Michael Kosta Unpacks America's Plastic Water Bottle Problem | Jordan Jonas

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Yea, let's talk about water. It's the thing you hope you just sat in on the subway. According to doctors, we're supposed to drink water basically every day, and in America, most of us do that with the help of these The number one package drink in the United States isn't coke or gatorade or even haterade.

It's bottled water.

We Americans buy fifty billion disposable water bottles a year. And I know what you're thinking, Oh shit, another depressing environment story. So can I not even drink water without ruining my children's future?

But that's the thing.

This is one environment story that actually has a really easy solution. And I'm gonna tell you what it is, another installment of long story short. For most of human history, people got by fine without bottled water. People got water from their well or the local stream, or by throwing a virgin into a volcano so it would rain.

It was a perfect system for water.

Bottles started to become popular in the eighties, mainly for health reasons. In nineteen eighty six, the EPA warned Americans that their tapwater it might be turning them into number two pencils. This might sound familiar to you if you grew up in the eighties or in Jackson, Mississippi last week and then marketers smelled money and soon bottled water wasn't just about health, but a whole healthy sexual lifestyle.

Keep your body, and it's peat.

Drinking Avon pure avion spring water from the French House.

It's refreshing, it's natural, and it doesn't have one single calorie input. It guys with good food. That's when I drink instead of a contail. It's what I drink instead of a cook too. Sure, but you can just say you've got DUI's all right, we've all got Duy's. Look. Props to these water companies.

They turned water into something sexy as opposed to something you just need to survive.

These ads were basically like oxygen.

It really helps me lay pipe.

So fast forward to today. Thank you great performance. So fast forward to.

Today, and the average American drinks upwards to one hundred and sixty seven bottles a year, usually right before a long haul flight when I'm in the aisle seat, Hey, just be an adult and wear a diaper like the rest of us. Now you might be asking Where does all that water come from the ocean? I tried that once I got so sick in reality. In order to get bottled water to the masses, water companies like Nestleie often suck up water from public lands for little to no cost.

It's not awesome, right.

We love it when multinational conglomerates find success. The problem is this creates a massive environmental impact. When these companies are called out for it, they come up with explanations like this.

Nelson Switzer is Nastlie Water's chief sustainability officer.

Some people say, this is the people's water. Is it fair that you guys make so much money off of it?

Nesslie has water rights, of course in this area. From a legal standpoint, of course, it's fair. From a perception standpoint, I understand why people are asking that question.

But water belongs to no one.

Oh really, really, Nastie, water belongs to no one. That's the dumbest thing anyone has ever said about water. And keep in mind Gwyneth Paltrow once said that you can hurt water's feelings by yelling at it. If water really belongs to no one, then why can't I go swimming in my neighbor Eric's coy pond.

Why did it scare his kids? Per the police report.

But sucking up all the fresh water is just the beginning of our problems. Making the bottles and shipping them to you uses seventeen million barrels of oil a year. That's enough oil to fill one million cars for a whole year, or grease up Don Junior for one weeknd plus. Most bottles just get thrown in the trash. Oh but I recycle it, okay, thanks for putting it in the green bin before they send it to Malaysia where they put it in the trash there. And the stupidest part

It, and that's how they make dasani.

And maybe you buy natural spring water because it's healthier, but it turns out not always. In fact, the study of Fiji water found that it has more arsenic than tapwater from Cleveland. Yeah, you thought bottled water was safer, turns out it's slowly poisoning you like a wife on dateline. So, considering that tap water is good enough for the vast majority of us, the solution to the huge environmental problems of bottled water is obvious.

Boom problem for all.

Using a refillable water bottle cuts down on fossil fuels, creates less waste, and could even save you sixteen thousand dollars over its lifetime. That's enough to pay for a luxury vacation or sixteen shitty vacations. So, long story short, this is like the easiest choice in the history of

You probably already have nine of these.

Open a cabinet in your kitchen and one will fall on you and tomorrow start using it.

That's how you save the planet. Welcome back to the Daily Show. My guest tonight is a wilderness guide.

And self reliance expert who won season six of the History Channel show Alone. Please welcome Jordan Jonas.

Who thanks for coming to New York City.

What an honor. Thanks for the invite. Now I'm in your world.

Yeah, you're in my world.

Now.

We were trying to get a hold of you. You live in Montana. Yeah, the booking department was freaking out. You're gonna make your flight. You weren't responding to anything, and then they told me you sent.

This text yesterday.

I literally just galloped on a horse for the last ten miles in the wilderness so I'd be able to catch my flight in the morning. Ha ha ha.

So this isn't like a bullshit act. You are a wilderness guy.

I was in the woods. Yeah, have a fast horse. Fortunately, cight it out.

You won season six of History Channels Alone. You spend seventy seven days alone in the Arctic.

You killed a moose with a bow and arrow.

Then then a wolverine was trying to steal your moose meat, so you killed that with a hatchet.

Doggy dog world.

You're out a way to fish in the frozen tundra, which helped you win.

Tell me about winning alone?

Oh man, what a I never pictured that as being a career opportunity. No, it was an incredible experience, man, Nothing like the pressure getting dropped off on a helicopter and you don't get another meal until you catch it like that indefinitely. But you also get the pure joy that's almost hard to replicate it. Every time you catch a fish or a rabbit or whatever it is, it's pure joy and like that all the way up until the end.

Which, yeah, I mean.

I think it's sometime we get so jaded watching reality TV.

This is your alone.

Yeah, no one's giving you granola bars and saying like Salmon fil a.

I mean, it's really a survival show.

It is. It's cool.

It's like, so it feels so similar to what all of our ancestors used to go through, you know, and yeah, on a daily basis, just trying to survive, trying to make, you know, make your way forward, and all of our dopamine, serotonin, all that is lined up with that experience, you know, kind of the modern life's a bit of a hack. But when you're out, you know, now our serotonin is released through Yeah, I do.

My hunting online Yeah, when you're dropped off in that situation, are you thinking I need big game like a moose. I need reliable fishing. I mean, what's the strategy? Because you kill a moose, then you have to do something with the moose.

Right my initial thought? I mean, I for sure my main concern was food. Like I thought, I'm a skinny guy, I'm gonna starve out here. Yeah, so I was all focused on food. I thought, I'm gonna catch a bunch of fish, make a pile of fish and beta bearing and hunt that. But I didn't catch many fish to begin with, and no bear. So I got an opportunity at a moose and just rolled from there.

Man.

Yeah, tell me about where some of the skill set came from. Yeah, because this story fascinates me, and it seems to have really affected your view on the world and who affected who you are.

Yeah.

When I was in my early twenties, I went over to Russia and spent a bunch of time living with nomadic reindeer herders.

Sure that you do know anyway, next question, You do that in your twenties.

As you do? Yeah, No, but it was a fascinating experience. I didn't even know, people really still live like that until I basically dropped off at the teepee. But they're nomadic, living in the wilderness year round, follow the herds through the woods, and I learned a ton from them, and they all, of course became good friends, and I spent a lot of years living with them.

So you know, I should be honest with our audience.

Jordan and I've met before, and I took one of your wilderness expeditions. My wife and I started to watch alone during COVID, as a lot of people did, and were just blown away at the show. And also you, because you had all this amazing skill set, you could feed yourself, you could survive. But then there also seemed to be a connection and humility with nature that was really beautiful.

And now I know you, I know that's all bullshit.

So my wife buys me for my birthday this wilderness survival expedition with Jordan.

Honestly, after the COVID, I think she was just trying to kill me.

This is me on the right, and this is I can't even explain to you everything about this. But I flew to Missoula, Montana. I drove four and a half hours, then I got on a horseback for eight hours with you and nine other people whose partners were trying to kill that We were at thirteen thousand feet maybe in the Bitterroot Mountain ten thousand feet let me exaggerate a little bit. And you really taught us some things in a really gentle kind way. There's a picture of you

You guys all know about this. That's like a basically a mouse or a rat trap. It's called a pio deadfall. But that's one of the Yeah, if you don't trap the mice that are harassing you at night, you'll have a miserable survival experience.

I thought that would be particularly helpful for so many New Yorkers.

Yeah, I know it is. That's an excellent trap to learn.

You were so kind to me. We one day we were walking on the mountain. We see this lake and I don't know if you didn't have an itinerary or out in the wilderness, you don't have an itinery. Yeah, so you go, do you guys want to walk down to that lake? And we're like yeah, of course it took all day. It's exhausting, and we get to out of the lake and we start fishing. But we just had a little bit of fishing line. I remember you handed me this casting reel.

I had a hook. I threw the casting reel in the lake.

I was holding onto my hook, but it was not natural for me. Is it important for you to introduce people to nature in this way?

Oh?

You could have easily been like Jesus Christ, you threw the wrong thing into the lake.

No.

I actually love it, man.

I feel like it's so important for people, especially in the modern world, to be able to escape. And I love you know, it's awesome to be all power people to go out there and experience what nature does have to offer.

Who did that for you?

What did you learn? Well?

I kind of grew up on a farm in Idaho and that that helped. But I really learned a lot living with the natives. I'd say, you know, it's kind of what set my knowledge base apart.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So then Jordan just grabs like some fishing a piece of stick and some fishing line, and he.

Just got it's like eleven fish.

There's a picture of that that's where we camp that night. And then he didn't just cook him like rudimentary style. He did a nice little smoke. Here's the fire with the fish on it, you know. Tell us about that.

Oh yeah, older, you know, so up in the northern regions al there's a great smoking wood. So I like to lay those green alders sticks down on top of the coals, put your fish on top of that.

It was excellent.

Tell me about let's say, hunting. People can have a reaction to hunting, big game hunting. It's easy for me to see pictures online and see this pin and go I don't like this.

You're killing an animal, right. I also feel like you care a lot about nature and conservation. How can those two be connected?

Yeah, that's actually a really fascinating question. I think we are no matter what we think, we're a part of nature. And in my experience, people who hunt, who rely on nature to you know, feed themselves, their families. There's almost there's few people that are more in tune with the health of a particular ecosystem because you rely on it.

The the knee jerk.

Yeah, you see these pictures and that, you know, I think one thing that really was beneficial for me. I'm not a hunter, but I definitely fished and killed a grouse that week because I was starving. And you said, we're only gonna eat what we can procure for the next thirty six hours. Well guess what COSTA doesn't really procure much.

But man, and this is sill.

Is gonna be silly to you and maybe silly everybody else, But when I took this little grouse's life, it really meant something, and it was sad to me.

But we then cleaned it. We cooked it that night.

It was my dinner, and I just thought on the flight home, I made a lot of notes. I had so much I had to be thankful for. I was like, I'd never been that close to my food before.

I appreciate it.

I go to the grocery store, I buy four pounds of whatever.

Three of it goes in the track.

I mean, it's like, man, that was like such a different connection that's gone.

For the most part from us.

Valuable.

Yeah, I know, I think we've all been disconnect We were talking. You're talking about packaging earlier, you know everything, Come.

Guy, But yeah, right, but it's.

Yeah, it's it's it's important to have that connection with our food. Otherwise it just all happens on a farm or in a field somewhere, and you can act like you're not a part of the system. But we are, so we should do our job.

Well, yeah, I I bought your axe. Oh okay, so.

People on the subway were looking at me weird. But tell me about this style of that. You used a similar axe on a loan and tell me some of the characters of this as to me and access for chopping.

Would you buy at the gas station.

When you're on vacation, but you actually used it as a survival tactic.

Yeah, I'm the real connoisseur of a good accent after Has anybody at.

The Daily Show ever had an axe out here before? Absolutely? So.

The features I kind of combined all the things I like.

Into it in an axe into one.

It has a it's the right link, the right weight and size. It's got a single bevel edge which if you'd like to pull out.

I'll watch. I'll do this and I'll cut myself. Yeah, careful sharp, they are sharp, So this is here. I'll let you do it.

So there you go.

It's sharpened from one side so that you're left handed. So if I was left handed, it's got that flat edge. I can carve and whittle like that really well. Chop trees down.

You use there's so much more than chopping trees down. You do you do.

You do a lot of carving and building things for yourself when you're out there, and so that's why I like that single bevel. It's got a slip on tomahawk style head, which is what the Evenki, the native folks did in Russia. It just makes it easier to repair. You have a little wedge, and it's got kind of the Siberian design, which I like, wide cutting edge.

It's very cool.

Yeah, it's a sweet I.

Feel like a poser that I have it.

But well, like I said, I don't see any plan plan be putting it to work.

You've come a long way to chat with me. I really appreciate it. Your Instagram is fascinating. There's so many great videos and pictures of you with your kids doing this stuff.

What's the goal there?

I mean, if it's a kid, my kid, I tell them to do so. I take my to the tennis court and she stands in the corner and kicks leaves. Are you worried your kids aren't gonna love and appreciate nature.

That's a good question. I think they will, but I'm not. I don't want to force anything on them. They might come and live here as far as I know, but I want them to have the.

Place.

I love when New Yorkers here from other people, what they think about.

Me, no, but I want them to have the ability to tap into nature because in the modern world, with all the distractions and all the you know, psychological issues, there's almost nothing like being able to get out in nature, disconnect, you know, and and be understand your thoughts and all that. And so I want to make sure they can always have the skills and ability to create that space for themselves.

And so I'm convinced, my daughter's three and a half, I'm convinced if we take a walk outside and I put my phone somewhere else, a lot of stuff gets solved just walking together outside.

You know.

And that's my little parenting hack.

But is there a survival skill that you could recommend to everybody to learn or is there a hack for connecting to nature if you live in a high rise in the Upper West Side of New York or Brooklyn.

Or you don't have a car, you can't get upstate.

Yeah, you guys in Montana take all this shit for granted. I have literally I have one tree on my street right and the way people drive, I think, sure it's going to come down somedays.

Well, I got to say, like, I feel like there's a lot of value in like setting aside a period of time, even if it's just yearly, you know, to go out in the wood and spend enough time to where you really your phone is off and you really do have time to think your thoughts and to talk

What about a survival tactic?

What's why you do you got to know how to build a fire? Because, yeah, so I usually carry.

A lot glad you said, let me know. I'm just.

One of the things that I loved was we when we got on the horseback it was kind of raining, and you started grabbing things off of the tree a little bark, yeah.

And you put it in your pocket.

It's raining, everything's wet, and you put it in your pocket, and I go, what are you doing? You go, well, in nine hours from now, when we need a fire at night, this will be dry. And I was like, you're thinking more for their ahead about this than I do about my career my family.

Is that an important part of me?

I mean, are you always even on a loan, it seems like you're always thinking a few steps ahead?

You have to be.

Yeah, you always try.

To plan ahead and things never quite work out as you plan. But uh yeah, I think.

Okay, build a fire. So the key to building a fire is what have dry tender?

So find some good dry stuff or take it with you, cotton ball with vaselines good. And then I always have two ways of starting to fire, an easy one like a lighter, and then the Pharaoh rod, which you're a master of. And that's like a fail safe way of starting to fire that way no matter what happens.

You're warm.

Yeah, don't start fires in your apartments. Don't start fires through lithium batteries on scooters.

That's New York's problem.

But uh, Jordan Jonahs, thank you for being here. I really appreciate you making it the whole.

You're an honor to talk with you. Thank you very much.

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