Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. It is found everywhere on Earth,
Speaker 1: from the peak of Mount Everest to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean. It's in our drinking water and even inside
Speaker 1: our own bodies. What is this omnipressent substance? Plastic? Plastic
Speaker 1: has infiltrated our lives to such a degree that it's
Speaker 1: almost impossible to live a day without encountering it. My
Speaker 1: guest today is an expert on this topic. Matt Simon
Speaker 1: is a science journalist and author of A Poison Like
Speaker 1: no Other, How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies.
Speaker 1: Matt Simon previously worked as a staff writer for Wired
Speaker 1: and currently serves as senior writer at Grist, a nonprofit
Speaker 1: media organization focused on climate solutions. In his book, Simon
Speaker 1: estimates that humans have produced more than eighteen trillion pounds
Speaker 1: of plastic, twice the weight of all the animals on Earth.
Speaker 1: He believes we are in a plastic crisis. I wanted
Speaker 1: Simon to begin by distinguishing some terms that had been
Speaker 1: floating around, including the difference between a microplastic and a nanoplastic.
Speaker 2: Well, we could actually start at macroplastics, the big stuff
Speaker 2: bottles and bags that we know of that are floating
Speaker 2: around on the ocean. We're all aware. Microplastics are defined
Speaker 2: as bits that are smaller than five millimeters, which is
Speaker 2: about the width of a pencil eraser. It's a good
Speaker 2: way to think of us. You can see some microplastics
Speaker 2: just by the naked eye, but these do get down
Speaker 2: to the nanoscale as you mentioned here, which is there's
Speaker 2: some debate in the scientific community as to the threshold there,
Speaker 2: but usually around a microns, which is a millionth of
Speaker 2: a meter. These things are imperceptibly obviously tiny to the
Speaker 2: human eye, but scientists are getting much better at detecting
Speaker 2: them in the environment, and they're finding truly astonishing numbers
Speaker 2: of nanoplastics, far more than actually microplastics. It's just that
Speaker 2: it's very difficult and expensive to test for an inmplan.
Speaker 1: To nanoplastics, are they another stage of microplastics to macroplastics
Speaker 1: become nanoplastics and degrade down to that smaller level.
Speaker 2: Yep, any bottle or bag that you see out there
Speaker 2: is it's pre microplastic and pre nanoplastic, which is a
Speaker 2: good way to think of it is it's going to
Speaker 2: break down over time into these smaller bits microplastics and
Speaker 2: over time into smaller, smaller bits than nanoplastics, but it
Speaker 2: never ever goes away. It probably actually reaches this sort
Speaker 2: of equilibrium at some size in that nanoscale where it's
Speaker 2: no longer subjected to the forces of inbrasion. So it
Speaker 2: just kind of exists like that for eternity. Maybe we
Speaker 2: don't know, But that's the really scary thing here is
Speaker 2: that we have a lot of that out there and
Speaker 2: the environment, and it could be permanent.
Speaker 1: Right for those to the extent that you can speak
Speaker 1: about this the history of plastic. Very often a product
Speaker 1: will be developed because of a failed or a born
Speaker 1: other product. So viagra comes from tests with like artificial
Speaker 1: sweetener or something, and they noticed that all the mice
Speaker 1: are really very very amorous, and they decide that they
Speaker 1: have a product as a result of that. That's kind
Speaker 1: of insane. But in terms of plastic, the roots of
Speaker 1: us are in the petroleum industry, correct, correct, right, And
Speaker 1: what were the beginnings of that plastic was meant to
Speaker 1: be what to be used where.
Speaker 2: It's actually a very fascinating story. So Back in the
Speaker 2: late eighteen hundreds, billiards was becoming increasingly popular in America. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: those balls were made out of ivory elephant tusks, obviously
Speaker 2: in short supply if you keep killing elephants to play billiards.
Speaker 2: There was a very famous billiards player who put out
Speaker 2: a call for alternatives. Some scientists, please invent some sort
Speaker 2: of synthetic material that can replace ivory in these balls,
Speaker 2: so we can switch to that, maybe save a few
Speaker 2: elephants in the process. But it was more like, here's
Speaker 2: you put up ten thousand dollars, which was a lot
Speaker 2: of money, and the.
Speaker 1: Elephants that play billiards were especially they.
Speaker 2: Were loving this. They were eating it up. So that
Speaker 2: actually led to the first mass producible plastic and that
Speaker 2: actually just kind of shifted. As we got closer and
Speaker 2: closer to World War Two, more and more materials were
Speaker 2: starting to be replaced by synthetic alternatives in plastic. So
Speaker 2: plexiglass was plastic in it nylon for parachutes in World
Speaker 2: War Two. That's a synthetic material.
Speaker 1: It wasn't originally just a military application. It was the
Speaker 1: billiard game.
Speaker 2: It was billiards.
Speaker 1: Oh did he get to manufacture.
Speaker 2: This actually, so Mina saying that he actually never coughed
Speaker 2: up that money. But the company that started producing this
Speaker 2: first mass producible plastic, there was a version of it
Speaker 2: previously that nobody figured out how to mass produce, but
Speaker 2: they concocted this kind of early plastic. It was actually
Speaker 2: really funny. There was there's ingredients cent that were quite flammable,
Speaker 2: so you would have sometimes in these billiard games they'd
Speaker 2: hit the ball hard enough and it would pop. It
Speaker 2: would explode like gunpowder. So it wasn't a perfect alternative
Speaker 2: to elephant to us by any that sound, but it
Speaker 2: was like, that's how weird is it that we are
Speaker 2: in the catastrophe and the emergency that we are in
Speaker 2: right now because of plastic pollution because there needed to
Speaker 2: be an alternative to billiard balls made out of elephant ivory?
Speaker 1: Now, what is it that people discover in the earliest
Speaker 1: stage just the petroleum yields plastic? Were they working on
Speaker 1: something else with petroleum and then all a sudden they
Speaker 1: realized that it you boiled it, then you let it
Speaker 1: sit in the pot, and that turned to this blob
Speaker 1: of future billiard balls. Like, how was it that petroleum
Speaker 1: was the source of plastic.
Speaker 2: So any plastic at its core is a chain of carbon,
Speaker 2: just a bunch of carbon chained together into this really
Speaker 2: strong material. That's what makes plastic so durables, carbon stuck together. Obviously,
Speaker 2: fossil fuels are a source of carbon. So as you
Speaker 2: know World War two was kicking off, we were also
Speaker 2: getting much deeper into fossil fuel production for any number
Speaker 2: of military uses, but also burgeoning car culture here in
Speaker 2: the United States. So the petrochemical industry taking off at
Speaker 2: this period realized that we could take some of these
Speaker 2: byproducts from fuel production and turn them into petrochemicals, which
Speaker 2: we then turn into plastics, And ever since then, plastics
Speaker 2: and climate change have been just very directly linked. This
Speaker 2: is two sides of the same coin, which makes it
Speaker 2: a much more difficult problem to tackle because of the
Speaker 2: fossil fuel interest in this country. But this whole time,
Speaker 2: it's carbon. It just comes right down a carbon. There's
Speaker 2: a bunch of chemicals added to make a plastic a plastic,
Speaker 2: to make it more waterproof or clear clear, to make
Speaker 2: it more stretchy, durable, that sort of thing, But at
Speaker 2: its core, it's carbon. You actually make plastics bioplastics out
Speaker 2: of carbon taken from plants. But that's problematic in its
Speaker 2: own right. As I talked about in the book.
Speaker 1: When I think back to my childhood, we had a
Speaker 1: milk man and he delivered milk in a truck and
Speaker 1: put a metal container on your front porch with glass
Speaker 1: bottles of milk every day or every other day. And
Speaker 1: then you turn around at some point and everything is
Speaker 1: inside a plast container. Yes. Now, when a product is
Speaker 1: inside a plastic container, particularly over a long period of time,
Speaker 1: do some of the chemicals that are kept inside these
Speaker 1: do they interact with the inside walls of the plastic
Speaker 1: and there's plastic released and in the product.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is known as leeching in the industry.
Speaker 2: So you have a bottle of water, There have been
Speaker 2: a number of studies that have actually quantified the amount
Speaker 2: of microplastics in that water, which is a lot much
Speaker 2: more so than you get in the tap water that
Speaker 2: I'm drinking here out of a glass container right now.
Speaker 2: But you also seem to have the leaching of these
Speaker 2: chemical components in plastics into both liquids through bottles, but
Speaker 2: also our food that's all wrapped in single use plastic.
Speaker 2: The very important study came out last year of the
Speaker 2: year before looked at a particular class of chemicals called
Speaker 2: thalates in plastics, and they look through people's blood samples
Speaker 2: and then looked at their health issues use. And they estimated,
Speaker 2: at a very conservative level that these thalites could be
Speaker 2: responsible for up to one hundred thousand premature deaths in
Speaker 2: the United States each year. And that's a very conservative estimate.
Speaker 2: They cannot say at the moment how those salites are
Speaker 2: getting from plastic into those bodies, Like maybe it was
Speaker 2: partly microplastics and nanoplastics, Maybe it was these chemicals leaching
Speaker 2: into foods or liquids that are in contact with single
Speaker 2: use plastic. They're not sure yet, but we have a
Speaker 2: growing body of evidence right now that there are a
Speaker 2: number of chemicals and plastics that are for sure terrible
Speaker 2: for human health.
Speaker 1: And again I'm thinking, like, if I'm spraying something on
Speaker 1: a countertop to clean the countertop, has plastic leeched inside
Speaker 1: that bottle into the product that I'm spraying, Yes, because
Speaker 1: that's what I was going to assume. It's got to
Speaker 1: be the case that this stuff can't stay on either
Speaker 1: side of some biochemical wall for very long.
Speaker 2: It gets everywhere, And I like to have people think
Speaker 2: about glitter. Glitter is a microplastic. It's little pieces of
Speaker 2: colorful plastic.
Speaker 1: Think of how I see glitter.
Speaker 2: It drives me crazy. I mean greeting cards. Stop it.
Speaker 2: So think about glitter. Think of all the nooks and
Speaker 2: crannies that glitter is so easily gets into. That is
Speaker 2: how microplastics behave in the human home and in the environment.
Speaker 2: It gets absolutely everywhere. These things are tiny. First of all,
Speaker 2: plastic bites nature is a very light material, so it
Speaker 2: very easily takes the air. If you look through your
Speaker 2: window and see the sunlight coming through, and you can
Speaker 2: sometimes see little floating bits of seems like fibers, those
Speaker 2: are most likely microplastics from your clothing. So it's it's
Speaker 2: like glitter. It gets everywhere, and unfortunately, like glitter, it's
Speaker 2: hard to get people to stop using it.
Speaker 1: What's of the most common type of clothing like obviously
Speaker 1: all of us have been made aware that the stain
Speaker 1: guard coating on sofas we have the coated stuff and
Speaker 1: that fiber the coating wears off. I was told the
Speaker 1: plastic comes off, the microplast takes literally feather off of
Speaker 1: or just acterior rate off of the couch. Where did
Speaker 1: the plastics come off of? What clothing?
Speaker 2: This is one of the rather sneaky ways that plastics
Speaker 2: have infiltrated our lives in recent decades that we just
Speaker 2: weren't aware of. I do not think that most people
Speaker 2: realize that two thirds of clothing now is made out
Speaker 2: of synthetic fibers like polyester or nylon, that is plastic
Speaker 2: that's made out of fossil fuels. There was a study
Speaker 2: that actually found that just by walking around as a
Speaker 2: human being wearing these synthetic clothes, you might shed a
Speaker 2: billion fibers a year. A lot of that is settling
Speaker 2: on the floor of your home, but also taking to
Speaker 2: the air. Your couch is probably made out of synthetic fiber,
Speaker 2: unless it's pure cotton, which is unlikely carpeting is made.
Speaker 1: I don't have to worry about.
Speaker 2: So that's the issue, like right and so, like right now,
Speaker 2: I think I'm wearing a sweat. I think it's wool.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, but even natural fibers now are oftentimes
Speaker 2: coated in plastic because it makes them waterproof. So we
Speaker 2: have like you're not safe from any sort of clothing.
Speaker 2: Some I think cotton might be pure cotton, but there's
Speaker 2: a high chance of it actually having plastic associated with it.
Speaker 2: Carpets made out of synthetic fibers, hardwood floors most of
Speaker 2: the time now are made out of plastics like laminate
Speaker 2: and vinyl, that sort of thing. Everything in the home
Speaker 2: is basically made out of plastic, and that is why
Speaker 2: scientists have been founding really stunning numbers of microplastic in
Speaker 2: the home, probably about six times the amount of microplastic
Speaker 2: in indoor air as an outdoor air. So we are,
Speaker 2: by one cognition.
Speaker 1: Those air filters on all the time in our house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good idea. I don't want to ruin that for
Speaker 2: you as well. But there was a study that found
Speaker 2: that those filters capture some microplastics, but because they're made
Speaker 2: out of plastic themselves also produced plastic. But it's probably
Speaker 2: better than them. It's probably yeah, it's probably better than
Speaker 2: not that break even.
Speaker 1: Now we got introduced to Jan Schlickman, who was the
Speaker 1: protagonist of Jonathan Harr's book, a civil action that was
Speaker 1: made into the film with Travolta, where they came and
Speaker 1: basically said that these children who were in this leukemia
Speaker 1: cluster were more likely killed and given leukemia by breathing
Speaker 1: in this contaminated word in the shower was going into
Speaker 1: their lungs, which were more sensitive. And I'm wondering is
Speaker 1: that true. Is that something we need to be concerned
Speaker 1: about in our world now where the water itself is
Speaker 1: contaminated with plastic.
Speaker 2: This is the frontier in microplastic science right now, is
Speaker 2: that we have good qualifications of where this stuff is
Speaker 2: a lot of the places in the environment, I should
Speaker 2: say every place in the environment we have microplastics. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of in the human home. We are inhaling,
Speaker 2: by one calculation, seven thousand microfibers a day. And when
Speaker 2: you think about children, they are spending a lot of
Speaker 2: their time on the ground crawling around. There have been
Speaker 2: a number of sites that consistently come up with the
Speaker 2: same figures that there's probably hundreds of thousands of fibers
Speaker 2: settling on the average living room floor each day, and
Speaker 2: we don't want children trapesing through that. Children are also
Speaker 2: putting a lot of things in their mouths, plastic toys.
Speaker 2: The huge source of microplastics into children's bodies is that
Speaker 2: when you prepare infant formula in a plastic bottle with warm,
Speaker 2: hot water, that has been shown to produce millions of microplastic. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's and that's so important is that you should never,
Speaker 2: under any circumstances prepare things that are warm or hot
Speaker 2: in plastic.
Speaker 1: Well, the cups we serve them, they're drinks.
Speaker 2: This bamboo great, Yeah, dude, Like, don't freeze plastic even
Speaker 2: unfortunately that that kind of cuts into frozen foods.
Speaker 1: Don't.
Speaker 2: So these are the things that really these are the
Speaker 2: things that tear apart microplastics from these macroplastics. The things
Speaker 2: that break down plastically. The environment is UV bombardment. It
Speaker 2: breaks apart the bonds in that plastic, but also freezing
Speaker 2: and heating plastics are very tough, but it does break
Speaker 2: apart these ways over time. So when we're thinking about
Speaker 2: the exposure that humans have, and especially children, we need
Speaker 2: to consider. Inhalation is probably the major one, just because
Speaker 2: there's so much an indoor air. We're drinking a lot
Speaker 2: of it. Because I'm in San Francisco, we get water
Speaker 2: from hetch Hetchy. It is not filtered on our way
Speaker 2: to our tasks because it's such pure water. But there's
Speaker 2: so much microplastic falling out of the sky that every
Speaker 2: water source is good. That's everywhere, it's everywhere, and it's
Speaker 2: like even underground water sources, they're finding microplastics have seeped
Speaker 2: through the dirt into these aquifers. There is no escaping them.
Speaker 2: We are now at this frontier where we know that
Speaker 2: we're exposed. We don't know how much microplastic. Is too
Speaker 2: much microplastic to have in the body. Obviously no particulate
Speaker 2: matter is good to have in the lungs, but we
Speaker 2: desperately need to know, especially for children, is there too
Speaker 2: much microplastic to have in the body. It's not gonna
Speaker 2: be good, Like there's no good ways for this to go,
Speaker 2: but how bad could it potentially be.
Speaker 1: There's no way that micro or for that matter, nanoplastics
Speaker 1: can be removed, for example, like on a centrifugal device,
Speaker 1: meaning is there any way to get rid of it
Speaker 1: out of water?
Speaker 2: There are some early studies into ways that you can
Speaker 2: do really precise filtration. So if you think about there's
Speaker 2: waste to recycle waste water actually by passing it through
Speaker 2: very fine membranes and the water that comes out of
Speaker 2: it is actually so pure that they have to add
Speaker 2: minerals back into it. It actually does terrible things for
Speaker 2: the human body. So that would remove microplastics for sure.
Speaker 2: That's just very expensive to do. That's that's what desalination does,
Speaker 2: and that's why desalination is so expensive. You could do
Speaker 2: that for microplastics, but it's just the issue is, like
Speaker 2: I'm drinking water out of this cup right now, there
Speaker 2: are microplastics falling into the water right now. So even
Speaker 2: if it's filter that clear, Yeah, even if we're being bombarded.
Speaker 1: By nanoplastics and microplasics while we're doing this show.
Speaker 2: Yes, not to freak you out. Just because we can't
Speaker 2: see it doesn't mean it's not there. You can actually
Speaker 2: see some of these microplastics, they're big enough, but there's
Speaker 2: so many more in the nanoscale that we cannot see,
Speaker 2: and we know almost nothing about what this means for
Speaker 2: human health.
Speaker 1: Journalist Matt Simon. If you enjoy conversations on the fate
Speaker 1: of municipal trash and recycling, check out my episode with
Speaker 1: former New York City Deputy Commissioner of Wastewater Treatment Pam
Speaker 1: Alardo and New York City's first recycling, z are Ron Gonan.
Speaker 3: This is the fascinating world of biology. We use a
Speaker 3: community of bacteria that actually digests the suspended organic material
Speaker 3: and clean the water via that method, and from there
Speaker 3: it goes to another settling tank where we settle out
Speaker 3: the biomass that just consumed all this organic matter. But
Speaker 3: the water that comes out of the final settling tank
Speaker 3: gets disinfection basically household bleached to take any particular pathogens out,
Speaker 3: and that gets either discharged to receiving waters or in
Speaker 3: some cases, in some cities, they're able to polish a
Speaker 3: little bit more, ease it for irrigation purposes.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Pam Alardo and
Speaker 1: Ron Goonan, go to Here's the Thing dot Org to
Speaker 1: the break, Matt Simon shares what he believes is the
Speaker 1: only solution to the plastic crisis. I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to Here's the Thing. Matt Simon writes in
Speaker 1: a poison like no other, that the vast majority of
Speaker 1: plastic produced on the planet becomes waste, ending up in
Speaker 1: our landfills or our water. I wanted his perspective on
Speaker 1: the possibility of biodegradable plastics.
Speaker 2: Videgradable is a sticky term without a really agreed upon definition.
Speaker 2: Videgradable basically means it breaks down faster. So you can
Speaker 2: think of like a composting bag. You compost in, you
Speaker 2: throw it out. That is a plastic. Still it's meant
Speaker 2: to degrade under certain conditions. So that's in a composing
Speaker 2: facility where the temperatures are very high for a long
Speaker 2: perd that's not.
Speaker 1: Made of a vegetable product, or it can. It can.
Speaker 2: It can be made like the carbon can come from
Speaker 2: plants that be a bio based plastic, but it's still
Speaker 2: mixing with all kinds of other petrochemicals, and yeah, it
Speaker 2: makes it a plastic.
Speaker 1: Noting that is just absent petrochemical.
Speaker 2: Sadly of plastic as we know it is a carbon
Speaker 2: typically comes from car from the carbon from fossil fuels,
Speaker 2: but also all the other petrochemicals that make a plastical plastic,
Speaker 2: that make it tough, that make it durable, that make
Speaker 2: it light, those are made from from fossil fuels as well.
Speaker 2: So you can have a bioplastic it's made from corn fantastic,
Speaker 2: except to actually scale that up if you were to
Speaker 2: replace all conventional plastics with bioplastics, would require an enormous
Speaker 2: amount of land, would come with just an enormous amount
Speaker 2: of water use and emissions. So it's problematic in its
Speaker 2: own right. So biodegradable theoretically means that it breaks down
Speaker 2: faster in a composting facility. Unfortunately, if those bags are
Speaker 2: breaking down in that comp.
Speaker 1: Just plastic broken down.
Speaker 2: The plastic bag just spread out on a field in
Speaker 2: its deconstructed form, it's glitter. It's glitter. But if you
Speaker 2: have that same bag that escapes into the ocean, for example,
Speaker 2: that isn't an environment that is not meant to break down,
Speaker 2: and it was designed to break down under high temperatures
Speaker 2: mixed in with all this organic matter. And they've done
Speaker 2: studies that have they they've set these bags in ocean
Speaker 2: water for years at a time and found that it
Speaker 2: just doesn't break down. They bury it, it just doesn't
Speaker 2: break down. So it's like usually biodegradable for a specific
Speaker 2: set of conditions, but so much of this stuff is
Speaker 2: escaping into the environment where it's not going to biodegrade,
Speaker 2: and even if it does, all these are shattering into
Speaker 2: microplastics all the same these are not alternatives. The only
Speaker 2: thing that's going to get us out of this mess,
Speaker 2: and I try to drive this home in the book,
Speaker 2: is that we have to stop using plastic and replace
Speaker 2: it with what metal, glass, that's much more easily recycled.
Speaker 2: We recycle at this point five percent of the things
Speaker 2: that we throw into recycling them.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you that. Then. I've often said
Speaker 1: in terms of this issue, because I'm an anti plastic
Speaker 1: person going way back now, what I've accepted about recycling
Speaker 1: and what I have fixed on about recycling is it
Speaker 1: at least people feel that they're trying to do something
Speaker 1: on a day to day basis, even though the actual
Speaker 1: impact is low. It's not really making very much of
Speaker 1: an impact, is it.
Speaker 2: The issue of the United States is that it's a
Speaker 2: profit driven industry. So if you cannot profitably recycle plastic,
Speaker 2: these companies don't bother. What we have been doing in
Speaker 2: developed countries like the United States has been shipping what
Speaker 2: we can't profitably recycle overseas. So this is another hidden
Speaker 2: aspect of carbon emissions associated with plastics.
Speaker 1: Is that what are we shipping overseas.
Speaker 2: The plastic waste that we cannot profitably recycle, so those
Speaker 2: are usually more recyclable. The issue becomes usually the more
Speaker 2: complicated plastics like pouches for baby formula. Those are multi layered,
Speaker 2: very difficult to recycle. We have just been shipping at overseas.
Speaker 2: Where we do wear has been China up until a
Speaker 2: couple of years ago, where they said no, we're not
Speaker 2: doing that anymore. That is now switching to other developing
Speaker 2: countries where they are now overflowing with our plastic waste.
Speaker 2: They're burning it in open pitch places like Malaysia, Indonesia.
Speaker 1: And they burn American plastic products in open pits.
Speaker 2: This is poisoning communities there. It is sending clouds of
Speaker 2: microplastics into the atmosphere and addition, all the chemicals that
Speaker 2: are poisoning the surrounding communities or they're bearing it if
Speaker 2: they're not burning it. It is a wildly inefficient system
Speaker 2: that we in America have been kind of on the
Speaker 2: hope system, which is I hope this gets recycled if
Speaker 2: I throw it in the bin, when in reality, five
Speaker 2: percent of that is getting recycled here the rest being
Speaker 2: shipped away.
Speaker 1: And when you say five percent, you mean five percent
Speaker 1: of the total amount of product that's consumed every year
Speaker 1: or or five percent of the stuff that actually people
Speaker 1: believe is being recycled.
Speaker 2: The latter, yes, the stuff.
Speaker 1: So people believe that there's a whole cornucopia of things,
Speaker 1: or at least a massive amount of a few things
Speaker 1: that are being recycled, and only five percent of it
Speaker 1: is actually recycled.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so fundamentally recycling is busted in this country. I
Speaker 2: do want to be very clear that I want people
Speaker 2: to put things in that bin because we need to
Speaker 2: put pressure on these systems to change. We need these
Speaker 2: like the system needs to catch up with our hopes
Speaker 2: as consumers. Right, we can't just get dejected and throw
Speaker 2: everything in the trash, because that's exactly what the plastics
Speaker 2: industry wants us to do. Oh, I mean anything around plastics,
Speaker 2: like getting sad about microplastics. They want us to feel dejected,
Speaker 2: just like they want us to feel bad about climate change.
Speaker 2: They've always like VP and mented the idea of a
Speaker 2: carbon footprint to make us feel like this is our
Speaker 2: issue as climate change. Maybe if you fly less, we're
Speaker 2: going to make more progress on climate change. They're going
Speaker 2: to do the same exact thing with plastic, which is
Speaker 2: what they did with recycling decades ago. The plastic symdistry
Speaker 2: pushed that really hard because if we think that we're
Speaker 2: recycling more, we will not feel bad about con soon
Speaker 2: to mollify you, yes, And the issue there is that
Speaker 2: we have been increasing the production of plastic exponentially. We
Speaker 2: are producing a trillion pounds of plastic a year now
Speaker 2: that is going to triple by twenty fifty if we
Speaker 2: do not stop the industry from doing this. So when
Speaker 2: we talk about these individual things that we can do,
Speaker 2: all well and good to reduce your exposure to plastic
Speaker 2: and your consumption of plastic, but we need systemic change
Speaker 2: that I think begins with politicians that need to realize
Speaker 2: that the climate change and plastics are two sides of
Speaker 2: the same coin.
Speaker 1: As many people of my age recall that there's one
Speaker 1: product that is very popular, they're everywhere, and they had
Speaker 1: a plastic bottle. Then they came back and said, we've
Speaker 1: made the bottle even lighter.
Speaker 2: That's profit driven. That's not of the goodness of the heart.
Speaker 2: That companies have been using more plastic and thinner plastic.
Speaker 2: It makes these products lighter, and it actually decreases the
Speaker 2: cost for shipping those that's what Actually, that's the base
Speaker 2: of what got us into this mess. At its core
Speaker 2: is much lighter than glass or metal. Everybody switched to
Speaker 2: it because it increased profit margins. But this is what
Speaker 2: we're up against right now, is that this stuff has
Speaker 2: so thoroughly saturated the market we have no choice. So
Speaker 2: like capitalism is supposed to be about choice, Like we
Speaker 2: have twenty different kinds of toothpastes in the grocery store,
Speaker 2: we don't have an option for any of those to
Speaker 2: come in something that's not plastic. I thought capitalism was
Speaker 2: all about choice, but apparently not. We have just no alternative.
Speaker 2: So even if you are very mindful about the way
Speaker 2: that you might be using too much plastic, and I
Speaker 2: never want to push this on the consumer as it
Speaker 2: being their fault, even so, you just don't have the
Speaker 2: opportunity to switch away from it because we are just
Speaker 2: not given any options now.
Speaker 1: We often ask this question of people involved with an issue,
Speaker 1: to see beyond the American horizon, where are they doing
Speaker 1: a better job around the world and extracting plastics from
Speaker 1: the waste stream.
Speaker 2: Germany's doing a much better job, but listen, they have
Speaker 2: a much more robust recycling system, like they're able to
Speaker 2: go in and pick out and recycle these much more
Speaker 2: complicated plastics that I mentioned, whereas we in the America
Speaker 2: we are saying screwabill ship it overseas, they'll deal with it. Recycling, though,
Speaker 2: is not the end all be all here. This is
Speaker 2: not what we should fall back on because it is
Speaker 2: in a poor state at the moment, and we're an
Speaker 2: emergency right now. This is a macroplastic and microplastic emergency
Speaker 2: because as we exponentially increase production, scientists are showing an
Speaker 2: exponential contamination of ocean sediments. For example, starting in the
Speaker 2: nineteen forties, you can track perfectly the amount of plastic
Speaker 2: production and the amounts of microplastic contamination going back to
Speaker 2: the nineteen forties in these ocean sediments map perfectly. So
Speaker 2: as we keep going on that exponential path, the whole
Speaker 2: world is going to become more contaminated with these microplastics.
Speaker 2: Recycling is not going to fix that. What is going
Speaker 2: to fix that is massively curtailing the production of plastics.
Speaker 2: And there's the treaty that is in the works right
Speaker 2: now might help with that, but there's also industry lobbyists
Speaker 2: there who are pushing very hard to keep producing as
Speaker 2: much plastic as they want because it's a profit driven enterprise.
Speaker 2: And if we think that recycling is working going forward,
Speaker 2: we won't make a big fuss about it. But we
Speaker 2: need fundamentally better systems like they do in Germany.
Speaker 1: The petroleum industry is obviously a key player here, but
Speaker 1: they don't make plastics themselves, or do they own subsidiaries
Speaker 1: that make plastics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all inn twine, it's all one product. It's
Speaker 2: the stuff that they're pulling out of the ground. That's
Speaker 2: why there are so many emissions associated with plastics production.
Speaker 2: So it obviously takes a lot of energy to get
Speaker 2: that stuff out of the ground. Here's a lot of
Speaker 2: energy to transform it first into fuels that go into
Speaker 2: our cars and jets, but then to take the rest
Speaker 2: of it and turn it into plastics. It is energy
Speaker 2: intensive the whole way through. And there's increasing evidence that
Speaker 2: as microplastics are floating around in the atmosphere, for example,
Speaker 2: they're off gasing that carbon method and in particular which
Speaker 2: is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. So we may have
Speaker 2: a twofold problem in the atmosphere. One is that those
Speaker 2: particles could be interacting with clouds and interacting with the
Speaker 2: Sun's energy and perhaps warming the atmosphere. That's how that's like,
Speaker 2: we're getting the point where there's enough microplastics in the
Speaker 2: atmosphere for that to happen. Are they changing the way
Speaker 2: that clouds are forming and that weather patterns are forming.
Speaker 2: The other thing is that while they're up there, as
Speaker 2: they're breaking down, they're releasing continually these carbon gases. So
Speaker 2: at their cores, a little particle breaks down, the stuff
Speaker 2: at the middle eventually is exposed to the air and
Speaker 2: off gases. So we have basically these little gas producing
Speaker 2: particles all over the atmosphere. These are they're fossil fuels.
Speaker 2: Any plastic, very few, like one percent are now made
Speaker 2: out of plants. Ninety nine percent aut of are made
Speaker 2: out of fossil fuels, and they're they're associated with emissions
Speaker 2: are insane. The projection is that by twenty fifty the
Speaker 2: plastics industry will be polluting as much as six hundred
Speaker 2: coal fired power plants. And that's the tragedies that as
Speaker 2: we're decarbonizing in the United States and decommissioning coal fired
Speaker 2: power plants, the fossil fel industry is seen the riding
Speaker 2: on the wall and they're saying, Okay, we'll just switch
Speaker 2: to plastics. It's the same product. Basically, we're gonna switch
Speaker 2: to that that is not emissions free by any measure,
Speaker 2: and it could be interacting with earth systems in other
Speaker 2: strange way, like heating up beaches. All the microplastics mixed
Speaker 2: in with the sand could be messing with sea turtle
Speaker 2: clutches and things like that. It's I call it a
Speaker 2: poison like no other, because it is so.
Speaker 1: I want to reach the poison like no weather is
Speaker 1: the name of your book, it is, Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: have that. No, I want to make sure we've got
Speaker 1: that down the I had an idea, and this is
Speaker 1: the part there's to be organized. Its massive campaigns of
Speaker 1: recycling where all that stuff goes to the military bases
Speaker 1: as recycling centers. You turn these old army bases into
Speaker 1: recycling centers and try to separate the plastics and the metals,
Speaker 1: and the glass and the paper, but mostly the focus
Speaker 1: on plastic. Have plastic and find a way to dispose
Speaker 1: of it, not recycle it, not use it again. If
Speaker 1: we're trying to push our way toward the non plastic world,
Speaker 1: which I mean, don't you feel that's pretty hopeless?
Speaker 2: Actually say, that's where I have actually a little bit
Speaker 2: of hope. You mentioned the milk bottles, which is interesting.
Speaker 2: I hadn't thought of that. I was watching old Westerns.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about general stores. Like back in the day,
Speaker 2: if you wanted beans or something, right, you go to
Speaker 2: a general store. They got a big burr lap sack
Speaker 2: of beans. You put your beans in your own bur lapsack,
Speaker 2: you take it home. Plastic was in no way in
Speaker 2: that supply chain. And when you think about the ways
Speaker 2: that plastics have really infiltrated our lives in the past
Speaker 2: few decades, and these really sneaky ways, it was not
Speaker 2: that long ago that we were getting along perfectly fine
Speaker 2: with that single use plassic. I'm in my late thirties.
Speaker 2: I remember a time when it was nowhere near the
Speaker 2: way it is today. There was a period in human history,
Speaker 2: the vast majority of human history actually, that we didn't
Speaker 2: use plastic, and we got a I'm perfectly okay. So
Speaker 2: I think that that's where I have a little bit
Speaker 2: of hope, is that maybe there's a tide turning here
Speaker 2: where people are realizing just how silly single use plastics are.
Speaker 2: Cucumbers are wrapped in single use plastic in the grocery
Speaker 2: store these days. They have their own skins, right, that's
Speaker 2: one of their charms as cucumbers. They leave them alone,
Speaker 2: leave plastic out of this. I think as we it
Speaker 2: dawns on us as a society just how out of
Speaker 2: control this has gotten. That hopefully we pull back on
Speaker 2: single use plastics in general. But I think there will
Speaker 2: be uses for plastic going forward, like in medical devices
Speaker 2: and things like that. That's okay, obviously, but singles plastic
Speaker 2: is absolutly out of control. And I think if we
Speaker 2: get enough support on the ground level, of the community level,
Speaker 2: and we can spend more time and money lobbying politicians
Speaker 2: on this to get them to realize that we are
Speaker 2: in an emergency that if we let the plastics industry
Speaker 2: keep doing what they want, they're going to contamine. They're
Speaker 2: gonna be like, they're going to kill the planet. This
Speaker 2: is planetary vandalism. And there are already indications that ecosystems
Speaker 2: are suffering, and there are a number of documented cases
Speaker 2: of animals dying because of ingesting microplastics. We have the
Speaker 2: evidence that it's really bad, and I go through in
Speaker 2: the book all these much more intricate ways that it
Speaker 2: could be affecting the planet that we also need to consider.
Speaker 2: But we can't wait for it to be a for
Speaker 2: sure thing that we know that's happening to like plankton
Speaker 2: or whatever. We need this right now. We need to
Speaker 2: stop the production of plastic where we can, because it's
Speaker 2: totally out of control.
Speaker 1: What organization that people might be familiar with or not,
Speaker 1: you think it's doing some of the best work and
Speaker 1: most cutting edge work on developing policies to solve the
Speaker 1: plastic problem.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to endorse anyone, but there are number
Speaker 2: ones is like a group called Beyond Plastics, for one.
Speaker 2: They're just a lot of scientists that are also getting
Speaker 2: more vocal about this, beyond these advocacy groups, because they
Speaker 2: have known about microplastic contamination for a few decades now,
Speaker 2: but the bulk of the research has really come out
Speaker 2: in the past few years. It's slowly dawning on that
Speaker 2: this is like a catastrophe of the highest order that
Speaker 2: affects basically every organism on this planet. So we need
Speaker 2: right now politicians to turn around This is me being
Speaker 2: way too idealistic in the United States, Like how do
Speaker 2: we divorce the fossil fuel industry that is so intricately
Speaker 2: intertwined with our politics. I don't know. The only way
Speaker 2: I see that happening is is it and I think
Speaker 2: this is already happening, is that people are starting to
Speaker 2: realize just how out of control it is and how
Speaker 2: crazy it is that we are so surrounded by plastics.
Speaker 2: This is an experiment that is forced upon us. We
Speaker 2: never asked for this, like I never asked for acomber
Speaker 2: to be wrapped in singles plastic. I doesn't want to
Speaker 2: the damn cucumber. It's out of control.
Speaker 1: Science writer Matt Simon. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell
Speaker 1: a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When we come back, I'm and sharees what city he
Speaker 1: believes is doing a proactive job of keeping the ocean clean.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: I am speaking with Matt Simon, author of the book
Speaker 1: A Poison Like No Other, Approximately eighteen billion pounds of
Speaker 1: plastic enter the ocean each year. The Ocean Cleanup is
Speaker 1: a nonprofit organization working to solve the problem by catching
Speaker 1: and extracting plastic from our bodies of water. One area
Speaker 1: they are concentrating on is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,
Speaker 1: which is estimated to be twice the size of Texas
Speaker 1: and the weight of seven hundred and forty Boeing Triple Seven's.
Speaker 2: It is this place in the ocean where currents tend
Speaker 2: to accumulate floating plastic, so that is coming off of
Speaker 2: either our west coast or from Asia. That stuff just
Speaker 2: kind of gathers in the middle of the Pacific, and
Speaker 2: you think of like this garbage patch. It's not like
Speaker 2: a salt you can't walk on it. It's not like
Speaker 2: an island. It's more spread out than that. So this campaign,
Speaker 2: their idea is to build this giant U shaped plastic tube,
Speaker 2: tow it out, have that catch all the plastic that
Speaker 2: floats into it, send a boat out to get that plastic,
Speaker 2: bring it back on shore, recycling into products that then
Speaker 2: go to consumers. The issue is a couple of fold
Speaker 2: So for one, the Ocean would have other ideas about
Speaker 2: building a very long plastic tube and deploying it on
Speaker 2: the surface. It broken half very early on in the campaign.
Speaker 2: They had to tow it to Hawaii or repair clean up.
Speaker 2: The other issue is that plastic pollution in the ocean
Speaker 2: is a three D problem. You are in that campaign
Speaker 2: gathering what's on the surface, but below that there is
Speaker 2: a whole lot more plastic and a whole lot more microplastics,
Speaker 2: and that's what it's not catching. It is catching the
Speaker 2: big stuff.
Speaker 1: But you don't discourage people from trying to get rid
Speaker 1: of the big stuff.
Speaker 2: So when scientists who are setting plastic talk about mitigating
Speaker 2: plastic pollution, they want to go as far upstream as possible,
Speaker 2: and by that I mean the fartheres step stream we
Speaker 2: can go is to stop producing the plastic in the
Speaker 2: first place. That way it cannot escape into the environment
Speaker 2: in anyway if it doesn't exist, but if you go
Speaker 2: farther downstream. One of my favorite things on the planet
Speaker 2: is something in Baltimore Harbor called Mister Trash Wheel, which
Speaker 2: is a barge that they put big googly eyes on
Speaker 2: and it actually does the same thing where it intercepts
Speaker 2: plastic floating out of the harbor before it can get
Speaker 2: into the seat. So that is catching those plastics before
Speaker 2: they're out, and you have a very much harder time
Speaker 2: getting a hold of them, like the Ocean Cleanup is
Speaker 2: trying to do. So we need to move as far
Speaker 2: upstream as possible, and what Ocean Cleanup is doing is
Speaker 2: very far downstream, and that just makes things much more difficult.
Speaker 2: It's actually quite effective to do beach cleanups. You just
Speaker 2: have people on the shore who might volunteer their time.
Speaker 2: But I also bristol this sort of stuff because this
Speaker 2: shouldn't be our responsibility. This is not our problem. This
Speaker 2: is the plastics industry problem. They created this catastrophe, and
Speaker 2: now we are the ones who have to walk along
Speaker 2: beaches and clean stuff up. Then that should be their
Speaker 2: money and time going to doing that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Now I see people in New York take the top
Speaker 1: of a pack of cigarettes off and throw them on
Speaker 1: the ground. And this is a source of tremendous anger
Speaker 1: for me. What pigs people can be and throwing their
Speaker 1: garbage here and there and just assuming that it's going
Speaker 1: to be collected. I mean, how many billions of cigarette
Speaker 1: butts go down storm drains and out into bodies of water.
Speaker 2: Trillions four trillion a year are discarded cigarette and I'll
Speaker 2: talk about this in the book. Four trillion are discarded
Speaker 2: each year into the environment. Those are made out of plastic.
Speaker 2: So those are made out of microfibers made out of plastic.
Speaker 2: When you when a smoker steps on it, when they
Speaker 2: put it out, that starts breaking apart. It primes it
Speaker 2: to disintegrate into microplastics.
Speaker 1: Cigarettes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cigarette butts are one of the most usually the
Speaker 2: most commonly collected item on beach cleanup blocks that they're
Speaker 2: a huge source of plastic pollution that you think it'd
Speaker 2: be bottled in bags. Nope, it is cigarette bets because
Speaker 2: exactly like you're talking about, people just do not give
Speaker 2: a damn. Maybe they don't realize that it's not like
Speaker 2: it's not made out of cotton or something. It's not
Speaker 2: going to biot A grade. It's a synthetic fiber and
Speaker 2: it's loaded with all the smoke chemicals that you were
Speaker 2: sucking through it before you throw it out. So I
Speaker 2: would say that I think with plastics that part of
Speaker 2: that is a large part really is education. I don't
Speaker 2: think a lot of people realize just what is made
Speaker 2: out of plastic. I don't think they realized maybe the
Speaker 2: cigarette bets are made out of plastic, that they're actually
Speaker 2: littering plastic into the environment. They probably don't realize that,
Speaker 2: like where does that actually go? It must go to
Speaker 2: a treatment facility where they're going to pluck out every
Speaker 2: tiny little bit of thing before setting the water out
Speaker 2: to the ocean. No, no, not the case. I think
Speaker 2: that education with plastics is going to be a huge
Speaker 2: part of it, talking to people both about the way
Speaker 2: that they're using it and you know, disposing it in
Speaker 2: improper ways, but also this bigger systemic change that we
Speaker 2: need here, which is to massively cut back on the
Speaker 2: production of plastic and get people to realize how terrible
Speaker 2: for the planet this stuff is in any number of ways.
Speaker 1: Now, the other thing, the last thing I want to
Speaker 1: say is who would you say, Is there someone in Congress?
Speaker 1: Is there a governor or is there a member of
Speaker 1: any legislature who do you think has the right ideas
Speaker 1: about this problem that you think you've had their ear.
Speaker 1: Who's someone who's good on this issue of solving the
Speaker 1: plastic problem?
Speaker 2: If anyone who is the is the organ senator or
Speaker 2: Representative Merkley Jeff Merkley Jeff Merkley.
Speaker 1: Yes, he is a US Senator from Oregon.
Speaker 2: That's been floating the idea of microplastics specifically here in Congress.
Speaker 2: And what I'm hoping with the book is that it
Speaker 2: does inspire some conversation around moving from the understanding of
Speaker 2: plastics as this macro thing the bottles and bags, into
Speaker 2: the micro scale and the nanoscale, which is the stuff
Speaker 2: that's really in every aspect of our lives. It's again
Speaker 2: in the air that we're breathing. You and I right now.
Speaker 2: I think when it becomes more visceral for people like that,
Speaker 2: maybe that inspires more political change, because that the only
Speaker 2: way that we're going to get these petrochemical companies to
Speaker 2: stop producing some stuff is political. It's like to put
Speaker 2: this treaty is actually going to try to put a
Speaker 2: cap on the production of plastic.
Speaker 1: So that's your prescription in the short term is caps.
Speaker 2: You think that that's the way to go, the only way,
Speaker 2: it's the only way, Like, we cannot continue in triple
Speaker 2: production of plastic by twenty fifty and come out at
Speaker 2: the end of it with a better world. That's the
Speaker 2: extreme urgency right now is that we need to do
Speaker 2: this at this moment to cap production because given the opportunity,
Speaker 2: these companies are going to make as much money as
Speaker 2: humanly possible, they are legally obligated to their shareholders to
Speaker 2: maximize profit and in doing so destroy the planet, which
Speaker 2: is a perversion and that needs to stop. And the
Speaker 2: only way that we're going to put the brakes on
Speaker 2: that is politically, hopefully with an international treaty and hopefully
Speaker 2: one that does not get watered down by the lobbyists
Speaker 2: who are attending these talks.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you so much. My thanks to Matt Simon.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and
Speaker 1: Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media
Speaker 1: manager is Danielle Gingrich. Here's the Thing is recorded at
Speaker 1: CDM Studios. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought
Speaker 1: to you by iHeart Radio.