Habits of Waste Founder on Combating Climate Change

make some changes. So looking at how we can create better habits that help the environment and our climate is Shela Sheila Moravati. She is president founder of Habits of Waste. It's a nonprofit focusing on reducing environmental impact. She joins us on the phone from Los Angeles. Sheila, Welcome to Bloomberg. Nice to have you here. Hi, Carol, thanks so much for having me. Hey listen. Like a lot of our guests, I've got to first ask you, what's your last twelve

months been? Like? I mean and quiet. I have to say I've been um. I was living a very intense life prior to the pandemic. I don't even know how I at it. I mean, I was a classic person that was burning the candle at two ends, and the pandemic just forced us into a very different lifestyle that, um, you know, really made me think a lot of about a lot of things. So, um, the environment is definitely

at the top of the list. Well, and it's interesting because of the pandemic, as I mentioned, uh, and the inswer to this is that, like all of a sudden we talked about with people not driving to work and planes not flying, uh, the environment got a lot cleaner. At the same time, we have been using a lot of single use items, whether it's uh, plastic cutlery and plastic bags or you know, masks one time. So it's

it's kind of this dichotomy of different things going on. UM, tell us about what you are trying to do with habits of waste, especially when I feel like we've all had a past year to really think about our impact, our footprint on society. Absolutely, UM, So I come into environmentalism with a little bit of a different angle. I studied sociology you c l A. And found it fascinating to understand human behavior and how to shift the behavior

of the masses. So throughout the pandemic, UM, food delivery applications went through the roof, so the increase in food delivery orders was about So what I realized is if we were able to convince people to only receive plastic cutlery upon request, how could we decrease the forty billion pieces of plastic cutlery that are entering our waste stream

every single year. So I was able to convince Uber eats, Postmates, and grub Hub to swap that default setting, so it's no plastic cutlery comes out anymore unless you ask for it. We're still waiting on Doortosh to jump in, and it's imperative that they join us because they had about of all food delivery orders. In that being said, um we used technology to get to this point. We had an email campaign on our website at habits of waste dot org where users could come in, send an email and

it would go directly to these food delivery applications. And I felt that if the food delivery apps knew that this is what we wanted. We have this junk drawer everybody has in the kitchen that they feel horrible about throwing away, yet it built to the rim with plastic cutlery. I mean, ask anybody they've got one. So luckily these emails worked and we sent about ten thousand emails to date, and now we're just holding out for door dash and

then we'll have it all done. It's amazing. How now, like I've got to say, we've gotten used to it and not getting cutlery and don't miss it. I'm actually kind of grateful that we're not getting it, and silly for us for not kind of saying earlier on like

don't you know, don't put it in. But it became such a habit right of all the takeout places, right, and it's really about choice architecture, Like how is it that we're just being bombarded with these habitual behaviors of waste without really getting a chance to even do better or bypass it. You know. I spearheaded the first plastic straw and cutlery band in history, which was in the city of Malibu, and unfortunately, banning plastic straws was a

lot easier than banning plastic cutlery. So here we are trying to at least have it only upon request, and most people don't even want it, so it's a win win. And by the way, restaurants are saving a ton of money. I'll give you this one really interesting fact. Postmates announced that within a year they saved a hundred and twenty two million packs of cutlery from entering the environment, and that was an equivalent of three point two million dollars

in savings for restaurants. So, you know, plastic is really important. But the next most important thing that I've ever done, probably in my whole entire life, has been, um, trying to get more people to eat plans. Well, well that's the thing almost important thing we need to do right now, Sheila, let's talk about I'm up on your website and I was looking at it earlier today as well. There's a form you can fill out to join a challenge that

you have. It's called hashtag eight Meals. What's that about? Yeah, so um, Actually it's a brand new app that we have and it's available in the app Store under Habits of Waste and eight Meals was basically born because you know, I'm very much involved in environmental work. Yet one thing I've yet to, you know, be able to commit to fully is going fully vegan and eating every single meal plant based. Is just something that I felt was impossible. If I feel this way, I can guarantee that many

of your listeners probably feel the same way. And I felt very dissuaded by the whole thing, and always like I, Okay, I'm gonna try this week, But then I'd fall off the bandwagon. I came across the study by this University of Michigan and two lane talking about how Western cultures must decrease their animal protein and take by fort at the very minimum in order for us to even have a chance at climate change. It is the number one

thing individuals must do to make an impact. So I thought about that and I said, okay, well, how do we translate that for the everyday person to be able to adopt this idea into their daily lives. So three meals a day time, seven days a week, twenty one meals? What's that that gives us eight meals? So that's the goal, is that we all want to try and increase our

plant based meals by eight meals a week. And we've created this new application to help everyone do that by providing recipes linking your meals you want to plug in into your calendar. You can check out how much of a carbon reduction you're making because by eating eight meals a week, it's actually carbon that you're reducing, which is the equivalent of driving a hybrid car a week, I'm sorry, a hybrid car for a year. So eight meals a

week for a year is equivalent to driving a prius. Um, don't you don't you almost feel like like I think about this year where we as individuals, global citizens, learned a lot about obviously a health pandemic, but also what it takes to create a vaccine, Like we peeled back the layers, and I almost feel like food production is a thing where I don't think we all really understand where a lot of stuff comes from or the impact

it has. We've we've done a lot of stories here at Bloomberg about meat, meat production and what it does for the climate and the environment. Um, you know, what, what do you think about in terms of what we need to do though to also educate people about food? I mean, we understand organic versus not and things like that, but the mass production of food, you know, not so much,

although we've got a glimpse of it. Right when all of a sudden the supply chain started coming undone during the pandemic, right you know, one fact that always sticks, um, is when you keep it really simple. So for example, creating one pound of beef is the equivalent of eight thousand gallons of water. So just thinking about these small

things that you know, just like tidbits of information. And by the way, eating a plant based meal eight times a week is not so you know, impossible for many people, and in fact, you feel better and it's less expensive. So there's a lot of winds in there for your health, for your wallet, for the environment. So if we can just look at it like, Okay, I'm not going to commit, fine, maybe you will. You never know. After eight meals, a lot of people are like, I'm kind of grossed up

by me. I don't even need it. Great, but my my whole mission is to edge kate with as much small bits of information that would interest the everyday person that's not in the environmental world, because people are living their lives. They're busy, they just got to get dinner on the table, and they've got work in school and a million other things, especially this past year. So um, yeah, this is my philosophy that you know, if you can

just give small bits of info, it's great. What do you think it's holding people back the most from doing things. Little things like you say, these habits, uh, you change them. If everybody starts to change a little habit, that's a significant one, you can you can kind of alter the outcome of our climate. What's holding people back? I think people just aren't aware that their impact matters. So it's just that everyone says I'm just one person. I'm only

one person. But if we all said that, then nothing would get done in the world. So this is an opportunity. Our whole website, our whole mission on Habits of waste dot org is really about inspiring people to know you do matter and your actions do add up and so, and then taking away obstacles. So, for ex ample, the eight Meals app is an opportunity for us to make it really easy and fun um and interactive to try, you know, increasing your plant base meals or cut out cutlery.

It's taking away a default setting that we were unable to communicate properly with the restaurants and the food delivery applications. But we were being bombarded with plastic that we didn't want.

So we're we're here um as an organization to help alleviate some of those obstacles in the way, but also to inspire the individual to know that every single day you wake up in the morning till the time you go to bed, you have decisions to make, and those decisions add up, you know, by the billions of people that are on this planet. What do you think is the necessary um collaborations we need? We need to be seeing maybe more style between private and public sectors on

this matter. Well, I believe that if we are able to basically give ourselves a little bit, just a little bit of wiggle room, that it's not an all or nothing, that there's no shame involved, that there's no it's really just about do in your very best. I believe that that is the most important way to move forward on on progress, and that is you know, and listening, listening

to each side. It really does make a difference because ultimately, companies want to do the right thing for their consumers um and if the consumers speak up and are heard, then it's a beautiful synergy. So with again back to the you know, cutout cutlery campaign that we did. The applications, you know, they're like these emails, can you stop sending them?

To us, so they're listening. It's not it's working. It's just a matter of again not shaming, and it's just positive and just the understanding that we all, we all can make an impact. All right, well, good stuff and please keep us posted on some of the work that you're doing as you got as you continue to move forward. UM,

really inspirational. Sheila Moravati she Morovoti, excuse me? She is president and founder of Habits of Waste on the phone from l A. You can find out more by going to Habits of weights dot org and you can also find out more on Twitter at how Changers