Fellow conspiracy realist, how much of you is plastic?
I think a credit card size amount per day day and your brain crosses the brain blood barrier.
Your body overall. Yes, especially if you are a person carrying a child inside of you, now that they probably are going to get a dose of plastics too.
Basically lego at this point, guys.
Yeah, Look, if you're not driving currently or operating heavy machinery, take a pause and look around your environment and ask yourself how many objects in your immediate vicinity contain plastic? Spoiler, it's a lot.
It's so damn convenient, even if you are driving. About how much of a.
Car is plastic nowadays versus I don't know what fifty years ago.
Coding on the gear shifts, the dash panel, all the rubber. I mean, I guess that's different than plastic, But it's plastic.
You can go to some of the most inaccessible parts of the Earth and you might reach a place where humans have never been in recorded history. But you know it, it probably beat you to the punch.
Plastic. Yeah, it really insists upon itself, as you would say, Ben, and it likes to spread its plastic seed.
And now historically manufacturers ever since the dawn of plastic can bake light and so on. They have claimed plastic pollution can be solved by recycling. But as we learned in twenty twenty, there's more than a little bit of stuff they don't want you to know on that one. From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, and welcome back to the show.
My name is Noah, our rider, die compatriot and colleague. Our better third Matt Frederick is on adventures somewhat off the grid, but we'll be returning soon, so say hello if you see him in the wild. They call me Ben. We are joined today with our super producer Alexis code name Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Before we begin today's episode, take a second, if you're in a safe place and not driving, and
look around just your immediate area. Don't think outside of your room. Don't just the stuff you can see or the stuff you can touch. Try counting how many things you can identify as being made of plastic. Just take a second and think about it.
Yeah, man, just on my desk right here, I've got this tiny little plastic ummy bear that my kid uses to make necklaces. So there's one a McDonald's cup. I've got a bunch of little trinkets, you know. I got a little plastic squirrel with a beanie. Like this guy is the camera focusing on this cute little I'm really bad at centering on this because it's off to the side.
Uh.
Got a bunch of like a bottle of hand sanitizer cords, you know, Like I've got an ethernet cord that's wrapped in rubber with plastic ends on it at the very least. Yeah, man, a lot so this camera that we're recording into these little cameras.
I live with a life sized plastic skeleton because that's where I'm at, and.
Life don't spoil. I wanted to believe that Agent Scully was in fact a real skeleton.
I think it is a huge injustice for us to say that the nature of her physical material decides whether or not she's real. But I'm very you know, just like a pro pro b what you want kind of person. But you're right, you know, and a lot of our fellow listeners just did the same thing. You see the objects on nearby counters, shelves, tables, right, and also think about the furniture, Think about the device you're using to play this episode. Think about the clothing you're wearing. Right,
what percentage of that is a synthetic polymer? The short answer is they're probably For many of us in the audience today, there are more plastic things around you than you can easily count. Plastic is ubiquitous, Plastic is everywhere. So today's question, how did it get here? When did we know about it? And what does this mean for the future. To answer this, we do have to start at what maybe kind of a boring place, but it's important for the rest of the episode. So here are the facts. Plastic.
A brief history of plastic. Yeah, technically, plastic is a it's like a catch all term sort of. It's a word or for a group of things, for any material that can be shaped, molded, or manipulated into any form. Some of these things occur naturally. These substances occur naturally, but most are man made. And today the word plastic is really used to refer to a category of materials that we collectively call polymers.
And plastics. First, shout out to everybody who's already remembering that scene in the Graduate. It's great scene. Plastics were often for times seen in the future. The science is fascinating. A lot of children don't know this growing up in school, But plastics are made from oil, right, the same kind of oil that is, roughly speaking, the same kind of oil that's used to make gas. Oil is car been rich. That's what makes it such a popular fat these days.
And plastics are these large carbon containing compounds, if you know, like you pointed out in all we're referring to them in the modern sense. These polymers, these large molecules. They're composed of these repeating units of shorter and shorter carbon
containing compounds called monomers. Chemists combine these different types of monomers to make a vast a monopoly of plastics that all have different chemical chemical properties, like how in the Justice League or in the X Men or Avengers people have different superpowers. Most of this stuff is inert and the big, the big win for humanity is that it often won't react chemically to other substances you can put soap and plastic, right.
But it makes me think of that scene in Breaking Bad where you know, they want to dissolve some bodies right in acid, and the material that Walter White asks Jesse to go get is are these plastic bins, which seems like, you know, acid would melt right through polymer bins instead. Jesse thinks this is absurd, so he does it in the bathtub and the acid dissolves right through the floor, showering you know, goo and dissolved body parts all over the living room. But right, isn't that right?
Ben Like, there's something about the chemical makeup, the inertness of plastic that even something as caustic as acid won't react.
With it, right, Yeah, And it depends on it depends on the plastic, right exactly.
Yes.
And I think that's a big plot point in Breaking Bad, which I just rewatched a lot of it, but in a very lazy way. I just rewatched my favorite scenes, So I think it holds up. So how do we get here? How do we get how did our lives become inundated with this stuff? The story of plastic dates back to the eighteen hundreds. In eighteen thsfty six, a guy named Alexander Parks created something called park Scene. This
is generally considered the first thermoplastic. A guy named John Wesley Hyatt in eighteen sixty nine saw an offer by a business in New York to give away ten thousand dollars to anyone who could make a substitute for ivory, you know, ivory elephant tusk, and this inspired John Wesley Hyatt to invent what we call celluloid today. The whole reason there was an ivory shortage, by the way, was
because billiards was growing massively popular. It was the pog or the Pokemon of its time, right, So this guy invents this guy invents celluloid, and people were like, whoa, this is amazing. But it didn't stop there. That's not even the real revolution yet.
Yeah, and celluloid, which is a ton twister and of itself, is also still what people think of when they think about film from cinema. It's printed on celluloid. It's sort of I think that's probably not exactly accurate anymore, but it's certainly what the original material was that was used
to project film. Then, in nineteen o seven, a guy by the name of Leo Bakeland invented what he very self aggrandizingly referred to as Bakelite, which was the first fully synthetic plastic, So that meant that it had no molecules that were found in nature. It was pure laboratory magic.
You're right, Noel Bakeland definitely definitely had his eye on some marketing there. These two major publicly known successes got the attention of the big players in the chemical industry, so they just started throwing money into the potential of plastic, the R and D the development. As a matter of fact, there was a time when they just started seeing They decided that they would just discover and invent new types of plast and then later they would figure out what
that stuff was good for. They just wanted to be kind of the first past the post in the invention game. And then World War let's fast forward. World War two sparks this massive, unprecedented expansion of the plastic industry. Think about it. Natural resources are at a premium. We want a safe, viable, affordable alternative, and that's why production of plastic increased by three hundred percent in the US. And this pattern continued in one way or another at the
end of the war. For a time, people thought plastic would save the world. Plastic was a miracle substance that may one day prove as historically important as the so called Philosopher's Stone of alchemy. Except plastic was real, or at the very least sliced bread. You know, but sliced bread. It's got this cool.
Thing about it where you know, you eat it and then it's gone and you don't have to worry about
it hanging around for generations. But it turns out as far back as the sixties, folks in the US already were realizing that plastics, while they were durable and lightweight and able to be molded into any number of amazing shapes, stuck around for a long long time, and they're already kind of started to be this I don't know if distrust is the right word, but a certain awareness and trepidation around, like, should we really throw our whole lot
in with this material when we're already seeing that studies are showing that it causes problems with the environment.
Yeah, the apprehension was growing. In nineteen sixty one, study found that five percent of birds had plastic on some sort in their stomachs. And then people also very pressing in people started raising concerns about the possible long term effects of plastic on human health. But here's the problem. We're already that's the point of Prometheus and Pandora. The lid of the jar been unscrewed. We knew the fire of this new technology. We as a society had already
doubled down upon plastic. And today plastic is virtually irreplaceable. I mean, there are obviously biodegradable alternatives in certain fields, right, Like you can get biodegradable straws, cups, bags, and so on. And there are a lot of environmental cleanup programs, they're recycling initiatives, but for better or worse, plastic is here to stay.
And I will say, Ben, you're right, there are alternatives, right, But those biodegradable straws they suck, They deteriorate, they fall apart. They just don't work as well as a plastic straw. And this is coming from someone who tries to avoid getting a plastic straw whenever humanly possible metal straws. Okay, that's cool, but they make everything you drink taste kind
of metallic and that's not cool. It's really just that the the Pandora's box you are describing ben is less the greed of monopolistic corporations and more just the malaise of consumers and just realizing that, Okay, sure there are problems, but gosh, it's sure as convenient, isn't it. It's like, we know all these problems with Amazon today, but you don't see very many people giving up their Amazon despite knowing all the labor problems and the monopoly problems and
all that stuff. It's a very similar example, and it really does all translate to the almighty dollar at the end of the day.
Agreed. And there's one Leviathan when big piece of this story that does not get as much press as it deserves. It's this, how much did the big manufacturers know about the dangers of plastic and when did they know it? Perhaps most importantly, what did they do about it? We'll tell you afterword from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. Well, they knew about it. They knew they knew way more about it than the average person. And they went on their merry way to the factories and to the banks.
And the average person knew enough about it already for it to be a red flag. I mean, there were these studies about the bird stomachs and all of that stuff that was out there. But yeah, you're right, Ben, they just waltzed their happy asses to the bank and cash those checks like forever. I mean, because this really is the kind of thing where you're placing a long term bet on plastics if you're one of these companies.
So concerns about plastic became even more mainstream in the seventies, you know, ecology and recycle, reduce, reuse and all of that stuff. The oil, chemical and plastic industries grew a little bit anxious because they're like, how do we spin this? You know, we don't want to be the big bad guys. We got to figure out a way to sell plastic back to the consumers in a way that they can feel good about. Right.
So they hatched what can accurately be called a conspiracy. It's an insidious one. In fact, it is a conspiracy that you may have participated in with the best of intentions. It's one that many of us have played a role in this conspiracy in a large way. I hate to ruin this for everybody is the concept of recycling plastic
That is the conspiracy in today's episode. At the first National Conference of Packaging Waste in nineteen sixty nine, the chief environmental manager of Dow Chemical presented a paper on the explosive growth of what are called single use plastics. We've all seen those. You know, you go to a fast food place, you get your bag and your you get your whopper in these trying times to that's an Easter egg for just the three of us talking off air, and then you get.
Your you're here with you with your flame world whopper to give you comfort during these are trying.
Times, standing DeVito with an egg, but now it's a whopper. So you see these in cafeteria's, universities, restaurants, et cetera. And this environmental manager takes an interesting approach because he says, you know, he extols the virtues of these things. They're durable materials, they might conceivably last forever, but he also points out the disposal problem, that's what he calls it.
He says, there's a coming deluge of plastic waste and the industry is turning a blind eye to it, and that they're going to continue turning a blind eye to it for as long as possible. We a lot of people didn't know the extent of this conspiracy until reporters working with National Public Radio and a couple of other outfits found documents that proved from the very beginning, the
same corporations telling customers that recycling was on them. Those same corporations knew that large scale plastic recycling was a pipe dream. It was a plastic pipe dream. It was unrealistic to think it would actually work in an economically feasible way at that scale.
Ben, I'm pretty sure we've talked about this on the show before, But remember that iconic ecological ad campaign with the Native American gentleman and the single tier, you know, because there's like piles of garbage behind him and was presumably his native land or whatever. You know, I remember freaking the guy's name. It turns out that dude wasn't even a Native American at all. I think used like Italian, and that ad campaign was developed by a lot of these waste producing corporations.
That's right, Yes, Yeah, that's an actor from spaghetti westerns and we're talking about the Keep America Beautiful. Campaign. Also known as kab Yeah, this is a great example of how Big Plastic. That's just what we'll use as mental
shorthand for all these trade groups. Big Plastic decided that instead of putting money into a solution for the problem of plastic waste, which they correctly predicted would grow out of control, instead of trying to solve that, they spent money funding pr campaigns to blame you, the customer, for the pollution. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, not because of these massive corporations throwing this stuff everywhere, but because you use a plastic straw monster.
You know, I would call it brilliant if it wasn't so evil, you know what. You know what, let's say it's both. It can be both. It's brilliant and evil, because that's right. Then they're punting the responsibility from them because they're just giving you what you want. They're just you know, continuing that legacy of convenience. It's your fault for for throwing it in the in the in the ocean. You're the one throwing it and making that Indian cry.
You did that, even if you've never been to the ocean. Yeah, I let's see if we importmante to that. How about Evilian? Love it believal?
It's also done done with Gusto. No I like Avilian because it makes me think of it bulliant. So it's sort of like it's evil and brilliant, and it's done with ebuliance because how how else do you sell it if it's not like, got some rasmatas to it, you know what I mean?
Aviliant? Yes, all right, booked, We'll we'll get Matt, we'll get Mad on board with that too. Actually, let's just we'll tell him, let's mess with his mind and tell him that we always use that word right exactly.
So.
Uh so this large scale mind and media manipulation is quite successful today. A lot of people still don't know that Keep America Beautiful to your point, Noal was founded by that industry and through twisting the narrative right of littering, which you shouldn't litter that's that's not even a hot take, put stuff in trash cans. Through that, through that Pavilian's move, Uh,
they were able to get public support. Even though Keep America Beautiful was founded to prevent state bands on single use plastic packaging like it was it was founded to keep the one time use fork spice flowing the lack of a better word. Yeah, and we know this because there are documents from these companies.
That's right. You know, it's sort of like it reminds me of the story we did on the material that's in nonstick pans with the lawyer who kind of spearheaded the whole investigation into uncovering very similar kind of secret documents about what they knew, when they knew it and how they essentially colluded or you know, yeah, that's that's probably accurate to cover it up and to keep it
from the public. And this is no different. So what they did was they did, like you said, Ben, manipulated this narrative to they did have a solution at least to the whole like making everyone sad, about making the Indian cry and about feeling this guilt of all this stuff they've been pumping out into the world. No, no, no, no, there's another way, folks. It's called recycling, and it's something that you too can be a part of and making
America beautiful, keeping America beautiful. You can be a part of it. How cool is that? Man? That's like, you know, they're literally selling you a gold star, the ability to feel like you're doing your part. Not only can you have your cake and eat it with a plastic fork too, you can then turn that plastic fork into another plastic fork or whatever else its upperware. The sky's the limit recycling plastic.
And it feels good to do it too. Right where you are, somehow, you are, somehow more aware, you're a better steward of the planet. That's the idea that they're selling. And if recycling worked the way that they described it, then this would to a large degree be true. But the problem is multiple internal company documents have indicated that this was a move of self preservation on the part of the plastics industry. They needed to make people leave
plastic was sustainable. When I throw that fork in the right bin, then I am really just giving someone else in the future another fork, or another jug of milk or something like that. The lobbyists in the plastic and oil industry fought very hard and quite successfully to mandate that triangle recycle symbol, you know the one.
It's like the ecological uroburros, but like in a good way where it kind of like feeds back into itself. You know what I mean, so it's what could this It says all you need to know. It's like, hey, you can be part of this amazing continuum of manufacturing.
Yeah, I was thinking ecological illuminati. I think both answers are acceptable. I would even say, you know, all of the above there. It did make an impact because it gave us this belief that all of those items bearing that mark could potentially be turned into new products. The thing is, the vast majority of them were not turned into new products. The vast majority of them are still not turned into anything new. They can be we have the technology. There's just not a market for these things.
It's not a market for this recycled plastic, and in many cases there's not a compelling financial reason to make them. And that's because recycling has problems when we talk about plastics. They are huge problems with recycling.
Yeah, I mean, remember we were talking at the top of the show about how like this one particular type of plastic might you know, be able to hold acid, and there's other types of plastic that can hold rubbing, alcohol, etc. I mean, you know, typically polymers are versatile and non reactive in that way. But to your point, Bend, there
are different ones. There's a bunch of different ones, and so you know, they don't all necessarily play nice together because you would actually have to combine them and they would have to gel chemically and in order to be repurposed into something else. And so all of the plastic that this that would be needed to do this properly or effectively would have to be sorted by hand to separate out this is this type of plastic, This is this type of plastic. This is this type of plastic.
They can't commingle, So consumers don't know what that is, right, I mean, that's not and there's not enough bins in a recycling you know, container to even deal with that on the front end, right, So that means it's way expensive to sort all of the plastics to make new plastic from old plastic. Then it would be just to make it from oil.
Yep, just make new stuff. It's true that this is the episode of where we're somewhat ruined recycling, So.
That's the subtitle. That's the sub But I mean this isn't to say that no plastic is recycled, right, Ben. I mean we if you read about usually kind of bespoke products often that are more expensive to buy to the consumer, that are in fact made of all recycled materials, are all recycled plastic. But you're paying a premium for that privilege of knowing that you're buying something that was made with recycled plastic. That's because it takes more work to make it that way.
It has to be sorted by hand, you know, Like you said, you have to find the plastics that play well together. And then just for an example, yeah, there is there is actual recycling a plastic. Sometimes it's sold it at a premium, as you mentioned, but the stuff that's recycled is often not used in the ways you think it would be used. Like take a plastic milk chug. Don't with your plastic milk chug. You wash it out because you don't want it to smell up your house
or your trash bag. And then while you're doing that, you say, oh, wait, I recycle, so I'm going to put this in the blue the blue receptacle, and then you think, okay, off on your journey. Well, plastic jug, bro, I wish you luck in this your secular version of reincarnation. That plastic jug can only get recycled a few times because it degrades in quality every time it's recycled. So this means it can only happen it can only be recycled a finite number of times. So what happened to
the used plastic? Well, in the US, we did something that's very popular in a lot of disposal strategies of this country. We shipped it somewhere where we couldn't see.
It, you know what I mean, out of sight, out of my like a child. It's not I can't see it. It's not there anymore. We Yeah, Unfortunately, that is an all too common thing that we as Americans fall a victim to. And to your point, Ben, like even like the idea, this is interesting to me, and this is maybe more of a question than I have if it can only be recycled to a number of times, Like how do you know when you're done, when you've no
longer got a viable product? Isn't that something you have to track as well?
Yeah? I mean that's a really good point because then we have this whole logistic aspect to it, right logistical aspect to it, where we can't just do our best to recycled stuff. We also have to make sure that we're recycling something into something viable. The complications alone could cripple the entire project, So shif it off to China. Right. For a long time, labor was cheaper there. Also, environmental
laws were lacks right, or at least on paper. The US laws were more strict the country of China and businesses in China. Eventually, we're no longer able to find uses for all of this discarded plastic, so now they've largely stopped accepting it. There's just not much of a market for this recycled stuff. And that means that a lot of the plastic in this country, in the US ends up getting discover and it piles up, piles up, And I don't know about you, this gives you an
existential crisis. There's there's a question I have to ask at the very.
End of this. Yeah, and you know, and maybe you can answer this, Ben, I know, you know, And I live in Decatur, Georgia, and the city of Decatur has been plagued with corruption in terms of like you know, overcharging people for utilities, and there was like a big lawsuit all this stuff. But I've also heard rumor that my little blue recycling bin hopper that I you know, roll out kick onto the curb every Monday, that that just ends up in the landfill more often than not.
That a lot of municipalities don't do a good job of recycling, even when you think that's what you're doing.
Yeah, it's true, and that's that's something that is unfortunately not historically uncommon, you know what I mean. Like, consider a lot of office buildings where you know, people think they are throwing that aluminum can, that plastic bottle into the recycling bin, and then night, maybe you're working late, then you see that the people who do custodial services in that office just throw it all in the same place.
And then maybe you tell yourself there's a magical Sussian sorting machine that handles everything like a.
Harry Potter had of some sort.
You know. Yeah, but it goes to trash hat.
But it goes to the whole point that we started with here, is that it's all about optics. It's all about selling you the dream. It's not actually about the practice. It's more about like the image. Right. So what happened as as this continued, you know, especially after China's sort of rejecting this material, I believe that that study reference earlier about birds having plastics in their stomachs. I think
the number then was about five percent. But by the eighties, and you know, in true eighties excess fashion, that number increased to eighty percent.
Eighty percent of birds in a similar study twenty years later had plastic in their stomach And now as we record this, multiple studies indicate that almost ninety seven percent of all birds have some sort of plastics somewhere in their system. Today, as we record this, about a million birds going to die this year due specifically to their stomachs being stuffed with plastic.
Man, a good way to go. And you know, my qualms with the bird population been but even I don't think they deserve to go out like that. Agreed.
And so you know, the one thing you want for an enemy you respect, I would imagine from your perspective, nole is to is that they have an honorable death right.
I mean, at least, let let it be spectacular. Let their stomachs explode from eating wedding rice or something. You know, I'm kidding, And bird people out there, please don't don't cancel me. I'm very much kidding, But no, it turns out that the concept of recycling as it's been sold to the United States public and other places around the world is at the very very least misleading. Is an optics first kind of thing, as opposed to, like, what's the actual end result of this whole operation?
Right, yeah, exactly. I like the way one industry insider put it. They said, selling recycling sells plastic. And then there's an interesting statement by a guy named Larry Thomas, who's a former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry which today is known as PIA Plastics Industry Association.
He was at the helm at, one of the most powerful trade groups for the industry in DC, and he said that if the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment. And to be fair, the industry's current position is that there is no conspiracy afoot I wanted to
give voice to the other side, to their perspective. Guy named Steve Russell, a representative for the plastics industry who was for a while the vice president of Plastics for the American Chemistry Council, says the industry has never intentionally misled the public about recycling and that they're committed to
ensuring one day that all plastic is recycled. And he says, you know, public commitment to recycling programs, public pressure, and evolving technology will all play huge roles in helping recycle all plastic. Essentially, he's saying, no one ever intentionally misled anyone, and maybe one day recycling can do what the industry for decades claimed it was already doing. Just think about the double think in that statement. It's Orwellian.
Yeah, kind of mind blowing. I don't even know how to respond to that, Ben.
I mean, we're not saying, we have to be clear, we are not saying recycling is anything other than an amazing, awesome, potentially world changing, world saving concept.
Do you remember, though, Ben, like being a kid and going to like the recycling center and getting a tour and all that stuff. I mean, it was something that's sold to you as early as as ah, you know, elementary school, recycled, reduce, reuse, all of that stuff and again, and we're gonna we're gonna continue on. But I do want to say, like recycling paper it's great, recycling paper works.
You can smush all that stuff together and make all kinds of cool stuff, uh, you know, and pulp and you know make You can even buy recycled paper for your copy paper if you want. There's all kinds of uses for recycled paper. But the plastic part just a much more tricky. Let's call it supply chain problem, right.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
And again, like I I'm conflicted about this because I love the idea of recycling, and I love the idea of individual people being able to make a fundamental difference in the world around them, you know what I mean. I love the power of the individual. But what we are saying here is that the idea of recycling in the world of plastic the way it's been practiced is not near as widespread as the plastic industry would want
you to believe. And this will probably continue to be the case until there's some revolutionary technology that Harry Potter trash hat which is a great phrase, until it comes online, or until it becomes somehow more profitable to recycle and reuse plastic rather than to make new plastic. Neither of those things have happened yet, neither of them. And to compound the issue here, we are still learning the full
scope of this problem. We may not know the long term consequences of this issue for years and years and years to come, And that doesn't mean it doesn't affect us. It means that we don't know what's going to happen, has never happened on Earth before, We have no idea what plot twister ahead.
Yeah, I mean each year human beings produced three hundred and sixty million tons of plastic, and according to one study, around eight million tons of it enters the ocean, and until recently, the fate of what's called microplastics, which is plastics that contain particles less than five millimeters in size in the ocean has been unclear, But to your point,
been a recent study. We're at least starting to get a whiff of what these microplastic particles are doing when they settle in marine sediments, following the pattern of a lot of other pollutants. So we're not just talking about like hard goods that stick around. We're talking about the chemical impact of plastics and how it can actually saturate and contaminate soil and water and beyond.
Yeah, you're right, nol microplastics and nanoplastics, which are they have a diameter of less than point zero zero one millimeters. Both of these form from the abrasion of larger pieces of plastic dumped into the ocean, so the stuff keeps kind of breaking itself into smaller and smaller chunks, and research in wildlife and in laboratory animals has established some pretty compelling links between tiny plastic and infertility, inflammation, even cancer.
Microplastics have polluted the entire planet, from the Arctic to your neighborhood park to the depths of the ocean. Like you probably saw not too long ago, scientists being startled to get to a very remote part of the world under the ice in Antarctica and then see that there was plastic there. This is happening.
Yeah, you ever heard you ever thought of the concept of airborne plastic ben Again, this the old school model of plastic pollution is much more just a nuisance, right or like, okay, it gets in birds, The physical chunks of things get in birds and like choke them or caused them to have a horrible digestive problems that can
ultimately kill them. But yeah, airborne plastic Apparently, human beings, according to a previous study that we found for this episode, have shown people eat and breathe in at least fifty thousand particles of microplastic a year, and that MicroPlace plastic pollution is absolutely just raining down upon city dwellers, and it's not going away anytime soon.
No, it's not, which means that to a large degree, this conspiracy was successful because the profit margins stayed consistent. But now it's coming to a head, and we have to ask ourselves what does this mean for the future. We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. We've returned, and let's open this segment about the future with a quote from Rolling Stone that gives us a troubling summation of the dilemma we face. No could I ask you to do the honors here?
Absolutely, sir. Rolling Stone puts it out like this. More than half the plastics now on Earth has been created since two thousand and two, and plastic pollution is on pace to double by twenty thirty. At its root, the global plastics crisis is a product of our addiction to fossil fuels. The private profit and public harm of the oil industry is very well understood. And again this is all quote from this Rolling Stone article by Tim Dickinson,
which absolutely recommend fully reading. Let's continue, oil is refined and distributed to customers who consumers rather who benefit from gasoline's short useful lifespan in a combustion engine, leaving behind atmospheric pollution for generations. By the same pattern, and the same tragedy of the commons is playing out with another gift of the oil and gas giants whose drilling draws up the petroleum precursors for plastics.
Yep, yep. It's they're troublingly similar cycles, right, and you know the proof is out there. Companies knew about the issues with fossil fuels dating back to the seventies and didn't say a word about it.
So that's where we're at.
Since nineteen fifty, the world has created six point three trillion kilograms of plastic waste. Ninety one percent of that has never been recycled even once. This trend is only going to accelerate as emerging economies increase their plastic consumption.
Like think about this. In twenty eighteen, advanced economies in the world were using twenty times more plastic than per capita than consumers in places like Indonesia or in India and now people are on the way up right, there's a higher demand for plastic, and the industry itself, Big Plastic, is counting on that growing demand to keep selling stuff even though a great deal of it will still be around long after and probably long after everyone listening to
this podcast or watching this YouTube clip today has been long dead. And this is that existential crisis. I wanted to ask you about this. Everyone, you know, you doc, all of us listening along at home or in our cars are counting the pieces of plastic around us. Do you experience existential dread when you hold like a plastic fork and realize just how much longer it will be around than you, how much more permanent it is in the scheme of things than you, a living being that it bothers me?
Yeah, it bothers me too, And you know who else it bothers ben kids who, as you well know, kids these days. I say that as someone who's potentially becoming an old grandpapa. But kids these days are what the kids these days call pretty woke. They are hip to
all these societal problems, political and environmental and otherwise. And you know else, kids like legos and apparently a lot of kids who are fond of Legos begged the Lego Corporation in the form of letters that they wrote to the company to stop using single use plastic bags in their packaging. So Lego heard that. The Lego Group Chief executive Officer Nils B. Christiansen said, we have received many letters from children about the environment asking us to remove
single use plastic packaging. We've been exploring alternatives for some time, and the passion and ideas from children inspired us to begin to make changes. So apparently they are looking to roll this out in the very near future and it will be replaced with paper, which again, like we said earlier in the episode, is much more viable as a recyclable good for single use materials. It's investing four hundred million dollars over three years to improve its sustainability efforts overall,
the Lego Corporation. Unfortunately, you know, legos themselves made of plastic, but at least kids aren't throwing their Legos in the ocean. Presumably it's something you keep around and pass down to siblings, and you know, so that's I think that's fine. Yeah, I mean they're so expensive, they are quite expensive.
You're a parent. You're aware of that.
I am aware of that. They're also murder on your bare feet, as every parent knows when you're walking around. Thankfully, my kids more into bracelets than she has legos. But that's plastic beads. But again, those are meant to be kept around and given to friends and hopefully not just chucked. But yeah, our super producer Doc Holliday off Mike just kind of during our ad break exasperatedly exclaimed, Oh, this is depressing, you know, And then you're not wrong, Doc,
You're not wrong. But hopefully we can sort it out before we wreck the planet entirely, not to sound too tree huggry about it, but sure feels like we're hitting a tipping point with all this stuff.
It's not a look. Extinction doesn't care about vague, the vague stories we have made up for ourselves. Extinction does not care about political leanings. It doesn't care about religion. It doesn't care about money the economy, which again is just another religion. I put out the clarion call a long time ago. I don't think anybody has successfully proven a difference between the concept of an economy and the
concept of a religion. But there is one fascinating point, and I appreciate it so much man, that you brought a little bit of light here. There's one fascinating point. The plastics crisis is different from climate change and the way it's been treated. Remember, like I mentioned, oil corporations put a lot of money into denying the concept of climate change for a very long time. But the folks over what we call big plastic, and to be fair, there are a lot less like two separate entities and
a lot more like fingers on the same hand. But whatever you want to call big plastic, they are not denying the problem anymore. They're seeking to convince consumers and regulators that despite the fact they put all this pollution out on the planet, they can be the trusted experts to make plastic use sustainable. It's something they call a circular economy, so that plastic does actually get recycled continually and doesn't degrade. The cynical way to translate that, honestly, is this recycling?
You know?
For real?
This time? Sure, I like that it's got a nice ring, not on a down note, but it just somebody just popped into my head that we hadn't even talked about what about plastic garbage bags? Like, I mean, don't they just end up in like landfills? Like that's a question forever. I don't know. It's I'm sorry. I took us down a peg. You brought us up a peg and no, no, it took us right back down. But what I don't know? Are there any environmental scientists out there? Any polymer scientists
out there? You know, Lego's talking about exploring alternatives even to the plastic bricks.
What does that look like?
Why are we so hooked on plastic?
Let us know, Yeah, let us know, Let us know how you think this is going to work out. We are all ears, honestly everybody should be. We cannot predict the future, but we do see troubling trends and we want to hear from you. You can find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter. You can find us on Facebook. We love to recommend our favorite page on the good old inter and that is our Facebook community page.
Here's where it gets crazy. But wait, you can find us as individuals too, should the spirit move you to do so, you certainly can.
You can find me exclusively on Instagram where I am at How now? Noel Brown. You know, I post a lot of like crazy cosplay videos from my kid, who's a delight and also very much into the environment, and you know, cooking experiments under lockdown, occasional drumming exercises, and I'm starting to get into yoga, Ben. I just did like three days straight of a beginner yoga YouTube video. Starting to really enjoy that. So maybe you'll see me in cow pose or I don't know the names yet,
but you could see that. Where are you Ben on the internets?
Uh, you know, it's interesting mentioned the yoga stuff. Nol my Pale, Alex your pal as well. It's got super into yoga recently.
He's the one who told me which videos to watch yoga with Adrian for anyone else out there that's trying to dip their toe in the yoga pool.
Nice credit to you, Alex. If you're listening to this show, if you're already on the internet, you can find me having any number of misadventures on Instagram where I'm at them bulling, and can find me on Twitter where I'm at Ben BULLINGHSW. You'll recognize it's me because you'll see a tweet that I wrote before I came into this episode, saying that the research really got to me. The plastic is everywhere. I will aim to make less depressing tweets in the future.
It's when you started getting into the airborne plastic that it really started getting dark. This is all pretty dark, but I don't know. It's always darkest before the dawn.
How far away are we from children being born with plastic in them? Anyhow? Tell us about it. You can also give us a phone call if you are not the type to sip the social needs.
That's right, We're one eight three three STDWYTK. Leave us a voicemail memo message. Try to keep it concise. Much more likely to get on one of our handy dandy listener mail episodes if you do that. But if you got something that needs to be broken up into a couple of these, I think what's the limit been a couple of minutes for each of these. Feel free, but you know we may have to condense it a little bit. And also please let us know if we can use your name on the on the show and.
Get weird with it, you know what I mean. My favorite listener mail is still that guy with a uniquely infectious laugh. If you're listening, sir, you made my day.
The truck driver, the kookie truck driver with the Hong Kong Yeah.
Morfect residents, check it out. That's somewhere in the title of that episode.
Absolutely, as we've said time and time again, you can also join our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy, where you can exchange memes and barbs and and no not barbs, definitely polite discourse with your fellow listeners. All you got to do is name one of the members of the crew of this conspiracy posse, and then you
will find yourself in the door. If you don't want to do any of that stuff and you'd rather just get in touch with us in an older of fashioned ways, you can do so by sending us an email.
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.