It's 1989. I am less than one year old. I'm seven, year seven. And single use plastic is everywhere. And people are getting pissed. So this man named Larry Thomas was the president. At the time of the Society of plastics industry, he called a meeting of executives from, say Exxon Chevron down. He said, This is a quote, the image of plastic is deteriorating at an alarming rate. We are approaching a point of no return. And do you want to know the brilliant plan that they devised during the meeting? They were going to advertise their way out of it? Of course, of course. Hi, cat native. How are you? Oh, better every minute. And how about you better every minute? Same thing for sure. Awesome. Yeah, I'm just hanging down in the basement with my spiders. Yeah. I haven't had a break and by the dog so far, so that's I know, I was thinking that too. Yeah, we record two at a time. So this is our second recording if anybody's confused, but yeah, go check out glass recycling last week's episode, if you haven't yet. Because you're gonna need the palate cleanser. I think you will maybe even listen that one after plastics. We're talking about plastic recycling today. And honestly, I lost sleep. Oh. It's depressing. It's it's actually not. It's depressing, but it's more like infuriating. So we'll see. But, but yeah, it's become such a month. It is such a monster in all meaning of the word. Yeah. That we've had to turn it into our first two parter ever. Yeah. So this is the cliffhanger. Except it's not going to be two seasons. It's going to be in the same season. So you're not going to have to like wait three weeks? Oh, yeah. No, no, because one at least. But yeah, it's a behemoth. Wow. I like all the monster names we're coming up with it's Godzilla. The Gorgon that's like it? Well, yeah. But I did want to start real quick with I meant to start this waist season off with a story because you know how you have those, like, painful moments in life that are so eye opening? You might know more what I'm talking about when I tell you the story. But if this was a very painful moment, where I was like, wow, I really need to like get my shit together. Oh, I'm intrigued. I haven't. Okay, so I have been into decluttering. Which is interesting, because we're going to talk about like decluttering and stuff later, I think the last episode of this season. everyone's obsessed with it. But so I went to Goodwill, which is not my first choice to be clear. But I kind of had like three boxes of crap that I just needed to get rid of. And it wasn't really crap. But one of the things was a this is so painful, but like a pretty nice pasta maker. Oh, one of those little cranky things to your table. Yeah, it was pretty nice. I hadn't used it in like, two years. And I was like, oh, all these Declutter. People online are telling me if I don't use it in one year that I should just get rid of it. Oh, no. Yeah. clogging up my shelves. Oh, which they're not necessarily wrong. But taking it to Goodwill was a wrong choice. Because, okay, I went through this whole process of taping, there's two parts to this thing. And it's heavy metal. It's like a really solid piece of equipment. And anybody in the right mind would have taken it on Freecycle. And I've learned this now, but Oh, there I know. So I taped these two pieces together and like made try to make sure that they were like solidly taped together. And then I walk over to the guy hand in my box, it's outside, walk back to my car. And when I come by the time I get back, he's already going through my box, right? See him take my pasta maker and just rip the two pieces apart. No, and throw it in the box. Meaning I don't blame him, but meaning nobody's ever going to use that again. No, you're going to see it and be like, What the hell is this thing? They don't know where's half the half of apart unless by some miracle? It's never it's just gone. It's It's It's landfilled and useless. I'm so sorry. So that's like breaking embarrassing and also no eye opening. You got to the people of goodwill are so over. I mean, people just throw. I mean, it's like wish cycling. Like we were talking about last week, people just throw trash in the recycling and hope that it's recyclable. It's the same with goodwill, they just give trash away. Yes. And it's like an easy, it's just such an easy way. You don't have to see it again. You just drive up and hand it off. You don't even have to have a conversation with the guy, you know, like, right, so it's painful. Yeah. I mean, this is why I really love the Buy Nothing group on Facebook. And yes, yeah, we're gonna get into more of that like a little bit later in the season. But it was just like hammer. Yeah. Oh, it hurts. It still hurts me. And yeah, so I've gotten into freecycle. And I'm loving it. We can talk about that later when we talk about the cluttering. Yes. But yeah, anyway, I just had to share because it's like, I have a Salvation Army near me. And I think they treat things with a lot more respect. At least that's what it seems like. But again, I don't blame the guy. It's like corporate goodwill. Like one like, yeah, he's got 40 billion other people coming. Yes. His day to like, drop off their trash and Exactly. And yeah, so anyway, there's my lesson. hard lesson learned about waste. It's fair. Yeah. Well, I guess I should say, Welcome to greening up my act. Now. Yeah. Welcome. This podcast about green living, we usually review products to see if they're actually eco friendly, sustainable, not full of green hooey. And efficient, do what they're supposed to do and are cost effective. So we do that. But this season, we're starting off with waste. And we're talking about recycling specifically to start and the four horsemen of the recycle Apocalypse as we're calling them. Yes. Which paper, aluminum and glass ended up to be more like My Little Ponies, whereas we have reached death today, which is plastic. Yeah, unfortunately, it truly is. It's might feel a little bit like death. So. Okay, well, at the end of every episode, we give it a granola rating from one to five granolas five being breaker tooth off, and one being soggy. So that's a you want it to be crunchy. You want it to be crunchy, because we've ever had soggy granola. It's the worst. just gross. So we want crunchy granola. J. So okay, Tiffany is going to. I feel like I'm going to a funeral. I know. I'm sorry. It's okay. No, it's okay. This is really important. So okay. Yeah. And you might know, but that's the thing. It's like, I thought I knew and then I was like, Oh my God. I mean, that's how I felt about all the rest of the recycling things. Yeah, we are so uneducated in America. I mean, it's just who has time. Exactly, which is why this podcast exists. So we're helping everybody out. Hopefully get a little bit more knowledge in that brain. Yeah. So buckle up. This is a two parter. This is one. Yeah. So I'm going to start part one off with a story. Another story. Good. Yeah. This isn't personal. This time? Yeah. This is from NPR and Frontline. They did a really had such a good article about plastic recycling. Good. Okay. One thing we do well is NPR tell you what America does. Great. NPR. Yes. So it's 1989 I am less than one year old. Seven years seven. Like a prayer by Madonna is topping the charts. And single use plastic is everywhere. And people are getting pissed. So this man named Larry Thomas, who was the president at the time of the Society of plastics industry, he called a meeting of executives from say Exxon, Chevron, Dow, DuPont, all the fun, fun, industry giant. It's a top friends of buddies and people everywhere. Yes, or buds. He call it Yeah. So we call this private meeting at the Ritz Carlton in Washington, DC. He said, This is a quote, the image of plastic is deteriorating at an alarming rate. We are approaching a point of no return. And do you want to know the brilliant plan that they devised during the meeting? They were going to advertise their way out of it. Of course, of course, favorite marketing. That's what we do for a living. So these plastics and oil industries, proceeded to spend$50 million per year on ads that said Things like plastic makes things possible. Oh boy. And they promoted the recycling of plastic. Okay. The industry. So these industries also funded things like sorting machines or nonprofits that were based on, like focus on recycling or recycling centers. So sounds good. It's Yeah, it sounds good. But then every single one of these projects that they had started had failed by the mid 1990s. Oh, like, five years later, wow. Yep. But they, you know, they could say, Oh, we did all of these things even. Yeah. So, these industry experts knew that recycling plastic would not work, that it was not economically viable. But they went to Minnesota to start a local plastics recycling program anyway. Okay. Then. Well, I think they first created a special group called council for Solid Waste Solutions, which is so lovely. And they brought a man from DuPont. But this is the same DuPont chemical that just like last week, paid millions and millions of dollars to settle a case for poisoning waterways with forever chemicals. Oh, wow. They're a great company. We love them. Yeah. Friends of the podcast. Big supporters. Yeah, financial backers. That's why we're poor. So these folks created this council for Solid Waste Solutions. And they brought this guy in from DuPont named Ron Lee summer to run it. So this Ron Lisa Mark guy was the one that they sent over to Minnesota to start their plastics recycling program. And when interviewed recently, Lee summer says the industry was focused on keeping their products on the shelves, not tomorrow's solutions. So these people later in life are sort of having Wake Up Calls like holy shit, what did I do with my life? Oh my God, because NPR interviewed several of them, and all of them are like, yeah, oh, I have some quotes from them later. He. So also starting in 1989, these sneaky bastards begin discreetly lobbying to mandate the three arrow symbol to appear on all plastic in almost 40 states. And that was even if the product wasn't economically viable my god recycle is that the biggest Green who we will avert our eyes it actually getting gig that has ever happened. It actually the mother of all green Hui? Yes, they had the story in the article about this recycling. The a woman, I think was a woman who was running a recycling center. And before all these arrows started appearing, it was like, she would get milk jugs and she would get like laundry jugs. And that was it. And all that was very recyclable. And then all of a sudden, all this other crap started showing up. And she noticed all these arrows, and they found out like, oh, it's actually the industries that are putting these arrows on these products. Oh, wow. Okay, so it doesn't mean it's recyclable. It's just reminding you to recycle. Yes. And that Yeah. And they will. Their excuse was that they wanted to make it easier for plastic like the for recycling centers to sort out the plastics. But that's complete bullshit. Because it didn't need the arrows. If you just want the number, just put the number. Yeah, like the the arrows mean recyclable? Yeah. So what a lie. What a great marketing lie. Yeah. And in 1993, there's proof that the society Society of plastics industry, the same one was told that companies are misusing the symbol as a green marketing tool. And they didn't give it they didn't give a shit. Wow. Yeah. Monsters. Yeah, they really are. So the takeaway is, one of the big takeaways is that this is a very new problem. This plastics, single use plastics, clogging up our everything. And this isn't something that our grandparents ever dealt with, which is really hard to wrap our like, wrap my mind around, because that's just been my life, but it's new and one of the crazier, it's always painful to say this. One of the crazier statistics that I found was that the world has produced more than 6.3 billion tons of plastic waste since the 1950s. And have a little over half a century. Oh, well, almost as well. Okay, we're getting, I'm like, yeah, it's 2000. It's been half a century. You know, it's, it's 75 years. Okay? Whoa, 75 years that sounds crazy, but ya know, three quarters of us. Okay, so in 75 years, more than half of that was produced in the last 16 years. Oh, damn. I know, that are that stat was from like 20 Maybe 2018 2017, something like that. But you know, last time the EPA was functioning Wow. Isn't that wild? Oh my god. I know. So today, you know, we find ourselves with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is a vortex of plastic waste and debris that no nation wants to take responsibility for according to National Geographic. Oh my god. Alright, so my story's over. I'm gonna cite my sources real quick. Okay, I'm gonna go cry into a corner. So all right, yeah, like I said, I use NPR and Frontline that amazing. They'd spent like sound like months researching. Great article, the conversation had website had an article and pinned the pin. Well, the pandemic's effect on plastics recycling. Financial Times had sort of like the most famous article about it came out in 2018. But it was about plastics recycling, post China's ban on recycling. Okay, we had our ban on taking imports. Not really bad. Anyway, we'll get into that later. That'll be next episodes week, but okay. National Geographic has mentioned plastics industry.org And I looked up what plastic was made of at plastic europe.org I found Okay, so if you google anything plastics, recycling, you're gonna It's probably one of the first SEO things, frickin SEO. Well, first things you're going to see which is search engine optimization. If anybody doesn't know that's a marketeer. Non marketing. Who a people Yeah, look it up because it really affects what you see on Google anyway. You'll probably see the Alliance to End plastic waste, which is pure green Hui? Oh, no. Pure Green Hui, you would never know it until you look at who pays for it. Turns out it's a bunch of chemical companies. Yeah. And oil companies. So okay, just Yeah, washing their activities. Yes. No. So other articles, one from The Guardian, one from Washington Post on the environmental costs of recycling plastic, which was also mind blowing. Both of these were new articles, like within the last couple of weeks, and I was like, holy moly, actually. Yeah. Okay. I looked up Dutch news.nl. And the plastic soup Foundation, both of which are Dutch, I'm pretty sure Dutch on the issues with Dutch recycling, because I had mentioned that I wanted to look into how they do it in the Netherlands and see if they do it any better. Right, and we'll see. So I also looked at the Ecology Center on the plastic bags, because I take my plastic bags to the grocery store. And I wanted to know if that mattered, right. And finally, my plastic free life.com This lady is super cool. And she started a blog, turn it into a book about living forming a life without plastic. Like, it took a long time. But she she's doing pretty well. So she has lots of tips. Great. Okay, I need those. I know, don't we all? So, four basic problems that I found with plastics, recycling, okay. Number one, used plastic can be turned into new things, but picking it up sorting it out and melting it down is expensive. New plastic is almost always cheaper to make than it is to recycle. That's the problem. Yes. And fracking for oil contributes to the low cost and also the pandemic plunging oil prices. Okay, so, plastics even cheaper to make new now than it was 10 years ago? Probably I'm not sure on that. But maybe not anymore. But yeah, during the pandemic, okay. Yeah. Yeah, the oil industry makes more than $400 billion a year making plastic. Okay. And because of the the demand for oil for cars is going down. They expect plastic to be their biggest moneymaker in the future. So they're just going to double down on it. That and if you think about it, I'll talk about it a little bit later. But recycling is there competition is too high. No. Yeah, I know all this. None of this came from my brain. All of it came from research and I was like, there's so much Okay, so that's number two. Number three plastic degrades each time is reused, meaning it can't be reused more than one to three times. So unlike our infinite glass and infinite aluminum recycling, oh, yeah, very different. Yep. Okay. And number four, this was the more recent news. There's evidence that recycling plastic makes it more toxic. Oh, boy. Okay. It really is death. You weren't kidding. I'm so sorry. I'm just looking at plastic lotion bottles. And guess what I'm drinking out of a plastic cup, although it's not single use at least but yeah. Jesus Christ. Okay, so, on that note, what's plasic? Native? Yes, please. I was like, What is this substance? Okay, so I didn't look a whole lot into it. But it's made of natural materials like cellulose, coal, natural gas, salt, and, of course, crude oil. That's put through a polymerization or polycondensation process. Okay, so I didn't look too much into the process of like making new plastic, but I did look into the recycling process. Okay. Because plastics are one of the hardest materials to recycle. There are dozens of types that we use in every day, and they cannot be recycled together. So we have to separate each of those numbers need to be needs to be separated from each other. And after sorting, the bales are sent to a recycling facility to be further washed and cleaned. Then they're washed and they're dunked in chemicals to remove the labels. Okay, then the plastic is all chopped up. So it kind of like glass except, yeah. Terrible. More chemicals. Yes. Less, less physical process more chemicals. Okay, great. And so the flakes, there's like lid flakes and bottle flakes. I guess they have different weights. So they're separated in a flotation pool. Okay. And then the flakes are melted into plastic pellets, which takes energy and can produce air pollution. And the pellets, go figure. And the pellets are sold to manufacturers. So what I learned is that it is possible to do all of this in an environmentally friendly way. I mean, this is, I think I'm quoting here because environmentally friendly, I'm not sure, but friendlier way. So if you treat the wastewater correctly, if you dispose of the chemicals properly, and you make sure that your emissions are held in and they don't escape, so recycling can actually use less energy and resources than making plastic. New. Okay, you would I think we found from every recycling process what we've covered, yeah, it actually is true. But a lot of times shortcuts are taken and the consequences can be devastating. Oh, dear. Yes. So more about recycling plastic, not everything is recyclable everywhere, especially after China's ban, which we will talk about next week. Just teasing next week. Yeah, they, they put in a policy into place that really, I would say open people's eyes more than anything. Yeah. But it really changed how we have to operate plastics, recycling, okay. So not everything's recyclable everywhere. And I looked at my County's website and some of the things surprised me that they will take, they have to be clean, but they'll take pump bottles, spray bottles, frozen food trays, whoa. And number five takeout containers which are like the clear lid with the black bottom right, which are notorious for not being taken anywhere. Okay. Wow. I know. I was really surprised. And then these all have to be clean though. Can't have a dishwasher Indian food. Yep. But they don't take plastic bags. Of course not that surprised about that. plastic egg cartons. Okay, which I'm really upset about because I've been putting those in my recycling for a long time. And I remember looking it up, they must have changed it because I looked it up like two years ago. Yeah. So I think I need to start buying the cardboard ones. They do not take number one. plastic clamshell packaging. Okay, which it's, I don't know. That's probably on everything. Yeah, that's so much. Yeah, they don't take cereal box liners and which is not surprising, but they don't take Styrofoam either. I don't know if anyone should recycle Styrofoam. Bridwell. We'll talk about them but they will do well yeah, awesome. Okay, so Wow, about I mean, I just like you ticked it off. When I was like I have wished cycled every one of those items. I know. So have I. So a little quick bit about plastic bags. So I mentioned there's no upside to this, but it's not going to get better, unfortunately. But so I take my I actually wrote out I was so frustrated. I take my effing plastic bags to the GED grocery store. Yep. Yep. And guess what I found out? They were probably not paying recycled? Not really. Yeah. No, this was from I'm trying to remember where I found this Ecology Center. Okay. They seem like they knew what they were talking about. They, yeah, they were saying, they went through the whole process of that. And they said, Some stores, use services that collect the bags, and then send them straight to the landfill. So like you're going to the grocery store. I don't know if everybody does this, but you take your bag to the grocery store, you put them in a little white bin or the little green arrow bin. Oh, wow, that just, I hit my thing, and it made it dinging. So you take it to the store, you put it in the green arrow Recycle Bin. You feel really good about yourself, which is what I do. Yeah, some of them just take it straight to the landfill. And some of its recycled. But it's very hard to follow. This isn't the same for like Saran wrap. So plastic film or plastic bags. It's it's almost impossible to follow it to the end product or even fine products made from recycled plastic film. Yeah. So yeah, this website recommended, like use paper instead of bags instead of plastic bags for trash, which I never thought about doing. Yeah. Growing up. My mom did I mean, I really, they did that in the Netherlands. My friends were doing that. And I just didn't think about it. But yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. And they said, like, eliminate plastic wrap. So you can use like beeswax cloth, which I do want to try. Do you have any of that? I have. We have reusable plastic bags that we use. And then of course my roommates infinite glass jars, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, bring your own bags. Don't buy food and pouches are packaged in films, but it's hard. It's so the kid arches are like the new. Yeah, it's how you eat anything. Yeah, I just bought yogurt in a plastic tub. Right? Like, I'm sorry, that's not a plastic film, or dual layer plastic, which is something else I've learned about which has like, plastic and aluminum or plastic and Oh, interesting. Two different kinds of plastic. Yeah, so like your, you know, granola pouch. Like any of those pouches has plastic and something else. Yeah, kinds of plastic. So they're impossible to recycle. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It's it sucks. But yeah, I mean, even your yogurt tub. It's like God, that's still plastic is still technically single use. So yeah. My sister uses she needs a great dog toy. The dog likes to lick the yogurt out. Right? Does it really does the same thing. Yeah. Her like, she's got like a line around her face when she comes out. Like, oh, I've got my fix. Yep. Wow. Okay. Yeah, I'm just I'm despondent. Now. They know. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Yeah, ruse the whole time. So back to more of the ruse. So that's just a little bit about like plastic and recycling plastic and whatever. As mentioned from the intro story, the plastics industry sold us a bill of goods. And the industry knew, like I said, and I have a quote here, like knew that plastics recycling would not be viable or sustainable. But this Larry Thomas guy who was the former president of the Society of plastics industry, he said, if the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment. And America in a nutshell, yes. And in 1974, an industry insider wrote in a speech there is serious doubt that recycling plastic can ever be made viable on an economic basis. And that was 1974 Oh my god. Yeah. So there's no responsible way to be involved in in plastic manufacturing baby basically. Or to use plastic? I think not. Yikes. I know It's really it's a hard pill to swallow. Yeah. And I want to say the bigger problem is like, I don't know this to be totally true. But I want to say the biggest problem, or at least the most solvable problem is the single use. Or the, you know, two to three times you use it and throw it out. Rather than, like, making car parts out of plastic. It's still not ideal, but it's not. Like, it's not ideal, because that car part will eventually need to grade and you don't need to go out of the car. Or plastics. We still got. Yeah, there's all kinds of thing. Right? And so elastic can create toxic anyway. Yeah, yeah. And like, yeah, and the one that feels more controllable is like the single use because it's like, you can't escape. Not ever having, like, you can't get a car without plastic. Right? Well, I think plastic there's a reason it exists. It's convenient. Yeah, it is. I mean, it's transformative for the economy, honestly. I mean, how would we get strawberries delivered? You know, you got to think about all the little peanuts in wrapping to deliver fragile goods or, or like any product on Amazon. Yeah. Little plastic bags. Yeah. Or anything that's wrapped individually wrapped to preserve it, or maintain its integrity. You know, my headphones. Or headphones. Yeah, actually, most of this equipment that I'm using for podcasting today. There's plastic. Yeah. There's also a lot of metal. I'm proud of that. Yeah. Yeah. Good Java. But yeah, like it really has made modern living possible. Right. Right. And that's the big point. That is a very good point. I want to come back to that for sure. Another big thing is that consumers want it to work. Like we so badly want it to work. Ultimate wish cycling. Yes, is exactly product of this, this packaging that makes our life better and easier. And it never breaks down. But if we can recycle it, we're fine. It's fine. You know, we can keep living our easy lifestyles. Yep. Yes. And what's so interesting is that this is I think it was the NPR article. They talked about in Oregon in like the very progressive part of Oregon, where, oh, yeah, it was that same recycling center owner who had gone to the city council meeting. And she tried to tell the City Council like, hey, this recycling, like, all these arrows are showing up everywhere, and everybody's throwing everything in. And recycling is not working anymore. And it's actually becoming more expensive for me to process recyclables than it is worth it. I'm not making any money. And everyone at the city council meeting, said, like they said, like, she says it was as if heresy had been spoken in the room. And everyone believed that this plastic was valuable. And yeah, and that's probably because of the advertising. So I have some examples here, which is really wild. It makes us feel better to believe it right? And a probably a little bit out of control to let go of that belief. But like one ad, I watched it, we'll have to somehow put on Instagram, from DuPont, again, oh, our friends at DuPont, our buddies. It's this cartoon ad and it says the bottle may look empty. It's like a recycling truck. And then a guy who I think is supposed to be working as a recycling collectors and they this bottle keeps popping out for some reason. It's like this really terrible 90s from 1990. It's really terrible commercial. But it says the bottle may look empty yet. It's anything but trash. It's full of potential. we've pioneered the country's largest, most comprehensive plastic recycling program to help fill valuable uses and roles. Well, at DuPont. We make the things that make a difference. Huh? Like forever chemicals in our water. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that has made a difference. And now Okay, so these ads were like, Shut being shown all the time in the 90s. And we don't even remember them because they're just ingrained in our minds. But that's, that had a huge impact on how we think of recycling in general, but mostly plastics recycling. Wow. Yeah. I mean, they love the narrative. Yes. And they owe it and they knew what they were doing and it's evil. But now the interesting thing is that there are new ads coming up about recycling and cleaning up plastic pollution. A lot of it has to do with like the ocean or whatever. One of the ads says we have people that can change the world. And both of the former industry officials that NPR interviewed say, it sounds like deja vu. And it sounds exactly the same. So it was interesting because they interviewed the NPR article interviewed somebody from a chemical company. And he said, Oh, no, it's, we didn't do it very well before, but it's better. It's better now. It's better. Everything's fine. We have new technology, all this crap. And these two industry insiders are like, bullshit. Wow. Yeah. It's not better. It's exactly what it was before. So keep an eye out for any bad like that. Yeah, that's offsetting. I mean, yeah, let Yeah, if you've out there see green Hui ads like this. send them our way. Yeah, we can dissect them, please do. So. Okay. The other big thing that I sort of mentioned that about the competition, but this Larry Thomas guy who used to run the Society for whatever the hills called, plastic society of the plastics industry. He said, He that he worked for an industry that didn't want recycling to work. Because if the job is to sell as much oil as you possibly can, any amount of recycled plastic is competition. Okay, wow. Yeah. said that out loud. Yeah. Forgotten. Everyone. Did. It's like, Well, I'm glad you figured it out. Now, after you spent your whole career working for these assholes. Good job. Congratulate Hey, better late than never, I guess. But yeah. And I'm going to leave us on. It shouldn't talk about kittens after this. There's one thing Yeah, leave us on, like a terrible note, but were sorry, in advance. Where's plastic production going? It's expected to triple in the next 25 years. Okay. Again, they think that it is that single use plastics or to get is it using plastics and other places that I think that's just plastic in general? No. Okay. Because maybe there's some hope. Maybe it is using it in places that it'll be used longer. Maybe. But you know, like the earth ships in New Mexico. Have you seen those? No. So they I think I've seen I've heard of them. Yeah. Well, we should post this on Instagram. But it's really crazy cool houses that people build and they use like recycled bottles for installation. I mean, just the plastic bottles for installation. Whoa, and that works. They just put bottles in their wall. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So cool. There's things like that you can do with bottles and things but yeah. Oh, God, how depressing. Apologies. And apologies for next week, because it's not getting better. We really are gonna have to do something really cheerful. No, for real. I'll like sing a song or something. a tub of ice cream? Ice cream. But it's in a it's in a paper container. I felt like well, that was one thing. Somebody I think it was the plastic free life lady was like, whatever recommendations was to go out to get ice cream and like get in. I get it into the cone. Yeah, that makes it. Okay, but then you're driving. I guess it offsets it enough that I don't know. Yeah, it's all. It's all hard. But anyway, that was. That's why I didn't sleep very well. But that's totally fair. Yeah. So that was round one. And so in the next episode, I'm going to do the whole like, granola rating. And, okay, we're going to talk let's see, what are we talking about? We're gonna talk about China's ban we're talking about, is recycling environmentally better than producing new plastic, which is interesting. Yeah. Because we were just saying it's like, oh, everything so far, seems better. Right? And then I'm going to talk a little bit about like, Dutch, plastics, recycling. And then where do we go from here? Okay, so I need a nap. I No need to go hug my dog. No. There anything of a funny story? Let's see Charlie did some. Oh, yes. I have a funny story if you want to end on that. Okay. Okay. So Charlie is to a little bit over two. Yeah. She just started talking. And it's just amazing because you get she like wakes up every day. And I can just see her mind. Opening up more. It's like she just notices more things and stuff. She just didn't pay attention to it all before. Yeah, the funniest thing happened the other day, because I was sitting next to her on her little doll house we were playing and I farted and she has never paid attention to that. Ever. And this time she got this like glaze. is looking. Alright. And then she goes mommy pooping? Because she thought I was like pooping in my diaper because because we all wear diapers. Because I do therefore she does, right. Like, I love color logic. I love it so much. So we taught her what party was, like many poops, it's just so amazing because it's like, you just see her like, wake up to the world in all these little weird ways. Amazing. Yeah. So there's still good in the world. Don't worry. Yeah, there's toddlers learning. That is helpful. That is yes. I'm glad. Okay, well, thank you. Yeah. Thank you for listening. Yeah, really? I've been like looking for not looking forward to but really interested in this topic pressing lately? Yes. Like, since we started the podcast, I was like, oh, man, that's gonna be a big and I know you've you've I've, you've given these quotes to me before, but I having them all in one sitting is kind of like I know, even for me, it's like, I discovered a lot of stuff that I did not realize before. Yeah, this is plastic recycling is trash. Wow. 110%. Okay. Well, maybe follow us on Instagram. So you can see ads from the DuPont. Yes, it's bad at greening up my act. I'm going to try to figure out a way I think I can just record it. I don't think that would be any sort of copyright. I don't care. We're not making money off of it. We're making money. Come on. Yeah, man, people. Yeah. So I'll put that up for sure. In some other interesting things. I'm not sure what yet. And shout out to everyone who does comment on our Instagram posts. I Tiffany farm farms that she's She is the chicken that hatches those eggs, and she does a great job. So I came in today and wrote a great tip. And I misspelled tip. So it's a top and I said, I mean to. So there's extra bad comments on Instagram today, because I looked at it. But it really, really appreciate the interaction we have with our followers. You guys are doing amazing things. And it's always really great to hear what you're doing. And I just love when people comment. It's so exciting. It's my career. It's like, oh, we're not the only ones doing this. Yes. And if any of our stuff has helped you that makes us feel better to so yeah, totally. One of our followers actually, I think it was Susan. Yeah. Who was it? Well, I think she was telling me that she used green bleach did yeah. Is that the one Yeah. Oh, I didn't read the I read her stuff about the dishwasher detergent. Yes. Thanks. Shout out, Susan. Yeah, whenever Oh, geez. For sure. Yeah. And Don, my friend from Yes. Well, I think Don Yeah, yeah, he's he's great too. Susan and Don, we love you. We do thing for sure. Yeah. You're why we do this. You are your purpose. Yeah. Hopefully you listen to this episode and you haven't given up after Are you just crying so loudly that you can't hear us? Alrighty, well take care to dream of glass and aluminum recycling. Totally. Kind of paper but. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Okay.