WEBVTT - How ‘Swiftonomics’ May Finally Break Ticketmaster’s Spell 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:08.119 Hello, Stephanomics. Here the podcast that brings you the global economy, 0:00:08.280 --> 0:00:10.880 and this week we're shifting gear to talk about music, 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:14.120 fast fashion, and catch up. We all feel a bit 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:17.280 better about our mass consumption culture when we drop our 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:21.880 empty milk cartons or last year's trousers in the recycling bin, 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:25.880 usually on our way to buying more. But holding onto 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:29.560 that warm feeling, I've discovered relies on not thinking very 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:33.839 much about where all that discarded stuff goes next. If 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:35.960 you're someone who likes to refresh your wardrobe on a 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:39.880 regular basis, you definitely shouldn't go to Gharna, where parts 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:43.000 of the coastline are clogged with what locals call dead 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:46.680 white people's clothes washed up on the beach, sometimes in 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:51.320 six foot piles. Bloomberg investigative reporter Natalie Pierson went to 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:54.720 Ghana and India to see for herself what happened to 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:57.400 all the second hand clothes we ship abroad. We have 0:00:57.520 --> 0:01:00.880 that depressing story in a minute, and some truths about 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:04.680 plastics recycling from a teacher and former official from the 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:08.960 Environmental Protection Agency Judith Ink. But first we have an 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:11.960 insight into another corner of the economy, which looks seriously 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:15.720 out of whack. Only this time the problem isn't excess supply, 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:19.840 but an explosion in demand the tickets to see the 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:30.720 singer Taylor Swift. Here's Bloomberg's Augusta Serreva. Good morning America. 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:33.600 It's Taylor. I wanted to tell you something that I've 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:35.960 been so excited about for a really long time. Have 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:38.360 been planning for ages, and I finally get to tell 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:42.120 you I'm going back on tour. Taylor Swift has been 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:46.720 my top streaming artist for six years now. Despite that, 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:50.520 I've never had a chance to see her alive. That's 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:53.680 why when the thirty two year old singer announced that 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:56.040 she was touring, they was for the first time in 0:01:56.160 --> 0:01:59.360 five years next year. I signed up for the PRIs 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:02.920 Cell right away, But when I got to the virtual 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:07.360 line on the Ticketmaster platform last week, I quickly found 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:10.120 out that I wasn't the only one bringing years of 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:14.000 pent up demand to the table. Not even eight hours 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:16.200 in line were enough for me to score a ticket. 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:18.079 The site was supposed to be opened up for one 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:22.240 point five million verified Taylor Swift fans. We had fourteen 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:24.680 million people hit the site. We did sell over two 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:28.760 million tickets that day, we could have filled nine hundred stadiums. 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:34.960 That was Gregmafae, the CEO with Ticketmaster's parent company, in 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:39.160 an interview with CNBC. Yes, Greg, I know it all 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:49.480 too well. Demand was so high in the pre sale 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:53.800 that Ticketmaster canceled the general public sale after a record 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:58.840 two point four million tickets were sold. The whole frenzy 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:05.600 triggered anti rust investigations from politicians and attorneys general like Meanwhile, 0:03:05.919 --> 0:03:08.919 for those like me, all that's love to do is 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:11.639 trying to buy tickets for as much as forty thou 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:17.320 dollars on the secondary market. We have the means of 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:22.120 almost unlimited production. We have an almost unlimited capacity to consume. 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:25.960 We need to raise our actual consumption so that it 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:30.079 matches our capacity to produce. We know that this doesn't 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:34.280 have supply and demand, two of the oldest concepts and economics. 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:39.960 But this is swift ponomics, where supplies manufactured and accusations 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:45.080 of price gouging and monopoly abound. In the early two thousand's, 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:49.760 late economists Alan Krueger came up with the term ro economics. 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:56.160 The labor economists who advised to US presidents suggested that 0:03:56.240 --> 0:04:01.880 economic concepts could be more easily explained through the music industry, 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:06.240 which most of us are familiar with. Krueger often used 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:09.800 Swift as an example of someone who's successfully used loyalty 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:13.680 strategies to boost concert and music sales. First of all, 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:16.400 I think Taylor Swift is an economic genius. She has 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:20.160 made more money from concerts at her age than Madonna 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:25.480 did at her age, or Beyonce or Lady Gaga. So 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:29.320 she's on its tremendous trajectory. And she has done this 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:34.240 I think by making very good economic decisions. That was 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:38.600 Krueger in a eighteen interview with the Princeton Alumni magazine. 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:44.920 Swift has chosen to play only a high capacity football stadiums, 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:50.120 She's added seventeen extra concerts since the Erastore was first announced, 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:54.880 and she's even created a verified band system to guarantee 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:57.920 only the most loyal had access to the pre sale. 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:01.960 None of that, though, was enough to stop years of 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:06.359 pantop demand turned nearly in elastic for the millions of 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:09.960 die hard fans. Not even the fact that Swift will 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:13.240 be touring the US at a time when many economists 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:18.719 are certain the country will be in a recession. Swift 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:24.840 aconomics is it's on economics microcosm, and for now all fans, 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:32.559 including myself, can do is shake it off. Great great, 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:41.120 great great again. Well, as Augusta mentioned, the saga of 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:45.120 the Swift tickets isn't just offering a window into millennial 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:49.520 spending habits. It's also triggered a renewed debate about antitrust 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:52.680 policies in the US, and particularly where the ticket master 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:56.560 has been allowed to acquire too much power in the industry. 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:00.440 Elena Tyler is a legal analyst for the Bloomberg Industry 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.320 Group in Arlington, Virginia, and she wrote an excellent piece 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:07.000 on all of that for us. Elena, thank you so 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:10.400 much for joining us very late notes just before Thanksgiving. 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:15.800 I appreciate it. Why has this Taylor Swift ticket debarked 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:23.320 triggered antitrust debates? What exactly is the monopoly problem? So 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:26.560 it falls neatly into a couple of debates that the 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:32.359 broader an antitrust policy uh world is having in the 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:35.800 United States right now. One of them is about whether 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:39.760 vertical mergers are something that the antitrust world should be 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:42.600 concerned about. And when you say, just to explain about 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:45.480 what a vertical merger is oh, of course, so there 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:48.800 are really we think of murders in two ways. Either 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:51.960 two companies that directly compete with each other in the 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:55.920 same market merge, and then obviously one of them stops 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:59.320 competing with the other and the market consolidates. But you 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:02.840 can also have mergers between companies that are not in 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:07.160 the same market. They are either supplier and buyer, or 0:07:07.960 --> 0:07:10.520 they are a company that makes a product and maybe 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:14.480 one that retails it or distributes it. Those mergers we 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:17.320 generally call vertical because they're in different places in the 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:22.440 supply chain. It used to be that antitrust didn't consider 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:25.239 those to be much of a threat because they weren't 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:31.480 consolidating a single market, but economic theory has recently called 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:35.240 that into question. A bunch of additional research has happened, 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:39.320 and we now are no longer quite so sure that 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:45.480 vertical mergers are as efficient and unproblematic as we had 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:51.320 believed in the past. This original merger in between Live Nation, 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:58.720 which is a behemoth in concert promotion for major venues 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:03.960 um and Ticketmaster, which is the beheaventh in primary ticket sales, 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:09.840 was very controversial, and the Department of Justice permitted the 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:15.400 merger to close with a settlement that both required some 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:19.200 structural changes to what would get merged together and also 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:23.880 some behavioral promises. Um the businesses combined promised not to 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:28.720 bully other providers and basically throw around their newly acquired 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:33.040 market weight. Right that hasn't worked the way one might 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:37.240 have hoped it would, and so that likewise speeds into 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:41.280 a current debate that's happening in anti trust policy about 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:46.560 whether behavioral agreements you know, not to be nasty once 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:50.720 you're allowed to merge, are really a good idea, and 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:55.480 whether the best solution isn't to prohibit the merger in 0:08:55.520 --> 0:09:00.520 the first instance and keep the market power from console alidating, 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:05.000 rather than trying to tinker on the edges with the 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:08.680 merged party and keep the worst outcomes from happening. So 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:12.200 those are two big debates that this plays into right now. 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:16.280 And now there's a concern that Ticketmaster is becoming a 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:20.760 big power in the secondary market as well, in other words, 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:24.800 resale of tickets. So there's a concern there that if 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:28.520 all of these markets, which play into each other, feed 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:32.720 off of each other and work together, might create a 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:36.840 situation where the whole industry is more or less dominated 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:40.200 by one big firm. Yeah, and it's interesting because there's 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:44.160 an absolute furore on Twitter. And I'm not someone despite 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:47.680 having a Taylor Swift mad fourteen year old daughter at home, 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:49.640 I don't spend a lot of time on the relevant 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:53.400 Twitter accounts. But I was just I would recommend people 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:56.960 listening just take a look at the amount of vitriol 0:09:57.240 --> 0:10:00.280 against ticket Master and Taylor Swift herself as kind of 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:03.520 come out against ticket Master. But I didn't know until 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:06.760 I read your piece this point about the resale that 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:08.880 the ticket Master even just in the three months at 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:11.559 the end of September, did about did one point one 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:14.480 billion dollars worth of business ticket Master did in the 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:18.000 ticket resale business. So if you're if you're a fan 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:21.440 who spent hours trying to get tickets, you couldn't get one, 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:24.800 But somehow these touts or the resale market markets could 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:27.800 you are surely looking at Ticketmaster and say, well, you've 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:31.280 got no interest in giving the ticket to me if 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:33.720 you can get paid twice giving it to somebody else, 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:39.040 that's the real concern. It's a puzzle. Somebody obviously got tickets, right, 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:43.000 there aren't exactly tickets left over and these complaints that 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:46.760 we see from private parties in US courts have all 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:53.320 claimed that while Ticketmaster says that it is um cracking 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:58.440 down on scalpers, cracking down on bots that sweep through 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:01.000 the system with multiple account and grab a bunch of 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:05.840 tickets and then place them for resale, that that's definitely 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:08.360 not where their incentives lie. Buying a ticket on the 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:12.280 primary market generates a fee for Live Nation, and then 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:15.680 if the ticket is turned around and resold on a 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:20.040 Live Nation platform and they have several um through ticket Master, 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:25.079 then they will generate a second fee. You would imagine 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:29.000 that the sale that generates two or even three fees 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:32.240 is preferable to the one that's a one and done fee. 0:11:32.520 --> 0:11:36.040 It explains a lot why the market looks like it does, UM, 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:39.640 and why it's still frustrating for ordinary people trying to 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:43.559 click with their actual human speed. Uh, they're up against spots. 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:45.720 I guess, going back to what you said about whether 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:49.920 you should be trusting businesses to do the right thing, UM, 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:51.880 I guess if you're a ticket Master and you do 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:53.680 the wrong thing and you get on the wrong side 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:55.640 of Taylor Swift, I mean that it's going to rue 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.280 the day that it didn't make more of an effort. Well, 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:02.920 it certainly has raised the profile of this specific problem. 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:07.640 But if Taylor Swift tangles with Live Nation and Ticketmaster, 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:11.240 she certainly wouldn't be the first big act to fail 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:17.200 in getting them to change their practices. Pearl jam back 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:21.880 in the Odds worked hard to try to change the 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:25.600 way ticketing happens in the primary market and failed. It's 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:28.600 a pretty tall order, but the Swifties may be up 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:31.440 to the churche. Well, we've also seen quite a lot 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:34.240 of prominent lawmakers weighing in, and I see that the 0:12:34.320 --> 0:12:37.319 chair of the U. S Senates Antitrust Subcommittee, Amy Kloba, 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:40.560 she said she'll hold a hearing on Ticketmaster by the 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:42.640 end of the year, so I guess we'll you'll be 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:54.520 watching that space. Eleana Tyler, thank you so much. Thank you. Well. Now, 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.480 as promised, we have some bad news for those of 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:00.000 you planning to splash out on a new winter wardrobe 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:11.800 in the days after Thanksgiving. Here's Natalie Pearson waterlog clothes 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:15.080 roll like carcasses and the waves along the coast of Ghana. 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:18.280 The country is one of the world's biggest importers of 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:21.719 US clothing. The cast offs arriving by the bail are 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:25.840 known here as a browny wind or dead white people's clothes. 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:30.600 What is happening is the fast fashion lifestyle of the vitaman. 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:36.320 They will go for programs, they print some clothing because 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:44.000 they know they have a place to dump them. That 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:46.760 was Solomon Noi, the head of waste management in Accra, 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:51.720 the capital of Ghana. Some of the imported clothes don't 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:55.360 get reworn or repurposed. They simply end up as garbage. 0:13:56.240 --> 0:14:00.360 When it rains, waterways belch garments into the ocean, waves 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:02.560 bring them right back to form a wall of rags 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:06.200 more than six ft high in places along the shoreline 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:10.760 of the city. Sanitation crews fight a losing battle every 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:15.400 day trying to corral Acra's textile waste into landfills. But 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:18.400 there's just too much, says Noi. So at the end 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:21.040 of the day, government doesn't have the money to be 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:24.360 able to implement a fastratcher that is needed to take 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:28.920 care of the mite man's glueto exactly. It's a disaster 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:33.000 decades in the making. As clothing has become cheaper, plentiful, 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:38.120 and ever more disposable each year, the fashion industry produces 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:42.720 more than one hundred billion apparel items. That's roughly fourteen 0:14:42.800 --> 0:14:45.720 for every person on Earth, and more than double the 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:51.240 amount of two thousand. Every day, consumers toss out tens 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:54.680 of millions of garments, many land and so called recycling 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:57.560 bins set up in stores by fast fashion chains like 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:01.600 h and M, Zarah and pre Mark. Research shows that 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:04.440 when people believe an item will be recycled, they consume 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:09.160 more of it, but textile recycling doesn't yet exist at 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:13.800 scale globally. It's estimated that less than one percent of 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:20.080 used clothing is actually remade into new garments. Instead, discards 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:23.880 enter a global second hand supply chain, which prolongs their life, 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:28.080 either by reselling them in developing markets or repurposing them 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:45.360 into items like cleaning cloths or insulation. One of the 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:49.760 world's biggest used clothing processors is in India's western Gujarat 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:55.880 state Knam International. Here, forklifts dig their way into forty 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:59.800 foot shipping containers packed tight with used garments, heating the 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:07.120 giant bales inside for sorting and grading. Some four hundred 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:10.600 women work at Cannam's facility, each sorting as many as 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:15.160 five thousand pieces a day. Sunita Suni Sa who is 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:21.000 one of them? My name is Sunita. I have been 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:26.160 working with Kanam International for sixteen years. I first started 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:31.040 with cutting, then sorting, than grading, and now finally I'm 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:35.000 on quality control. The work is tough to automate. A 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:37.800 greater needs to quickly decide the economic value of a 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:41.880 used garment. Can it be reworn or turned into rags 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:46.240 or is it simply worthless. It took around five years 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:49.520 for me to understand which garments were premium brands as 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:53.880 I started with the cutting job. Now I understand properly 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:57.000 which ones are branded and which was sell for a 0:16:57.000 --> 0:17:00.920 better prize. Roughly a third of what the sility receives 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:05.080 has no value. Across the industry, that share is growing. 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:14.879 The decline and clothing quality has been spurred by fast 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:21.000 fashion and consumers preference for quantity over quality. Garments fall 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:23.960 apart after a few washes. Most are blends of cheap 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:27.600 synthetic fibers that are difficult to repurpose or recycle, and 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:30.280 there's just so much of it that markets are saturated. 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:41.119 Clothing value the high and the prices are low. That's 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:48.920 why at Robert Hall Family Clothings march toward disposability traces 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:51.960 back to the post World War two period, when companies 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:56.520 in America began intentionally designing goods not to last so 0:17:56.560 --> 0:18:01.000 that people would keep buying. The fashion instry became geared 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:06.000 toward getting consumers, particularly women, to turn through clothing ever faster. 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:11.560 By the nineteen eighties, the preconditions for fast fashion were 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:19.000 in place. Then one Spanish company perfected the formula. Hey guys, 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:22.040 welcome back to my channel. I'm so excited to be 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:25.359 doing this haul for you. I went to Zara and 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:28.800 picked out my favorite items. It's the beginning of October 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:32.960 five and it's time to see what's in store. I 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:36.679 found ten hidden Johns from Zara that are really worth 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:41.840 buying into texts. The parent company of Zarah pioneered a 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:44.960 retailing model that rolled out ten thousand designs a year 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:50.000 and continuously cleared out unsold items. The effect was astounding. 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:54.240 Shoppers began dropping by Zara stores four times more frequently 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:58.800 than those of its competitors. Neurological research has since shown 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:01.080 that shopping taps in to a region of our brain 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:05.520 linked to addictive behavior. Sara had hit on a way 0:19:05.520 --> 0:19:09.719 to commercialized fomo or fear of missing out before it 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:12.040 was even a thing. And I'm going to share those 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:14.840 items with you today so that you can go out 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:22.640 and buy them too. Today. China produces clothes so cheaply 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:26.080 that new garments can be competitive with used ones. That's 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:30.520 according to Eric Steuben, president of Transamerica's Textile Recycling, Inc. 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:34.320 They operate one of North America's oldest sorting facilities. We 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:38.240 have to compete. Buyers all the time would say to 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:41.879 me things like, well, we're competing against you know, uh, 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:46.040 you know, cheap Chinese manufactured merchandise. So it's you know, 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:50.960 in a lot of the major African markets or global markets, 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:55.160 Chinese manufactured clothing competes with secondhand in these markets. I've 0:19:55.240 --> 0:20:00.480 seen that in first hand in my dealings. Turns out 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.720 that recycling clothes back into fibers for new clothes is 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:08.320 devilishly difficult. Buttons and zippers need to be removed, Blended 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:12.280 fabrics must be unblended dyes removed. The technology to do 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:17.439 so is nascent. Garment tags that boast recycled fiber content 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:21.520 today usually use polyester from plastic bottles, but a plastic 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:24.359 bottle can be recycled back into a plastic bottle. Many 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:28.320 times a plastic bottle turned into a puffer jacket. Can't 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:33.199 At the end of the day, experts warn that we 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:37.560 can't shop our way to sustainability. Recycling will always consume 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:40.639 more energy and produce more waste than we're using something 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:46.400 or not consuming it in the first place. Here's Julia Atwood, 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:50.320 head of sustainable Materials at Bloomberg an ef. I mean, 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:54.359 whenever you're thinking about the circular economy of anything, the 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:58.119 best thing to do is to reduce to map. So 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:01.000 you would have to kill the fast fasht and market 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:05.240 in order to make a meaningful difference to the emissions 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:14.960 or footprint of text dollary cycling. Fort Lumberg inanever, I'm 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:25.639 Natalie ob called Pierson now Judith thank is a senior 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:28.919 fellow and visiting faculty member at Bennington College. She was 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:32.360 previously a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency under 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:37.280 President Obama, and she's also the founder of Beyond Plastics. Judy, 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:40.520 thank you very much for coming on. Stephanois one lesson 0:21:40.560 --> 0:21:43.879 of Natalie's pieces that when it comes to clothing, the 0:21:43.960 --> 0:21:48.119 supply of secondhand clothes vastly exceeds what can realistically be 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:51.919 reused at home or abroad. Is that also the case 0:21:52.119 --> 0:21:59.440 for plastics, Well, there is so much plastic production happening 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:04.400 every day and once it is used, and it's typically 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:08.240 single use, um, there's nothing good to do with it 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:13.240 when when you're done. Plastics recycling has been an abysmal failure. 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:19.040 There's very very little reuse refill of plastics. So our 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:26.560 world is drowning in single use plastic clothing. Uh, clothing 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:32.879 has plastic in it. And unfortunately, plastic production is on 0:22:33.480 --> 0:22:37.080 track to double in the next twenty years according to 0:22:37.119 --> 0:22:42.680 the World Economic Forum. So this absolutely is not sustainable. 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:46.920 This is not what people think of when they think 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:51.679 of the need for a circular economy. And when I 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:54.800 look at my recycling bag and in our part of London, 0:22:54.840 --> 0:22:57.439 it's all mixed up together. Um. And if I at 0:22:57.440 --> 0:23:00.520 any given bag in a given week, you know a 0:23:00.560 --> 0:23:03.480 lot of it would be plastics that we're taking, whether 0:23:03.520 --> 0:23:07.679 it's a milk plastic milk bottles and other things. Is 0:23:07.680 --> 0:23:10.280 it just is that just a fiction to say that 0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:13.880 that all of those plastics can be recycled. Yeah, it's 0:23:13.920 --> 0:23:20.920 a fiction and it's also a lie. Perpetuated by plastic producers. UM, 0:23:20.960 --> 0:23:25.800 we have so little choice when we go to the supermarket. UM, 0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:29.280 none of us have voted for more plastic. But plastic 0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:33.480 is cheap and it is flooded the market. And for decades, 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:38.600 Big Plastic has suggested to the public, UM, don't worry 0:23:38.600 --> 0:23:41.440 about all of your single use plastics, just toss it 0:23:41.880 --> 0:23:46.000 in your recycling bin. But they have known for decades 0:23:46.600 --> 0:23:52.159 that plastics fundamentally are not recyclable. That's why in the 0:23:52.280 --> 0:23:55.320 United States we're looking at a five to six percent 0:23:55.440 --> 0:23:59.200 recycling rate, a little bit higher in Europe, but not 0:23:59.359 --> 0:24:02.320 much high air And I just want to briefly explain 0:24:02.680 --> 0:24:09.080 why this is why plastic is not similar to metal, glass, paper, cardboard. 0:24:09.359 --> 0:24:12.680 All of those materials can be made from recycled material 0:24:13.280 --> 0:24:15.560 and then when you put them in your recycling bin 0:24:15.720 --> 0:24:20.000 or bag, they actually do get recycled. It's the opposite 0:24:20.000 --> 0:24:25.120 with plastics. And that's because there are hundreds of different 0:24:25.200 --> 0:24:29.320 types of plastics. Not only do you have different resins, 0:24:29.880 --> 0:24:35.200 but they all have different chemical additives and different colorants. 0:24:35.640 --> 0:24:38.120 So think of your own home. On top of your 0:24:38.160 --> 0:24:41.320 washing machine, if you have one, you might have a 0:24:41.480 --> 0:24:45.760 bright orange hard plastic detergent bottle, and then in your 0:24:45.840 --> 0:24:51.639 refrigerator you might have a clear, squeezable ketchup bottle. You 0:24:51.760 --> 0:24:58.360 cannot recycle them together. They are two different, different chemical additives, 0:24:58.760 --> 0:25:03.360 different colors, and so plastic recycling is a dead end, 0:25:04.040 --> 0:25:08.840 and plastic recycling has given other recycling a bad name. 0:25:09.040 --> 0:25:11.720 I want to be clear. I am a strong supporter 0:25:12.359 --> 0:25:17.639 first of waste reduction, refill, reuse, and then definitely recycle 0:25:17.840 --> 0:25:21.960 all of your metal, glass, paper, cardboard. But you need 0:25:22.040 --> 0:25:27.720 to know that most plastics do not get recycled. And 0:25:27.880 --> 0:25:32.160 is there just on your example, given that a lot 0:25:32.200 --> 0:25:35.760 of the consumer products we do seem to be kind 0:25:35.800 --> 0:25:38.359 of hardwired to make things out of plastic, wouldn't make 0:25:38.359 --> 0:25:43.560 it any any better to be reducing the different types 0:25:43.600 --> 0:25:47.199 of plastics. So there was more possibility that maybe that 0:25:47.400 --> 0:25:51.720 that detergent bottle and the ketchup bottle could be recycled 0:25:51.720 --> 0:25:54.960 in the same place. Yeah, it definitely would be better 0:25:55.160 --> 0:25:59.680 if we had fewer types of plastics, but that change 0:25:59.720 --> 0:26:05.280 is only going to happen when legislative bodies adopt new 0:26:05.400 --> 0:26:10.560 laws requiring this. The plastics industry and consumer brands like 0:26:10.840 --> 0:26:15.679 Unilever and um coke and PEPSI and McDonald's. They're not 0:26:15.760 --> 0:26:20.679 going to change on their own. We need new laws 0:26:20.800 --> 0:26:24.640 that give us a fighting chance to have a more 0:26:24.760 --> 0:26:31.800 sustainable economy. So one area is known as extended Producer Responsibility, 0:26:32.480 --> 0:26:37.280 and that would put environmental standards on packaging. Just like 0:26:37.320 --> 0:26:41.560 we have fuel efficiency standards for cars that allow us 0:26:41.640 --> 0:26:45.240 to save money at the gas station. We have energy 0:26:45.280 --> 0:26:49.760 efficiency standards for appliances so we save a little bit 0:26:49.760 --> 0:26:54.040 of money on our monthly utility bill. We need environmental 0:26:54.320 --> 0:27:01.640 standards for packaging that encourage reduction, reuse, but also some 0:27:01.760 --> 0:27:05.720 standardization so you have a chance to actually recycle it. 0:27:06.359 --> 0:27:10.639 And equally important, we need to reduce the presence of 0:27:10.800 --> 0:27:18.280 toxic chemicals in packaging, particularly food packaging. And I guess 0:27:18.280 --> 0:27:21.680 I should ask where the administration is on this. I mean, 0:27:21.680 --> 0:27:25.240 we've had sort of landmark environmental legislation in the summer 0:27:26.040 --> 0:27:28.879 which was more devoted to the sort of the big 0:27:28.920 --> 0:27:35.040 picture emissions um story um is there are the people 0:27:35.080 --> 0:27:38.240 in the administration, maybe former colleagues of yours in the 0:27:38.400 --> 0:27:40.560 in the e p A, who are planning to act 0:27:40.640 --> 0:27:46.200 on any of this. No, the Biden administration record and 0:27:46.440 --> 0:27:52.359 goals on plastic pollution is m I a missing in action. Um, 0:27:52.400 --> 0:27:56.040 I don't think the Biden administration, which I have tremendous 0:27:56.080 --> 0:27:59.320 respect for, I don't understand. I don't think they understand 0:27:59.359 --> 0:28:04.879 the connection between plastics and climate change. They talk a 0:28:05.040 --> 0:28:09.760 lot about environmental justice, but they have not done very 0:28:10.000 --> 0:28:15.200 much to reduce the risks of plastic production in low 0:28:15.280 --> 0:28:22.320 income communities and communities of color in places like Louisiana, Texas, Appalachia. Also, 0:28:22.400 --> 0:28:26.639 there's very little difference between the position that the Biden 0:28:26.640 --> 0:28:31.280 administration and the Trump administration is taking on a proposed 0:28:31.400 --> 0:28:38.280 international plastics treaty. But fundamentally what needs to happen is 0:28:38.560 --> 0:28:43.600 quite simple. We need to make less plastic. It's affecting health, 0:28:43.800 --> 0:28:48.800 particularly in low income communities where the plastic is produced 0:28:48.920 --> 0:28:54.120 or disposed of. It is it definitely impacting climate change, 0:28:54.640 --> 0:28:59.880 It is turning our ocean into a landfill, and plastics 0:29:00.120 --> 0:29:05.040 is a huge recycling failure. So given all of that, 0:29:05.840 --> 0:29:10.720 it only makes sense that we make less plastic. But 0:29:10.840 --> 0:29:14.040 that's the opposite direction that the United States is taking. 0:29:15.200 --> 0:29:18.719