then probably

505
00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:31,960
Speaker 1: what you just described has done it like a someone

506
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:38,160
Speaker 1: who specializes in paper reprocessing, right, Um, their money right exactly.

507
00:29:38,240 --> 00:29:42,360
Speaker 1: But along the way, your town made money by not

508
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:45,440
Speaker 1: sending something to landfill, because most towns have to pay

509
00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 1: for landfill stuff. So by diverting this from the landfill,

510
00:29:49,240 --> 00:29:51,360
Speaker 1: the town just saved money. And if it's a big

511
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:54,280
Speaker 1: enough town because say millions, tens hundreds of millions of

512
00:29:54,320 --> 00:29:58,440
Speaker 1: dollars in fees um, and then once it entered that

513
00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:02,920
Speaker 1: murf then they start to sort it for resale to

514
00:30:03,080 --> 00:30:06,720
Speaker 1: reprocessors and the money started to come in right about that, Yeah, right,

515
00:30:06,760 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: all right, So what about glass glasses like similar to paper,

516
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:15,120
Speaker 1: and that they'll usually sort it. And again, so sorting

517
00:30:15,360 --> 00:30:18,520
Speaker 1: is can be done by machines in a lot of cases,

518
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:21,160
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of human beings who are

519
00:30:21,160 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 1: employed in this process whose job it is to say,

520
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:27,240
Speaker 1: brown bottle goes here, green bottle goes here, clear bottle

521
00:30:27,280 --> 00:30:31,000
Speaker 1: goes here. I really like Rome, right exactly, Captain Morgan's

522
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:34,160
Speaker 1: and they drop them down these different shoots and it's

523
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:37,280
Speaker 1: a convey convey about going past them, and they're like

524
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 1: kind of I love Lucy's style, like just grabbing the

525
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:44,720
Speaker 1: stuff and mixing it around and putting it sorting it themselves. Right, Yeah,

526
00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:49,080
Speaker 1: And glass is significant because, um, you've also heard people

527
00:30:49,120 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 1: say that you know you do you burned just and

528
00:30:51,120 --> 00:30:53,320
Speaker 1: there have been people that have taken great pains to

529
00:30:53,360 --> 00:30:57,240
Speaker 1: try and prove that recycling actually uses more energy than

530
00:30:57,280 --> 00:31:00,400
Speaker 1: just making new stuff and throwing it away. Uh uh,

531
00:31:00,440 --> 00:31:02,880
Speaker 1: and that is very fair about it. He points out

532
00:31:02,920 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 1: that it really depends on your material as a whole recycling,

533
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:11,560
Speaker 1: I think without question, um uses less energy as a

534
00:31:11,600 --> 00:31:13,800
Speaker 1: whole from what I understand. Yeah, but if you want

535
00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:16,360
Speaker 1: to break it down to the individual things, some of

536
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:18,680
Speaker 1: them are a little tougher to get, you know, your

537
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:22,240
Speaker 1: money back out of or your energy usage. But glass

538
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:25,880
Speaker 1: is one of those that has a significant energy cost savings,

539
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:29,720
Speaker 1: right and and in some cases UM glass recycling basically

540
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:34,400
Speaker 1: is just the intact bottle is being washed and sterilized

541
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:37,400
Speaker 1: and then reused again. Sometimes so when you drink out

542
00:31:37,400 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 1: of like a glass coke bottle or something that may

543
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 1: have been used because it's nineteen, you're at the soda jerk.

544
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:47,840
Speaker 1: But I mean, if you think about it like that's

545
00:31:48,080 --> 00:31:51,920
Speaker 1: if you could buy just glass bottles, you're probably it's

546
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:55,400
Speaker 1: probably better off as far as recycling is concerned, because

547
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:57,800
Speaker 1: they probably are just reusing the bottle as long as

548
00:31:57,800 --> 00:31:59,880
Speaker 1: you don't smash it on the ground, then sweep it up,

549
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 1: put it in the recycling bin. Well, that's another thing

550
00:32:02,080 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: that can be done with glass, right. They might reuse

551
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:07,720
Speaker 1: it like wash it out, burn the label off, put

552
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 1: the go put have it go through the whole process again,

553
00:32:10,360 --> 00:32:13,840
Speaker 1: so it's basically like new, or they may smash it

554
00:32:13,920 --> 00:32:17,880
Speaker 1: up into pieces and um, those pieces will get melted

555
00:32:17,920 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 1: down and turned into glass again, which is another reason

556
00:32:20,440 --> 00:32:23,080
Speaker 1: why the glass gets sorted, because if you have a

557
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:26,440
Speaker 1: bunch of different colored glass mixed together when you melted down,

558
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:28,880
Speaker 1: it has like kind of a modeled color that nobody

559
00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:32,120
Speaker 1: would want. So it's very important to have your green

560
00:32:32,120 --> 00:32:34,520
Speaker 1: glass over here, and your clear glass over here, and

561
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 1: your brown glass over there. Yeah. And I think I

562
00:32:37,040 --> 00:32:40,040
Speaker 1: said on the show they announced in our county or

563
00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:43,080
Speaker 1: maybe city that they were not doing glass anymore, and

564
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:46,320
Speaker 1: so they set up the big ben's like in certain

565
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 1: places around the county. That's for you and your wine

566
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 1: o friends congregate. Right, Absolutely, what a great bottle that

567
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:57,800
Speaker 1: was so um. Hey, you know something You can reuse

568
00:32:57,800 --> 00:33:01,200
Speaker 1: a wine bottle by putting a candle in it. Yeah,

569
00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:03,719
Speaker 1: make it into a candle holder, or make it a

570
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 1: water a feeder for your plants. That I've tried that before.

571
00:33:06,920 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 1: I've never gotten it to work. What does it? What

572
00:33:09,040 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: does it do? Well? You fill it up and then

573
00:33:11,600 --> 00:33:14,239
Speaker 1: you plunge it into the soil, and I guess like

574
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:17,400
Speaker 1: the I don't think it's ever come out. It's either

575
00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 1: stuck in there or it's just poured out. I don't remember,

576
00:33:19,480 --> 00:33:22,120
Speaker 1: but I was like, I don't think this is working. Interesting.

577
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 1: Has it worked for you? You know? It comes out

578
00:33:25,240 --> 00:33:27,720
Speaker 1: very slowly, like it's not like you're gonna see go

579
00:33:27,800 --> 00:33:30,400
Speaker 1: glug glog glog globe, because then you might as well

580
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 1: just pour the water on it. No, I know, I

581
00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:33,640
Speaker 1: think I left it in there for a good week

582
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:37,960
Speaker 1: or two and this plant is dead now. It didn't work, huh,

583
00:33:38,800 --> 00:33:41,920
Speaker 1: I don't know. You're sure it was water like on

584
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:45,040
Speaker 1: no way to put grain alcohol alcohol. It was weird.

585
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 1: Uh So is that good on glass? They ground it

586
00:33:49,840 --> 00:33:52,600
Speaker 1: up into culor it. Yeah, that's like the ground, the

587
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:55,320
Speaker 1: ground stuff that they eventually melt down. Yeah. Well, the

588
00:33:55,360 --> 00:33:58,960
Speaker 1: neat re reuses of glass or recycle the one of

589
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:01,960
Speaker 1: the neat things that glass and be recycled into his fiberglass.

590
00:34:03,120 --> 00:34:07,840
Speaker 1: It can be extruded into fiber ak a fiberglass, meaning

591
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:10,520
Speaker 1: it's glass. It may have been your coke bottle at

592
00:34:10,560 --> 00:34:13,919
Speaker 1: one time, and now you're keeping your house. Sure, yeah,

593
00:34:14,160 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about that. I always think of like

594
00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:20,439
Speaker 1: house installation it's like the pink panther. Yeah. What about

595
00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:24,319
Speaker 1: steel steal is a big one. It's usually recycled. At

596
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:29,000
Speaker 1: least of American steel is recycled. Is made of recycled

597
00:34:29,040 --> 00:34:32,480
Speaker 1: steel from what I couldn't find that anywhere but in

598
00:34:32,520 --> 00:34:38,800
Speaker 1: this in this article. But yeah, he's smart. But the

599
00:34:38,560 --> 00:34:41,840
Speaker 1: the reason why is number one is just useful to

600
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:45,120
Speaker 1: recycle steel. But also apparently it's very easy. You just

601
00:34:45,200 --> 00:34:48,400
Speaker 1: melt that stuff down and reuse it. Yeah, and Ed

602
00:34:48,719 --> 00:34:53,880
Speaker 1: mentions the giant machines at shred cars. Uh did you

603
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:57,000
Speaker 1: see these videos? I've seen it before. It's about the

604
00:34:57,040 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 1: best thing ever to watch, Yeah, is to see a

605
00:34:59,719 --> 00:35:04,719
Speaker 1: man e van just get sucked into a a tooth machine.

606
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:08,080
Speaker 1: It's really amazing. Yeah, and it feels like there's nothing

607
00:35:08,120 --> 00:35:10,880
Speaker 1: that can clog this thing. No, I mean a minivan

608
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:13,840
Speaker 1: can't clogg it. Yeah, nothing can can't. Yeah, man, I

609
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:16,640
Speaker 1: could have watched that stuff for hours. And steel too.

610
00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:19,920
Speaker 1: So they don't just do minivans, chuck. They do buildings,

611
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:24,800
Speaker 1: old buildings, Um they do. Uh, there's something called ship breaking,

612
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:28,759
Speaker 1: where like you know those old huge ships, Well they

613
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:33,719
Speaker 1: get torn apart and recycled eventually. Um, that's actually one

614
00:35:33,760 --> 00:35:36,120
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily very good for the environment because there's

615
00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:38,800
Speaker 1: so many like toxic metals and like old diesel and

616
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:41,400
Speaker 1: stuff like that that gets like leached out into the environment.

617
00:35:41,520 --> 00:35:43,480
Speaker 1: But an old ship is probably one of the worst

618
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:47,279
Speaker 1: like environmental disasters. It's it's pretty bad. But what are

619
00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:50,000
Speaker 1: you gonna do? Just like sink it. You have to

620
00:35:50,040 --> 00:35:53,719
Speaker 1: do something with it. So, um, that's steal. Another one,

621
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:57,759
Speaker 1: this one stuck out to me is um plastic water bottles. Right. Yeah,

622
00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:02,920
Speaker 1: So with plastics and general, it's tricky because if you

623
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 1: ever get into an argument with somebody who's just hell

624
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:08,959
Speaker 1: been on proving that recycling is actually not green because

625
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 1: they like to rain on people's parade or whatever. Um,

626
00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:16,480
Speaker 1: they will point to plastic and they are absolutely right.

627
00:36:16,880 --> 00:36:21,600
Speaker 1: Like you, you just can't argue it's cheaper and probably

628
00:36:21,760 --> 00:36:26,279
Speaker 1: less polluting to produce plastic new than it is to

629
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:30,440
Speaker 1: recycle plastic. It's just that's how cheap making plastic is.

630
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:33,319
Speaker 1: We've got to do an episode on plastics. It's just

631
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:37,160
Speaker 1: like we live in a plastic age, right, So, um,

632
00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:41,239
Speaker 1: that is true, it is. It's it's it's more costly

633
00:36:41,360 --> 00:36:45,719
Speaker 1: both environmentally and I think economically to recycle plastic than

634
00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:48,719
Speaker 1: to just make it new. But that's not to say

635
00:36:48,719 --> 00:36:50,920
Speaker 1: that you just shouldn't recycle plastics. So if you do

636
00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:54,239
Speaker 1: recycle like a plastic water bottle, one thing that I

637
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:56,759
Speaker 1: ran across it I didn't know before is screw that

638
00:36:57,480 --> 00:37:00,919
Speaker 1: cap on tightly. And if you'll notice that plastic cap

639
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:05,120
Speaker 1: is a different type of plastic than your plastic water bottle. Um.

640
00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:08,520
Speaker 1: But if you throw the cap away separately, it'll just

641
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:11,040
Speaker 1: end up in the landfill, even if it's in your

642
00:37:11,040 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 1: recycling bin, if you screwed on the The way that

643
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:18,440
Speaker 1: the plastics reprocessors are set up these days is that

644
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:22,880
Speaker 1: whole bottle goes through and the plastic is separated by density.

645
00:37:22,960 --> 00:37:25,960
Speaker 1: So the stuff in the cap, I believe, floats and

646
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:29,280
Speaker 1: the stuff in the bottle sinks in in like whatever

647
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:32,000
Speaker 1: liquid bath they create for it and melt it and

648
00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:34,520
Speaker 1: then they separate it like that. But if it's just

649
00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 1: your caps or whatever, it's not going to make it

650
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:39,400
Speaker 1: through the machine. The machines are set up to separate them.

651
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:42,520
Speaker 1: Connected with your cap connected to the to the water bottle,

652
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:50,120
Speaker 1: still screwed on. A commonly argued that we now have

653
00:37:50,239 --> 00:37:52,439
Speaker 1: given you the answer to, Yeah, and now I think back,

654
00:37:52,480 --> 00:37:54,759
Speaker 1: I'm like, how many times I've been like, well, I

655
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:56,920
Speaker 1: got to unscrew the cap and throw it in separately,

656
00:37:57,400 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 1: had no idea. Now I know I won't be doing

657
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 1: in that again. I can assure you, Chuck, I'll chick

658
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:06,680
Speaker 1: through these recycling symbols real quickly. For plastic, instead of

659
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:11,360
Speaker 1: going into great detail, there is one through seven that

660
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:14,040
Speaker 1: you will see stamped on the bottom usually of whatever,

661
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:17,640
Speaker 1: or you know sometimes on the side of your plastic.

662
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:21,799
Speaker 1: Number one is p E, t E or PET. Number

663
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:25,920
Speaker 1: two is hd p E, Number three is V or PBC,

664
00:38:26,120 --> 00:38:29,719
Speaker 1: final four is ld p E. Number five is PP

665
00:38:30,280 --> 00:38:34,720
Speaker 1: and these all have you know, longer scientific names. Number

666
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: five is like your yogurt container. From what I've seen

667
00:38:37,719 --> 00:38:41,760
Speaker 1: yogurt containers catch a bottles or bottles, medicine bottles, although

668
00:38:41,800 --> 00:38:46,640
Speaker 1: most pharmacies ask you to bring back here script bottles. Yeah,

669
00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:49,200
Speaker 1: I am so green. I just go and like make

670
00:38:49,239 --> 00:38:51,480
Speaker 1: a little basket out of my hands, just say, put

671
00:38:51,520 --> 00:38:54,399
Speaker 1: the pills in here, just dump dump it into my hand.

672
00:38:55,200 --> 00:39:00,160
Speaker 1: Number six is polystyrene. That's styrofoam. And then number or

673
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:03,240
Speaker 1: seven is other and miscellaneous. That's where everything else goes.

674
00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:07,160
Speaker 1: So every single one of those plastics can be recycled.

675
00:39:07,320 --> 00:39:09,320
Speaker 1: This is like one of the big things about recycling.

676
00:39:10,000 --> 00:39:13,160
Speaker 1: We can recycle. About seventy of the stuff that we

677
00:39:13,239 --> 00:39:17,600
Speaker 1: throw away can be recycled. We recycled what about thirty

678
00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:21,319
Speaker 1: of it? And the reason why is in large part

679
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:24,919
Speaker 1: because there's no money in recycling some of those other ones,

680
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:28,480
Speaker 1: like styrofoam. You can recycle styrofoam, but the process for

681
00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:32,440
Speaker 1: recycling styrofoam is so difficult and expensive that it is

682
00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:37,560
Speaker 1: it costs money to recycle styrofoam. Therefore, no one recycles styrofoam.

683
00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:39,759
Speaker 1: And when you step back and think about all the

684
00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:43,480
Speaker 1: styrofoam packaging out there, and the styrofoam peanuts and all

685
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:46,600
Speaker 1: that stuff, it's not getting recycled. You put it in

686
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:48,759
Speaker 1: with your even though it has the recycling symbol, it's

687
00:39:48,760 --> 00:39:51,759
Speaker 1: saying this can be recycled. In theory, there's no one

688
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:54,080
Speaker 1: out there, almost no one out there that recycles it,

689
00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:57,760
Speaker 1: so it's just going straight to the landfill. The problem

690
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:00,200
Speaker 1: is even worse than that, though, and this is thing

691
00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:02,840
Speaker 1: I was talking about before, Chuck at the very beginning.

692
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:06,040
Speaker 1: You put that styrofoam in there, you put enough styrofoam

693
00:40:06,080 --> 00:40:10,600
Speaker 1: in there. Then you might do what's called contaminating the batch.

694
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 1: Where these the recycle um sorting center, the murph might say,

695
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:20,040
Speaker 1: it's not even worth paying human beings to sort through

696
00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:22,399
Speaker 1: this stuff. There's so much styrofoam in here. Just send

697
00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:25,200
Speaker 1: that whole batch to the landfill, including the stuff that

698
00:40:25,239 --> 00:40:28,959
Speaker 1: can be recycled. So that's another big deal. Why we're

699
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 1: not recycling a lot of stuff is because we're mixing

700
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:35,120
Speaker 1: stuff that can't be recycled or won't be recycled in

701
00:40:35,239 --> 00:40:37,960
Speaker 1: with the stuff that can and should be recycled, and

702
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 1: it's diverting the whole batch off to the landfill, which

703
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:45,239
Speaker 1: is a big problem. Which is the way the best

704
00:40:45,239 --> 00:40:48,239
Speaker 1: way to address that is for people like you and

705
00:40:48,320 --> 00:40:52,239
Speaker 1: me to go onto our local recycling website and say

706
00:40:52,280 --> 00:40:55,279
Speaker 1: what can I actually recycle in my area and they'll

707
00:40:55,280 --> 00:40:57,960
Speaker 1: tell you, and then the stuff that can't be it

708
00:40:58,080 --> 00:41:01,280
Speaker 1: feels terrible to throw it away eight but throw it away,

709
00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:05,680
Speaker 1: like I can tell you by like with experience. It's

710
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:08,239
Speaker 1: not a good feeling to throw a big piece of

711
00:41:08,280 --> 00:41:12,320
Speaker 1: styrofoam away into a dumpster that's going to the landfill.

712
00:41:12,680 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 1: But you can take solace in the fact that it's

713
00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:19,240
Speaker 1: not going to spoil the batch of recycling that actually

714
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:22,400
Speaker 1: is going to the recycling center. Yeah. So our community

715
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:27,440
Speaker 1: has a styrofoam recycling day like twice a year, and

716
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:30,040
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start bringing my styrofoam to your No, don't

717
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:33,000
Speaker 1: do that, because we already have loads. Uh. And that

718
00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:36,080
Speaker 1: stuff does is recycled, but it's you know, you gotta

719
00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:39,520
Speaker 1: look out for it. It's very specific programs that ask

720
00:41:39,640 --> 00:41:43,319
Speaker 1: for your styrofoam, uh, and they do recycle it. So

721
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:46,520
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of like electronics recycling, right, it's

722
00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:51,160
Speaker 1: really expensive. It's uh to do it costs money. Um.

723
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:54,120
Speaker 1: So our community like twice a year again, in fact,

724
00:41:54,120 --> 00:41:57,480
Speaker 1: I think it's at the same time has electronics recycling

725
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:00,440
Speaker 1: and you actually have to pay and you go and

726
00:42:00,440 --> 00:42:05,160
Speaker 1: pay them some money to donate your old whatever you know. Um.

727
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:07,680
Speaker 1: Very ironically, I was going through stuff you should know

728
00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:10,360
Speaker 1: Selects and I can't remember what episode it was, but

729
00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:13,640
Speaker 1: in the listener mail, we basically read a p s

730
00:42:13,719 --> 00:42:16,600
Speaker 1: A for something called free I t Athens. Do you

731
00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: remember that, Yes, And it's freed to I think is

732
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:21,480
Speaker 1: what it's called. But um, I looked it up and

733
00:42:21,520 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 1: they're still around, but you can give them, at least

734
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:28,520
Speaker 1: in Athens, Georgia, your old e waste, your old electronics

735
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:31,600
Speaker 1: and and um specifically computer stuff, and they take it,

736
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:34,480
Speaker 1: refurbish it and then donate it to people in need.

737
00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:38,360
Speaker 1: And they're still doing it. And I guarantee that that Athens,

738
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:40,480
Speaker 1: Georgia is not the only town in the country that

739
00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:44,000
Speaker 1: has a program like this. So rather than paying somebody

740
00:42:44,040 --> 00:42:46,719
Speaker 1: like a chump to recyclist, give it to somebody who

741
00:42:46,719 --> 00:42:49,240
Speaker 1: can refurbish it. Well, yeah, because a lot of times

742
00:42:49,280 --> 00:42:52,640
Speaker 1: like this old Mac is just out of date. It

743
00:42:52,680 --> 00:42:55,320
Speaker 1: works fine, yeah, and just let me throw it in

744
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:58,840
Speaker 1: the trash. Yeah, got an old got an old computer monitor?

745
00:42:59,200 --> 00:43:02,279
Speaker 1: You can you can trade that to an anarchist for

746
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:05,880
Speaker 1: their goods and services. They love those things. So to

747
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:10,440
Speaker 1: quickly finishing up on these symbols, they say avoid three,

748
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:14,479
Speaker 1: six and seven, look for two, four and five. They're

749
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:18,080
Speaker 1: considered to be the safest um and number one is

750
00:43:18,120 --> 00:43:24,400
Speaker 1: considered safe. But that's the one that's soda bottles, water bottles, um,

751
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:28,640
Speaker 1: salad dressing containers, mouth wash, peanut butter. Uh. It can

752
00:43:28,680 --> 00:43:31,320
Speaker 1: be recycled and it is safe. But they're just I

753
00:43:31,360 --> 00:43:32,919
Speaker 1: think they're on a mission to try and get people

754
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:35,880
Speaker 1: to use less of that stuff. Especially in ED points

755
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:40,120
Speaker 1: out one of the gripes against recycling, one of the

756
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:44,279
Speaker 1: few they actually agree with, is people recycle. So they're like,

757
00:43:44,840 --> 00:43:47,200
Speaker 1: I'm I buy a case of water every two weeks,

758
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:51,320
Speaker 1: but it's fine because I recycle it. It encourages maybe

759
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 1: for some people to think, because I'm doing this thing right,

760
00:43:54,680 --> 00:43:57,239
Speaker 1: and then I can just keep buying water bottles right Precisely.

761
00:43:57,280 --> 00:44:01,040
Speaker 1: That's probably the biggest argument against recycling today is it

762
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:05,440
Speaker 1: allows for this consumer society to keep flourishing and thriving.

763
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:33,320
Speaker 1: Let's take a break real quick and come back. Okay, chuck.

764
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:37,840
Speaker 1: So all that stuff has been sorted and um depending

765
00:44:37,880 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 1: on what it is, say like um aluminum cans or

766
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:45,840
Speaker 1: plastic bottles or something like that, it is put into

767
00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:49,000
Speaker 1: these huge enormous bails and then sent off to the

768
00:44:49,040 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 1: reprocessors who then do things like you described with the paper.

769
00:44:52,680 --> 00:44:57,680
Speaker 1: They basically um clean it, burn off any impurities, scrape

770
00:44:57,719 --> 00:45:00,840
Speaker 1: off any impurities, get to the raw cial again and

771
00:45:00,840 --> 00:45:03,640
Speaker 1: then turn it into small little things like um if

772
00:45:03,680 --> 00:45:07,520
Speaker 1: it's aluminum in gets or if it's um glass. They're

773
00:45:07,520 --> 00:45:11,240
Speaker 1: trying to cull it um or if it's plastics, they'll

774
00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:14,680
Speaker 1: melt it down into nerdles. I can't remember what they're called,

775
00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:18,759
Speaker 1: but those are mermaids tears, remember that's what they break

776
00:45:18,800 --> 00:45:21,480
Speaker 1: down to and fish eat them and die. Um. And

777
00:45:21,520 --> 00:45:24,200
Speaker 1: then those things go to manufacturers and they buy it.

778
00:45:24,280 --> 00:45:28,320
Speaker 1: So that's that's this. That's the current state of recycling

779
00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 1: right now. And that last part, the last two parts

780
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:38,279
Speaker 1: them where the reprocessors by the stuff and then the

781
00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:41,600
Speaker 1: manufacturers by the stuff from the reprocessors that has been

782
00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:45,040
Speaker 1: disrupted with China coming in and saying we're not doing

783
00:45:45,080 --> 00:45:48,520
Speaker 1: that anymore. So there's a lot of things that can

784
00:45:48,600 --> 00:45:51,200
Speaker 1: change as a result of this. Right if all of

785
00:45:51,239 --> 00:45:54,919
Speaker 1: these if these things that actually do have value start

786
00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:57,240
Speaker 1: to build up as they are in all of these

787
00:45:57,280 --> 00:46:02,680
Speaker 1: warehouses and facilities, um, so there another market is going

788
00:46:02,719 --> 00:46:07,040
Speaker 1: to develop because these things do have value, because consumers

789
00:46:07,080 --> 00:46:09,399
Speaker 1: do want to see like, oh, this thing I'm using

790
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:14,440
Speaker 1: was made with you know, post consumer recycled material. I

791
00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:16,719
Speaker 1: feel good about that. I'm gonna buy this package over

792
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:20,000
Speaker 1: that package. There's value to this stuff. Right, So there

793
00:46:20,080 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 1: will be a market that develops, But will it be

794
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:27,000
Speaker 1: this continued thing where we're like here, developing country, you

795
00:46:27,040 --> 00:46:31,600
Speaker 1: don't have like um regulatory and safety and environmental protections

796
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:34,680
Speaker 1: like we have in our country. So take this and

797
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:37,880
Speaker 1: we can feel good about ourselves because it's out of sight.

798
00:46:38,080 --> 00:46:43,279
Speaker 1: That's that's basically how the recycling commodities market developed in

799
00:46:43,320 --> 00:46:47,480
Speaker 1: the nineties and up till two thousand eighteen, it was

800
00:46:47,560 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 1: just like here, you take our our thing, and we

801
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:54,399
Speaker 1: can feel good about things, but but unwarranted and unwarranted

802
00:46:54,520 --> 00:46:59,480
Speaker 1: feeling of of feeling good about um about recycling. So

803
00:47:00,760 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 1: it's possible that the actual like real deal will develop

804
00:47:05,560 --> 00:47:08,080
Speaker 1: and that will will continue to recycle and feel good

805
00:47:08,080 --> 00:47:11,600
Speaker 1: about things, but it'll be you know, justified. That's what

806
00:47:11,680 --> 00:47:13,880
Speaker 1: I'm hoping. That's what I think is going to happen.

807
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:16,720
Speaker 1: I think that single stream recycling is going to go away.

808
00:47:17,560 --> 00:47:20,640
Speaker 1: I think that we're gonna have to start like being

809
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:24,400
Speaker 1: more conscientious and just know what we're doing more. Because

810
00:47:24,400 --> 00:47:26,680
Speaker 1: if you put the average person who recycled in the

811
00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:31,719
Speaker 1: nineties up against the average person who recycles today, do

812
00:47:31,760 --> 00:47:33,959
Speaker 1: you remember back like in the nineties, like people knew

813
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:37,400
Speaker 1: what they were talking about with recycling and way more sideburns.

814
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:40,439
Speaker 1: Sure more so, but like I think of my dad

815
00:47:40,719 --> 00:47:43,640
Speaker 1: like he's still just a religious recycler. Now. He got

816
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:46,400
Speaker 1: like the bug in the nineties because there's such a

817
00:47:46,440 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 1: good campaign, a good public campaign, and yes, fewer people recycled,

818
00:47:51,239 --> 00:47:53,480
Speaker 1: but the quality of the stuff that was entering the

819
00:47:53,520 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 1: recycling stream was way better than it is today. Good

820
00:47:57,480 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 1: stuff in the nineties it was so great because so

821
00:48:02,200 --> 00:48:04,200
Speaker 1: depending on where you live in the country, in the

822
00:48:04,280 --> 00:48:07,640
Speaker 1: United States and reckon all over the world, UM, you

823
00:48:07,719 --> 00:48:12,280
Speaker 1: might have different options for recycling. The Abuse Center research

824
00:48:12,320 --> 00:48:16,880
Speaker 1: study UM found that of the United States has something

825
00:48:16,920 --> 00:48:21,440
Speaker 1: available to them UM, which is great. Uh, thirty percent

826
00:48:21,520 --> 00:48:25,759
Speaker 1: has curbside only, drop off only and forty pcent and

827
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:30,799
Speaker 1: had a mix of both. And of any town with

828
00:48:30,880 --> 00:48:33,319
Speaker 1: a population over a hundred and twenty five thousand have

829
00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:37,880
Speaker 1: curbside pick up now and in the US over a

830
00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:42,439
Speaker 1: hundred still yeah, a lot of America. Yeah. So those

831
00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 1: are the general ways that you're going to recycle, either

832
00:48:45,120 --> 00:48:48,240
Speaker 1: at a recycling center, uh, like a drop off center,

833
00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 1: curbside pickup, which you know we love UM buy back centers.

834
00:48:53,760 --> 00:48:58,080
Speaker 1: You know, if you've ever seen the aluminum can machines,

835
00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:01,319
Speaker 1: we can collect aluminum hands, throw them in there and

836
00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:04,319
Speaker 1: make some money. Uh, and then that's kind of part

837
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:08,160
Speaker 1: of the deposit refund program where you know in the

838
00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:10,759
Speaker 1: good old days when you would you would drink a

839
00:49:10,800 --> 00:49:13,560
Speaker 1: soda that you actually actually paid extra for that bottle.

840
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:18,239
Speaker 1: That Yeah, if it has like a five cent refund,

841
00:49:18,640 --> 00:49:21,160
Speaker 1: it's called a refund for a reason because you paid

842
00:49:21,200 --> 00:49:24,760
Speaker 1: an extra nickel to drink that coke out of the bottle.

843
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:26,399
Speaker 1: Out of the bottle. But you can always go take

844
00:49:26,440 --> 00:49:28,719
Speaker 1: it back, sonny, and they'll give your five cents back.

845
00:49:28,719 --> 00:49:31,600
Speaker 1: Then they take that bottle, wash it out, sterilize it,

846
00:49:31,719 --> 00:49:34,680
Speaker 1: may fill it with coke again. Yeah. I don't drink those.

847
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:37,520
Speaker 1: I don't drink cokes at all. But there's something about

848
00:49:37,520 --> 00:49:42,799
Speaker 1: that iconic bottle that I love. That green tinted, green

849
00:49:42,840 --> 00:49:46,160
Speaker 1: tinta that's bright ribbed. No, no, no no, that the original

850
00:49:46,160 --> 00:49:48,839
Speaker 1: coke bottle has that really faint green. It's not green

851
00:49:48,920 --> 00:49:53,120
Speaker 1: green like this bright bottle. But yeah, and it's got

852
00:49:53,239 --> 00:49:57,120
Speaker 1: like that. It's ribbed and it has that curve ribbed

853
00:49:57,120 --> 00:50:00,759
Speaker 1: for your pleasure. It's very sexy bottle. They think about it.

854
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:05,680
Speaker 1: I wonder I loved it. You just went Should we

855
00:50:05,680 --> 00:50:10,640
Speaker 1: talk about um stuff? You shouldn't recycle absolutely. Well, let's

856
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:14,400
Speaker 1: get to that. But let's talk about the criticisms. One

857
00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:16,200
Speaker 1: of the ones we talked about was that it gives

858
00:50:16,239 --> 00:50:17,920
Speaker 1: you and this is the one I think it sounds

859
00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:20,960
Speaker 1: like we both fully agree with, is that recycling gives

860
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:24,600
Speaker 1: you a false sense of um, like you're doing something

861
00:50:24,600 --> 00:50:27,360
Speaker 1: for the environment. Yeah, which you are, but not to

862
00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:29,160
Speaker 1: the point where you can just be like, hey, I'm

863
00:50:29,160 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: just gonna buy everything and but I'm recycling it. Yeah,

864
00:50:33,040 --> 00:50:37,399
Speaker 1: that's definitely true. But also you're not fully like it's

865
00:50:37,560 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 1: amateur hour with recycling these days, where before you you

866
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:45,759
Speaker 1: there was less being recycled, like only one to three

867
00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:48,480
Speaker 1: percent of that stuff was being diverted to the landfill.

868
00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:54,480
Speaker 1: Today there's like fifty increase in the amount of stuff

869
00:50:54,520 --> 00:50:58,279
Speaker 1: that's being recycled, but up to like of that is

870
00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:01,840
Speaker 1: being diverted to the landfill. Yeah. Right, So if you

871
00:51:01,840 --> 00:51:05,120
Speaker 1: could just keep that number up, the increase over like

872
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:09,760
Speaker 1: the early nineties, and then decrease what's going to the landfill,

873
00:51:09,920 --> 00:51:13,760
Speaker 1: that'd be fantastic. And you do that by teaching people

874
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:16,879
Speaker 1: what not to recycle. You should be the e pH

875
00:51:16,960 --> 00:51:20,520
Speaker 1: chief I am. You know, like my pen cost me.

876
00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:25,080
Speaker 1: You might actually want to protect the environment. There, it's

877
00:51:25,120 --> 00:51:26,880
Speaker 1: right there in the job title. We're gonna get some

878
00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:32,799
Speaker 1: email for that. Politics. Uh, this is one that we

879
00:51:32,880 --> 00:51:36,240
Speaker 1: touched on a little bit. But um that it's basically

880
00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:40,279
Speaker 1: a zero sum game. Uh with with the you know,

881
00:51:40,680 --> 00:51:44,640
Speaker 1: the energy used, okay to recycle and like we said,

882
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:47,200
Speaker 1: it sort of you know, very much depends on the product.

883
00:51:47,760 --> 00:51:50,680
Speaker 1: But many of the most common things we recycle. It

884
00:51:50,800 --> 00:51:52,879
Speaker 1: is not a zero sum game. No. But even if

885
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:57,759
Speaker 1: even if Chuck you took all of material manufacturing and

886
00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:01,080
Speaker 1: all of material recycling and it turned out that it

887
00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:07,400
Speaker 1: was totally evened out energy energy wise, pollution wise, you

888
00:52:07,440 --> 00:52:11,280
Speaker 1: would still be it's still be worthwhile to recycle because

889
00:52:11,320 --> 00:52:16,920
Speaker 1: recycling has a demonstrably better impact on the economy. Like

890
00:52:16,960 --> 00:52:19,600
Speaker 1: there are more jobs associated with it, there's more revenue

891
00:52:19,640 --> 00:52:23,080
Speaker 1: associated with it. Um, there are more goods and services

892
00:52:23,120 --> 00:52:26,800
Speaker 1: associated with it. It just has a greater economic impact

893
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:30,520
Speaker 1: than sending waste to the landfill does. Like there's money

894
00:52:30,520 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 1: and sending sending waste to the landfill, it's true, but

895
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:39,160
Speaker 1: recycling actually has way more of a positive economic benefits.

896
00:52:39,160 --> 00:52:42,359
Speaker 1: So even if pollution is the same, energy uses the same,

897
00:52:42,719 --> 00:52:47,560
Speaker 1: it's just shown overall recycling is better money wise. Take

898
00:52:47,560 --> 00:52:50,359
Speaker 1: the pin out of that one. Yeah. Uh, there isn't

899
00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:53,360
Speaker 1: a garbage problem to begin with. There is no garbage crisis.

900
00:52:53,800 --> 00:52:57,680
Speaker 1: Plenty of landfill space. Um, so we don't need to

901
00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:00,560
Speaker 1: sweat it this one. You just say, can you just

902
00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:02,200
Speaker 1: lean forward a little bit and you kick them in

903
00:53:02,239 --> 00:53:07,480
Speaker 1: the butt. Yeah, technically there is plenty of landfill space.

904
00:53:08,320 --> 00:53:10,160
Speaker 1: That does not mean that we should fill it as

905
00:53:10,239 --> 00:53:13,280
Speaker 1: quickly as possible. Right, that's probably the easiest way to

906
00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:17,360
Speaker 1: debunk that, right, Yeah, I mean it's just because there

907
00:53:17,440 --> 00:53:19,880
Speaker 1: is space doesn't mean all right, then fill it with

908
00:53:19,960 --> 00:53:22,880
Speaker 1: drash exactly? Like who thinks that? Do you look at

909
00:53:22,920 --> 00:53:25,399
Speaker 1: the ocean and go, well, we could dump a lot

910
00:53:25,440 --> 00:53:28,879
Speaker 1: of stuff in there, Like that's just that's just that's

911
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:31,359
Speaker 1: just dumb. I'm sorry that you're a dumb person if

912
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:34,759
Speaker 1: you think that. I don't say that very often, but

913
00:53:34,800 --> 00:53:38,080
Speaker 1: when I do, I mean, alright, so I think now

914
00:53:38,120 --> 00:53:42,520
Speaker 1: we can talk about things you're recycling wrong. Okay, So again,

915
00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:48,080
Speaker 1: listen up, everybody, because if we can tell you what

916
00:53:48,239 --> 00:53:51,080
Speaker 1: not to recycle or how to recycle things better, and

917
00:53:51,120 --> 00:53:53,719
Speaker 1: you can tell other people and everybody just kind of

918
00:53:53,719 --> 00:53:56,960
Speaker 1: figures this out and actually becomes like primo recyclers like

919
00:53:57,000 --> 00:53:59,319
Speaker 1: we used to be in the nineties. This would have

920
00:53:59,400 --> 00:54:03,920
Speaker 1: a signal forgetting positive impact on at the very least

921
00:54:03,960 --> 00:54:06,040
Speaker 1: the amount of stuff going to the landfill, which we

922
00:54:06,040 --> 00:54:09,600
Speaker 1: can all agree is not a good thing. Correct. Okay,

923
00:54:09,640 --> 00:54:12,520
Speaker 1: So throw away that Starbucks cup. That's a that's a

924
00:54:12,520 --> 00:54:16,000
Speaker 1: sad one. It is because you want to even if

925
00:54:16,040 --> 00:54:18,400
Speaker 1: you wash it out with water and it's clean as

926
00:54:18,400 --> 00:54:21,759
Speaker 1: a whistle, you cannot recycle that and you're gonna get

927
00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:25,719
Speaker 1: stared at and people are gonna shoot spit balls at you,

928
00:54:25,760 --> 00:54:28,400
Speaker 1: even though they don't have straws anymore. You just say stop, stop,

929
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:31,719
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm on your side. You don't understand. Yeah,

930
00:54:31,760 --> 00:54:33,359
Speaker 1: tell him, Josh, that you know is what you should

931
00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:39,560
Speaker 1: say back. Don't don't mention chuck. But yes, those disposable

932
00:54:39,640 --> 00:54:42,920
Speaker 1: coffee cups have wax on them. It's a very fine

933
00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:45,000
Speaker 1: film and you you know you can tell by looking

934
00:54:45,040 --> 00:54:47,919
Speaker 1: at them. Um, that's why your coffee doesn't leak out

935
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:50,600
Speaker 1: all over through the paper, that's right, because yeah, it's

936
00:54:50,600 --> 00:54:52,719
Speaker 1: either wax or plastic, I think. And the problem is

937
00:54:52,840 --> 00:54:55,880
Speaker 1: is very tough to separate from the paper when they

938
00:54:55,920 --> 00:54:59,359
Speaker 1: start running it through that reprocessing process. Yes, And there

939
00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:04,200
Speaker 1: was a group of people at um stand Earth who

940
00:55:04,200 --> 00:55:06,759
Speaker 1: did a little experiment where they actually had tagged these

941
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:11,680
Speaker 1: Starbucks cups and uh and where Denver, Colorado that went

942
00:55:11,719 --> 00:55:13,880
Speaker 1: to the recycling bin and then they traced them. They

943
00:55:13,920 --> 00:55:17,000
Speaker 1: ended up in the landfill. So yeah, with like electronic tags,

944
00:55:17,440 --> 00:55:20,800
Speaker 1: they were tracking a dolphin. Yeah, or like your child.

945
00:55:21,760 --> 00:55:24,719
Speaker 1: So throw them away. I'm sorry, Okay, but don't just

946
00:55:24,760 --> 00:55:27,080
Speaker 1: throw the whole thing away. You feel dressed that thing, right,

947
00:55:27,120 --> 00:55:29,480
Speaker 1: You pull the coffee clutch off, you pull the lid off,

948
00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:31,839
Speaker 1: both of those can be recycled, and then you throw

949
00:55:31,920 --> 00:55:34,720
Speaker 1: the cup away. Here's the even better thing to do

950
00:55:35,120 --> 00:55:38,440
Speaker 1: by one of those like ten or fifteen dollar travel

951
00:55:38,520 --> 00:55:42,000
Speaker 1: mugs and say I would like my Starbucks in this please,

952
00:55:42,480 --> 00:55:45,319
Speaker 1: and they'll go okay, great. Or if you're sitting in there,

953
00:55:46,080 --> 00:55:49,240
Speaker 1: I don't know that of Starbucks does this, but every

954
00:55:49,239 --> 00:55:51,560
Speaker 1: mom and pop coffee shop will serve you your coffee

955
00:55:51,560 --> 00:55:54,520
Speaker 1: and a big, delicious giant mug. Yeah. I think Starbucks

956
00:55:54,560 --> 00:55:57,360
Speaker 1: does too, if you Yeah, but that that's the point,

957
00:55:57,440 --> 00:56:01,040
Speaker 1: Like re reducing the number of paper cups that you

958
00:56:01,080 --> 00:56:03,480
Speaker 1: have to throw away, so much the better. Yeah, and

959
00:56:03,520 --> 00:56:07,200
Speaker 1: what I do is um my, uh germophobes might think

960
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:10,480
Speaker 1: is creepy, but I take the little sleeve off what

961
00:56:10,520 --> 00:56:13,239
Speaker 1: do you call it clutch to keep it from your

962
00:56:13,280 --> 00:56:15,400
Speaker 1: hand from getting warm. I just stick that back in

963
00:56:15,480 --> 00:56:19,000
Speaker 1: the thing with the other ones. What do you mean, Well,

964
00:56:19,040 --> 00:56:20,480
Speaker 1: I use it and I take it off and I

965
00:56:20,560 --> 00:56:23,440
Speaker 1: put it back where I found it. Oh, I see smart,

966
00:56:23,640 --> 00:56:25,560
Speaker 1: just for the next person. So that's the second are

967
00:56:26,080 --> 00:56:29,759
Speaker 1: yeah nice? Use nice? Just as long as you keep

968
00:56:29,800 --> 00:56:35,759
Speaker 1: your hands clean. Yeah, I try to poopy hand. We've

969
00:56:35,760 --> 00:56:38,760
Speaker 1: talked about pizza boxes before, but it is definitely worth

970
00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:41,960
Speaker 1: saying again, we've talked a lot about pizza boxes. I

971
00:56:42,000 --> 00:56:44,680
Speaker 1: think it's even they say a little grease is okay,

972
00:56:44,719 --> 00:56:47,359
Speaker 1: a tiny amount. I think it's best to just cut

973
00:56:47,400 --> 00:56:49,520
Speaker 1: out the grease spot and throw and throw the rest

974
00:56:49,520 --> 00:56:52,600
Speaker 1: in the recycling bin. Or usually there's only grease on

975
00:56:52,600 --> 00:56:54,479
Speaker 1: one side, the side where the pizza has been sitting.

976
00:56:54,520 --> 00:56:57,120
Speaker 1: The other side's fine, just tear that off and throw

977
00:56:57,160 --> 00:56:59,760
Speaker 1: the non greasy side and the recycling through the greasy

978
00:56:59,760 --> 00:57:02,040
Speaker 1: side in the track. I'm saying, go the extra mile

979
00:57:02,760 --> 00:57:06,160
Speaker 1: and cut around the grease because all those corners are recyclable.

980
00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:08,279
Speaker 1: You go you know. Okay. And here's the other thing

981
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:10,279
Speaker 1: I said, throw the greasy side in the trash, no

982
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:14,399
Speaker 1: light it on fire. The that that, um, that can

983
00:57:14,440 --> 00:57:18,680
Speaker 1: be composted. Uh yeah sure. The cardboard box almost always

984
00:57:18,680 --> 00:57:21,120
Speaker 1: can be composted if even if it has grease on it.

985
00:57:21,280 --> 00:57:28,160
Speaker 1: Yeah okay, so um, pizza boxes, no grease equals recycling. Right,

986
00:57:28,280 --> 00:57:30,840
Speaker 1: And I already talked a little bit about food stuffs.

987
00:57:31,040 --> 00:57:32,959
Speaker 1: A little bit of food stuffs is okay. But again

988
00:57:33,000 --> 00:57:36,240
Speaker 1: I just recommend like taking an extra thirty seconds and

989
00:57:36,280 --> 00:57:39,160
Speaker 1: rents out that mayonnaise jar, right, rent it out. Um

990
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:42,320
Speaker 1: if if it if it has like the oily sheen

991
00:57:42,480 --> 00:57:45,040
Speaker 1: from the mayonnaise and it's still that's fine. The plastic

992
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 1: reprocessor is set up to deal with that. If it

993
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:50,280
Speaker 1: has lumps of mayonnaise and it's still, it's not it's

994
00:57:50,280 --> 00:57:54,920
Speaker 1: too dirty. Um. Same with like peanut butter is another one. Um,

995
00:57:54,960 --> 00:57:58,200
Speaker 1: if you have like a to go like plastic food

996
00:57:58,240 --> 00:58:01,240
Speaker 1: tray or something like that, like like get the crumbs out,

997
00:58:01,280 --> 00:58:03,440
Speaker 1: just get it, like, don't don't sit there and scrub

998
00:58:03,480 --> 00:58:05,320
Speaker 1: it as I think this is A New York Times

999
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:08,360
Speaker 1: article points out like you're'll actually be wasting water at

1000
00:58:08,400 --> 00:58:10,520
Speaker 1: some point, but you do want to you want to

1001
00:58:10,600 --> 00:58:12,560
Speaker 1: kind of get it prepped. Don't just throw it in

1002
00:58:12,600 --> 00:58:16,120
Speaker 1: there like it's like you would the trash um like

1003
00:58:16,200 --> 00:58:19,320
Speaker 1: because it's trash. And again, if there's enough stuff in

1004
00:58:19,360 --> 00:58:22,400
Speaker 1: this batch that's going to the recycling center, they're gonna

1005
00:58:22,480 --> 00:58:26,240
Speaker 1: throw it away. So don't throw stuff that shouldn't be

1006
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:29,760
Speaker 1: recycled in with the recycling. Yeah, I get we have

1007
00:58:29,800 --> 00:58:33,120
Speaker 1: a lot of guilt about take out containers. Yeah, so

1008
00:58:33,320 --> 00:58:36,480
Speaker 1: ordering in that's that's the one thing where just like man,

1009
00:58:37,000 --> 00:58:40,360
Speaker 1: I love ordering in food, love that Chinese delivery yeah,

1010
00:58:40,600 --> 00:58:44,160
Speaker 1: but all that waste. Yeah, and like the Chinese delivery boxes,

1011
00:58:44,200 --> 00:58:47,400
Speaker 1: I mean their waterproof too for a reason, so they're

1012
00:58:47,400 --> 00:58:50,240
Speaker 1: not getting recycled either. You've gotta just awsome. I saw

1013
00:58:50,320 --> 00:58:55,680
Speaker 1: something like this is made up. But it's something like

1014
00:58:55,800 --> 00:59:01,960
Speaker 1: seventy or eighty percent of plastic trash is one time

1015
00:59:02,120 --> 00:59:07,880
Speaker 1: use food packaging, like just some ridiculous amount. Where if

1016
00:59:07,960 --> 00:59:09,720
Speaker 1: and this is the weird thing, what are you gonna do?

1017
00:59:09,800 --> 00:59:13,240
Speaker 1: You're gonna take like your own dishes to the Chinese

1018
00:59:13,240 --> 00:59:15,800
Speaker 1: food place or your own like tupperware and say put

1019
00:59:15,840 --> 00:59:19,320
Speaker 1: it in this please? People do that? Do they? But

1020
00:59:19,400 --> 00:59:21,840
Speaker 1: I mean, you are pretty hardcore if you're doing that,

1021
00:59:22,160 --> 00:59:24,080
Speaker 1: So there's gotta be another way. And chuck. This is

1022
00:59:24,120 --> 00:59:26,400
Speaker 1: another another thing we can do besides you and me

1023
00:59:27,120 --> 00:59:31,040
Speaker 1: being smarter and better at recycling, like just just making

1024
00:59:31,040 --> 00:59:35,480
Speaker 1: that like a side thing. It's demanding that manufacturers who

1025
00:59:35,840 --> 00:59:40,440
Speaker 1: make packaging make it with this end of life and mind.

1026
00:59:40,800 --> 00:59:42,920
Speaker 1: Make it so it can be reused, or make it

1027
00:59:43,000 --> 00:59:45,840
Speaker 1: so it can be very easily recycled, or make it

1028
00:59:45,880 --> 00:59:48,480
Speaker 1: so it has a minimal design rather than a bunch

1029
00:59:48,520 --> 00:59:51,320
Speaker 1: of like styrofoam and wrapping and all this stuff. And

1030
00:59:51,360 --> 00:59:53,640
Speaker 1: if you, I mean, just the smallest little things can help.

1031
00:59:53,680 --> 00:59:56,600
Speaker 1: Like if you're picking up food to go, uh, and

1032
00:59:56,640 --> 00:59:59,600
Speaker 1: they're throwing in a bunch of utensils that you take home,

1033
00:59:59,680 --> 01:00:01,720
Speaker 1: yeah to say no, Yeah, like you don't use that

1034
01:00:01,800 --> 01:00:04,320
Speaker 1: stuff if you're taking it home, So what do you do?

1035
01:00:04,360 --> 01:00:06,000
Speaker 1: You probably throw it away or there's a drawer in

1036
01:00:06,000 --> 01:00:12,200
Speaker 1: your house with those things, you know. Uh. Plastic straws

1037
01:00:12,200 --> 01:00:14,160
Speaker 1: are a big deal right now to like cities are

1038
01:00:14,160 --> 01:00:17,200
Speaker 1: banning them. I think Starbucks just said they weren't gonna

1039
01:00:17,240 --> 01:00:19,600
Speaker 1: use them anymore, So that's a big one. Um. And

1040
01:00:19,680 --> 01:00:23,600
Speaker 1: plastics again, plastic bags are really bad zip block bags,

1041
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:26,280
Speaker 1: bubble wrap. None of that stuff should be in your recycling,

1042
01:00:26,320 --> 01:00:28,520
Speaker 1: none of it. None of it. Yeah, like don't. I've

1043
01:00:28,520 --> 01:00:31,000
Speaker 1: seen people take a bag full of alumium cans and

1044
01:00:31,040 --> 01:00:33,200
Speaker 1: throw the whole thing in there, Right, that bag is

1045
01:00:33,240 --> 01:00:35,760
Speaker 1: going to good like they're they're gonna say, well, this

1046
01:00:35,800 --> 01:00:40,280
Speaker 1: whole bag is trash, even though everything inside can be recycled,

1047
01:00:40,600 --> 01:00:43,680
Speaker 1: it's trash now because it's just not worth their time

1048
01:00:43,720 --> 01:00:47,760
Speaker 1: to empty the bag out. The conveyor belts going too fast. Yeah,

1049
01:00:47,880 --> 01:00:52,720
Speaker 1: dirty diapers can't recycle those that has human bio hazardous

1050
01:00:52,760 --> 01:00:56,680
Speaker 1: waste in it, even if you're even if you're using

1051
01:00:56,680 --> 01:01:01,320
Speaker 1: the diapers that do have plastic in them, get judge.

1052
01:01:01,480 --> 01:01:05,480
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't use those either. But that's there the

1053
01:01:05,760 --> 01:01:07,800
Speaker 1: reason you might think you can recycle them because well,

1054
01:01:07,800 --> 01:01:10,240
Speaker 1: it's plastic. I can recycle plastic. You can't recycle like

1055
01:01:10,280 --> 01:01:12,640
Speaker 1: eight different kinds of plastic that are in the diapers.

1056
01:01:12,960 --> 01:01:16,360
Speaker 1: They again, they melt them down, and then yes, once

1057
01:01:16,400 --> 01:01:18,720
Speaker 1: you add the whole dimension of poop to it, it's

1058
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:22,040
Speaker 1: bad news from your child who was eating plastic that

1059
01:01:22,200 --> 01:01:24,080
Speaker 1: was plastic in the poop. I can't wait to do

1060
01:01:24,120 --> 01:01:28,640
Speaker 1: a plastic episode. It's gonna knock everybody's socks off, chuck. Uh.

1061
01:01:28,680 --> 01:01:31,840
Speaker 1: So we're going to stop here and we'll pick this

1062
01:01:31,960 --> 01:01:35,440
Speaker 1: up again in eight years. Okay. Yes, if you want

1063
01:01:35,440 --> 01:01:39,840
Speaker 1: to know more about recycling, go to your local recycling

1064
01:01:39,920 --> 01:01:43,520
Speaker 1: website and figure out what you can recycle and what

1065
01:01:43,600 --> 01:01:47,040
Speaker 1: you can't and do it. Okay. And since I said

1066
01:01:47,120 --> 01:01:51,680
Speaker 1: do it, it's time for listening mail. I'm gonna call

1067
01:01:51,760 --> 01:01:55,600
Speaker 1: this Zambardo follow up. Hey, guys, big fan of the

1068
01:01:55,640 --> 01:01:59,240
Speaker 1: show and also a fellow movie crusher. Well nice, thank you. Alex.

1069
01:01:59,800 --> 01:02:02,080
Speaker 1: Let's thing to the Stanford prison experiment and reminded me

1070
01:02:02,080 --> 01:02:05,720
Speaker 1: of my own discovery of Zimbardo. In high school, I

1071
01:02:05,760 --> 01:02:08,560
Speaker 1: took a psychology class and the teacher didn't really have

1072
01:02:08,600 --> 01:02:11,600
Speaker 1: a lesson plan for any day. He would periodically just

1073
01:02:11,640 --> 01:02:15,240
Speaker 1: put on episodes of the PBS show called Discovering Psychology,

1074
01:02:15,640 --> 01:02:18,479
Speaker 1: hosted by some middle aged guy who looked a bit

1075
01:02:18,600 --> 01:02:22,600
Speaker 1: like a Star Trek evil doppelganger. The episodes are pretty elementary.

1076
01:02:22,600 --> 01:02:26,000
Speaker 1: He seemed to be designed for student audience. The host

1077
01:02:26,040 --> 01:02:29,320
Speaker 1: would introduce himself, talk about something like perception or learning

1078
01:02:29,360 --> 01:02:31,560
Speaker 1: for a bit, and then read and then do a

1079
01:02:31,680 --> 01:02:36,040
Speaker 1: reading rainbow esque graphic. Uh cutaway to a famous experiment

1080
01:02:36,080 --> 01:02:39,959
Speaker 1: on the subject. Fast forward to this semester. We're given

1081
01:02:40,000 --> 01:02:43,080
Speaker 1: some free time to research UH, and I was trying

1082
01:02:43,080 --> 01:02:46,960
Speaker 1: to pick something good and I discovered the Standford prison experiment.

1083
01:02:47,240 --> 01:02:50,240
Speaker 1: It was only then that I realized that Zimbardo was

1084
01:02:50,280 --> 01:02:53,000
Speaker 1: the one hosting that PBS special that I had been

1085
01:02:53,000 --> 01:02:56,640
Speaker 1: watching for the past month. Frankly, guys, im will surprise

1086
01:02:56,720 --> 01:02:59,200
Speaker 1: at UH, the guy that had the lead role in

1087
01:02:59,200 --> 01:03:01,520
Speaker 1: when of the least at the cool psychology experiments was

1088
01:03:01,560 --> 01:03:04,440
Speaker 1: given Well, let's be fair, it wasn't one of the

1089
01:03:04,520 --> 01:03:08,880
Speaker 1: least ethical. Ever. Things have gotten way worse, But for

1090
01:03:08,920 --> 01:03:12,080
Speaker 1: as big as it was, I just want to be clear,

1091
01:03:12,120 --> 01:03:16,280
Speaker 1: they're poorly, poorly put together. I'm I'm surprised he was

1092
01:03:16,320 --> 01:03:19,640
Speaker 1: given a hosting role for an educational TV show targeting

1093
01:03:19,680 --> 01:03:25,120
Speaker 1: students twenty years after. Okay, fair enough, that's Alex's point

1094
01:03:25,160 --> 01:03:30,000
Speaker 1: of view. That is from Alex Aberman. Alex from Falls Church, Virginia,

1095
01:03:30,320 --> 01:03:34,760
Speaker 1: nice town, buddy NICs area. Yes for running it? Oh yeah,

1096
01:03:34,840 --> 01:03:38,080
Speaker 1: have you ever been to um oh? Man, I can't

1097
01:03:38,120 --> 01:03:41,120
Speaker 1: remember the name of the place. They're famous for peaking

1098
01:03:41,240 --> 01:03:45,600
Speaker 1: duck there. Oh really? Yeah? I can't remember. There's one specific,

1099
01:03:45,880 --> 01:03:49,400
Speaker 1: amazing Chinese restaurant that has the best peaking duck you'll

1100
01:03:49,560 --> 01:03:53,720
Speaker 1: ever had. Wow, try it all right, okay, um duck,

1101
01:03:53,800 --> 01:03:57,800
Speaker 1: but oh well, don't bother me. The rest of the

1102
01:03:57,800 --> 01:03:59,800
Speaker 1: food is pretty good too, but the peking duck is

1103
01:04:00,000 --> 01:04:03,560
Speaker 1: off your socks off. Um. So, if you want to

1104
01:04:03,560 --> 01:04:05,720
Speaker 1: know more about oh no, I already said that. If

1105
01:04:05,760 --> 01:04:07,080
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, go to

1106
01:04:07,120 --> 01:04:09,160
Speaker 1: our website, Stuff you Should Know dot com. It has

1107
01:04:09,240 --> 01:04:11,800
Speaker 1: all the links to all our social meds, and you

1108
01:04:11,800 --> 01:04:14,800
Speaker 1: can also send us an email, wrap it up, spank

1109
01:04:14,840 --> 01:04:16,920
Speaker 1: it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff

1110
01:04:17,000 --> 01:04:24,320
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on

1111
01:04:24,400 --> 01:04:26,880
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff

1112
01:04:26,920 --> 01:04:28,040
Speaker 1: works dot com.